The ground floor functioned much like any museum I had been to. At least as far as having displays and signs and things to look at and walk around. It was almost mundane.

Except for the glowing white skulls floating around. That was definitely different. They hovered in front of each of the exhibits.

I wondered what they were for. To answer questions? Security? Maintenance? All of the above?

It was really too bad Mr. Makiros wasn't interested in talking about them.

We stopped at a wooden door carved with runes and markings. Something about it looked oddly familiar.

I heard Russel next to me whisper, "What in the hells…"

That's when I realized, it was identical to the one Dragon Tower made this morning to show us an Echo of Jantres.

There was no way that was a coincidence.

Time to add another panel to the Dragon Tower mystery board.

Angelina poked me in the arm. "You look like you're worried about something," she whispered. "Is something wrong?"

"No," I responded. "I don't think so. I'll explain later."

She kept silent despite the curious look on her face.

"And here we have our Jantres display collection," Mr. Makiros explained.

Then he knocked on the door. One, pause, three, long pause, then two.

Well that was curious. More coincidences? How many more were going to pile up?

The door opened and behind it was a wide staircase leading downwards. Light grey stones with depictions of skulls on the walls, some of them were human, some were vaguely humanoid, and others were completely unknown to me.

Creepy.

The first display was a one twentieth scale model of what looked like a little fishing village. At least the model included little boats and docks.

No figures of people though.

Curious.

Russel went right past it without sparing it a second glance.

I followed after him. If there was anyone here who knew about interesting Jantres artifacts it would be the guy studying necromancy.

Angelina was sticking close to me while keeping her eyes away from the bone shaped carvings into the wall.

Was this where she would see that coffin from her vision? Would it shake? What was inside?

Or maybe what would be inside was the better question?

Only one way to find out.

Russel stopped at a glass case. He had a strange look on his face. Somewhere between inquisitive and a frown.

The only reason I didn't ask as I approached was me noticing what he was looking at.

In the glass case was a knife. A short straight blade that couldn't be longer than seven inches, a handle that looked like it was made of some kind of horn wrapped in black leather.

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It looked, at first, like a normal blade.

But then I recognized it.

"Death's Echo," Russel read from the plaque on the case. "Jantres the Feared's personal enchanted knife that can turn anyone slain by this blade into a wraith for him to control."

It was also the knife Jantres had in his hand when we saw him this morning.

"Why did Dragon Tower show us this?" I wondered out loud. From the way the rest of the class was scattered about I was fairly sure only Russel and Angelina could hear me.

"Ah, taken an interest in Death's Echo? Jantres made the enchantments on it himself," Dellik was suddenly behind us.

Had he heard us?

"Did he now…" Russel mumbled.

That's when the knife did something strange.

It began to glow with a very familiar and instantly recognizable soft blue light.

Echo blue.

Death's Echo pulsed with it in that same pattern. Once, pause, three, long pause, twice. It then repeated the pattern two more times and then stopped.

"Professor, is it supposed to do that?" I asked while stepping back from it. I mean, sure it was in a case but magic was at best unpredictable around me and I didn't feel like experimenting with the curse today.

"That's…very strange," Mr. Makiros said from somewhere nearby.

(*********)

After we were done Angelina, Russel and I, were sitting in an Oktos cart on the way back to the school.

"Okay, will one of you please explain what that was about?" Angelina asked. The other students were chattering amongst themselves.

"Dragon Tower being Dragon Tower. It locked us in this morning because it wanted to show us Jantres with Death's Echo," I explained. "No idea why."

"That's a little scary. It just does that, locks you guys in?" Angelina looked worried.

"Only when it has something it wants us to see. For some reason," Russel commented.

"What I don't get is why bother, we already knew that Jantres had ties to Dragon Tower," I said.

"True, but I never imagined Jantres was the one to actually do the spells to make the Echoes," Russel said with his arms crossed.

Angelina furrowed her eyebrows in confusion for a moment before realization overcame it. "It glowed the same color as the Echoes."

"Which means whoever enchanted the knife also did the one for the Echoes," I pieced together.

And since the knife was done by Jantres, the Echoes were done by Jantres.

Then Russel had a loud intake of breath. Like a shocked gasp. "Serafina," he said my name with a very serious tone. "The knife that makes wraiths is powered by the same magic that powers the Echoes."

"Yes, we just established…" the snarky comment died as presumably the same thought occurred to me. "The wraith that I saw."

He nodded.

Angelina looked horrified.

"Don't worry. Echoes can't touch us, remember?" I told her.

Except that wasn't fully true. Red could. Red had. And the wraith had seen me, there was no way it hadn't.

"If wraiths made by Death's Echo can enter the school," Russel commented. "Who can say the lingering magic from the knife doesn't have some kind of effect on the Echoes enchantment?"

"We can't prove that, can we?" I asked.

Both of them gave me very strange looks.

"What?" I asked.

"Your mom really told you basically nothing about the Exterreri, huh?" Russel asked after a few moments.

"You don't know about the time some Mists extremists broke into the school?" Angelina asked.

"Yeah I know about that part. What does that have to do with anything?" I asked them both.

"The only reason they managed to get away with the number of students that they did was because they stabbed and murdered a professor with Death's Echo and let the wraith it made run wild on campus. The staff was too busy to notice that anyone had gone missing. Apparently they made a stop at the Gallery Hall of Bone beforehand." Russel still looked like he was thinking while he spoke.

I definitely didn't know that part.

"By the gods…" I whispered.

I rubbed at the curse mark. How terrible of a man was Merripen?

That's when another idea occurred to me.

What if Red was also connected to Death's Echo? Or maybe even some other artifact made by Jantres?

"Do you think that might also explain Red?" I asked.

Russel, who had been staring off into the distance and watching the scenery go by us, suddenly snapped his gaze to me. "If we're right about the wraith, that would explain a few things."

"Who's Red?" Angelina asked.

"The…Echo I saw that first day I got here. The one I mistook for a ghost sighting." I explained. "She…doesn't always behave like the other Echoes. She's not dangerous. Just different. We have no idea why. She's also the girl you saw that one time you tried to peak into my future."

"Even the Tower doesn't know what's going on with her," Russel commented.

"Really glad I wasn't picked by Dragon Tower. I couldn't handle it," Angelina shivered.

"That's okay. Heavens know I didn't do well in Pixie. I have no idea what made it choose us, but it must have some semblance of a clue what it's doing."

Russel laughed.

"Just please be careful. All of you." Angelina wasn't quite pleading, but there was a hint of desperation in her request.

"Of course," I told her.

I remembered the swirling red smoke she saw in the crystal ball the last time she saw my future. And the danger she sensed from it.

"Besides," I smiled at her in my best attempt at reassuring. "We have the head of security and discipline as our Tower Head. You really think we get to do anything stupid?"

She looked genuinely relieved.

That had to count for something.

But there was a bad feeling I couldn't shake as I thought about it. We had seen Red die. Was that the moment she became what we knew her as? Or was there something we just weren't seeing? And what about the wraith? Where did it fit into all of this? Did it?

I still had way too few pieces to make sense of any of this.

Dragon Tower still had so many questions without answers.

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