We touch down at the village green in Corwen by red, by which point everyone's grateful to be going inside to eat at a table and sleep in a bed. We mumble our good nights as Corwens head into the Hearth and the non-Corwens head for the guest house.

One of my aunts approaches me as I'm eating dinner in the hearth.

Name: Magnolia Corwen Tempest Tiganna Race: Human | Gender: Female | Rank: Heroic | Tier: Master | Class: Sophic Hearthkeeper Disposition: Friendly | Mood: Busy, busy, busy

"A skyship arrived with a package for you," Aunt Magnolia says. "Your grandmother sent you a naming day gift. Normally, I would insist that you wait until your naming day to open it, but as it is a very late 7th naming day gift, well…"

Aunt Magnolia brings it to me in between dealing with babies. The box is distinctly book-shaped, and the label says, Happy belated 7th naming day! Love, Grandma Kestrel.

I open it up. It's a textbook titled Sigil Programming: A Basic Primer on Arcane Spell Structure.

An additional note has been written onto a blank page at the start of the book. To Drake, my beloved grandson. You seemed to be the sort of kid who would appreciate a textbook for a naming day present. Have fun, nerd! Love, Grandma Kestrel.

"I will be sure to thank her should I see her again before I get eaten by a monster or something," I say. "Because I have no way to guess where she might be at any given time and that might be tomorrow or a century from now."

"I'm sure my dear sister will show up to defend her home if she's alive for the next apocalypse," Aunt Magnolia says. "She had better. Oh, and here's the student handbook for the Dolwen Wizardry Preparatory School."

"Please never bother to say that full name again," I say, taking the booklet. "Thanks, I'll look over it in bed."

"Are you sure you want to attend a school with… normal children?" Aunt Magnolia says.

"Everyone keeps asking me that," I say with a sigh. "I'll be fine. Prep school will not be the greatest challenge the Crystalline Heavens has to offer me. If it is, I had better just hang up my caduceus and stay home. I'm sure I can survive tweens. But seriously, I have the opportunity to attend wizard school. Why wouldn't I?"

I head for my room and lie down on my nice, soft bed to read my student handbook. I am entirely too tired right now to start learning sigil programming, but I need to know when term starts and what supplies to acquire first.

Term starts on Monday, January 4th, 740. Because there are monsters on the surface for the entirety of fall, children are kept in their own Hearths until winter. Friday, March 25th is the last day of winter term, after which there's a spring break so rural children can go back to help their families with the planting. Spring term starts on Monday, April 11th. Then school gets out for the year on Friday, August 12th, so children can help get the harvest done before swarm season begins.

Children who have no intention of getting more levels in agricultural skills than absolutely necessary can go delve dungeons or study or whatever during those breaks. Or, I suppose, actually take a break, if they're lazy and unmotivated, but who would want to do a crazy thing like that?

"Hey Drake!" says little Griffin, bouncing into the room and onto the bed next to me. "Whatcha got?"

"It's the handbook for Dolwen Prep School," I say.

"Can I read it?"

"Sure," I say, handing it over to him. I already shoved it into my [Mental Library], so I don't need the physical copy anymore. "Want to help me with a skill? Read it aloud to me in your own words. Ask if there's something you don't understand, but this skill is about understanding."

"Okay!" Griffin says.

Another boy shows up while he's starting in on the introduction. Raven, the half-orc, has gotten huge since I last saw him. Toddler growth spurts are no joke with orc blood, apparently.

"Hi Drake!" Raven says. "Where have you been?"

How old is this kid again? Blast it, I need to put a page in my [Mental Encyclopedia] for all my relatives' naming days. Anyway, he looks like he might be five, but orcs are bigger than humans.

"I went to Amroth, Nefern, Halkyn, and Hebron," I say. "I made some new friends, some with tools and some with words."

The two younger boys listen with rapt fascination as I give them an abbreviated account of my encounter with the orcs. It's good to be home, with my family. And I realize that while I can perfectly understand Raven, he's still in the "incoherent babble" stage to everyone who doesn't have a universal translator.

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Griffin reads aloud some of the student handbook, but he dozes off during the section about school rules. We will probably regret that later. Oh well.

Before I go to sleep, I cast a [Ghostly Watcher]. I can't yet keep the skill up all the time, but I'm practicing as much as I can. And [Ghostly Enchanter] takes even more Inspiration to maintain.

With my body in bed, my ghost flies off as a disembodied pair of eyes. I circle around the village a bit first before slipping out of the Hearth and drifting down the road toward the Spooky Grove. I'm still gauging the increase in cost based on distance. I couldn't make it back to Hebron from Amroth before the spell dissipated. The ghost doesn't move much faster than I could on foot, and that only because ghosts can phase through walls and don't need to watch where they step.

My ghost makes it to the Spooky Grove, and I spot those disembodied yellow eyes that look very much like the ones that come with [Ghostly Watcher]. I assumed they were just the dungeon providing spooky ambience, but out of curiosity, I bring up [Trace Connection] to see if they're actually connected to anything.

Inspiration costs here are steep but manageable only because my body is asleep. Physical sleep and dreaming greatly increases my Inspiration regeneration rate. Doing this every night would be an excellent way to practice, too.

I trace the links from the eyes to a crypt I'd never known was there, concealed in brambles even denser than the ones around the Sleeping Raven Inn. As a ghost, I can pass right through, of course, but seeing razor-sharp thorns pass through my noncorporeal eyes is still disconcerting.

Countless sarcophagi line the walls, each of them marked with a plaque bearing a name, birth and death dates, and a class. Their surnames are all Treharris, and their lifespans mention the Age of the Azure Fox, the age immediately preceding this one. These dates were all thousands of years ago.

And they are all watching. The thick barrier of green vis prevented me from seeing how many ghosts are here until I was actually inside.

Not all of the stone coffins still contain a soul, but a significant number of them do. A budding Necromancer could get a good start on an undead army here. But why is it here? I had been under the impression that the previous Age ended in a Divine Apocalypse that led to the complete destruction of Tempest.

Well, I suppose that doesn't mean much. Hebron was able to bring back stone relief carvings it had erased. Cores can manipulate matter pretty freely in their own territory. So this is here because Treharris wanted it to be here. It kept the souls from the previous Game round.

I scan the aura inside the coffin in the middle of the room.

Name: Durian Treharris Tempest Tiganna Race: Human | Gender: Male | Rank: Elite | Tier: Ancient | Class: Revenant Jester Disposition: Hostile | Mood: Come play with us!

These coffins would absolutely pop open and these people would rise up as zombies and attack anyone that walks into this crypt. And they know I'm here and many of them are gleeful at the prospect.

They must be so damned bored.

I do a thorough scouting of the area, leveling [Mapping Feet] in the process even though I don't actually have feet in this form. Did we seriously not know this was here? This might be a good place to take my party, if we were careful about not letting them get out and sticking to the upper floors. The whole place is arranged like a typical dungeon with increasing difficulty as you go deeper.

Estelle has to know this is here, but she never mentioned it. Once I'm done scouting the crypt, I slip over to the inn. I can't actually talk in this form, but that's hardly a problem.

"Hello, Drake," the ghost poet says. "So good of you to visit. I see your skill at Necromancy is growing rapidly."

I take a peek at what she's writing, but of course it's in French. I now have a skill to analyze communication, but it requires someone actually being there trying to communicate. I'm probably going to need a second skill for written languages. (No, I'm not just considering this to get out of actually learning French. This will be an essential exploration skill.)

That won't be tonight, though. Even dreaming, my ability to maintain the ghost is starting to fade. The last thing my floating yellow eyes see before they dissolve is a mirror on the wall reflecting them as the spell falls apart.

After breakfast, I head over to the guest house to check on my party members.

Melody sits at a table across from her fellow white-haired Gleam, Bucky. The 7-year-old boy is still silent, but there's joy in his aura and a smile on his face as he listens to her regale him with tales of her adventures since they last met.

"Hey, Drake," Melody says. "When are we planning on heading out?"

"Not just yet," I say. "I've got a couple things to do and some people I need to talk to, so feel free to make yourself comfortable and catch up. The next dungeon's very close, though."

"Alright. Thank you for bringing me here, by the way. I'm so glad to know Bucky and his mom are alright."

I bid them good day and go off to find Aunt Savannah, and locate her at the top of the Hearth's central tower.

"What do you know about the crypt in the Spooky Grove?" I ask.

"There is a crypt in the Spooky Grove?" Aunt Savannah asks.

I sigh. "Even you didn't know about it?" I describe to her how I ran across it last night, and the invariably hostile state of the dead inside.

Aunt Savannah frowns as she listens to my recounting. "Curious. Most curious. The sort of undead that show up some years at swarm season are monsters made of protean plasm, but these sound like true undead with human souls. I have not dealt much with true undead."

"I have, or at least, Alex did," I say. "Earth was overrun with them. It was only the discovery of the aether cores and invention of the system that let us beat them back and reclaim our world."

"What would you, or at least Alex, suggest to be done about them, then?" Aunt Savannah asks.

"We need to have a little chat with the aether core that's supposed to be keeping those souls from becoming murderous. They've been sealed in there safely for centuries, but it's worrisome having that many angry dead sitting right next door, waiting and watching."

"Indeed. That dungeon is a vassal of Corwen, so it should not seek to harm us, but things don't always happen as they should."

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