The guard's laughter echoed through the enormous hall, bouncing off the walls and filling the air with a harsh, grating sound.

"Don't worry, princess. If you die here, you don't come back,” was the reply to the ex-programmer’s query.

Dave gulped.

He slowly approached the dark haired, dark skinned girl standing beneath the gate. She clutched her bone knife, looking lost. The belt with the pouch now wrapped around Dave's waist did nothing to cover him and left him feeling more exposed than a clown at a funeral.

He decided to strike up a conversation with the girl because, let's face it, the alternative was going outside into a desert filled with millions of corpses and people armed with bone knives. He cleared his throat, trying to sound calm and cool, but his voice betrayed him, sounding more like a cat coughing up a hairball.

"Hey there, you alright?" he asked.

The girl hesitated for a moment before she gave an answer. "I'm not alright. I don't know where I am or what's happening."

Dave nodded. He glanced at the mayhem beyond the gates.

"Well, according to the fat man in the sky," he said, "we're outside the Dragon Emperor's citadel on a mission to collect gold teeth. As a bonus, we have magical skills."

"And you believe that?" The girl looked at him skeptically.

"It's not like we have a choice," Dave sighed. "As we're stuck here, we might as well try to make the best of it."

She looked down at the knife. "I am not sure if I could kill someone for teeth," she admitted.

"I haven't killed anything bigger than a bee. I got attacked by a badger once and had to retreat," Dave confessed.

"I can barely see your face without my glasses. Everything is a blur," the girl revealed.

Dave nodded, understanding that it would suck for a person with glasses to suddenly be reincarnated without them.

The girl's eyes flicked from Dave's bone knife to his face, her expression unreadable.

"So, what's your name?" He asked.

Her lips formed a small smile before she replied, "Lily. And you are?"

"Dave," he said, reaching out for a handshake, only to remember that they were both stark naked. Feeling awkward, he quickly withdrew his hand, lamenting his lack of clothing options.

He tried to keep their conversation going, "So, where were you before you got here?"

Lily looked at him suspiciously, "I'm from the British Empire, Maldives. You?"

Dave was taken aback, "United States,” he said.

The girl's words caught up to his mind.

"So, let me get this straight," Dave said, scratching his head. "You were summoned here from a place where the Empire is still around? What year is it from your perspective?"

Lily nodded, her expression serious. "It's 1999. My trawler was shot at by the French bastards... And then I found myself here, naked."

"Hrmm. I died in 2023 in a car accident. We don't have a British Empire anymore..." he said.

The girl pursed her lips.

"Well, this is one heck of a dimension-hopping experience," Dave chuckled nervously, hoping to lighten the mood.

Lily looked unconvinced, "Are you sure we're not just hallucinating?"

Dave scanned the desolate landscape, "If this is a hallucination, it's the most vivid one I've ever had."

Lily nodded in agreement, "What do we do now?"

Dave shrugged, looking out at the wasteland beyond the citadel. "I am not going to cut teeth out of people. It's... insane, inefficient and also gross."

"What will you do then?" she asked.

Dave looked up at her with determination in his eyes. "I may not know much about this dragon emperor guy, but I do know one thing: I have a skill, and I'm going to use it to figure out how to get out of here. Honestly, I'm starting to think that the fat sky-man just summons people from other dimensions to do his bidding with his overpowered magical skill. It's like some sort of inexhaustible interdimensional workforce."

Lily looked thoughtful. "It would certainly explain why we're from different timelines. But what are we supposed to do? And more importantly, how do we get out of here?"

Dave shrugged. "I have magic... I think? I'm going to figure out how to use it."

"Right," the girl nodded. "I don't have anything. My bracelet is still evaluating my soul or something."

Dave sat down in the shadow of the gate and focused on his bracelet.

"Activate Phantomancy?" He said, not sure of himself.

The world became bathed in murky dimness as if someone turned the knob on the dimmer that controlled the local sun. A million ghostly threads suddenly intersected reality, like an endless web passing through the world.

Dave reached out to the nearest thread and touched it with his hand. It vibrated in his hand, whispering of another life, a memory of another person that had perished here.

He moved his hand and touched another thread. Another voice sounded in his head, another imprint etched into the world. A dying scream, pleading, muttering.

"So?" Lily asked curiously.

"I can hear dead people," Dave uttered.

“What, like in Sixth Sense with Michael Cera?” She asked.

“Michael Cera didn’t act in Sixth Sense,” Dave shook his head.

“Yes he did,” the girl insisted.

“Look, never mind our interdimensional differences in cinema,” Dave waved her off. “Let me focus.”

“Mh-hmm,” the girl rolled her eyes. “What are the dead people saying? Do they have words of wisdom for you?”

Dave focused for a few minutes holding onto various glittering threads. He heard indistinctive sounds, echoes, screams.

"I can hear... their whispers... sounds, vague last thoughts," Dave replied, eyes wide as he let go of the spectral thread connecting him to a lost soul.

He took a deep breath. "It's very odd, like listening to an old radio trying to catch a channel," As the ghostly web retreated into the background, he felt a strange mixture of wonder and discomfort, his mind still buzzing with the echoes of dead voices.

Lily shifted her weight from one foot to another. "Think you can summon the dead to help us? Collect a ghost army like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings?"

Dave shrugged, less than thrilled at the prospect. "Maybe. I'd rather not be the 'John Deere of mislaid spirits', but we're short on options. So far I can only barely hear them..."

"Hearing ghosts doesn't sound like a handy superpower, " the girl sighed. "Perhaps if we were back on earth it would be a cool skill to have as a psychic medium, but how can it help us out here?"

Dave focused on the threads again. They were brighter, thicker in the distance where people were still dying.

"Maybe it will be stronger if I am near a person that died recently?" He muttered.

Dave's stomach churned at the idea of facing death and bloodshed more closely. He glanced at the knife in his hand.

"Are you sure?" Lily asked, concern painted on her face.

"To be honest, I have no idea how it would help us. I'm just grasping at threads here, both figuratively and literally."

Lily bit her lip, and after a moment of contemplating their predicament, she smiled softly. "Well, if we must wade through this muck of misfortune, I'm glad I'm not alone in it."

Dave returned her smile, the camaraderie of the moment providing both with a sheen of courage. "Right. Let me go see if listening to the more recently departed is more helpful..."

"You're going to get stabbed if you go out there," she said.

"I realize that," the ex-programmer nodded. "Here, take my pouch."

"Why?" Lily squinted at him.

"I'm going to make myself as unapproachable as possible," Dave reasoned. "If I leave my pouch with you, the likelihood of me getting stabbed for teeth is way lower if I have no bag to store gold teeth in. I'll cover myself in blood, wrap my belt around my fingers so the knife won't slip out and... appear as deranged as possible."

Dave eyed the chaotic wasteland beyond the gates, mentally preparing himself for the macabre persona he aimed to adopt. He gave his food bag to Lily before closing his eyes, taking deep breaths, and gathering the strength to proceed.

"Well, I'm off to find my unfortunate muses," he muttered, the corners of his mouth lifting in a wry smirk.

"Please be careful," Lily urged, with a worried gaze that yearned for his safe return.

Dave gave her an uneasy grin, attempting a lighthearted farewell. "Wish me luck."

"Godspeed," she said.

With a final nod to Lily, he strode past the citadel gates, the grim facade of fake maniacal persona taking shape with each inhale of the acrid air on his face.

Dave quickly reached the nearest double-corpse lying on the ground and sliced the artery with his knife. Blood sprayed across his face. He embraced the grotesque shower.

As the warm, viscous fluid covered his face and body, Dave fought the urge to gag. Yet, he soldiered on, applying red tendrils to his limbs like braided ivy. The smell of death clung to his unwashed form, further cementing his facade of a deranged being.

Dave swung his knife and put a permanent scowl of fake madness on his face. He headed for the nearest brilliant thread hanging in the air that was as away from teeth seeking men with knives as possible.

He approached a brilliantly glowing thread which up close looked like a leaf-less, brilliant tree. With his heart racing, he tentatively grasped the shimmering branch.

Immediately, a spine-chilling scream reverberated through his head. The voice of the recently departed was much clearer than the barely discernible whispers at the gate. It struck at him like a freight train making him shudder. Dave's maniacal appearance intensified without intending to do so.

Dave held onto the thread gritting his teeth. He felt the spirit pour into his soul, adding to the metaphysical furnace in his heart.

In that moment he somehow knew what the dead man had been, knew his job and biggest passion. Torn remnants of another life filled Dave's brain, sending his own thoughts careening sideways.

Overwhelmed, Dave staggered back from the spirit tree, his brain a whirlwind of fragmented memories and foreign emotions. The deceased man's expertise in quilting somehow solidified within Dave's own consciousness.

His world steadied, but the newly added knowledge still echoed within him, tolled like sonorous bells within his head.

"Quilting, why?!" He groaned, trying to recollect himself.

Limiting the scope of his vision, he found another spirit tree nearby and resolved to focus only upon a single memory within it. Gritting his teeth, he touched the new thread, hoping the experience would be less unpleasant.

As Dave's fingertips grazed the strand, random memories poured in once more filled with unhinged laughter. He recoiled from the thread, trying to gain equilibrium amidst the dissonance within him.

He stumbled forward and brushed against another spirit tree, hoping for a less maddening experience.

It was less insane, but still not very useful.

Cooking. He suddenly knew how to cook excellent spaghetti. Freaking great.

The symphony of memories playing within Dave's thoughts now included both meshing fabrics and intertwining noodles. He took a steadying breath, searching for something else to apply to his predicament.

[Phantomancy LV 0 skill unlocked - Postmortem Parleyer]

the blue screen flashed on Dave's bracelet.

The blood covered, pretend madman stared at the holographic display.

The memory of quilting was already fading away like a bad fever dream. Whatever Level 0 was, it wasn't very good at keeping the skills of the dead inside his mind for long.

Relief washed through Dave as the phantom thread's influence began waning. Gripping his bone knife, he felt much like a somber, blood-splattered connoisseur of hapless souls.

The Level 0 skill felt more like a hollow husk of power than a trusty anchor in his time of need.

Irritation smoldered within him, Dave kept moving through the field of merged corpses, touching more threads.

Memories of last moments and their skills came and went passing through his head.

With each spectral thread, Dave absorbed ephemeral fragments of lives once lived, enduring a dizzying procession of final moments. The human tapestry flickered through his mind.

Alas, his collection of souls yielded little in terms of usefulness.

In a moment of desperate lucidity, Dave paused to consider whether he was being pranked by his own magical bracelet. If only Lari could see him now -- wandering naked, covered in blood, and searching fading echos of the deceased for answers.

No sooner had the thought passed that another ghostly whisper graced his mind. Its origin was a sparkling ghostly thread-tree nearby sprouting from a white-haired, muscular man intersected with a fat woman.

Green, unblinking eyes of the man stared into the hazy, dust-filled sky.

The memory stemming from them was far brighter, clearer, more rational than the others Dave encountered. It was as new as possible, the man must have let out his final breath just seconds before Dave’s arrival.

Like a clear brook the imprint danced in Dave’s bloodied fingers, singing like a lonely violin.

A detective.

Within Dave's grasp, the brilliantly clear memory radiated images of smoke-filled alleys and the staccato drum of rain on smog-covered streets. A detective's life unfurled before him, chronicling the dissection of countless shadows hiding dark secrets. Dave found himself awash in haphazard observations, ruminating on impassive faces that masked nefarious intent.

Dave's heart swelled with the knowledge that the green-eyed man whose final moments he had touched had been one of relentless curiosity, unyielding in the face of an ever-quieting orchestra of deception.

He hoped that the spirit of the deceased detective could join hands with him in his current, otherworldly predicament. In that moment, the blood-covered man and the ethereal memory of the detective shared a deep understanding, a desire for clarity and answers.

Dave clung to the song of the thread with his entire soul. Its calm reason soothed, smothered the panic that had been pressing down on him all day. The terror and his inability to think straight suddenly washed away by soft rains of an extremely rational, friendly, warm presence.

Dave refused to let go of the symphony of reason. His hand reached down to the silver haired head and closed the green eyes of the man shut.

"Good night, detective," Dave whispered. "Thank you."

As Dave embraced the echoes of the detective's soul, his mind careened through a vast library of deductions. Each volume, a chronicle of insight, added to his own consciousness like a mural of understanding. The amalgamation took form as a neoteric persona within him - part stoic sleuth, part sarcastic programmer.

"Alright, detective," Dave murmured, "let's put our heads together and survive this ludicrous charade the fat man summoned us into."

[ Level 1 Phantomancy Skill Unlocked: Wraith Wingman. You are now able to hold 1 imprint of the departed within yourself and call upon its knowledge and skills for aid. ]

The blue bracelet announced with white, flickering text.

"Interesting," Dave muttered.

Instead of a reply he heard the sound of the violin once again, soft and somber.

Feeling empowered, Dave strode back towards the citadel gates, embracing the music of his clandestine partner.

"I'm going to call you Sherlock," he said, with an unwavering voice. "Can you understand me?"

The bittersweet ebb of violin strings answered his call, a knowing melody that straddled tranquility and turmoil, comprehension without words.

Dave somehow understood the music. It signified agreement.

Accepting this spectral response, Dave headed back to the gate, back to Lily.

As he walked back towards the gate, he felt a chill run down his spine. He had a sinking feeling that something was amiss. As he reached the spot where he had last seen Lily, his heart sank. She was nowhere to be found.

In her place, there was a pool of crimson blood, spreading out across the dusty ground.

Cold despair surged through him as he frantically scanned the surroundings in search of Lily.

"Lily!" he cried out, voice strained under the weight of worry.

The rhythmic symphony of the violin murmured comforting wisdom, to which Dave held like a drowning man clings to a driftwood raft.

Panicked, Dave approached the nearest guard, his mind torn between apprehension and a rational desire for restraint.

"Excuse me," he began, voice trembling, "the girl that was here just moments ago, have you seen her?"

The guard's gaze swept over Dave's blood-soaked figure, disinterest met by a flicker of disdain beneath the skull-mask. "No," came his terse reply.

"Please," Dave implored. "I need to find her, she was my only companion here."

"Not my concern," the masked man replied.

Dave's vision blurred in despair.

“Investigate, focus,” the violin strings in his soul sang, becoming far more sharp and coherent.

Dave knelt down beside the pool of blood, studying it closely. There was a very thin layer of dust made from bones on everything here. Footprints. A trail of metaphorical breadcrumbs.

Dave gazed upon the evidence before him. A desperate struggle traced itself through dust and bone. The once mild-mannered programmer pressed on, following the trail of footprints.

Sherlock's haunting violin notes carried through the air, a symphony of courage amidst the cacophony of distant screams of people fighting for gold teeth.

He found Lily in the white sand, a few thousand steps left of the gate. Her skull was smashed in and her body broken. A tree made from silver threads danced above her mangled body like a phantasmagoric gravestone.

Dave's heart dropped as the spectral ballet of shimmering ghost-tree flickered above Lily's broken body.

"No, Lily," he gasped, bile coating his throat like jagged shards of glass.

Kneeling, Dave delicately reached for Lily's dust-covered hand, holding onto its fading warmth. The violin's melody wept across the wasteland, the last strains of hope smothered within its mournful symphony.

Lily's last memories rushed through his mind. Pain and panic. Being struck. The knife, taken away. Not being able to see her assailants.

Dave's vision swam, anger and despair becoming a tempestuous ocean. The maddening pulse of fury coursed through his being, a rhythm resonant with his accumulated ghostly choir. He clenched his fist, convinced that the Dragon God-Emperor and his malignant realm were responsible for this senseless carnage.

"You will pay," he murmured, his once-sniveling voice now a bitter growl, his tone imbued with the fury that fully drenched his soul.

Lily's memories flickered backwards in his mind, like a tape playing in reverse.

Dave beheld the idyllic scenes of distant Maldives and the proud flags of the British Empire adorning graceful vessels that sliced through the wind-swept waters as Lily pulled fish from the ocean with her net. His gaze beheld a life that never was, and a parallel world he would never know.

He held onto her imprint as long as he was able to, but soon it began to slip away from him. His newly acquired Phantomancy simply wasn't strong enough. Desperation clung to Dave as Lily's spirit ebbed from his grasp, fading away like an elusive lover's embrace.

With a dry, wistful sob, Dave entrusted Lily’s imprint to the undulating embrace of eternity.

He looked up to the infinite landscape above him caressed by rolling clouds. Azure lakes and endless continental divides were coldly indifferent to his plight.

Dave exhaled.

"Farewell, Lily," he whispered. He gently closed Lily's unseeing eyes, and as violin strings waned in a regretful embrace, he swore an oath: "I will avenge you."

He stood up and focused his sight on the field of the dead. Ghostly trees that only he could see were shimmering all around. The essence of the dead vibrated through his veins, their memories entwined with his own.

At that moment, the detective's persona resonated to him from beyond.

"There is power here," Sherlock's violin strings sang, its timbre a symphony of enigmatic possibility. "If you wish to extract vengeance or change this world, you must survive."

Dave clenched his fist.

"I will," he hissed, his voice filled with newfound ferocity. "I will do what it takes to get stronger."

With the symphony of the violin strings spurring him onwards, Dave strode forward reaching out to every shimmering spirit tree in his path.

As he touched the imprints of the dead, vivid memories of random professions blazed forth in his mind like a meteor shower.

An embittered cobbler, a hapless fishmonger, a dim-witted cleric, a tax accountant, a cheerful kindergarten teacher, a motivated soccer coach, a tired housewife, a landscaper, a tour guide, a taxi driver... all were illuminated in the brief, bizarre vignettes that passed behind Dave's eyes in a dizzying procession.

Some of the jobs were as simple as a professional reader, others were quirky and complex such as a CERN operator or STEM researcher.

Amid the kaleidoscopic blur, Dave felt a staggering sense of connectedness, a communion with the imprints of the departed. The violin strings hummed with a strange, deeper energy, each note a subtle enchantment that bolstered his resolve. He closed his eyes, listening to the chorus of voices that sang to him with a surreal blend of infinite possibilities of other lives.

"More," he whispered, reaching out to another spectral tree.

Dave’s body tingled with the quirky sensation of absorbing the essence of the dead, each sliver of their collective consciousness sharpening his own, innate understanding of Phantomancy.

[Phantomancy level 2 reached]

The bracelet flashed on his hand.

David ignored it. His mind swam across the multitude of the dead souls.

A sea of memories and personalities cascaded through Dave like a fountain of light, each one a chevron in the tapestry of various lives. He felt an electric sense of awakening, as if his mind had tapped into a vast network, a web of knowledge and potential. The essence of the dead swirled around him like a tempest, a symphony of voices whispering to him from beyond the veil.

Dave opened his eyes, memories of ghosts coursing through him like a wildfire.

"I will bring down the god of this hell," he declared, his voice ringing like a bell through the endless fields of the dead.

The internal violin affirmed his words, its melody soaring to meet his thoughts. He strode forward, his eyes alight with a newfound strength.

The sun beat down on him as he traversed across the endless field of bodies. Each caress of a spirit tree added a tiny, microscopic grain of understanding to his skill.

The day wore on and Dave continued his voracious pursuit of all the unlife he could absorb. Every spirit tree he touched added another smattering of insight to his Phantomancy skill.

His strides grew surer.

"I'll show that fat sky-bastard," he murmured.

The spirit branches around him flickered as the sunlight began to wane, wind blowing bone dust through the desolate landscape.

"I have to keep going," he whispered to himself. His elation was unfortunately beginning to fail him.

A loud noise suddenly interrupted his journey. Dave raised his eyes and spotted a monstrous thing looming over the corpses in the growing twilight. It was an awful, grotesque mixture of a giant vulture, a bat and a dragon. The beast was feasting on the dead, blood dripping from its maw.

Dave's heart raced as he beheld the monstrous hybrid clawing at the corpses before it. Fear swelled within him. He steadied his nerves and raised the bone knife above his chest, his eyes focused intently on the creature.

It let out an ear-piercing screech and suddenly lunged at him, a hurricane of wings and claws.

He slashed at the abomination, but he was too slow. His Level 2 Phantomancy did nothing to help him. The monstrous beast grabbed Dave with its talons lifting him off the ground.

Dave felt his body being crushed by the creature's massive claws, the wind rushing past him like an arctic storm. The world spun around him, his fear and frustration mingling in a terrible cocktail.

The snarling beast seemed to be… laughing? Dave blinked, almost disbelieving, as the creature's maniacal cackling reverberated through the clearing.

"What's so funny?" he snarled.

The creature simply continued to laugh like a hyena, a wild, savage sound that echoed across the field of the dead.

Dave's stomach churned as he was hoisted higher and higher into the sky by the monstrous thing, its laughter echoing through the mountainous peaks. He felt the wind whip at his face, his knife useless in the beast's grip.

The beast that beheld him emitted an awful aroma, even worse than the field of the dead.

"Just my luck," he muttered through gritted teeth. "I get reincarnated only to be eaten by a giant smelly bat."

As the creature's mad laughter continued to fill his ears, Dave heard a new sound - a low, ominous hum. The beast seemed to pause, its grip loosening as it looked around, as if searching for the source of the sound.

Something suddenly struck the creature in mid air. Dave yelped as two monstrous, dark, blurry things fought and spun in the sky.

He took the given opportunity, twisting his body and struggling free of the creature's grasp.

He stabbed at the claw that held him again and again.

Dave felt a surge of adrenaline as he was suddenly free of the large talons.

He then discovered that he was plummeting down, his knife clutched tightly in his fist. With a sickening thud, he slammed into the dark ground, his bones jarring from the impact.