The tavern was a cacophony of jeers and laughter as patrons roared their approval at the song that had just finished playing. Niram slammed his almost emptied tankard on the counter table, the little liquid remaining inside sloshing and jostling about.


    He stood up, pushing through the tightly packed room as he made his way to the door. He received multiple insults and pushbacks, but he didn''t pay them much attention; those people only had to see his face to immediately freeze up and move away.


    Finally, Niram left the candle-lit tavern and stepped out into the dark streets of Carosh. He looked at the sky; it was a full moon, and the little bit of silver streams that managed to get past the tightly packed houses in this dump of a town shone down on his path. However, he didn''t need it. Niram was a Ghost seer, which made him able to see in the night as well as the day. He staggered and stepped on a puddle of rainwater which was probably mixed with piss and shit. Looking down on his reflection—the bone-white skin and his light blue, glowing eyes—Niram went back to the day he''d become a Ghost seer.


    The town of Hearshe— a rural community in the Kingdom of Seilon far in the east — had been built close to a massive war graveyard. Apparently, the founding families had been people, mostly widows and mourning mothers, who couldn''t seem to let go of their losses, so they''d come up with the idea to build a town close to their dead loved ones.


    Niram spat to the side, his dim glowing eyes glancing at a man leaning on the wall of another building. The man only had to take in his eyes before he scampered off, probably to go find an easy prey to rub.


    Niram had grown up playing in that graveyard. His mother was mostly absent, she was either in a tavern by the roadside getting stupidly fucked by whoever had a copper decari. And if she wasn''t getting fucked, she was probably fucking her brains with all the manos leaves she was sniffing. The only time she ever paid attention to Niram was either to rant about his deadbeat father or beat him senselessly for asking her for money.


    The graveyard had been Niram''s safe place, alongside the other children whose parents were either dead or deadbeats. They''d play hide and seek from morning to evening, and after that, they''d come up with multiple schemes to rob some unsuspecting passerby.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    That regretful night, Niram and Kiesh, his best friend, had forsaken their usual routine to go play in the graveyard. They''d always heard stories about voices coming from the graveyard at night, but since they had very intimate knowledge of the place and hadn''t heard anything themselves, they chose not to believe.


    Niram and Kiesh had run into the graveyard—a place of tall trees with expansive crowns that fortunately shrouded the place from the wrathful afternoon sun—laughing and making all sorts of noises. That had gone on well until they''d come face to face with something they hadn''t been expecting to see. A ghost. The thing had not looked like how they''d envisioned ghosts to be. It had been, of course, transparent and floating a few inches off the ground. But that wasn''t what scared them. The wolfish face and the scythe-like daggers hanging from its mouth and long limbs had been what had made them scramble back in terror.


    Kiesh did not make it out alive that night, his insides had been inverted as the wolf ghost tore into him with wild abandon. Kiesh had been, unfortunately, enough for the ghost as it didn''t bother chasing after Niram, and he was forced to hear the pain-filled shriek of his best friend as he ran for the town.


    His adrenaline had lasted until he''d gotten to his home, and within seconds, he was already unconscious. He had woken up the next day to shouts and heavy banging on the door. The first thing he got when he finally opened it was a scream and a heavy ringing sound in his ear as a heavy slap landed on him. It wasn''t until he''d seen himself on one of the rare glass windows that he finally knew he''d been changed; but by then, there was nothing to be done. He was already dead.


    Nobody had believed him when he''d described the thing they''d encountered. Looking back, he''d found it ironic how much the people raged for a boy they actively ignored when he''d been alive and begging for scraps on the streets. The only person who had believed him was Carin, and he was thankful for that. Otherwise, he''d have been nothing but ashes and bones by the next morning.


    He''d fled the town shortly after that, running as far as he could with his twelve year old legs. He wasn''t aware of where he''d been fleeing until he''d found himself back in the graveyards. And then he had to choose: death by wolf spirit or death by fire? Well, both were sure to make a human scream their throats raw, so he''d simply picked the graveyard. After all, the wolf spirit was probably on the other side of the graveyard, never to encounter Niram as long as he was careful.


    Well, careful lasted no longer than a minute before he was frightened out of his skin as a voice pssed at him. Turning back had brought him face to face with his dead best friend, Kiesh.