"My cousin said there's one near the gym bathroom," Reynor said. He was completely serious. "She said if you flush three times and say your name backwards the lights flicker."

  "That's just myth," Mark said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because the light is broken!"

  "That doesn't mean ghosts aren't in there."

  "I didn't say ghosts aren't real. I said the lights are broken."

  They were under the big oak, sitting in the roots the way they always did at lunch. The yard was loud around them, other kids running and yelling and throwing things that weren't meant to be thrown. The three of them had claimed this spot by some unspoken agreement in the first week of school and nobody else had ever tried to take it, maybe because Reynor had told everyone the tree was haunted, which at the time had been a joke.

  "This school used to be a cemetery," Lark said.

  Both of them went quiet.

  "What?" Mark said.

  "Before they built here. There were graves. A lot of them." He'd heard a teacher mention it once during a local history lesson that nobody else had paid attention to, after all, from kindergarten to grade 6, he attended this school in the past. He had. "That's why there are so many trees on the property. They planted them over the old graves."

  Reynor looked at the roots they were all sitting on. He stood up.

  "I'm sitting on someone?" he asked, looking quite scared.

  "You're sitting on roots," Mark said.

  "Roots that are going through someone."

  "Reynor."

  "I'm just saying what's true."

  "The point is," Lark said, "if there are ghosts anywhere, it's here. The whole school grounds."

  "Why do you want to find them?" Mark asked. “Ghosts are scary.”

  "I'm just curious," Lark said. Which was true, technically.

  Mark looked at him for a moment. "Okay. Don’t cry if you see one." he said.

  Reynor was still eyeing the ground under his feet. "I'm not going near the gym bathroom. That's where I draw the line."

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  The walk home was twenty minutes and Lark spent all of it thinking.

  Ghosts are just Aether remnants, or at least that’s what I know. What's left of a person's life force when they die and it doesn't fully disperse. In a world this thin on Aether they'd be faint. More like impressions than actual presences. Not nearly enough to trigger a Core awakening.

  But a demon would be different.

  Demons weren't remnants. They were their own thing, beings with Aether of their own, existing in the gaps between root worlds and the upper realms. In a low-Aether environment like this they'd be small and limited, nothing like the things he'd run into during his first life. But small was fine. Small was workable. A demon's Aether was naturally dense, compressed into a form that didn't need a high-concentration environment to sustain itself. Even a weak one might carry enough for what he needed.

  The question is how you find one. Or call one.

  He stopped at the corner of his street.

  Later in life I'd just look it up. Cross-reference cultivation texts and find the footnote that everyone else skipped. But it's 2007. I'm five. Even if I could get to a computer, the internet right now is mostly forums and slow loading screens and nothing that would actually help with this.

  He started walking again.

  Memory. What do I actually remember?

  He'd been seventeen the first time around, bored and going through a phase. He'd read everything strange he could find online. Witchcraft guides. Folklore collections. Old translated texts on spirit contact and summoning that he'd treated like entertainment, because back then he hadn't known any of it was real. He'd tried a few things in his bedroom, candle lit, a diagram copied from a book, completely half-hearted.

  Nothing had happened.

  He knew why now. Without an active Core, you couldn't interface with anything that ran on Aether. You were just a person making shapes with salt in a dark room, producing nothing but a slight fire hazard.

  But I have a Core. Dormant, yes. Barely a whisper. But it's there. And if those old methods were real Aether theory dressed up in ritual language, then maybe some of them would actually work for someone whose Core already exists, even if it hasn't woken up yet. The Core is the key. The rituals might just be the door. I just need the right place for it.

  His house came into view at the end of the street. Lights on in the kitchen. His mother's car in the driveway.

  I need to write down what I can remember. But maybe there are things that I can learn on the library?

  He pushed the gate open.

  I'm five. I can be weird. That's practically expected.

  "Lark!" His mother's voice came from the kitchen the second he stepped inside. "Shoes off! How was school?"

  "Good," he said, toeing his shoes off neatly. "Mom, can we go to the library this weekend?"

  A pause from the kitchen. Then his mother appeared in the doorway, spatula in hand, looking at him like he'd said something in another language.

  "The library," she repeated.

  "Yeah. I want to read something."

  "What kind of things?"

  Lark paused as he feel the cringe rising up before he speak.

  "Just books. I talked with Reynor and Mark about ghosts."

  She stared at him for another second with a sigh. Then she pointed the spatula at him. "Well, at least you’re gonna read a book."

  "Fine, but bring Maya along too," she said, already turning back to the stove. "Wash your hands before you sit down!"

  Lark looked at his hands. Small. Un-cultivated. Not a single realm to his name yet, not even Core Stirring, the most basic rung on the entire ladder.

  Step one, he thought. Look for sources.

  He headed for the bathroom to wash his hands.

  Easy.

  He paused at the doorway.

  Is it?