On the way home, I dropped by the city cemetery. I walked past the rows of tombstones. Interesting... The oldest graves were no more than a century and a half old. A fresh cemetery for such an ancient city.

  A frame surfaced in my memory, like static on an old screen: I am standing on a hill, and a gray sea is marching before me. A horde of the dead that I raised against the living. It was... fun?

  At the very least, it wasn't boring back then.

  I remembered how, after that slaughter, people in terror stopped burying each other. They began burning bodies, turning death into ash so that no one could ever again knock on their windows from underground. Those who tried to protest or secretly buried their loved ones were killed and burned right along with them. Fear turned out to be stronger than love for one's ancestors.

  I couldn't help but smile.

  "Well, let's see if you've forgotten how to obey."

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  I stomped my foot on the loose earth.

  SNAP.

  The ground stirred. With the sound of tearing fabric and the crunch of dry boards, gray, time-eaten hands began to emerge from the graves.

  "Arise," I said cheerfully, watching the dead crawl out. "You are probably the only ones here who don't complain about this lousy world."

  I lined them up in a neat row. Skeletons in rags, half-rotted bodies with empty eye sockets—my personal parade of silent listeners. I looked at them and started to laugh. Loudly, until I hiccuped, scaring away the crows.

  But the laughter suddenly caught in my throat. Something howled in my head again.

  WHAT AM I DOING?

  Reality cleared up for a second. I was standing in the middle of a cemetery playing with corpses, while the fates of a thousand people were digesting inside me.

  I sharply snapped my fingers.

  POOF.

  Destruction Magic swept through the ranks of the dead. They didn't just fall—they instantly crumbled into fine, white dust.

  "It's just bone meal..." I whispered, trying to calm the trembling in my hands. "Just fertilizer. The soil needs minerals. I'm just... a good gardener. Yes. I just wanted to make the land more fertile..."

  I turned around and practically bolted away from the cemetery.

  "Just fertilizer..." I kept repeating under my breath.