“Phaedra was my most talented student, and when it comes to revenge, she was a patient girl. Ever since her coven was slaughtered, she has waited over two hundred years for the right time to make a move. Unfortunately for her though, that cost her magical abilities. With each passing day without use, small bits of it dwindled until she could no longer even levitate a fork.”

I never thought a phantasm could remember so much, yet here I am standing before one that lived in a time where Phaedra wasn’t even brought into the world. He is translucent, fickle, but no knowledge left him, even as it was passed down to Phaedra centuries ago when she was just a child.

“The last ounces of magic she had was used to erase your memories and fabricate new ones. And now she uses the spirits, mainly me, to carry out her bidding.”

Holding Altas close to me becomes a reflex now. His hoodie is soft, but not enough to push down the murky strangeness in my head. I am unable to process his words properly, so I simply let them put themselves wherever they need to in my memory.

“Is that how she’s been able to get away with this?”

He nods. “We have cleaned up her messes more times than we can count.”

We thanked him for the valuable information and let him return to the trinket box. The silence is dense, filled only with the difficulties Atlas and I deal with in processing this information. The gears in our mind slow, and we are tired.

“I…don’t want to believe this,” Atlas whispered.

“Me neither.”

“But do we have a choice?”

No, we really don’t. But for now, we sleep on it. It will be a while before the next victim comes around.