I hesitated, glancing up at Lyra, who still looked like she’d rather shoot the ghost again and deal with the consequences later. But curiosity was already gnawing at me. I mean, who offers a haunting like it’s a side quest on a menu?

  “…What kind of haunting are we talking about?” I asked cautiously, still half-shielded behind her. “Because if it involves crawling into a crypt or something grabbing my ankle, I’d like to formally opt out.”

  The ghost beamed, or, well, I think it beamed. Its glow shimmered with the enthusiasm of someone about to pitch you a really weird vacation package. “I knew you were cool! This one’s light haunting, beginner level. No ankle grabs, no poltergeist-level furniture throwing. Just a little… spiritual echo. Bit of a loop, you could say.”

  Lyra frowned. “A loop?”

  “Mm-hmm. Something’s stuck in the cemetery. Keeps replaying. A memory, or maybe a regret. Harmless on the surface, but it’s starting to attract… less harmless attention. You noticed the creepy vibes, yeah?”

  I nodded slowly. “The… cold air? The weird humming?”

  “Exactly! That’s not me, by the way. That’s the graveyard reacting. Spirits like me get drawn to these things. But other stuff? Hungry stuff?” The ghost wobbled slightly in midair, its glow dimming just a little. “They come to feed on it.”

  Lyra’s eyes narrowed. “You mean undead?”

  “Not yet. But give it a few more days and this place’ll be a theme park for things with too many teeth and no skin.”

  I shuddered. “So what, we just… go in and find the source of the loop?”

  “Bingo.” The ghost did a celebratory twirl. “Look for anything that repeats. Sounds. Lights. Shadows. If you see someone walking the same path or crying over the same grave, that’s your loop. Break it, and the bad stuff stops sniffing around.”

  Lyra crossed her arms. “And why can’t you do it?”

  “Because I’m a vibe consultant, not a combat unit,” the ghost replied with a dramatic sigh. “Also, I can’t touch anything. Very frustrating.”

  I exchanged a look with Lyra, who seemed torn between skepticism and her usual lowkey protector mode. “What do you think?” I asked her.

  She groaned softly. “I think we’re already involved whether we want to be or not.”

  “Yay!” the ghost cheered. “Welcome to the light haunting package. No refunds. You break it, you bless it.”

  ? ? ?

  The moment we stepped past the rusted iron gate, the air changed. It was subtle, just a shift in pressure, like walking into a room where someone had been crying. The temperature dipped a few degrees colder, and the quiet that followed was almost too perfect, like even the insects knew to keep their wings shut in this place.

  Lyra stayed close, her bow still drawn but lowered, eyes scanning every inch of the overgrown path ahead. I followed beside her, each step crunching softly on dead grass and brittle leaves. The graves around us were all different shapes, some tall and crumbling, others sunken and nearly swallowed by the earth, but they all had one thing in common: they leaned. Like they were bowing toward something. Or maybe someone.

  “Look for anything that repeats,” I whispered, my breath curling in the air in front of me. We crept deeper into the graveyard, the fog thickening around our ankles. Then I heard it.

  Sniffle… sniffle…

  A soft, wet sobbing sound echoed from somewhere to our left. It was faint, but clear enough to be human. Lyra raised her head, locking eyes with me, then silently pointed toward a bend in the path where the gravestones were smaller, child-sized.

  We moved as one, silent and careful. The sound grew louder.

  Sniffle… hic… sob…

  There, kneeling in front of a small, crooked headstone was a figure. I couldn’t tell their age or gender, just that they were wrapped in a shawl and trembling with every breath. Their shoulders shook, their fingers pressed against the name carved in stone.

  “…I’m sorry,” the figure whispered, the voice hollow and soaked with pain. “I didn’t mean to leave you alone. I didn’t mean to… I should’ve been there.”

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  A heartbeat later, the figure faded, like mist dispersing in the breeze. Gone. I opened my mouth to say something, but before a sound escaped, it happened again.

  Sniffle… sniffle…

  The same sound. The same voice. I turned and the figure was back in the exact same place, kneeling, sobbing, shaking.

  “Okay…” I breathed, “we found our loop.”

  Lyra nodded grimly, lowering her bow completely. “Question is… how do we break it?”

  Before I could answer, something clinked behind us. A faint sound, like bone tapping metal. We weren’t alone. The soft clink came again, sharper this time. Like bone tapping against something hollow and metallic. My heart jumped into my throat, and I spun around, scanning the mist behind us. Nothing.

  Just rows and rows of crooked tombstones, some half-swallowed by time, others casting warped shadows in the moonlight. The fog curled like fingers across the ground, brushing against my legs like cold silk. I stepped closer to Lyra without even thinking, clutching her sleeve.

  “Tell me you heard that,” I whispered.

  “I heard it,” she said flatly, already reaching for an arrow.

  Clink. Scrape. Clink.

  Closer. No footsteps, just that unnatural rattle. It wasn’t coming from the sobbing figure. That part of the loop continued as if nothing else existed.

  Sniffle… sob… I didn’t mean to…

  Then, from behind one of the larger tombstones, a hand emerged.

  It was pale, too pale. Bone-white fingers with thin, translucent skin stretched tight over them, as if someone had tried to remember what a human hand looked like from memory. The hand gripped the edge of the stone, followed by an arm, a shoulder, then a face.

  No eyes. Just dark hollows where they should’ve been. A wide mouth opened in the thing’s face, not in a scream but in a smile.

  I gasped, stumbling back into Lyra. “Okay, nope, nope, I vote we un-haunt this place right now!”

  Lyra didn’t flinch. She pulled me behind her, stepping forward with steady confidence, bow raised and arrow notched. “Don’t run,” she murmured. “It’s testing us. If we panic, we lose control of the scene.”

  “Who taught you that?” I whispered, clinging to her arm.

  “My grandma,” she said grimly. “She’s very into spiritual warfare.”

  The creature began to crawl, not walk, its limbs bending in ways that shouldn’t be possible, scraping across stone and earth as it circled toward the loop. It paused right behind the sobbing figure… and just watched. Tilting its head slowly. Waiting.

  The ghost’s words floated back to me:

  They come to feed on it.

  I swallowed hard. “Lyra… it’s not part of the loop. It’s watching the loop.”

  “Then we distract it before it joins in,” she said. “We need to break the pattern before it does.”

  “But how do we stop the loop?” I asked. “What if it’s not a curse, it’s just grief?”

  The sobbing repeated again. Same spot. Same words.

  Lyra lowered her bow just a little. “Maybe it doesn’t want to be stopped,” she murmured. “Maybe it wants to be heard.”

  The creature had stopped just behind the sobbing figure like it was waiting for a bus, head tilted unnaturally far to the side, mouth stretched into a grotesque grin that definitely hadn’t been approved by any deity of smiles. Its teeth were too straight and too clean for something that looked like it’d clawed its way out of a compost pile.

  It didn’t blink, it couldn’t. Its eye sockets were deep, hollow pits, like someone had scooped the humanity out with a spoon and forgotten to refill it. The way it just stood there, watching, motionless and patient, made my skin crawl worse than anything we’d seen so far. It looked like a skeleton that had lost a bet with a meat grinder, then got glued back together by someone who had only ever seen bones in badly drawn cartoons.

  Instinctively, I reached for the safest object within reach, Lyra’s sleeve, and gripped it like my life depended on how many wrinkles I could leave in her shirt. “Okay, listen,” I said under my breath, my voice trembling despite my best attempts to sound brave and sarcastic at the same time. “I know we’re supposed to be brave heroes or whatever, but I draw the line at discount ghouls who hang around crying people like they’re waiting for open mic night.” The thing didn’t react. It just kept staring. Which somehow made it worse.

  Lyra didn’t respond immediately. Her bow was still drawn, the string tight and ready, but she wasn’t aiming it. Her eyes weren’t on the monster, either, they were locked onto the crying loop, her brows drawn together like she was trying to mentally dissect the whole situation. “I think…” she said slowly, her voice more thoughtful than scared, “I think it’s not here for us. Not yet. It’s just… watching the loop.” She paused, blinking like something clicked in her mind. “Like it’s waiting.”

  I blinked, processing that. “Waiting for what?” I asked, incredulous. “A group hug? Emotional catharsis? Is it just here for moral support?”

  “Maybe it feeds on unresolved feelings,” she muttered, eyes narrowing at the unmoving figure.

  “Well, then it’s gonna love me,” I shot back, throwing up my hands. “I haven’t emotionally unpacked since middle school! I still feel guilty about stepping on a snail in seventh grade.”