“Are you okay?” Alex asked the red-masked individual.

The wearer dipped their head again, showing the sad expression. Not knowing what else to do, Alex removed his own mask, in the hopes it might encourage the crying person to remove theirs. He asked again if they were all right, and again the wearer dipped their head.

Does that mean they’re not okay? he wondered. It didn’t sound as if they were.

Hoping it wouldn’t result in terrible repercussions, Alex reached forward and removed the mask from the person’s face, lifting it gently off.

Beneath the mask was a ghostly woman, her eyes red with tears. She might once have been beautiful, but time had not been kind. There was a translucence to her body that made Alex think she was an actual ghost, and her sorrowful expression had him transfixed.

“I’m sorry,” he said, handing the mask back. In some defiance of physics, she took it from him, keeping hold of it in her faded hands. “Are you okay?” he asked again.

For a second, it seemed as if she wouldn’t speak, her voice lost after death. And then she did, in a tone so haunting it made tears spring to Alex’s eyes.

“Have you come to help me?” she breathed.

“I’ll try,” Alex replied solemnly.

“Kind boy, I am lost, and my child is starving,” she whispered. “Could you spare a coin so I might return to him? He is so hungry, and I have left him all alone. I need only a gift from the world beyond this place, and we shall be reunited. A simple coin. A token of value.”

Alex turned to see that the others had followed him and were standing nearby. Their faces reflected his own, after listening to the hauntingly sad voice of the phantom woman.

“Do you have a coin, or something valuable?” he asked the group. They checked their pockets, patting them down for stray treasures, but because the clothes were not their own, they didn’t carry any currency. They had nothing they could give. “I’m sorry,” said Alex, turning back to the woman.

She began to weep again, the sound undulating with an extra layer of hopelessness.

“All is not lost. You’ll see,” Alex said comfortingly as he checked his own pockets. All he had were the clockwork objects he had obtained on his travels. A thought occurred to him, and he removed the mouse, wondering if the gold-and-silver inlay might be a valuable enough token to buy food for her child, and to reunite them. He held it out to her, and her sad eyes went wide in surprise. Her spectral hands closed over it. With a whoosh of cold air, she disappeared, the red mask clattering to the ground.

On the air, Alex could swear he heard the whispered sound of “Thank you.”

Stooping low, he scooped the red mask from the ground and turned it over in his hands. Written on the inside was the word “Kindness.”

Lintz smiled. “The seventh virtue of Orpheus. That was a generous thing you did there, dear boy.”

“It was the least I could do,” replied Alex, knowing her face would haunt him for a long time to come.

As he turned, with his mask and the ghost’s mask in his hands, the rest of the Noh-masked people swept aside, bowing in a sort of reverence as the group passed on their way to the doorway.

Entering a passageway with a cavernous roof, dripping with stalactites, they saw two entrances ahead of them, though only one was open. The other had a heavy stone door blocking the way, with no obvious means of opening it. There was no lock, no keyhole, nothing, only the half-eroded face of an ancient bust, most of the features worn away.

“I guess we have to go this way, then?” said Alex, gesturing to the open passageway.

“Why don’t we scope it out first, you and I?” suggested Aamir.

Alex nodded. “We’ll be back in a second,” he promised Ellabell and Lintz. “Once we know the coast is clear.”

They headed through the open entrance, and as they paused at the lip where the tunnel stopped, Alex could sense something was wrong. The cavern beyond was filled with water, but it was not the kind of pool anyone would have wanted to swim in. Dark shapes weaved along the surface, pointed fins emerging and disappearing beneath the water. With a splash, a school of flying fish covered in barbs soared through the air, gnashing rows upon rows of vicious teeth. Alex could bet there was a moat creature in there somewhere, ready to lunge.

An enormous bird-like monster with vast, leathery wings swooped close to the cave’s entrance, sending the two young men staggering back from the edge. It was a hybrid of sorts, somewhere between a dragon and a bird, with a face that looked more like a skull than a living head. There was no way they could go in that direction, not if they wanted to live.

With shocked looks on their faces, the duo hurried back to where Ellabell and Lintz were patiently waiting.

“Yeah, we can’t go that way,” Alex said, catching his breath.

“So how do we get this one open?” Ellabell asked, tapping the stone doorway.

A vision flashed into Alex’s mind. He moved toward the eroded bust that stood just to the side of the doorway, looking more closely at the worn features. Standing nose-to-nose with the masonry, Alex was glad he had stopped for the ghostly woman. Upon further inspection, the features, though worn down, were remarkably similar to those of the ghost he had met. Alex was still holding her mask in his hand. Carefully, he placed the mask over the face. It fit perfectly, and as it locked into place around the sculpted features, a loud rumble shook the passageway. The entrance to the second tunnel was sliding upward, revealing a safer path—or so Alex hoped.

With no time to lose, they moved through the newly opened passage, praying it would prove kinder than the alternative route.

After following a dim, torch-lit tunnel for what seemed like an age, they emerged into a grand room, decked out with tapestries and fine furnishings. All around the walls were elegantly painted urns, depicting friezes of Grecian battles and ancient deities, but most intriguing of all was the magnificent feast laid out on a long table in the center of the room. Mountains of food rose up from silver platters and golden sauce jugs, from clusters of plump, ripe fruit, to desserts piled high with cream and chocolate. Alex’s stomach rumbled. He hadn’t realized just how hungry he still was, until he saw the beautiful spread that had been laid out.

“Do you think this is for us?” Aamir asked cautiously.

Lintz licked his lips. “I don’t know, but it sure looks good!”

The professor was right: it did look good, and Alex had a feeling it might be some sort of reward for having come this far through the vault. He reached out to grasp a glistening slice of fruit-filled pie, but Aamir’s hand shot out to stop him, snatching his arm away.

“Hey! We’ve earned this,” insisted Alex, none too pleased by Aamir’s intervention.

“We shouldn’t trust anything we see,” Aamir said. As he removed his hand from Alex’s arm, a strip of his bloodied bandage fell onto the table below, making impact with the slice of pie. As soon as it touched the enticing pastry, a swarm of vile-looking bugs with jagged pincers surged upward and engulfed the food in a writhing mass. When they receded, nothing was left of pie or bandage.

Alex shuddered, thinking about what would have happened if he’d actually made contact with the slice.

“I guess my stomach got the better of me,” Alex murmured.

Upon closer inspection, he realized that the whole inner core of the feast was rotten, everything decaying, covered in a forest of gray and black mold. It was an illusion. Only the outer layer was fresh and glistening, designed to entice gluttonous hands, to encourage the flesh-eating bugs to come out of hiding. Alex understood that this was test number eight as he read the word embroidered on the purple velvet tablecloth: “Temperance.”

Alex glanced toward the beautifully decorated urns, and felt suddenly nervous. If this was a task, then what were the urns for? For the first time since entering the vault, Alex wasn’t even sure he wanted to get the book anymore, but the thought of Virgil, and the promise of destroying the Great Evil, of setting everyone free, pressed him on.

“We should go to the next room,” Ellabell said, urgency clear in her voice. “I don’t like this place.”

The others nodded and made their way toward the door at the other end of the room. However, as they neared, it became clear that the doorway was a trompe l’oeil, a deceptive painting, made to look realistic. There was no door.

Panic flooded Alex’s veins as all the torches were blown out. From the sudden darkness, a glowing, unnerving light filled the room. A split second later, frightening specters, very like the ones Alex had seen around Vincent, floated upward from the urns, their wispy forms twisting into being.

“Close your eyes!” Alex yelled. “Don’t look them in the eye! Whatever you do, do NOT open your eyes until we are out of this room, under any circumstances!”

“What? Why?” asked Ellabell.

“You have to! Close your eyes now, and don’t open them again until I say!” he insisted, his panicked voice making them obey.

Even with his eyes closed, Alex could feel the cold prickle of the specters all around him, brushing at his skin with their vaporous hands. Goosebumps rose on his flesh.

“We are the Gaki, the starving ghosts of the greedy,” some whispered, passing close to his ear.

“We are the Goryo, vengeful spirits of the dead,” said the others.

Alex didn’t know whether they were the same species of specter as the ones that had surrounded Vincent, or simply an illusion, but he wasn’t willing to risk an incident, regardless of where they had sprung from. They were creatures of dread, made all the more terrifying by the fact that they could not be fought in the conventional way.

“They’re telling me I have to open my eyes!” Aamir shouted. “I can feel them trying to lift my eyelids… I am not sure I can fight them,” he added, his voice strained.

“Don’t listen to them!” Alex instructed. He, too, could feel the spirits physically trying to lift his eyelids, their ice-cold hands making his eyes dry and itchy, compelling him to want to open his eyes and blink away the discomfort. He held fast, keeping them squeezed shut. He didn’t want to experience what Caius had.

Thinking fast, Alex wondered if there might be a key or a lever within the moldering buffet, but he couldn’t bring himself to plunge his hand into the mess, just to have his flesh gnawed off by disgusting bugs.

“Professor, what is the ninth virtue of Orpheus?” Alex asked.

“Honor!” Lintz replied.

Honor? thought Alex. What is that supposed to mean here?

Feeling the tug of vaporous fingers pulling at his eyelids again, he thought about how he could get the specters back into their urns. What might entice them back in? He had seen them in his encounter with Vincent, but they were not something he had fully delved into—he knew he wasn’t supposed to look them in the eyes, but that was about it. Wracking his brains, he considered holding the urns and asking them to return, perhaps saying a few words or a prayer, in order to honor the dead. That would fit the bill, Alex reasoned, but the idea seemed a little too easy.

He thought about performing a necromantic incantation, but he was painfully aware that he didn’t know any. It made him wonder if he was entirely equipped for this series of tasks after all, or if he was missing an ability. Perhaps the golden disc had read his talents wrong.

His only link to necromancy was walking the spirit lines, and the way he was able to incorporate mind control, to manipulate memories, but he had no idea whether any of that would work on these beings. Before, he had used those talents to make people feel happy, and to restore their minds, but he didn’t think these specters could be made to feel happiness.

Going back to plan A, he clumsily made his way toward one of the urns and reached out to pick it up, almost knocking it off its plinth in the process. He held it steady, realizing it was a stupid idea, but knowing he had to at least try it out.

“Please go back inside, honored spirits,” he said.

“You think we will obey the words of a feeble human?” one of the specters cackled, making Alex feel foolish.

That left only the spirit lines as the sole valid idea he had. Dubious of its success, he fed his anti-magic out into the space of the room, seeking out the pulse of the spirits. To his surprise, he could almost see them as clearly as if he’d had his eyes open, though there was a more human quality to them when he viewed them through a necromantic lens. Where before there had been hollow eyes and gaping mouths, he could make out the echoes of their previous faces shifting beneath the surface. With an almost magnetic pull, he drew the spirits to him, letting his anti-magic flow into the wells of their former minds.

Pushing his energy into the mind of the first specter he encountered, he saw a flash of her history. She had been a young girl, no older than Alex himself, running through an empty house, her head turning fearfully backward over her shoulder as she mounted the rickety steps of a spiral staircase. There was somebody behind her, Alex could feel it, and the adrenaline pulsing in her veins pulsed in his. There was fear and dread as she hurried across a landing into a room where everything was draped in dustsheets. Panicking, she realized she had nowhere to run, the sound of footsteps gaining on her. Standing in front of a stained glass window, a shadow fell across her. Alex couldn’t make out the face of her attacker, but he heard the girl’s scream. A firm hand shoved her hard in the chest, sending her careening backward with such force that she sailed straight through the bright glass pane, shattering it with her body, before plummeting to the ground. Everything hurt, her broken form lying twisted on the stone below. Death did not come instantly, however, her eyes managing to glance upward one last time to see a handsome man standing in the shattered window, looking down upon her, a cruel smile on his lips.

With her dying breath, she whispered, “My love.”

This was not a happy spirit, but searching deeper into her memories, he found a small pocket of warmth. She was sitting by a fire, reading a book to a smaller girl, who looked up at her with loving eyes and an awestruck smile. Alex fed the memory to the forefront of the spirit’s mind, and felt a shift in the specter’s emotions. The vaporous being pulled away.

“I am remembered,” she whispered, before disappearing into the urn she had risen from.

Moving from spirit to spirit, Alex did the same for each, though some had minds crowded with dark remembrances, making it all the harder to find a lightness with which to make the specter return to its urn. When he came across such a mind, he manipulated the memories he did find, altering them until they could be skewed as happy. It took longer, and he was forever conscious of the struggling cries of his friends as he forced these false memories into the forefront of the specters’ consciousness. At least this way, Alex thought, these ghosts would be able to rest awhile in peace.

As the last specter returned to its urn, Alex heard something clatter onto the floor. Nervously, half expecting it to be a trick and to see a hollow-eyed spirit swooping toward him, he opened his eyes. The room was clear of ghosts, and on the floor, beside the painted door, lay a key.

Alex picked it up off the flagstones, noticing for the first time a small keyhole in the ground beside it. With a hopeful heart, he twisted the key in the lock. There was a quiet click, followed by the grating sound of stone on stone as a section of the floor moved away, revealing another downward spiral staircase.

Almost there, thought Alex triumphantly. Almost there.