Chapter 49

Sinclair had been mindlessly reminiscing about his memory with the past Uriel that he lost track of where they were going with the current Uriel's exploration.

"Hey, look! There's a cave over there," The boy pointed out rushing towards it. "It seems warm and interesting! Let's go in."

When Sinclair glanced at it, he noticed the cave's identity – which is his residency right now.

It was too late before he could stop the boy from entering it and seeing the deep blue roses glowing through the cave's inside.

"Hey, don't touch anything!" The ghost warned him. "Let's get out of here. Nothing's interesting inside this damn cave. It's just a dent from the ground that echoes in and out. Come on, kiddo!"

"I think I've seen these flowers before," He said in an undertone, observing it intently.

He didn't dare touch it just as Sinclair had instructed, but he grew quite interested to it.

The flower is similar to the ones he saw at the backyard of Olia Isema's flower bed in the city.

Although, it can hardly be called a flower bed anymore because most of the flowers were dead and were just pieces of rotten petals scattered about.

"It'll be sunrise soon, so let's get outta here!" Sinclair convinced him. "If you're really interested, I'll invite you to our festival tomorrow."

That caught Uriel's attention and asked the ghost for more on what it's all about.

Sinclair explained that spirits have their ritual festivals at certain moon phases for no reason at all. It may have been an ancient agreement between spirits from centuries ago, but the ritual was said to have never been broken at all.

Maybe because the spirits aren't allowed to do much that the festival went on unbroken for who knows how long.

"But are humans allowed to attend such festivals?" Uriel curiously asked. "You did say that there are some spirits who would be willing to eat me. I might just be a target prey at the event and cause trouble for you."

"Yeah? And since when did you cared causing trouble for me?" The ghost retorted. "If you really cared, you wouldn't have gone into this stupid, little exploration of yours just to satisfy your childish curiosity! And yet, you're here!"

"Hey, don't be so angry," The boy chuckled.

"Anyway," Sinclair continued. "It'll be alright. There's a special mask from a certain shop that allows humans to disguise their flesh similar to that of a spirit's. I can get that for you."

"Whoa! Really? That sounds really cool! I wanna go with you to get that-"

"Don't think of coming with me to buy the mask because it's located somewhere humans aren't allowed to enter. At the deepest parts of the forest, there are different portals that are only available for the spirits. There are some for other creatures too like dullahans and sirens and other creatures. But as for us, we are allowed three portals which lead to different places. One of them has that kind of shop that entertains spirits to let humans interact with them in ways they usually couldn't. It's like the black market, but for spirits. Everything in the world has its exceptions, of course and that's one of them."

"But Sinclair, all those exceptions have a cost. How do ghosts pay for those masks?"

Sinclair looked at the boy wearing his innocent, wiped out expression and then to the glowing flowers.

With him in that warm cave he considers home are some of those he treasures the most.

The memories he has in his flowers and the little boy whose memories got lost.