Chapter 3: The Ghost Out of Place

If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought I’d wandered onto a movie set. The whole thing had that staged kind of horror from the warm wooden tones of the cottage clashing with the sheer brutality of the scene. But this wasn’t some grim period drama being filmed in the countryside. No boom mics hovered above the ceiling, and no director yelled "cut." It was real, and uncomfortably so.

Inside this deceptively cozy-looking cottage were four ruffians, each positioned around the body of a silver-haired woman who had very clearly died only moments ago. Her skin had taken on that unmistakable waxen stillness, and her eyes were dull and vacant. It reminded me too much of my own death. The scorched umbrella. The smell of burnt ozone. My own body twitching from a cocktail of lightning and powerline. I’d had my death. Apparently, she just had hers.

Then there was the child.

She was tiny, maybe eight or nine, curled against the dead woman’s side, hands trembling as she tried to shake life back into her mother’s body. Her hair shimmered silver in the firelight, too much like the woman beside her for there to be any doubt about their relation. Mother and daughter. Or sisters, yeah, that was also a possibility.

Her head turned. Her eyes locked on me.

“Please… save my mom.”

Ah. So it was mother and daughter, then.

Her voice was frail, barely above a whisper, and yet it struck me harder than any thunderbolt. There was something uncomfortably raw about the way she said it, not just desperation, but that instinctive belief children have that adults can fix everything. Especially strangers who appear in a burst of light.

“Please…” cried the child a second time. "Help me..."

What startled me more than her words, though, was the fact that I could understand them perfectly. Not a hitch in the vocabulary, not a stammer in the grammar. I didn’t know what language she was using, but somehow, I knew what she meant as if the words translated themselves mid-air and dropped neatly into my brain. It was unnerving. Magic? Psychic transmission? Soul-deep subtitles?

Whatever the case, it only worked for her.

Because the ruffians were also speaking, shouting now, by the sound of it, but I couldn’t make sense of a single syllable they said. Not a word. It was like static wearing human skin. And as someone who worked for a tabloid and prided himself on being halfway decent at parsing communication, that bugged me more than I wanted to admit.

I know English. I can bluff through a few phrases of Japanese and recognize the cadence of Korean. Spanish, Mandarin, German… I’d heard enough of them to get a feel for their rhythm, even if I couldn’t speak them fluently. But whatever these people were speaking? It wasn’t any Earth-bound dialect I’d ever heard. It wasn’t even close.

I’d already suspected something was off. The circle that had dragged me here was a strong clue. But that wasn't what truly convinced me that this wasn’t Earth. No, that came when I got a good look at two of the so-called ruffians.

One had pointed ears. It was long, elegant, and unmistakably elven. His features were narrow, symmetrical, and annoyingly beautiful. The other was green-skinned and broad-shouldered, with a pair of tusks jutting from his lower jaw. He had orc written all over him. If either of them told me they were actors in full prosthetics, I might’ve believed it… until I tried to touch one of the elf’s ears.

My fingers went right through.

“Of course…”

It was strange already that I've become a ghost, so a fantasy creature shouldn't surprise me anymore.

"Stop deluding yourself, man..."

I turned to the other two. They were humans, by all appearances, dressed in rugged gear that screamed "fantasy adventurer." The man had a leather tunic and steel bracers. The woman wore layered cloth armor and a belt full of trinkets that jingled when she moved. They could’ve passed as dedicated, maybe even professional cosplayers. But there was something about the way they handled themselves that killed that theory cold.

Then there was the dead woman. Cosplayers didn’t bleed out on the floors... Unless this was the most elaborate murder-mystery LARP ever orchestrated, the pieces didn’t fit.

So, yeah. Serial killer cosplayers? I doubted it.

The human male walked over to the dead woman’s side and picked up the heavy tome lying beside her. It looked ancient. It was rough-bound, frayed at the edges, and still smeared with her blood. The little girl lunged forward with a scream.

“That’s not yours!”

She pounced, but she didn’t stand a chance. The man swatted her aside with the ease of someone flicking away a cat.

Then he reached into his belt, pulled out what looked like a wand, and flicked it toward her.

A pulse of blue light arced across the room and struck her square in the chest.

She collapsed mid-cry, eyes fluttering shut as the magic took hold.

And there it was.

No mistaking it. That was a magic spell and a real one at that. There were no wires, no CG, and no sleight of hand. A bolt of light from a wand. I’d seen enough anime and game cinematics to recognize the trope when I saw it. This wasn’t just another country with a weird language and eccentric fashion sense.

This was another world.

Let’s see. Magic circle that lit up? Check. Elves and Orcs? Check. Magic spells flying out of wands? Triple check. All I needed now was a dragon to complete the starter pack. Gods, I hoped I wouldn’t get that lucky.

My bleak prospects aside, I figured I should probably try to save the girl.

I mean, come on. Dead or not, I wasn’t about to sit back and watch a child get hacked apart like some side character in a grimdark RPG. Especially not after she asked me to help her mom. The least I could do was try. Not just for her, but for myself. She was the only one who could see me, speak to me, and hear me. That connection, however fragile, felt important. Maybe she had something to do with why I was here. Maybe she was the key to understanding what the hell happened to me.

Not that I had much to go on. I didn’t even know if I was technically alive, dead, reincarnated, or a result of some freak accident of cosmic bureaucracy. My death had already been weird enough… lightning, powerlines, electrocution, and now this afterlife with magic circles. If there even was an afterlife... sigh. For all I knew, I was some soul glitch trapped between two worlds.

But right now, none of that mattered.

I had to save the girl.

The human male barked out something. I didn’t understand the exact words, but the message soon became clear to me. The orc grunted and stepped forward. He lifted his axe. It was thick, curved at the edge, and still wet. He loomed over the girl like a death sentence carved in muscle and steel.

Panic clawed at me, but I forced myself to think. What do ghosts do in movies? Possession, poltergeist activity, wailing in creepy hallways? I needed something useful. Something now.

Telekinesis, maybe? That was usually high up the list. I focused on the orc, imagining his massive body flinging back against the wall, or his weapon yanked from his hand mid-swing.

Nothing happened.

I clenched my teeth. “Ugh… Come on! Work with me here.”

The axe came down.

Time didn’t slow, but my heart, if I still had one, felt like it froze.

I didn’t think. I threw myself forward and slammed my fist toward the orc’s face with everything I had. I screamed as I hit him, not that anyone could hear me.

“Die, you cruel son of a boar—!”

Then everything shattered.

It was like being sucked through a drain made of ice and fire. The cottage, the girl, even my own ghostly awareness twisted and pulled, and then… There was only darkness.

When I blinked awake, my vision was different. I smelled iron and sweat and burning wood. My body felt heavier and stronger, but also alien. I was standing above the little girl.

My axe, the orc’s axe, was drawn across her throat. A shallow line of blood ran down her pale neck, but the blade had stopped just barely.

She was staring up at me, wide-eyed, trembling, and confused.

I staggered back, as if the act itself had startled me.

Wait.

Wait.

What…?

A voice behind me broke the haze.

“What’s the problem, Mord?” the human woman asked. Her tone was casual, as if murdering children was something they did between lunch and afternoon tea. "Got cold feet?"

And that was when it hit me.

I wasn’t looking at the orc anymore.

I was the orc.

I had become the orc.