The office was quiet except for the faint hiss of the gas lamps along the walls.
Percy sat across from Lyro with his hands resting on his knees, still feeling the bruise forming along his ribs from the lamp post. Lyro had his fingers laced together on the desk.
Percy spoke out confused and somewhat scared .
"Poltergeist as in a ghost ? "
Lyro raising an eyebrow questions back .
"That's a really childish term to use actually, as a Haunted that term is laughed upon , so you better not use that word unless u want to be looked down on ."
Percy simply nodded .
"So where was i ?"
"Right," Lyro said. "The Oath."
"When a spirit integrates with a person successfully," Lyro began, "the person becomes Haunted. Which i have told you before ."
"Yes you mentioned it."
"What you don't know is that the spirit doesn't simply sit quietly inside you after that." Lyro unclasped his hands and leaned back. "It has a nature. And that nature has to be satisfied."
Percy frowned slightly. "Satisfied."
"Think of it as a condition," Lyro said. "Each spirit type carries an Oath. The Haunted has to fulfill that Oath periodically. If they don't " He paused . "The spirit starts taking over. Bit by bit. Your thoughts first. Then your actions. Then everything else."
"So it possesses you."
"Eventually. Yes."
Percy sat with that for a moment.
"And if it goes on long enough?"
"Then it's no longer reversible," Lyro said plainly. "The person is gone. What's left walks around looking like them but isn't."
Percy felt goosebumps at the description.
"So the Oath," Percy said. "It keeps the spirit satisfied enough not to take over."
"Correct." Lyro pointed at him. "That's actually the clearest anyone has ever summarized it to me."
"It wasn't complicated."
Lyro looked mildly offended.
Percy moved on before he could say anything. "And your Oath. Disturbance."
"Yes."
"Which means you have to disturb something. Regularly."
"Yes."
A brief pause settled between them.
"Like a wall," Percy said.
Lyro's expression became very controlled. But there were protrusion of veins visible on his forehead .
"Among other things. Yes."
Percy said nothing further on the subject. Lyro appeared to appreciate the restraint without showing it openly.
Lyro cleared his throat and adjusted his collar and continued .
"And there are different spirit types, each with their own abilities and their own Oath. Poltergeist is mine as you know." He said it without particular pride or modesty, just as a fact. "Senior Charles carries a Dullahan."
Percy's eyes moved up. "Dullahan? "
" yes Dullahan" Lyro raised his brow and asked, "But why do you sound surprised like you know what that is ?"
Percy shook his head and answered with an awkward smile, " It just sounded ominous is all "
He changed the topic immediately . "And the old woman? " Percy asked . "From the hospital. The one who came with you and Charles."
Lyro tilted his head slightly. "Oh you mean Margarette."
"She carries a Shade. Different nature entirely from a Poltergeist or a Dullahan. Shades are quiet. Observational. Her abilities reflect that."
Percy remembered the woman's unblinking stare in the hospital room.
"She was reading me," Percy said.
"She was confirming what Charles already suspected," Lyro said. "Whether you were telling the truth."
"And she confirmed I was?"
"She did."
Percy filed that away and looked at Lyro again. "How many types are there."
"More than I can list usefully right now." Lyro waved a hand. "Poltergeist, Dullahan, Shade, Banshee and Wraith . Those are the ones you're likely to encounter in this region. There are rarer types further out but that's not relevant yet."
Percy nodded slowly.
"He's actually explaining this reasonably well."
Percy glanced at the stacks of documents on the desk.
"He was probably reading them before this conversation."
Percy said nothing about it. It seemed like the kind of thing Lyro would prefer left unacknowledged.
"So," Lyro said, leaning forward again. "About your situation."
Percy looked at him.
"The sensation you have. The pull toward supernatural presences." Lyro folded his hands. "It's not going to stop. It doesn't diminish on its own and it doesn't become easier to manage with time. If anything it gets stronger as you encounter more of these things."
"I had gathered that," Percy said.
"What you may not have gathered," Lyro continued, "is that the sensation works both ways."
Percy went still.
"You can sense them," Lyro said. "But they can sense you too. Not all of them. But enough of them. And the ones that can " He paused. "They are not the harmless kind."
The crimson eyed figure in the alley came back clearly. The way it had pretended not to notice them until Charles said otherwise.
"It was already aware of us."
"So without integration," Percy said, "I'm essentially walking around producing a signal."
"A loud one," Lyro said.
"And with integration."
"You'd have the means to do something about what finds you." Lyro looked at him steadily.
Percy looked at the desk again.
A signal. He had been walking around this city for weeks producing a signal he didn't know about, pulling things toward him that Charles and Lyro had apparently been quietly managing from a distance.
"How many times did something notice me that I never knew about?"
He didn't ask it out loud. The answer probably wasn't something he wanted confirmed sitting in an office at this hour with bruised ribs and an empty stomach.
"I'm not saying decide now," Lyro said, reading the silence correctly for once. "But I am saying the longer you wait the less comfortable your life becomes."
Percy nodded once.
Outside the window the city had gone properly dark. The gas lamps along the street threw their usual orange light across the stones below, ordinary and unchanged, the same streets Percy had walked every day since waking up in this body.
"Alright," Percy said.
Lyro raised an eyebrow.
"Not a decision," Percy clarified. "Just. Alright. I understand."
Lyro studied him for a moment. Then nodded and leaned back.
"Good enough for now."