Hadrian Underwood ruled the dead, and he spent his days trying to send them home. Every wandering soul in his realm had lost someone. He kept a ledger of names, matching the lost to the loved, guiding them back together. But the soul before him now gave him nothing. It hovered in the gray fog, a pale shape without a face, and it would not speak its name. Without the name, Hadrian could trace no family. He could not help it at all. "Please," Hadrian said. He crouched to meet the soul's height. "Just tell me who you were. Then I can find them." The soul drifted back. Its edges trembled like smoke. It had refused him for three days now, and each hour it grew fainter. His winged serpent coiled on a stone nearby, watching with bright eyes. She flicked her tongue, restless. Hadrian rubbed her red scales. "It doesn't remember," he said. "That's the trouble. It's forgotten its own name." A soul that forgot itself would soon dissolve into the fog forever. He had to make it remember. Cold air moved behind him. Hadrian turned. The reaper stood at the edge of the fog, black robe pooling on the stone, scythe held in one bony hand. No face waited beneath the hood, only shadow. Hadrian did not flinch. He had worked beside Grimmy since he first took the throne. "You brought this one down," Hadrian said. "You know its name." Grimmy's hood tilted. "I know the day it died," Grimmy answered. The voice was dry as old paper. "Not the name. That's carried in the memory, and this one dropped its memory on the way down." The scythe pointed past Hadrian, into the dark. "But memory can be shaken loose. Take it where it lived hardest." Hadrian understood. He rose. He had heard souls speak of the old arena, the ruined colosseum lit by green flame, where the dead gathered to remember their loudest days. If the soul had cheered there, or fought there, the place might wake it. He led the soul across the fog. His serpent flew ahead, red wings cutting the dark. Grimmy walked behind, silent. They reached the colosseum. Green fire lamps burned along its cracked arches. Bats spun through the towers. Hadrian brought the soul into the empty ring and waited. The green flames flared. The soul shuddered. A face formed in the pale smoke, then a mouth. "I remember," it whispered. "I fought here. My daughters watched from the top row." It spoke a name at last, clear and full. Hadrian gripped the name like a thread. But the soul's face fell. "My daughters," it said. "They died before me. I never learned where they went." Now Hadrian had the name he needed. And now he had two more lost souls to find, buried somewhere in his vast, dark realm.