Estel blinked, looking down at the sword and the book lying on the table. Something felt like it had shifted, fallen into place, but she didn't quite know what. And then a memory hit her: herself, floating down a long staircase to reach the ghost dormitory. Where she lived. Her real home, at Amity. she was dead - of course. And her life as a knight... to her surprise, it wasn't hers, anymore. She didn't remember her life as a human, true, but there was no way that she had been that remarkable person before she died.

The story she had been listening to - no, the story she had been experiencing - was really just a story. Estel hesitantly reached out to touch the book in front of her, opening the cover and flipping slowly through the pages.

At first she saw her own name written there - but it was wrong, somehow, and Estel closed her eyes and reopened them, staring at the book more intently and willing it to reveal the truth. She blinked hard, realizing the letters had shifted, revealing the true name of the knight whose life she had experienced: Alinora. It wasn't her, it hadn't been her, and yet...

There hadn't been a single thing that Alinora had done that Estel wouldn't have as well. It was shocking, how similar the two of them were. Not in appearance, Estel realized - Alinora had red hair, it seemed; the book had changed some things - but in the decisions the knight had made.

"I would have done the same," she said slowly, frowning.

She continued paging through the story. There was so much left to go, and yet she was rapidly approaching the last thing she remembered. To her surprise, shortly after Merlin's defeat, the pages went blank - as did the memories. What had happened to the knight after she had resolved to stay and protect that place? She couldn't remember - but she supposed that perhaps it had been a happy ending, after all. That made her smile: she thought she had deserved one.

There were more pages blank than filled out. Curious, Estel flipped to the very last page.

A war is coming.

Something about that struck her as odd. She had no reason to suspect a war on the horizon, given how little she knew. Her friend Shun had been (more) paranoid (than usual) lately, but war was... well, the only images she had of true war came from her false memories of Alinora's life as a knight. That had been a war. And yet, the knights had been fighting against people like her.

The next thing she knew, she was sitting up in bed. Estel looked around at her dorm room, blinking and rubbing her eyes in the low light. She remembered the dream she had been having very clearly, somewhat to her surprise. Alinora's memories were as clear in her mind as the memories she had made for herself since waking up as a ghost in Halloween.

She was aware that they weren't her memories, that she hadn't been Alinora before she died, but there was something comforting about it. She could remember having a mother, having a childhood, and even if that wasn't her mother or her childhood, she knew a bit about what it felt like, now.

To her surprise, now that she thought about the other knights in the dream, some of them felt familiar, too. The storyteller had put other names, other students into those characters. Perhaps she wasn't the only one who'd had those dreams.

Estel pushed the covers aside and got out of bed, doing some stretches. The warning from the book came back to her, and she wondered if it had any bearing on reality. After having experienced Alinora's life, there was nothing appealing about the idea of fighting a war. She had felt the Great Knight's helplessness at having her home torn to pieces, the horror she had experienced when even Camelot, the place she had come to for safe haven, was so easily taken from her as well. The idea of her dear school becoming a battleground... Estel didn't even want to think about it.

Hopefully, there would be no war. In the meantime, she had some breakfast to go fetch. Estel packed her bag for the school day, put her shoes on, and made her way to the door. As she touched the doorknob, she stopped, realizing something. Alinora's weapon, Leila... she had been a reaper during her lifetime. All of their weapons - Alinora had hardly given it a second thought, she'd just thought of them as shadows - but they were creatures of Halloween, weren't they? Estel's people. She had been fighting using a weapon that could just as well have been one of Estel's classmates.

It was a chilling thought.