The mountain was draped in a moonlit shroud of darkness, the shadows of trees writhing suggestively on the slope. The sky was clear but for a few wisps that scooted nervously to whatever destination awaited them, fearful of whatever the geometry of the night sky might bring. Mona held the black obol in her dark star-silver wreathed hand, turning it over in her fingers and examining the thing, tear-caked eye flicking back and forth. How such a small thing could cause so much misery, she couldn't grasp. The ghosts of Metallia Lunas past whispered to her, telling her how to make more of the obols.
    From the stone before her, Mona drew the metallic elements out in glowing forge-hot ribbons, eyes closed as she focused on re-arranging them just so. The ghosts instructed Mona on how to rearrange the pattern of the metal, to transmute it into an occult matrix to contain soul fire; the very essence of what made living beings truly alive on this particular Earth. She saw the pieces in her mind shift and move into place as the ghosts explained how to drain a person of their soul, to open the matrices in the unfinished black oboli and trap it within. Mona did so, eliciting terrified screams from the nine ghosts as the nine black oboli drew them inside and into true oblivion as the memories and thoughts that composed them were stripped by the magic rite.
    The symbols on the oboli changed as they cooled; nine different symbols reflecting the ghosts within. Mona wiped the tears from her face, her lips forming a smile.
    Alone, at last.