A Boy's Hand, the Dead's Wrath

Ethan Luther sold out the Ghost King in the middle of a mission, with a second man directing it from behind, and the Ghost King fell there. This was in a world overrun by spirits and ghosts, and he had been its strongest fighter. Ten years on, a fragment of his soul comes back in the body of Charles Loring, a boy of eight whose talent the family has written off. Charles is the younger brother of Snow, who was the Ghost King's girlfriend in his last life. Snow has put her own training on hold to look after him. Inside the Loring house a cousin pushes Charles around, and outside it the Zouch family wants what the Lorings have. Charles still has everything he knew before. At the family assessment he does far more than anyone expected of a boy with his rating. In private he coaches Snow, and she beats opponents who had been stronger than her. The Ghost God Pendant their father left stays in his hands. The Loring family has kept its own Ghost God, White Impermanence, under a seal for generations, and Charles breaks the seal and brings the ghost under his control. The Zouch family's schemes run into him, and so do Ethan Luther's.