Seeing the Crimson Hungry Ghost didn’t move to stop him, the frost giant bellowed. He hefted his warhammer and smashed at the wall of Crimson Flame.
Another ponderous blow fell. A lightning bolt as thick as a man ripped out of nothing and slammed the blazing wall. The web of his grip split; inhuman blood sprayed.
This time, heaven blinked. The tight firewall finally cracked, a narrow seam torn open.
Both giants roared like mountain valleys answering. The frost giant seized the hammer again. A thousand sparks of Thunder burst from it; he bathed in a sea of stormlight. With a die-with-honor resolve, he charged the gap.
At the heart of the blaze, the Ghost panicked. Like a flaw exposed, she drove the burning harder into the blade-bearing giant. He did not cry out. Instead, he let slip odd syllables, a sound like mockery thrown back at flame.
With that dreadful sea of Thunder, the frost giant rammed through the split. His bulk vanished into the fire-ocean. The blade-bearing giant roared in delight, heedless as Crimson Flame skinned him from crown to heel.
But the Ghost’s fluster died in an instant. Like a mask dropping, she returned to that monstrous calm; the flames on the blade-bearer eased.
She hauled the blade-bearing giant up and walked toward the seam, unhurried as a hunter watching prey stumble into a pit.
Fear pooled cold in the blade-bearer’s chest. Why was she so calm, when his companion had escaped? What was that sudden panic for?
With every step she took toward the crack, his dread thickened like fog. The Crimson Flame on him flared hotter, chewing him to the bone.
At last, she stood by the gap. She lifted him high and laughed, a manic cackle echoing like iron on stone. She pressed him to the slit, made him look through at that so-called road to freedom.
He saw. He trembled. He glared at the Crimson Ghost and roared, sky-splitting. Black power flooded his blade. He hewed at her in fury.
Of course it never landed.
She cocked her head, derision in the gesture. Fine flames climbed his blade like ivy, ate the black power to ash, then slipped under his skin, burrowing deep.
His despairing scream shredded the air. The giant crumbled to ash under the Crimson Flame. Only the blade remained.
“Cough—ah… AAAAAAAA!”
With both giants dead, the Crimson Hungry Ghost went wild, a beast without a target. She tore flame from her own body in strips. Inside that furnace stood Aphelia, the one who’d vanished in the Crimson Flame.
Agony first, then motion—she crawled to Wend’s corpse. She shoved those torn strips of Crimson Flame into his body, as if packing embers into a cold hearth.
“Don’t die…”
Aphelia’s heart ached like ice breaking. Under her will, the Crimson Flame turned to liquid and flowed toward Wend’s severed neck.
It wasn’t enough. Driven by something she couldn’t name, Aphelia peeled a piece of herself away and smeared it over Wend’s wound.
Crimson Flame braided with Primordial Soil. Under that weave, Wend’s terrible wound began to knit.
But his body stayed cold. No stir, no breath.
“Why… why…”
The Crimson Flame on Aphelia dimmed to coals. Her strength bled away. The repair on Wend’s body began to slip from her grasp.
Panic surged like a tide. Without knowing why, she drew out the pale-cyan Rune from before.
As if guided by an unseen hand, she set the Rune against Wend’s heart.
In that instant, the world changed color.
The star-bright night clogged with black cloud. A gale rushed in around Aphelia, a knife-wind that even threatened to snuff her Crimson Flame.
“What is this?!”
She had no time to think. A lance of Thunder fell from the sky and hammered the ground beside her. Thick Aether flooded the air, stinging her like spice and smoke.
There’d been no trace of Aether in this world. Now it brimmed, electric and alive with storm-born Aether.
The next heartbeat, another blinding Thunderbolt fell.
It struck Wend’s heart like a finger of god, unerring. The savage force drove Aphelia back step after step; she had to give him space.
It did not stop. Thunder fell again, not one bolt but many. The space around Wend became a blazing sea of thunderlight. Power that could cow heaven poured into him without end.
The massive warhammer and the black blade shivered. Drawn like iron filings, they flew into the sea of Thunder.
“Has a god… descended?”
In that thunder-sea, a will woke. Vast. Unbearable.
Aphelia stared into the dazzling stormglow. Waves rose in her heart like a storm tide.
A world that knew no Aether suddenly stirred. Or rather, under this ocean of Thunder, the Aether hidden in all things was being called forth.
Even that pure-white Aether she knew so well stirred awake, whispering through the forest.
But she had almost no strength left to feel it. As the Crimson Flame guttered, her stamina plunged. The world blurred to watercolor.
Her once-severed body returned to what it had been.
Through a haze, she thought she saw someone walking out of the endless sea of Thunder toward her.
“…”
The figure spoke, words wrapped in lightning. Before Aphelia could see her face, darkness swept in. She collapsed into it.
Pain. Despair. Rage. Dread.
My life has been a string of these, Aphelia thought, drifting in the endless dark.
Is this the world after death?
She sighed at the boundless black and sat down, as if on cold stone.
I just took back my body and a sliver of strength, and I threw my life away on impulse again. Not the first time, is it?
Dying in a nowhere like this. How humiliating.
The thought made her laugh, dry as ash.
At least I died trying to save someone. At least I didn’t let Violet’s kind of tragedy happen before my eyes again. In truth, it’s self-satisfaction, isn’t it? How base, dressing up my own needs as something noble…
She slipped into the old habit of mocking herself. In this endless dark, who would ever listen?
But… Wend should be alive now, right?
At that thought, all the snarled feelings inside her cleared like mist after rain. She closed her eyes, quiet and at peace.
Good. So good.
She didn’t know why. They’d only met once; friend might be too much. Yet relief bloomed in her chest. Maybe it was joy at not killing someone again with her own weakness.
She was ready to sink into the dark like a leaf on a still pond when a figure strolled out of it and stopped beside her.
“So… to die like this. Don’t you think it’s a waste?”
Aphelia smiled at the voice.
“And you are?”
“Me? A ferryman, that’s all. I’ve worked a very long age, and it’s my first time seeing a soul as interesting as yours.”
Aphelia opened her eyes. Sitting beside her was a girl who looked strikingly like Wend. She wore a white dress. In this pitch-black space, she was a lone candle.
A ferryman of souls… a Reaper?
“An interesting soul? Miss Ferryman, tell me what’s interesting. I’d love to hear it.”
She thought it through and spoke.
If she was a ferryman and hadn’t dragged me off yet, but sat down to chat about “interesting,” then maybe my fate isn’t sealed?
With that thought, Aphelia grew calmer. She lay back, trying to make herself more comfortable on the dark.
“Your soul… is in ruins. It’s riddled with holes, yet nothing leaks. It’s a jumble, yet its core is clear. It’s brittle, yet unbreakable.”
The girl took Aphelia’s hand. She hesitated, then went on.
“Most of all, it was born in the Primordial Flame. Nothing is tougher. Nothing is stronger.”
“Hold on. If you say that, why would I die?”
Aphelia blinked, thrown off. If her soul truly couldn’t be broken, even a body turned to ash shouldn’t mean easy death.
“Who said you died?”
The girl let go, frowned, and scolded her without much patience.
“So… I’m not dead? Then what is this place? Some world I imagined—”
“This is the seam between the Underworld and the mortal realm. Every soul that’s dying, or might die, passes through. Within my reach, the dead are guided back, into what you’d call ‘reincarnation.’”
She cut Aphelia off without a pause and explained, gentle as rain.
“Then… does your work here obey time?”
The question slipped out of Aphelia like a ghost.
“Of course not. If time bound this place, the world would’ve broken long ago.”
“Then I want to find someone. Is that allowed?”
