Orpheus sat in the little boat, his trembling hands clutching the paddles.
His breath rattled in his chest, his body still broken from the endless desert, yet he forced himself upright.
He closed his eyes, and in the dark he saw her face—Eurydice, smiling as she once had beneath the sunlit fields.
That vision steadied him, lit a fire in his hollow chest.
Charon's silent form loomed nearby, watching with eyes like two pits of burning coal.
The ferryman raised his skeletal hand and pointed forward. "The second trial begins. Five rivers. Endure them all, as the souls do, and survive. Only then will the heroic spirit guide you onward."
Orpheus nodded, swallowing the dryness in his throat, and dipped the paddle into the water.
The boat glided forward, slipping into the first current.
It was the river he was on, the River of Styx.
The water hissed like acid against the wood of the boat, black and boiling.
As the current swallowed him, voices began to echo all around.
