The silence in Dao's living room was thick enough to chew on. We had a goal: find the Soul Ledger. We had a problem: we were all, technically, wanted by the management of the afterlife.
Kephriel looked utterly bored by the logistical nightmare.
"Simple. We go to the main gates. I announce myself. They let us in. We find your little ledger."
He said it like he was suggesting a trip to the grocery store.
Lamia let out a sound that was halfway between a scoff and a whimper.
"Are you profoundly stupid? Or are you just trying to get me discorporated?!"
She shoved her glasses up her nose, her hands shaking.
"Marching up to the Main Processing Entrance with you?"
She pointed a trembling, ink-stained finger at Kephriel.
"They'd atomize you on sight for the bounty on your head! And me? They'd see me standing next to you and assume I'd gone rogue! They'd run a full audit on my soul and then use it to power a desk lamp for the next aeon! It's not a plan, it's a suicide pact!"
"Okay, calm down," Dao said, her voice the steady anchor in the room.
"If not the front door, then what? There has to be another way."
Lamia took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to regain her bureaucratic composure.
"There... is. It's not in any official guide. It's a backdoor. A maintenance shaft for the cosmos. The Purgatory Passages."
Niran snorted. "Purgatory? That weird, smoky market dimension? With the floaty guys and the creepy vendors? Been there. Hired a devileater. No big deal."
Lamia's jaw went slack. She blinked her magnified eyes behind her glasses, looking from Niran's nonchalant face to the rest of us.
"You... you traversed the Scorched Markets? Voluntarily? And you... hired someone?"
Her professional curiosity momentarily overrode her terror.
"The paperwork for an inter-realm contract must have been... did you even file a 12-G? No, of course you didn't."
She shook her head, a new flicker of respect in her eyes.
"Perhaps you are not completely incompetent. The Passages are vast. The Markets are just one stabilized node. The paths to the Administrative Wing are... less traveled."
—
The entrance wasn't grand. It was a forgotten archway in a sub-basement of our city's oldest subway station, hidden behind a rusted gate that read
'DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE'.
Lamia muttered a string of numbers and symbols under her breath—a celestial password—and the air within the archway shimmered, solidifying into a corridor of swirling, grey mist.
Stepping into Purgatory was like stepping into a dream made of regret. The air hummed with a thousand whispered conversations you could almost understand. Landscapes flickered at the edges of our vision: a sun-drenched field here, a burning house there, all fading in and out of existence.
And the spirits... they saw me.
As we walked, the lesser souls—the wisps of forgotten memories and minor regrets—didn't just flinch away. They bowed. They pressed themselves against the shifting walls of mist, lowering their heads as I passed. A wave of cold preceded me, the Mindbreaker aura announcing my presence like a death knell. I was a king in a kingdom of sorrows, and my subjects were paying homage. I hated it.
I was so focused on the path ahead, on the unsettling deference of the lost, that I didn't see the figure until I walked right into him.
The impact was solid. Real. We both stumbled back.
"Hey, watch it—" I began, and then my blood ran cold.
It was me.
Same tired eyes, same face. But this Other Raf wore clothes I'd never owned—a dark, ruined jacket. And across his throat was a thick, vicious, still-bloody scar. Chains tied to his wrists. His eyes widened as he looked at me, not with anger, but with a desperate, panicked pity. He opened his mouth as if to shout a warning.
And then, he walked away, disappearing in the crowd of spirits.
I stood frozen, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. "Did... did you guys see that?" My voice was barely a whisper.
Niran looked over.
"See what?"
Dao followed my gaze.
"Raf? You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"…It's nothing,"
I mumbled, forcing my feet to move.
"Let's just keep going."
The image of that scar was burned onto the back of my eyelids.
After what felt like an eternity of walking through the mournful haze, Lamia held up a hand.
"There. There it is."
It wasn't a glorious portal. It was a gate of black, rusted iron, covered in thick, thorny vines that wept a viscous black sap. It was set into a wall of weeping stone, looking ancient, forgotten, and utterly unwelcoming. This was the backdoor to Hell.
Before we could even decide how to open it, the vines shuddered. With a sound like snapping bones, they retracted, slithering back into the stone. The rusted gate groaned in protest, and then swung inward on its own.
But it didn't open onto more mist.
It opened onto a stark, sterile, fluorescent-lit office corridor. The hum of Purgatory was replaced by the distant, monotonous clack of keyboards and the tinny ring of unanswered phones. The air smelled of stale coffee and photocopier toner.
Lamia went pale. "The Administrative Wing." She swallowed hard, adjusting her red dress.
"We're in. Now, for all our souls, remember the plan: find the Central Records Room. Do not make eye contact. Do not talk to anyone. And for goodness' sake,"
she said, giving our group of teenagers, a death god, and a sleeping devileater a look of pure despair,
"try to look like you belong here."