Chapter 1 – The Tear Between Shadows
He never thought death would come like this.
One moment, he was walking home, steps dragging on the cracked pavement, head filled with nothing but the dull ache of another useless day. The next moment, a scream—high, sharp, shattering—cut through the air like broken glass.
It was a little girl.
She was frozen on the road, two small legs stiff as if nailed into the tar, eyes wide and wet, staring at the headlights rushing down toward her. The car came fast, too fast, like a beast foaming at the mouth.
Something inside him snapped. No thought, no reason. Just movement. His feet tore at the ground, his lungs burned, his arms reached out as if pulled by chains.
He grabbed her. He shoved.
Impact.
The world shattered into white. His chest caved in. Bones cracked like brittle wood. His skull rang with thunder.
And then—silence.
Darkness. Cold. Floating.
He thought he should scream, but his mouth was sealed. He thought he should breathe, but his lungs were gone. All that remained was a thread of thought, dangling in the black.
So… this is it?
I die for nothing… no one will even remember my name…
I was nobody when alive… and now… I am nothing again.
A whisper, soft and dry, slid into his ear.
"Not yet."
The dark peeled away.
He stood on a stone bridge, stretching across a river the color of old ink. The water churned with shadows—faces, hands, twisted bodies writhing like worms, trying to climb but always dragged back under.
At the bridge's center sat an old crone, Meng Po. Her bent back hunched over a pot of steaming soup, the liquid inside murky and gray. She ladled it into a cracked bowl, eyes dull as stone.
"Drink," she croaked.
He stared at it.
He didn't want to. He didn't want to forget. His death, his pain, that child—if he drank, even the last proof of his existence would vanish.
His fingers trembled. He almost refused.
And then—
A hand.
It came from above, pale and thin, fingers stretching down from a rip in the sky itself. It seized his wrist, dragging it away from the bowl.
"Not this one."
The air froze.
Across the bridge, a figure appeared. Cloaked in shadows, face a skull hidden beneath endless night. Death. Its eyes were twin voids, its steps echoing like nails driven into a coffin.
"Release him."
The hand tightened, veins glowing faintly with a strange gold light. From the rip stepped an emaciated old man. His robes were torn, threadbare, fluttering though no wind blew. His eyes were sunken pits, but within them burned a fire that felt endless, terrifying, ancient.
"Why should I?" the Old Man rasped, voice like stones grinding. "This soul… this spark… is mine."
"You know the law," Death hissed, each word dripping like tar. "All things end. None escape. He has died. He will drink. He will forget. He will be nothing."
The Old Man laughed, hollow and thin.
"You call yourself inevitable… yet you bleed when I strike."
The air screamed.
The Old Man raised his hand, and from his fingers poured rivers of fire—not bright, not warm, but sickly, crawling, like flames devouring flesh. They fell onto the bridge, burning holes into stone, and the shadows in the river shrieked louder, as if the fire fed on their agony.
Death raised a hand, and the flames went out. Instantly.
Not smothered, not resisted. Gone, as though they had never been.
The Old Man snarled, bones cracking as his body stretched taller, his spine bending backward, his face splitting into too many mouths, each screaming in languages no human tongue should know. From those mouths spilled chains of light, whipping across the sky, lashing toward Death.
Each strike bent the bridge, shattered the clouds, split the black river into spouts of screaming faces.
Death stood still. Its eyes glowed darker. With each lash, its form unraveled into dust—yet reformed, endlessly, impossibly, unbroken.
"You rage against the tide," Death whispered. "You gnash your teeth at the end. But all things, even gods, fall to me."
And then Death moved.
One step. The bridge cracked.
One breath. The river stopped writhing.
One gesture. The chains of light snapped like rotted rope.
The Old Man staggered, coughing blood that turned into black moths midair. They fluttered, screamed, and died in silence.
The nameless soul trembled, watching. Terror pressed on him so heavy he thought he'd crumble into dust.
The Old Man turned his head—just slightly—and his gaze landed on him. For a moment, the fire in those hollow eyes dimmed. Pity? Fury? Desperation?
"Run," the Old Man whispered.
Before Death could strike again, the Old Man thrust his hand forward, palm pressing against the nameless soul's chest. Something poured in—hot, cold, burning, freezing, endless. A weight. A seed. A brand.
"Carry me," the Old Man croaked. "Carry me where even Death cannot go."
The world cracked apart.
He woke up screaming.
The air stank of rot, of rust, of wet earth that never dried. The ground beneath him was soft, spongy, like meat left to spoil. The sky above was gray, streaked with veins of black, trembling as if it too were alive and in pain.
He pressed a hand to his chest. It burned. Something pulsed inside, something not his own. Something whispering.
The world stretched around him—dead, dying, but not silent. Faces pushed against the earth as if trying to crawl out. Towers of bone rose in the distance, their tips lost in the fog. Rivers of blood crawled sluggishly, carrying corpses that still twitched.
And from the horizon, a sound came.
A laugh.
A scream.
A chorus of voices stitched together, calling his name—though he had none.
He curled up, shaking. His teeth chattered. His mind screamed: I should be gone, I should be gone, why am I here, why am I still here—
But deep inside, beneath his terror, something pulsed.
The Old Man's essence.
Alive.
Waiting.
And Death, though barred from this place, was watching.