It clung to Mara like damp cloth, pressing against her ears, choking her thoughts. The tunnel stretched endlessly ahead, a vein carved through stone and shadow. No wind. No dripping water. Not even the faint skitter of vermin. Just silence—so heavy it rang in her skull.
She did not remember walking into this place. One moment she was stumbling through a forest, rain blinding her eyes, the next… here. The air stank of soil and rot, though her lungs told her she was far too deep beneath the earth for anything living to survive.
Her boots scuffed stone. The sound was devoured instantly, as though the air itself swallowed noise.
She tested her voice.
"Hello?"
Nothing. Not even an echo.
Fear slithered down her spine. If the air refused her sound, if the silence could consume it whole—what else could it consume?
She pressed forward, one hand brushing the cold wall. The stone pulsed faintly, like something alive.
After what felt like hours, a faint glow swam into view. She hurried, heartbeat thundering, though she could not hear it. The silence devoured that too.
The tunnel opened into a vast cavern. At its center spread a lake—black, glassy, still. On its far shore stood a figure cloaked in tattered gray, faceless beneath its hood. In one skeletal hand it held a staff of bone.
The Ferryman.
Though it never spoke, Mara understood. She must cross.
A boat drifted toward her, carved from petrified wood, oars unmoving yet cutting the surface. She climbed in, throat tight. The Ferryman raised its staff. The lake accepted her without a ripple.
As they drifted, shapes floated beneath the black water. Faces pale as moonlight, eyes wide, mouths opening and closing in silent screams. Mara squeezed her eyes shut but the images remained, burned into her mind.
Halfway across, the Ferryman turned its head. Though faceless, Mara felt its gaze pierce her. A thought slammed into her skull, not spoken but known:
What will you give?
Her breath caught. "I don't understand."
Passage has cost.
Her pockets were empty, her body trembling. She had no coin, no jewelry, nothing to offer.
"What… what do you want?"
The Ferryman extended its staff toward her chest. The air grew colder.
Your name.
Mara recoiled. "My name?"
To cross, you must not be found.
Her name. Her last tether. If she surrendered it, who would she be? A whisper with no face, no place?
She thought of the forest she had come from, the rain-soaked earth, the faint memory of running from something—something hunting her. The details blurred, slippery as smoke.
But if she refused? The silent faces beneath the water convulsed, mouths stretching wider.
She clutched her chest, whispered, "Take it."
The Ferryman's staff touched her heart. Heat seared through her ribs. A whisper tore from her lips, vanishing into the black lake. She tried to remember it—the shape of the sound, the syllables—but it was gone. She was no one.
The Ferryman lowered its staff. The boat slid forward.
On the far shore, Mara stumbled onto stone. Her tongue felt heavy, her thoughts blurred. She reached for her name instinctively—nothing. Only emptiness.
The cavern beyond the lake was narrower, jagged. Shadows moved along the walls though no flame burned. She walked.
The silence deepened.
She began to see them: figures pressed into the stone. Men. Women. Children. Their bodies melted into the rock, their faces stretched, mouths open in eternal wails. They were trapped mid-scream, frozen but alive. Eyes tracked her as she passed.
One face tore free, stone crumbling around it. A man's ruined features, eyes hollow. His voice erupted in her skull, bypassing the silence:
Run. He hears you.
Her legs obeyed before her mind did. She sprinted down the tunnel, lungs burning though the air felt dead. The stone walls pulsed faster, like a heart accelerating.
Behind her, something moved.
The silence deepened until it screamed inside her head. Her own thoughts fractured, filled with static. She burst into another cavern, larger than the first.
At its center stood a throne carved from bone and iron. Upon it sat a figure immense and rotting, its skin like cracked obsidian, eyes glowing ember-red. A crown of ash circled its skull.
The Eclipsed King.
He rose as she entered, the ground trembling. His voice shattered the silence, deeper than earth's roots.
"Another nameless. Another lost."
Mara fell to her knees, clutching her head. His words were not sound—they were collapse, an earthquake inside her skull.
"You gave up your name," he said. "But names are only the beginning. Here, beneath the silence, all things are stripped away."
His skeletal hand extended. Shadows writhed from the cavern walls, snaking toward her ankles, wrists, throat. She thrashed, but the tendrils coiled tighter.
"You will forget your body next," the King said. "Your face, your form. You will join the walls, screaming, until all that remains is silence."
"No…" she choked, though the silence devoured even that.
The King stepped closer, his eyes burning into her skull. "Fight if you wish. None return."
The shadows surged.
But something sparked inside her. A fragment. A memory. Rain. Trees. Blood on her hands. A child's laughter cut short.
Her crime.
Her reason for running.
The Underworld was not random. It was punishment.
The King loomed. "Yes. Remember."
Mara's chest heaved. If she surrendered, she would dissolve. If she resisted, she might buy a chance.
She tore her wrist free of shadow, skin ripping. She lunged for the bone staff leaning against the throne. Her fingers closed around it. Cold fire shot up her arm.
The King roared, cavern shaking. "You dare—"
The staff pulsed. Voices exploded in her skull—thousands, millions—the screams of the forgotten. Their power burned through her veins.
She slammed the staff into the stone floor. Cracks spiderwebbed outward. The walls convulsed, the trapped faces shrieking silently. The King staggered.
Mara screamed—not aloud, but inside herself, where silence could not reach. I will not be nothing.
The staff shattered. The cavern split open, shadows ripped apart. The King's form dissolved in fire and ash, his roar echoing into nothing.
Mara collapsed. The world tilted. The silence rushed back, heavier than before.
When she opened her eyes, she was back at the lake. The Ferryman stood before her, staff whole again.
You have killed him, the thought pressed into her skull. But silence cannot be slain.
Mara's body trembled. She tried to ask what would happen to her, but her voice was gone.
The Ferryman gestured to the lake. Souls writhed beneath its surface, freer now, their mouths no longer silent but still unheard.
You may walk further, nameless. Or you may sink.
Her hands shook. The path stretched on into blackness, endless, hungry.
She stepped forward.
The silence followed.
And nothing found her