What was it like… to be dead?
Honestly, I don't know what I expected. I mean, I'd read a lot about the afterlife—religions, myths, near-death experiences, all that stuff. I thought maybe there'd be a tunnel of light. Or a golden gate. Or fire and brimstone. Maybe I'd wake up in a field full of flowers with some glowing figure welcoming me to the other side. Or maybe I'd be dragged down screaming by demons. I don't know. Something.
But not… this.
Not nothing.
Because that's where I ended up.
Nowhere.
Just... darkness all around me.
No sky. No ground. No air, really. Just me, floating—or maybe standing?—in a place without shape or color or sound. A place that wasn't a place. And I couldn't even tell if time was passing. It felt like a second and a thousand years at the same time. Do you ever try to count your own thoughts when you're stuck in silence? It gets old fast.
So yeah. Limbo. I guess that's what this was. Some kind of in-between space. Not Heaven. Not Hell. Not even some cool Greek Underworld with rivers and gates and monsters. Just emptiness.
And it sucked.
I mean it. It really sucked. I don't say that lightly.
No voices. No other souls drifted by. No mysterious robed figure keeping watch. Nothing. Just this empty void and the hum of my own thoughts, slowly starting to loop like a broken record.
And hey, remember that angel of death I saw? That shadowy figure standing there in the storm, watching me just before I got hit? Yeah, well... he was gone. Just disappeared. Like he was never there to begin with.
So I waited.
And waited.
Tried calling out at one point. Just to see if anything or anyone would answer. I yelled. I screamed. I cursed. I begged. But my voice didn't echo. Didn't even sound right. It was like shouting into a pillow that swallowed every word.
There were no doors. No paths. No choices.
Just me. And the growing fear that maybe this was it.
Maybe this was what death really looked like. Not fire. Not clouds. Not peace or punishment. Just... being forgotten. Floating forever in a place where nothing happens and no one remembers you were ever alive.
I hated it.
And the worst part?
I didn't even know if I deserved it.
I didn't think I was a bad person. Not really. I didn't steal. I didn't hurt anyone. Sure, I wasn't perfect—I wasted time, kept to myself, probably didn't live as boldly as I should've—but I saved someone. I saved Lia. I gave my life for her.
Didn't that count for something?
Didn't that mean anything?
Apparently not. Because here I was. Alone.
Dead.
And honestly? More confused than ever.
So I started wondering if this was some kind of test. Or maybe a punishment not for what I did, but for what I didn't do. For not living the life I was meant to live. For never chasing the things I believed in.
I don't know.
All I knew was that I didn't want this to be the end.
There had to be more.
There had to be.
And just when I was about to give up—when the silence started sinking into my bones—something changed.
Then, I feel it.
A pressure. A weight.
Something... watching me.
At first, I try to ignore it, but the sensation clings like cobwebs, crawling across my skin, prickling my neck. I feel the urge to speak—to shout—to tear through the silence.
"Enough games," I say, my voice echoing in the dark. "I know you're there. You've been watching me. Come out."
The void shudders.
Like a ripple through a curtain of velvet darkness, the air folds in on itself. A tear splits open, jagged and glowing with stars. Fingers, long and delicate, but impossibly vast, stretch through the rip in reality. They shimmer like they're made of the night sky itself—nebulae swirling in their joints, galaxies orbiting their knuckles.
They pull.
The tear widened.
From the breach steps a being. Towering. Radiant. Terrifying in its beauty. I stare up, slack-jawed. My entire body feels like an afterthought beside her. The being is shaped like a woman, but that's like saying the sun is shaped like a lightbulb. Her body is a tapestry of cosmic light, with eyes like binary stars and hair cascading in streams of stardust.
She sees me—really sees me—and smiles.
"Ah," she says. Her voice is like wind through trees and the chorus of whales singing across galaxies. "You noticed. Not many do."
"Hard not to," I manage. "when you seemed to be staring daggers at me."
She chuckles, delighted. "You're quite the interesting human. Quite different than most."
She lowers herself, shrinking as if the very fabric of reality kneels to her will. Her cosmic form condenses until she stands before me as a young woman, no taller than I am, with long white hair tied into a loose over-shoulder ponytail. Her face is youthful, but ageless, framed by silver bangs. She wore a simple hoodie and pajama shorts.
The darkness around us melts away, replaced by the warm glow of a crackling hearth. A cozy, old-world living room unfurls around us. Wooden beams overhead. Bookshelves sagging with ancient tomes. Two plush couches angled toward each other. The scent of tea and pine.
She gestures to the couch across from her as she sits down cross legged pulling a pillow to her lap. "Please. Sit."
I hesitate for only a second before I sink into the cushions. They're impossibly soft. Like sitting on clouds warmed by sunlight.
"I have to say that you are quite interesting," she says as she gives me this look, gripping the pillow tightly.
"I'm sorry but who are you?"
She laughs again. It echoes through the room and the void beyond.
"Across the ages, I have worn many names—Chaos, Atum, Olodumare, Amma, Brahma, Vairocana, Yahweh, Ginnungagap… the list is endless. I am all of them—and yet, I am none. You may call me Veritas."
"I see.. You know, this is... not what I expected." I said motioning to the room and her.
"It helps you process. I found this particular setting conducive to conversation. You humans respond well to warmth, safety, and comfort"
I couldn't help but chuckle. "Yeah, you don't know how true that is. I do have a question, you mentioned something before. That, I was interesting. Why?"
Veritas steeples her fingers, her silver-white lashes casting shadows on her cheeks.
"Because you shouldn't exist."
I blink again. "Well that's reassuring."
"Don't misunderstand," she says gently. "It's not an insult. It's a curiosity. You are dead, have been dead for several years now. Though it probably has felt like mere moments for you. And yet here you are, still conscious and aware of what is happening around you."
I feel something cold settle in my gut. "So this is the afterlife?"
Veritas' smile turns wistful. "No, not really. You can think of it like Limbo in a way. That is what you were thinking earlier, though the problem is that those that die are to simply return to nothing. Cease to even exist, so this is why you are interesting."
"How long have I been dead?" I asked, breaking the silence at last.
Veritas answered calmly, "Thirteen years."
The words struck like a hammer to my chest. My breath caught. "Can I ask… what happened to Lia? The girl I saved?"
A gentle smile touched her lips. "She's done well—more than well. She never forgot you. In fact, after the accident, she dedicated her life to your dream. She's now both a scientist and a mythologist of growing renown."
A spark of warmth flickered in my chest, but Veritas wasn't finished.
"She's on the verge of something extraordinary," she continued. "Right now, she's close to unearthing a ruined temple—one that speaks of a catastrophe yet to come. A discovery that could change the course of history."
I blinked, the warmth quickly replaced by a chill. "I'm sorry... a catastrophe?"
Veritas nodded solemnly, her cosmic eyes dimming like dying stars. "Yes. A catastrophe unlike any your world has ever seen."
I swallowed. Her voice held the weight of centuries, and the air around us shivered with a hush. "What kind of catastrophe are we talking about?"
She took a slow breath—if a being like her even needed breath—and began to speak. "Long ago, a great evil was born from the void between realities. A creature that defied every law of existence. It called itself the Great Devourer. A wyrm of corruption, an eternal hunger. It consumes worlds and grows larger with each feast. Galaxies fall into it like dust into a black hole."
My stomach twisted. "And the gods... they stopped it?"
"They did what they could. A coalition of deities, pantheons from every corner of the cosmos—Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Hindu, countless more—sacrificed everything to stop the Devourer. They sealed it away. It took every drop of divine power they had left."
I leaned forward. "Sealed? Not destroyed?"
"No," she whispered. "Only sealed. And the seals are weakening."
A silence settled between us like a curtain. I stared at the fireplace flickering across the living room she'd conjured, its light warm but somehow distant.
"If the Devourer escapes—"
"It will consume Earth. Then every star. Then the universe itself." She looked at me, and for the first time since we met, her expression was unreadable. "All of creation will be undone."
My chest tightened. "But you're still here. You're... Veritas. Can't you stop it?"
She smiled, but it was tinged with sorrow. "I am Creation, little soul. When I was born, the universe was born. I breathe life. I spin galaxies. But Destruction... true destruction... that is not within me."
I frowned. "So we need a counterpart. A being on your level, but for destruction. Like a yin to your yang."
She nodded. "A Primeval Being of Death and Destruction. Only such a force could end the Devourer."
My mind spun. "So... make one."
"I cannot. Only a god can be ascended to that role. And you... you are but a soul. Flickering. Fragile. You have no body. No form. You are one heartbeat away from nothing."
I stood up, pacing now. The room shifted slightly with every step, as if the dreamlike realm bent to my emotions. "What if... what if I went back? To the past? I could warn them. Help them prepare. Maybe even convince the gods to work together and prevent this whole thing."
She tilted her head. "Interesting. Risky. But it's interesting."
"You said you still had some divinity left. Enough to send me back?"
Veritas pondered this, then nodded. "Yes. I could send you to a time before the fall. But I cannot choose who you become. You could be a human. A demigod. A monster. Even a god. It would be... random."
My heart pounded. "A gamble. But one I'll take. Hell, maybe I'll get lucky. Be reborn as Perseus. Or Odysseus. Or Theseus. Maybe a minotaur. Or a vampire. Or... Zeus himself."
She chuckled. "Ambitious."
"This might be my only shot to make a difference. Let's do it."
She stood and raised her hand. In it, a small glowing sphere of light formed. A spindle of golden threads encased it, and it pulsed like a heartbeat.
Then came the needle. A simple silver needle one could use to sew. "Give me your hand."
I did.
She pricked my finger gently, and a single drop of blood fell into the orb. It shimmered, then flashed through an array of seven different colors.
"What is that?" I asked.
"This," she said, "contains every life that matches your soul. Every existence you are compatible to be reborn as."
"And who did I get?"
"Odysseus. Marduk. Quetzalcoatl. Perseus. Amaterasu. Dionysus.... and I think Anubis?"
I frowned. "You think?"
"Eh, I'm like 10% sure that it is Anubis or some other chthonic god. They all use black as their soul color, thinking it makes them edgy or something."
"Alright so how do we do this? Do I just pick one of them or what?
"Nope! That's entirely up to the Fates!" she said with a grin, standing up and winding her arm back like a pitcher on the mound.
Before I could question it, she launched the glowing sphere straight at me.
It hit me square in the chest—too fast to dodge, too sudden to brace for.
The instant it made contact, it was like getting slammed by a hurricane. My body snapped backward, weightless, as if I'd been ripped from reality. Everything spun around me, colors blurring, sounds warping. I watched, stunned, as my own form still sat calmly on the couch, growing smaller with distance.
Darkness crept in from the edges of my vision. I was drifting… falling…
And then—light. Blinding, consuming, endless.
I surged forward, yanked toward it with impossible speed.
And just as suddenly, I stopped— and when I opened my eyes to find myself in the arms of a beautiful woman. My body felt strange—smaller, softer. I glanced down and saw tiny hands. I was a baby.
The woman holding me looked exhausted but radiant, her golden hair damp with sweat and clinging to her face. Her emerald eyes sparkled as she gazed down at me with a mixture of love and exhaustion. Around us, several young girls scurried about, speaking in hurried, anxious tones. They were removing a basin of golden, inchor-streaked water and laying out towels.
Their words sounded strange, foreign, yet familiar. It took a moment, but soon I realized they were speaking Ancient Greek. It took a bit before I realized that I could understand everything that they were saying. As they worked, one of the girls leaned over to the woman holding me. "My Queen, have you decided on his name?" she asked softly.
The woman smiled weakly, brushing a finger across my cheek. "Yes. Hades," she whispered. "My little Aidoneus."
The woman looked down at me with so much love that I couldn't help but smile. Rhea truly cared for her children. You know, maybe this wouldn't be so bad, I thought to myself.
I should have known better than to even think that.
The heavy bronze doors groaned open with a sound like ancient thunder. From the shadows beyond stepped a tall figure—lithe and elegant, yet imposing in a way that made the very air seem to retreat. His skin was pale like polished ash, and his black hair flowed behind him like oil spilled over glass. But it was his eyes that stole the breath from the room: golden, burning, ancient. Like they had watched stars die and hadn't blinked.
His black toga shimmered faintly with threads of starlight, draping over a frame that was deceptively slender but crackled with unseen power. Sandaled feet moved without sound across the marble floor, yet each step felt like the toll of a distant war drum.
Rhea, the woman cradling me, tensed. Her smile faltered, replaced by a pale tightness in her jaw. I felt her arms wrap tighter around my tiny body, her breath swallowing as if preparing for battle. She looked up at him—not with love, but with dread.
"Cronus…" she breathed, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind.
He did not respond. His gaze was locked on me, golden and piercing, as though he could already see the path I would walk—the shadows, the fire, the crown.
He stopped in front of us and extended his arms. "Give me the child," he commanded, voice smooth and hollow, like stone siding over stone.
Rhea didn't move. Her grip tightened around me. "Please," she whispered, her voice cracking.
Still, he said nothing. The silence stretched until it became unbearable.
Then, with visible reluctance, she surrendered to me. Her hands lingered a moment too long on my skin, trembling, before finally letting go.
I expected fury. I expected the wide maw, the abyss of his throat, the end.
But instead… he held me.
He studied me with that same unreadable gaze for a long moment. Then, in one swift motion, he lifted me high above his head, his golden eyes alight with something I couldn't place.
And then—he laughed.
A deep, resonant laugh that echoed through the chamber like rolling thunder. It wasn't cruel or mocking. It was… joyous. Reverent, even.
"Look at you," Cronus boomed. "My firstborn son. My blood, my heir! Born of Queen Rhea and destined for greatness."
I blinked, utterly confused. What?
"You have your mother's stillness," he said, lowering me slightly to study me more closely. "But there is fire in those eyes. You will not be weak. No… I see power in you. Mark me—this one will change the world."
Rhea's eyes welled with tears. Whether from relief or something deeper, I couldn't say.
I, on the other hand, was spiraling. I'd read the myths. I knew the story. Cronus devoured his children, terrified of the prophecy that one would overthrow him. So why did he seem so… proud? So accepting?
Why wasn't I already in his stomach?
Cronus cradled me in one arm and turned to Rhea with a grin like a blade. "Let it be known: my son Hades has entered the world of the living. And he will accomplish wonders."
The room was silent. Even the wind beyond the palace had stopped, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
And all I could think was: What the hell is going on?
This wasn't how the story was supposed to go.