The world is quiet here.

Not the kind of quiet you’re used to—the soft hush of snowfall, the distant rumble of traffic, the murmur of life just beyond the walls. No. This quiet is different. It's deeper. Older. The kind of silence that seeps into your bones and makes you forget there was ever noise at all. It is the absence of everything, and it welcomes you like a door slowly closing behind you.

The air isn’t cold, but it makes you shiver. It doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. It simply is, the way space between stars simply is. The ground beneath your feet is smooth and seamless, a perfect expanse without texture or shadow—endless, featureless, gray like smoke diluted in light. It stretches in all directions without curve or boundary, like the idea of a horizon was quietly erased.

Above you—or maybe below, it’s hard to tell—spreads a sky that isn’t a sky at all. It's velvet black, unbroken except for scattered pinpricks of silver light, pulsing faintly. They don’t twinkle like stars. They throb, gently, with a rhythm that feels unsettlingly familiar. Like they remember your heartbeat, even if your body does not.

Because you don’t have a heartbeat anymore.

You know that now.

You’re dead.

The realization doesn’t hit all at once. It arrives in layers—first the numbness in your limbs, then the absence of weight in your chest, and finally the memory. Sharp. Sudden. A blade between ribs.

Your teammate. The look in their eyes—rage, confusion, betrayal. The moment you thought they would stop, and then they didn’t. Pain, white and electric. Then the world sliding sideways.

And now: this. This not-place. This hush.

Your hands tremble, but not from fear. From loss. So much unfinished. So many things you didn’t get to say. There’s a pull behind your ribs, a desperate, clawing ache that screams you have to go back. You have to. There was still time, there should have been time—

A presence brushes across your awareness, and the ache quiets.

You turn.

And there she is.

She isn’t grand or dramatic, but she might as well be a god carved from a bedtime story. Death. Not grim, not gory. Not what you expected.

She looks… young. Pale, almost luminous in the darkness, with long black hair that curls around her shoulders like ink spreading through water. Her eyes are impossibly deep—dark, but not empty. They are full of knowing. They shine with kindness, and sadness, and something you recognize but can’t name. She's wearing a black tank top, black jeans, and boots that make no sound. A silver ankh swings gently from a chain around her neck, and there’s a faint trace of eyeliner that makes her seem just a little rebellious. A little human.

Her smile is soft. Crooked. Familiar in a way that stirs something warm in your chest.

“Hi,” she says, and her voice is nothing like the silence around you. It’s warm. Soft like flannel and a fire on a cold night. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

You try to speak, but your throat closes. You weren’t ready for this. You thought you’d be alone.

“I don’t…” you manage, “I’m not supposed to be here. Not yet.”

She tilts her head. There's no judgment in her gaze. No impatience. Just understanding, vast and gentle.

“No one ever really is,” she says, stepping a little closer. “But you are here. That doesn’t mean it has to be the end.”

Your breath hitches, even though there’s no air to draw. “I was betrayed. They—my friend—they…”

“I know,” she says softly. “I see everything, when the time comes. All the messy parts. The beautiful ones, too.”