At first, I thought I was dreaming. There was no pain. No weight in my limbs. No warmth either, just… stillness. Not cold, not dark, just nothing. Then nothing began to shape itself.
A floor beneath my feet—smooth, black stone like polished obsidian, stretching forward in a narrow path that vanished into silver mist on one end and burning red light on the other. I stood at the center of a bridge that spanned a chasm with no bottom. Above me, there was no sky. Just a vast expanse of swirling shadow and light, folding into itself like a storm trapped in silence.
Then I realized—I wasn't breathing.
I wasn't alive.
This was it.
The Place of Judgment.
It was said to exist beyond the veil of death, where all souls pass—no matter how holy or damned. I'd heard the tales as a boy, whispered by drunk priests and dying soldiers, Yet I never believed them.
I believe now.
Pillars ringed the path ahead, tall as towers, etched with faces I could barely look at—some beautiful, some monstrous, and some… both. They watched me without eyes. I felt them weighing me with a gaze deeper than flesh. They saw through everything I'd ever tried to hide. Ahead of me, a great dais rose from the void, glowing softly—light not from flame, but memory. And above it, suspended in the air like a hanging judgment, an hourglass turned with no hands. Its sand shimmered gold one moment, blood-red the next. I knew without being told: those were my moments, falling one by one—my choices, my failures, my sins.
To the left, I saw the descent.
Rings of fire spiraled downward, each circle tighter, darker, more twisted than the last. I couldn't see the bottom. I wasn't sure there was one.
To the right, a path of silver mist wound upward into brilliance—serene, distant, unknowable. The Realm of the Gods, if such a place truly existed.
I stood between them, neither burning nor shining. Not yet.
No voice greeted me. No figure appeared to judge me.
Only the truth.
And I think I knew, in that moment, that I wasn't here to beg or fight.
I was here to be seen.
Stepping forward towards the raised dais and hourglass I continued to watch it for a moment And yet, I was not alone. I felt it—before I saw anything. A pressure, subtle at first, like a weight behind my eyes or a whisper brushing against the back of my neck. Not malevolent. Not kind. Just... present. Timeless. Endless.
Slow and hesitant, I turned the way a man might turn in an ancient forest when he knows something is behind him but fears it might not be human.
She was standing there.
Madira.
The Goddess of Souls.
I had never seen a statue of her that came close to the truth.
She was tall, but not towering. Her form shifted with the light—neither young nor old, neither beautiful nor terrible. Her skin shimmered like pale moonlight through water, and her eyes… gods, her eyes. They were vast. Ageless. Each one held galaxies, and I felt myself shrink beneath them, laid bare and weightless like dust in a storm. She wore a gown of layered veils that whispered across the stone without touching it, each layer stitched with glowing runes that pulsed softly in rhythm with… was that my heartbeat?
No. I had no heartbeat.
Her voice, when it came, didn't reach my ears. It echoed inside me, stirring something old and fragile.
"Eiran."
Just my name. But it was all of me in that word—my triumphs, my failings, every version of who I had been and might have become. I couldn't speak. I could barely stand. I felt like a child caught in a lie, or a king stripped of his crown. She stepped closer, and I realized her face was not fixed—it shifted with every breath, now a stranger's, now Auralia's, now mine. She was everyone. She was every soul.
"You have passed from the world of flesh."
"Now comes the truth."
I wanted to look away, but her gaze held me. Not with force. With mercy.
Terrible, infinite mercy.
Madira's gaze held me still, yet I felt no chains. There were no guards, no walls—only her, and the unbearable weight of truth ready to fall. She raised one hand, pale and luminous, and with that simple motion I felt the threads of my soul begin to unravel—memories pulling loose like frayed cloth.
And then—
"Wait."
The word was soft, but it cracked across the stillness like thunder.
Madira's hand froze in the air.
My breath caught—if I still drew breath. I turned instinctively toward the voice.
There, standing just at the edge of the obsidian path, was a boy.
He looked no older than ten, barefoot, his white hair wild and wind-tossed though there was no wind here. His eyes… gods, his eyes. One gleamed silver, the other gold. They shimmered not with light, but with motion—the turn of stars, the spinning of worlds, the breath of centuries collapsing into a single gaze.
He smiled at me like he'd known me all my life.
Like he would know me again.
Madira's expression didn't change, but the void around us seemed to draw tighter, reverent.
"This soul stands at the threshold," she said, voice even, eternal. "His thread has run. He must be judged."
The boy tilted his head.
"His thread may have run, but I haven't finished weaving."