Chapter 1: The Ferryman's Bargain

Chapter 1: The Ferryman's Bargain

The world was grey.

Not the comforting grey of a misty Port Blossom morning, but a flat, soul-crushing absence of color. A silent, tideless ocean lapped at a shore of fine, grey dust that might have been sand or ash. Other figures drifted along the water's edge, their forms translucent and their faces vacant, their gaze fixed on a horizon that never changed.

Lyra Corvus was not like them. She felt the grit of the shore under her bare feet, a phantom sensation that was more memory than reality. The flannel shirt she wore—the one she’d stolen from her dad’s closet—was heavy with a dampness that never dried. A Kurt Cobain lyric was a scream trapped in her throat. Here we are now, entertain us. But there was no sound here. No music. No life.

There was only waiting.

She didn't know how long she’d been here. Time was a river that had emptied into this stagnant sea. But unlike the other shades, Lyra remembered. She remembered the salty sting of the night air, the jagged edge of a rock against her back, and a flash of betrayal so sharp it had sliced through her life. The memory was a burning coal in the grey wasteland of her consciousness. It was the only thing that felt real.

A shadow fell over the shore, a patch of darkness in the perpetual twilight. A long, skeletal skiff drifted toward her, disturbing the placid surface of the water without a ripple. At its stern stood a figure cloaked in robes the color of a starless midnight, a long pole of blackened wood in its grasp. Its face was a hollow of deeper shadow, but Lyra felt a gaze that was ancient and utterly final.

The Ferryman.

The other shades shuffled forward, a silent, orderly queue for oblivion. Lyra stood her ground. Her fists, half-faded and ethereal, clenched at her sides.

The skiff glided to a halt before her, the prow scraping the shore with the first sound she had heard in this place—a grating sigh of finality. The Ferryman extended a bony hand, a silent command. Your turn.

“No,” Lyra whispered, her voice a rusty croak.

The hooded head tilted. It was not a gesture of curiosity, but of weighing, of judging.

“I’m not done,” she insisted, her voice gaining a sliver of the defiant energy that had defined her life. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why.” The burning coal of her memory flared. “Someone has to answer for it.”

The Ferryman remained silent, but an understanding flowed from him, cold and clear as deep water. All accounts are settled here. Justice is a mortal concern.

“Then let me be mortal again,” she shot back, stepping closer, her form flickering with agitation. The other shades recoiled from her sudden vehemence. “One more chance. That’s all I’m asking. Let me find out who did this to me. Who put me here.”

And what is the price for such a boon, little ghost? You have nothing. Your life is spent. Your soul is forfeit.

The logic was as inescapable as this grey beach. But Lyra Corvus had never been one for logic when her heart screamed otherwise. “I’ll give you what you’re owed anyway,” she bargained, her mind racing. “My soul. You’ll get it no matter what. But if I go back… if I find the truth… I’ll come back willingly. No fight. No regrets. A soul at peace. Isn’t that worth more than a screaming, angry one?”

For a long moment, the entity was still. Then, a low chuckle echoed, not through the air, but directly inside Lyra’s head. It was the sound of grinding stones and forgotten sorrows.

A curious bargain, the thought emanated from the darkness under the hood. An echo desires a voice. Very well. The balance is disturbed. Your end was… irregular. It has left a splinter in the fabric. The Ferryman raised one long, skeletal finger. Seven days. Seven risings of the sun. When the seventh sun sets, your time is spent. Find your truth or lose yourself to the whispers between worlds. Either way, you will ride my ferry.

“I accept,” Lyra said, without a breath of hesitation.

Then go.

The world shattered. The grey shore dissolved into a vortex of screaming color and sensation. The feeling was not of being born, but of being stuffed back into a container that was too small, too cold, too tight. The silence was broken by the roar of blood in her ears, the smell of damp earth filled her nose, and the taste of dirt coated her tongue.

Panic, primal and suffocating, seized her. She was buried.

Her hands, no longer ethereal but caked with mud and chillingly solid, flew up to claw at the suffocating darkness. Splinters dug under her nails as she hit wood. The cheap pine of a coffin. Rage, hot and blinding, gave her a strength she didn’t know she possessed. She hammered upward, her knuckles raw, screaming a silent, desperate prayer to anyone but the Ferryman.

The wood cracked. Then it splintered. A cascade of heavy, wet soil tumbled in, cold and cloying. She pushed, wriggled, and fought her way up, inch by agonizing inch, climbing through her own grave.

Finally, her hand broke the surface, fingers splayed against a cool, damp night. She hauled herself out, gasping, collapsing onto wet grass. The air was crisp, tasting of rain and something else… a faint, electric hum, like the world was thrumming with a power she’d never felt before.

She was in the Blackwood Cove cemetery. The familiar, crooked headstones of Port Blossom’s founding families stood like skeletal sentinels around her. But beyond them, everything was wrong.

The Port Blossom she knew was a town of quiet streets, the smell of fish and pine, the distant foghorn a mournful lullaby. This… this was different. Where the old cannery should have been, a gleaming tower of glass and steel scraped the clouds, its surface crawling with pulsating neon lights of blue and fuchsia. The skyline glittered with dozens more, casting an artificial twilight that drowned out the stars. The very air buzzed, and faint, glowing lines, like veins of liquid light, were visible crisscrossing the streets in the distance.

Stumbling to her own headstone, she wiped the mud from the inscription.

Lyra Corvus. Beloved Daughter. 1980 - 1999.

Nineteen-ninety-nine.

Her breath hitched. That was the year she… died. The year she turned nineteen. She looked at her hands, the pale skin clean of any rot or decay, then back at the impossible, futuristic city. How long had she been in that grey place?

A discarded newspaper, caught against a nearby crypt, gave her the answer. The date was stark under the neon glow: October 28th, 2019.

Twenty years.

Twenty years had passed in a blink. Her friends, her family… everyone she knew would be… older. Changed. Her best friend, Jenna Thorne, who was always so desperate to escape this town… what happened to her? Her dad? A wave of vertigo and grief washed over her, so potent it nearly sent her back to her knees.

She had to move. Get her bearings. The path leading from the cemetery toward the old town was still there, at least. A ghost in a new machine, she stumbled onto the cracked asphalt, her ripped jeans and faded Nirvana tee feeling less like a statement and more like a costume from a history book.

The silence of the cemetery was replaced by the low hum of the city. As she passed into the shadow of an alleyway, a glint of light caught her eye. It wasn’t the neon glare. It was sharper. Colder.

Silver.

A flicker of movement. A man stepped out from the darkness, blocking her path. He was young, maybe late twenties, with a sharp, predatory focus in his eyes. Intricate, silver-inlaid tattoos coiled up his arms, catching the city lights and glowing with a faint, internal luminescence. In his hands, he held a compact, modern crossbow, the bolt already loaded and aimed directly at her heart.

“Revenant,” the man’s voice was low and steady, devoid of any emotion but grim certainty. “By the authority of the Silver Wardens, your unlife is forfeit. Stand down.”