Chapter 1: An Unsolicited Job Offer

Chapter 1: An Unsolicited Job Offer

The first thing Morrigan noticed was the cold. It was a deep, invasive chill that seeped from the stone altar beneath her, leaching the warmth from her skin through her thin t-shirt. The second was the smell: a cloying mix of myrrh, damp earth, and something metallic and sharp that coated the back of her throat. Blood. Probably not hers. Yet.

Her wrists and ankles were bound tight with rough rope, chafing her skin raw. Above her, flickering candlelight threw monstrous shadows of robed figures against the damp basement walls. Their chanting was a low, guttural hum, a vibration she felt in her teeth more than she heard with her ears.

Fear was a cold knot in her stomach, but rage was a wildfire blazing over it. This was the pathetic, final punchline to the joke that was her life. Morrigan Thorne, the orphan art student who drifted through her days like a ghost, finally noticed by someone. Too bad they were a death cult.

"Behold the vessel," a voice rasped, cutting through the drone. The leader, his face hidden in the deep cowl of his robe, loomed over her. He held a wickedly curved obsidian dagger, its edge glinting with hungry light. "A soul untethered, brimming with dormant power. The Master will be pleased."

Morrigan met his gaze, pouring every ounce of her defiance into her silver eyes. She refused to scream or beg. She had spent twenty-one years feeling invisible; she wouldn't spend her last moments being pathetic. "You picked the wrong girl," she snarled, her voice surprisingly steady. "I’m going to be a very difficult ghost."

A dry chuckle was her only answer. "That is precisely why you were chosen, child. Your resonance… it sings to the shadows."

He raised the dagger. The chanting swelled, the air growing thick and heavy, pressing down on her chest. For a terrifying, lucid second, Morrigan saw it—not just the air, but the space between the air, shimmering with a sickly purple energy that coiled around the blade. The demonic magic they’d been rambling about. It was real.

The knot in her stomach tightened into a core of ice. This was it. No dramatic escape. No last-minute rescue. Just a cold slab, a crazy cult, and an arts-and-crafts knife from Hell.

The leader’s arm descended.

Pain, white-hot and absolute, erupted in her chest. A gasp tore from her lips, a sound of pure shock as the world dissolved into a blur of agony. Her vision tunneled, the chanting faded to a distant roar, and the last thing she felt was the profound, final insult of a single, cold tear escaping her eye and tracing a path to the stone.

Then, nothing.

…

Blink.

The scent of blood and incense was gone, replaced by the sterile aroma of lemon-scented cleaner and freshly brewed coffee. The hard stone was now a plush, leather chair. The guttural chanting had been swapped for the low, rhythmic hum of a high-end computer tower.

Morrigan sat bolt upright, her hands flying to her chest. There was no wound. No blood. Her leather jacket and dark jeans were pristine. The ropes were gone. She wasn't in a grimy basement anymore.

She was in an office. A ridiculously expensive-looking one.

A vast mahogany desk, polished to a mirror shine, dominated the space. Behind it, a floor-to-ceiling window offered a breathtaking, impossible view: a swirling nebula of stars and galaxies, the kind you only see in doctored telescope images. A sleek, silver laptop sat open on the desk, displaying what looked like a constantly updating stock ticker, except the symbols were arcane runes and the numbers were ticking down, not up.

"Punctuality is a virtue," a smooth voice commented, "even in the recently deceased. You’re three-point-seven seconds ahead of schedule. I’m impressed."

Morrigan’s head snapped towards the source of the voice. A man stood by the window, silhouetted against the cosmic vista. He was impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than her entire college tuition. As he turned, the light caught his features. He looked to be in his late thirties, handsome in a way that was both classic and unnerving. But it was his eyes that held her captive. They were like chips of polished obsidian, ancient and utterly devoid of warmth, holding the weight of millennia.

He clicked an antique silver pocket watch shut and slipped it into his vest pocket. "Morrigan Thorne. Age twenty-one. Orphan. Art student. Cause of death: ritualistic exsanguination. A bit dramatic for my tastes, but to each their own."

Morrigan’s mind struggled to catch up. She was dead. She knew she was dead. She’d felt it. So… what was this?

"Am I in Hell?" she asked, her voice raspy. "Because the corporate aesthetic is a little on the nose."

The man smiled, a slight, humorless twitch of his lips. "An astute observation. Hell is a few floors down, and their interior design is far more chaotic. Think… endless open-plan office with no one knowing who to report to. True horror. No, this is Management."

He walked to the desk and leaned against it, crossing his arms. The picture of casual authority. "You are, for lack of a better term, in my office. My name is Thanatos."

The name didn't register at first. It was just a name. But then, a dusty corner of her art history minor sparked to life. Greek mythology. The personification of Death.

"Right," she said, a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in her throat. She choked it down, replacing it with her default setting: sarcasm. "And I'm Persephone. So, where’s the pomegranate martini?"

"I am, in fact, the Grim Reaper," he stated, his tone as matter-of-fact as if he were discussing the weather. "The CEO of this entire operation. The final arbiter. The manager of cosmic balance. Take your pick of titles; I’ve collected a few."

Morrigan just stared. Every rational part of her brain screamed that this was a hallucination, a final, elaborate firing of synapses as her brain starved of oxygen on that cold, stone slab. But the rich smell of the coffee, the solid feel of the leather chair beneath her—it all felt too real.

"So you’re Death," she said slowly. "And you brought me here… why? For a post-mortem performance review?"

"Close," Thanatos said, a glint of something that might have been appreciation in his obsidian eyes. "I’m here to offer you a job."

Of all the things she expected, that wasn’t one of them. "A job? I'm dead. What are you going to have me do, haunt a spectral resources department?"

"The position of Reaper for your local sector has recently become… vacant. I require an apprentice. A replacement."

Morrigan gaped at him. "You want me… to be a Reaper? Like, with the scythe and the spooky cloak and everything?"

"The cloak is optional, more of a flair for the dramatic, but the scythe is standard issue, yes," he confirmed. "Your death was… unique. The demonic energies used to kill you have left a certain residue on your soul, a resonance that makes you uniquely suited to perceive the veil between worlds. More importantly," he added, his gaze sharpening, "you possess a spark of defiance that I find… interesting. It’s been eons since I’ve had an interesting variable."

She stood up, her legs feeling shaky. "No. Absolutely not. I didn’t ask for this. I just want… I don't know what I want. But it's not this."

Thanatos’s expression remained placid, but the room seemed to grow colder. The swirling galaxies outside the window stilled. "Refusal is, of course, an option. However, souls like yours—violently untethered and touched by forbidden magic—cannot simply pass on. They are unstable. The alternative to my offer is not a peaceful oblivion."

He gestured to a corner of the room that had been empty a moment before. An image flickered into view, like a heat haze. It showed a vast, grey expanse under a colorless sky. There was no sound, no movement, just an endless, silent, featureless landscape of nothing.

"Limbo," Thanatos said, his voice soft but heavy with finality. "An eternity of silent, grey, sensory deprivation. No art. No anger. No feeling. Just… erasure. You will simply cease to be Morrigan Thorne and become part of the quiet static between realms. Your choice."

Morrigan stared at the image of Limbo, and a terror far deeper than anything she’d felt on the altar washed over her. Death was one thing. To be erased, to have the very fire of her being snuffed out into utter nothingness… that was a fate worse than any hell she could imagine.

Her defiance, her sarcasm, her anger—it was all she had. It was who she was. The thought of losing it was unbearable.

She turned back to Thanatos, the charismatic, terrifying manager of the universe. He held all the cards. Her life had been stolen from her, and now her afterlife was being held hostage. The injustice of it all burned like acid.

But she was a survivor. She always had been.

She squared her shoulders, the old, familiar defiance settling over her like armor. If this was the game now, she would learn the rules. And then she would find a way to break them.

"Fine," she spat, the word tasting like defeat and rebellion all at once. "You win. Where do I sign?"

A faint, knowing smile touched Thanatos’s lips. He snapped his fingers. A thick, vellum contract materialized on the desk, a quill pen glowing with faint, ethereal light beside it.

"Excellent," he said, his voice once again the epitome of corporate pleasantry. "Welcome to the team. Orientation begins immediately."

Morrigan stared at the contract, her heart—or whatever passed for it now—a cold, heavy stone in her chest. Her afterlife had just begun. And it came with a soul-binding contract.