For Eathan, the end had been abrupt: one last array holding, a wall of flame, the sensation of his HUD slamming error after error into his cortex… Then, like someone unplugged a modem, everything cut.
When he reopened his eyes, he was watching over the unfolding of his own funeral.
Rows of folding chairs. A cheap rented hall. White lilies in vases that were trying very hard to pretend they weren’t supermarket plastic.
And in the middle of the room, on a low table draped in dark cloth—
His own face, framed in black.
Eathan stared back.
“Okay,” he’d said at the time, very calmly, because his brain had simply decided it was done. “This is new.”
He then shifted his gaze to his hands, which looked… transparent. Cold light bled through his wrists.
“Okay,” he’d said again, staring at his own fingers. “So I’m either a really immersive dream or—”
“Dead,” a small voice had supplied.
He turned.
Chewie stood at the opposite corner, hands shoved in her coat pockets and hair floating.
The twelve-year-old looked like herself and didn’t. Petite frame, oversized hoodie, that eternally unimpressed expression—but her outline bled faint smoke, and the ends of her hair drifted as if underwater. When she shifted her weight, her boots didn’t disturb even a single fallen leaf.
“Hi,” she’d said, then scowled at the lilies. “They picked the dramatic flowers. Of course they did.”
“…You died in a totally different incident,” Eathan blurted. “Different continent. Different day. Why are you here?”
At his question, Chewie glanced down at herself, then around at the intersection. “Resonance,” she said. “Your pendant. My banner. Our anchors. This crossroads.”
“That was not a sentence,” he said. “You just threw nouns at me.”
Chewie sighed and tapped the side of her head.
“You left the pendant in Li Wei’s vault,” she said. “I left the war banner with Meng Yao. Both are sacrifice anchors now. Both are tied into Realm of Passing’s entry ledger. When our mortal bodies crossed the ‘dead’ line, the anchors synced. Their resonance dragged our spectral forms together.” She jerked her chin at the glowing neon streets outside. “You’re the second to revive. Obviously, I had to come to you.”
She said it like she was explaining why water was wet.
The day continued on, and the the funeral ended. Emily, Sera, and Luke trudged down the snowy streets of New York, wholly unaware of the two floating behind them like kites.
Eathan sighed, taking in the evening street.
“So we’re… what. Casually dead. Temporarily.”
“Technically, we experienced brief mortal death to satisfy Realm regulations,” Chewie corrected. “Heaven’s paperwork needs a pulse going to zero. For at least three seconds. Captain Spreadsheet had timed it. Very precisely.”
Eathan’s stomach did something unpleasant. “And after the three seconds?”
“Vault,” she said. “Your body and mine, both thrown into area vaults. Limbo stasis. Keeps decay from starting and keeps the line between ‘dead’ and ‘visiting’ fuzzy.”
“Reassuring.”
Now, they just needed a guide to lead them through the door.
A breeze slid through both of them without resistance. Eathan shivered anyway, out of habit rather than temperature. Ahead, down the quiet residential street, a familiar figure turned onto the block.
Sera Dream.
She walked like she always did: measured steps, spine straight, camera bag bumping against her hip. Grief hadn’t changed her stride; it had merely sanded some of the bounce off.
Eathan and Chewie drifted after her like badly anchored balloons.
She moved up her walkway, climbing the porch steps. The small, square shape waiting at her door looked almost comically ordinary.
Li Wei’s people had dropped off the package an hour ago. Eathan knew that, because he’d sensed—from the moment the delivery ward flickered at the curb to the second the courier’s aura vanished off his [Calamity Radar].
Now he hovered at the bottom of the stairs, watching.
Sera’s gaze caught on the package. She frowned, just a little, and Eathan knew why. No label. No sender.
Of course she'd notice the wrong thing first.
Eathan drifted up another step until he stood behind her shoulder, close enough to see the tension in her jaw.
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Guilt rose, thick and sour.
Chewie appeared at his other side, hands tucked into the pocket of her hoodie. “You’re staring,” she murmured.
“That’s my friend unpacking my ashes,” Eathan murmured back. “I am allowed to stare.”
On the porch, Sera bent and reached for the box. The twine creaked softly under her fingers.
“Calm, isn’t she?” Eathan murmured, partly to distract himself from his own nagging conscience. “Honestly, it’s pretty impressive.”
Chewie, spectral arms crossed, nodded once. “Expected. Sera Dream has always been sharper than twenty Lukes combined. Maybe five Emilys.”
“Three at most,” he corrected, earning a sidelong glance from the twelve-year-old.
Then, as if hearing voices whispered on an invisible wind, she suddenly froze and turned—head whipping over her shoulder, eyes cutting straight through them.
Eathan jerked back, instinct screaming caught even though logic knew better.
“…She can’t see us,” he whispered, skin prickling anyway. “Right? We’re on stealth mode?”
“Relax,” Chewie said. “We’re essentially ghosts right now.”
“Again, not exactly relaxing.”
Sera’s brow furrowed. She squinted at the empty air for a split second too long, then shook it off, slipping the package under one arm and unlocking her door. Warm apartment light spilled onto the porch as she disappeared inside.
The door shut.
Silence washed over the porch. Wind cut through their spectral outlines.
Eathan exhaled, floating up the front steps after her.
In the dimly lit apartment, the two watched as Sera set the box down on the coffee table and flicked on the small overhead lamp.For a long moment, she just looked at the box. Then she reached for the envelope.
“Here we go,” Eathan murmured.
From where he hovered a step behind the couch, he could see every line of his own rushed handwriting. He could also see the way Sera’s throat moved around each swallow.
“If you’re reading this…”
He silently mouthed the words along with her, guilt a tight burn behind his ribs.
She finished the letter slowly, eyes skimming the last line.
See you again soon, I hope.
The silence that filled the apartment was heavy and brittle. Eathan’s spectral stomach twisted as he watched her stare down at the urns, at his name engraved in jet black letters.
“It’s not us,” he said quickly, even though she couldn’t hear him. “That’s—it’s mostly substitute material with a hair sample. Li Wei said full cremation was ‘operationally suboptimal.’”
“Also,” Chewie added, “Realm of Passing hates empty paperwork.”
Of course, none of their words delivered.
Sera’s fingers hovered over the lid. For a moment, her expression crumpled—just a little at the edges, like a picture glitching at low resolution. Then she inhaled, long and controlled, and picked up the letter again.
She folded the paper twice, pressed it flat, and tucked it into the inside pocket of her coat.
Chewie stepped closer, spectral hands clasped behind her back.
“She’s compartmentalising,” she said. “Mortals do that when the alternatives are screaming or shutting down. She chooses neither. Healthy coping mechanism. Very enviable.”
“They planned a funeral for me,” Eathan said hoarsely. “On three days’ notice. All three of them. They actually found a hall and an officiant and a weirdly nice flower arrangement and—”
His words stuttered.
Images flickered: Luke fussing with the crooked photo frame by the incense table. Emily standing with her hands twisted in her sleeves, lips pressed together. Sera, head bowed, kneeling to light a stick of incense with fingers that barely shook.
His nonexistent chest hurt.
Chewie glanced at him sidelong, expression almost gentle.
“You did warn them once you were good at disappearing,” she said.
“Not the same thing.”
He watched Sera stand, cradling both urns against her chest. Her camera bag was gone tonight. She’d swapped it for a plain messenger strap—letter inside, holopad on silence.
She checked the time on the wall clock. 11:37 pm.
Right on schedule.
“She adjusted fast,” Chewie murmured, approval in her voice. “Must be Spirit Envoy instincts. She reads the letter, weighs the risk against what she knows of you, then decides without dithering.”
“No,” Eathan said quietly. “It’s because she’s Sera.”
While she pulled on her boots, Sera tapped a message out on her holopad with her thumb. Eathan drifted closer and peeked.
[GROUP CHAT — E.L.S.E] [DREAMERA]: If I don’t pick up later it’s not because I’m ignoring you. [DREAMERA]: Something came up. Will explain tomorrow. [DREAMERA]: Promise.
She hesitated, then added a small camera emoji.
Eathan’s throat tightened.
“I hate that we didn’t tell her anything before this.”
“Told her what?” Chewie’s eyes flashed, but not unkind. “‘By the way, I’m secretly a vessel for a dead auspicious deity, my boss is the former White Tiger you’ve all learned from Chinese Myth, and I’m about to fake my death so I can go spelunking through the afterlife, so please don’t make a fuss?’”
He grimaced. “When you put it like that…”
“Also,” she added, “the gate needs real mourning. Not staged, not politely rehearsed. If they knew you were alive, that door stays shut. Their ignorance is not just protection. It’s the key. You’re asking them to hurt so you can go try to un?hurt somebody else. That’s ugly math, Eathan.”
“But Sera’s different,” he said helplessly. “Realm?tied. She was already in the blast radius. Erzhong Ren saw it—remember? That was why we settled on this in the first place.”
Chewie’s lips twitched. “Ah. Our favourite ogre.”
It had been one of those weirdly quiet afternoons at COZMART, back when the corner shop had still been one piece. They’d been mid?hushed argument by the freezer on the specifics of RoP mourning energy when Erzhong Ren strolled in.
The ogre-spirit had paused, head tilted, then politely dropped the bomb.
“Your mortal friend, with the camera.”
Chewie had squinted up at him. “What.”
“The one who buys the expired Pockie and sits outside to take pictures of buses?” Erzhong had pointed awkwardly at a rack of candy, not quite meeting their eyes. “She smells like passage.”
“Sera?” Eathan had asked, blinking.
“I didn’t say anything before because it’s rude to comment on people’s… afterlife affinity. But if you’re… planning something with the Passing…”
He’d shifted his weight, embarrassed. “Spiritual envoys. Very compatible with death administration. Just saying.”
“…”
After he’d gone, they’d went to the Captain once again for confirmation. Li Wei, bless his exhausted soul, had rotated his cigarette between his fingers, sighed, and hacked into MSR’s ancestry database without breaking eye contact.
Three illegal keystrokes and a few glowing family trees later, lines of script scrolled across his tablet.
“Spirit envoy line, confirmed,” he’d said. “Grandmother’s side. Strong affinity with transitional realms. Never activated, never trained. Never registered in the Jade Court.”
Chewie had grinned, sharp and satisfied. “Perfect.”
Perfect.
Great.
Now, watching Sera clutch the letter in her hand, Eathan felt equal parts of relieve and nausea.
“You better not be lying to me,” she said.
Eathan stepped closer until his hand nearly overlapped her shoulder.
“I won’t,” he said, and even though she couldn’t hear him, he said it like a vow. “I swear. I’m coming back.”
Chewie didn’t comment for once.
Sera straightened, urns nestled carefully in her arms, coat half?buttoned, letter against her heart. She checked the time, grabbed her keys, and moved for the door without looking back.
Eathan and Chewie fell into step behind her.
A guide in front, two ghosts trailing, and somewhere beyond the city lights, a door was waiting to be opened.