Chapter 1: The Threshold.

Khai woke up gasping.

Not the slow breath of someone awakening from deep slumber – this was a drowning gasp. A desperate, clawing, pull of air, like he had held his breath for too long and couldn’t remember how to breathe. 

His back arched sharply off the ground.

He rolled to one side.

And coughed out a mouthful of dust.

Not dirt. Not sand.

Ash.

Fine, black, and bitter. It grinded between his teeth. Coated his airways, stuck in his throat. He retched dry, helpless.

Gentle hands reached for him, slowly becoming stronger. Voices. Distant.

“Hey—breathe.”

“Leave him, let him catch his breath.”

“Someone get him off the glyph and move him to the platform.”

Fragmented words reached his mind. They didn’t feel real.

The sky looked wrong.

It pulsed.

Not with clouds or light. With glyphs—flowing symbols etched in the dome of darkness above which seemed to press too close and heavy. Like the inside of a coffin made of darkness.

Khai moved slowly as he sat up, pain shooting through his chest.

Eleven people were standing by his side.

He was the twelfth.

The last one to arrive.

A wide circular platform stretched beneath them, made of stone too smooth to be natural and too dark to be volcanic. It was pulsating with flowing, spiraling glyphs scratched on its surface, shifting slightly, like there was something alive beneath. 

The floor had no walls around it.

Only white, bone-colored columns shot up and around the circle, leaning together like teeth in a beast’s mouth. There was no breeze, but the air whispered with a soft murmuring.

Khai wiped dust from his eyes with his fingers. His palm was buzzing with something.

He looked down.

The mirror.

Held firmly in his grip.

Still warm.

He hadn’t realized he was holding it.

Nothing could be seen on its surface... No reflection. Only a circle of smoke and dust beneath the glass.

No one noticed its presence. No one asked.

The woman who had touched him—a sharp-eyed older soul in what remained of a nurse’s uniform—stood back now, frowning.

“He’s here. That makes twelve of us.”

Another man, rail-thin and sleepless, muttered, “Twelve. Like the obelisks.”

Someone else—young, hoodie, shaking—laughed once. Dry. “Twelve’s a good number. Not unlucky. Not sacred. Just... enough to die with, I guess.”

“Aren’t we still fighting for our lives,” said a broad man with burn-marks down one arm. His voice was too level.

The silence that came after wasn’t awkward.

It was frayed.

Khai’s breathing evened.

He finally looked at them, studied them. 

1. The nurse. Calm on the surface. But her fingers flexed like she was used to holding broken bones together.

2. The addict in the gown. Pale skin. Faded veins. Eyes tracking invisible things in the sky.

3. The ceremonial woman. Robes tattered. Her mouth moved constantly, prayers no one could hear.

4. The burned man. Tall. Quiet. Arms like stone. His eyes scanned each of them like weights on a butcher’s scale.

5. The teenager in the hoodie. Talking under his breath. Fidgeting with the drawstring like it was a talisman.

6. The priest. Robes torn. Mouth wet. Every thirty seconds, he tapped his chest—three times. Always three.

7. The bald woman, barefoot. Still as a statue. But her gaze never stopped moving.

8. The child. Seven years old, maybe. Holding a melted doll. Her lips moved, but no sound came.

9. The businessman, still trying to straighten his ruined tie. His fingers trembled.

10. The woman with gauze-wrapped arms. Burn scars peeking through. Her hands tapped out perfect rhythms on her thigh.

11. The person in a cracked lab coat—sharp eyes, neutral stance. Watching everyone. Including Khai.

12. And Khai. New. Breathless. Gripping onto an artifact that no one seemed to notice.

None of them talked to him.

Even so, everyone acknowledged him with a nod, a pat on the back.

Then, the boy in the hoodie muttered, “So. What now?”

“Now?” the nurse said. “We wait.”

“For what? For judgment? For hell?”

“This doesn’t feel like hell,” said the priest, dryly. “There’s no fire.”

“No.” The bald woman finally spoke. “There’s something worse than fire.”

Everyone turned their eyes upward.

The glyphs in the sky trembled.

The air grew stressed.

Khai held tightly to the mirror in his hand.

It throbbed and hummed weakly.

And from above—

The guide descended.

It didn’t fall. It didn’t land.

It simply became present.

A towering figure draped in rotting linen. Face hidden behind a jackal mask of obsidian, eyes blank, polished, endless.

Its robes dragged across the glyphs. They didn’t tear. They folded.

The room fell utterly silent.

Even the whispering stopped.

Then the voice came.

Not sound.

Pressure.

Inside their skulls.

“You stand at the Threshold.”

“You are dead.”

“You are not judged.”

“You must walk.”

The guide turned its head slowly, scanning the circle of twelve.

It paused on each one—equal, even, ritualistic.

Until it reached Khai.

And then it stopped.

For just a beat too long.

Its masked face tilted down—just enough to acknowledge the mirror.

And then it moved on.

“Beyond this hall lies the First Path. The Mouth of Dust.

There, your Rite awaits.”

The ground behind them split—clean and vertical, no hinges, no light. Just a thin line of black inviting them in.

“No gods will walk beside you.

No name will protect you.

Speak nothing of who you were.”

“Walk.

And be weighed.”

Then the guide vanished. Not with ceremony. Not with grandeur.

Simply not there anymore.

The gate behind them throbbed.

And twelve dead souls—breath held, eyes wary—stepped into the dark.

Khai walked last.

And the mirror, still warm in his hand, showed no reflection.

Only a thin, smiling crack.