Page 6 of Aïdes the Unseen
“These are joys no one was allowed to have,” he said. “Dreams unfulfilled. Love unspoken. Lives that never made room for happiness.”
Tears pricked my eyes from the ache ofalmost.I let the petals brush my fingertips and thought:I could stay here forever.But I didn’t.
The path twisted, and we reached the Furnace of Oaths.
A stark chamber. Stone walls scorched black, though no flame touched them now. In the center, fire danced without heat, but there was no mistaking the existence here. It was a flame that knew.
“What burns here?” I asked.
“Promises. Lies. Words that can’t be taken back.”
I looked into the fire and saw pieces of myself—truths I wasn’t ready to speak, truths I wasn’t ready to accept. I stepped back. My hand brushed Aïdes’ sleeve, and I didn’t apologize.
He took me to the Mirrorway.
A narrow corridor lined with mirrors, each one taller than a man and framed in obsidian. I looked into the first and sawmyself—not as I was, but as Icould have been. Laughing in a garden. Crownless. Unchanged.
The second showed me as I am, aware, shadowed, and a little lonely. That image humbled me. The third seemed to be what I might become if I stayed too long here.
“You shouldn’t look too deeply,” Aïdes warned. “Some forget which reflection is theirs.”
Still, I touched the glass. My own eyes stared back at me. I wasn’t sure which version they belonged to.
We passed next into the Chamber of Quiet Sleep.
Beds—hundreds, thousands—lined the vast room, each one shaped from smoke and soft stone, cradled in fog. Souls lay sleeping, not restless, but complete.
“They don’t wake?” I whispered.
“Not unless they choose to,” he said. “Some lives are too full of ache. This is their peace.”
I wanted to kneel. To bless them. But it didn’t feel right. This washissanctum. His mercy. Not mine.
And then, the River of Once.
It was narrow, more a stream than a river, winding through the rock like a silver thread. The water shimmered strangely, as if it remembered light but hadn’t seen it in a long time.
“What flows here?” I asked.
“Memories,” he said. “Ones willingly surrendered. Touch it, and you’ll remember something you didn’t know you’d forgotten. But only once. Then it’s gone.”
I knelt beside it. Let one finger trail through the current.
A memory bloomed: my mother’s hands in my hair, humming a song I hadn’t thought of in centuries. The warmth of it broke me open. Then it was gone.
I didn’t cry. But I pressed my hand to my chest for a long time afterward.
At last, we reached the quietest place of all: the Passage of the Unnamed.
No grandeur. Just a long, narrow hall filled with endless rows of candles, flickering softly. Each flame was a soul who’d never been named aloud. Children lost before their first breath. The murdered. The forgotten. The unseen.
I stopped walking. Lit a single candle. I didn’t know for whom.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
Aïdes knelt beside one flame that had guttered to almost nothing. He cupped his hand around it until it steadied. He didn’t say a word. That was his offering.
Mine was silence, too. Eventually, we reached the final chamber.
