Page 5 of Aïdes the Unseen
“This is the path down,” he said. “There are faster ways. But I thought you might want to…see.”
Oh, I did. I really, really did. I smiled at him. “Show meeverything.”
The descent was long, but not painful. Every step felt like shedding light, sound, even breath. Spring still clung to me in flecks of pollen and warmth, but it grew quieter the deeper we went. Not dimmer. Justcalmer.
There were no torches. No need. The cavern lit itself with a gentle light that pulsed from the walls. It was subtle, like the last glow of sunset before it disappears.
He showed me the Meadow of Echoes first.
“This is where the names go,” he said.
Not souls. Not people.Names.
Sure enough, I saw them: threads of glowing script floating through the mist, some curling into one another, some fading gently as though exhaled. They shimmered and whispered and sometimes cried out, not in pain, but in longing.
“The world forgets,” Aïdes said, watching them. “I don’t.”
I touched one. It trembled and hummed my own name back to me. It felt like holding an old lullaby. The whispering stroke of Kore teased me.
We moved on.
“The Vigil Hall,” he murmured before leading me through a chamber of stone statues. They weren’t carved, rather they hadformed. As if the memories themselves had sculpted the statues. Each figure stood in stillness, not mourning, but waiting. Some with tears carved into their cheeks. Others with laughter half caught in stone. None forgotten.
“They chose to stay,” he said. “To remember. Or to be remembered.”
“Are they trapped?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “Just…resting.Some wait for the ones they loved. Others just wanted to matter somewhere.”
Still, he led me deeper.
I don’t know how long we walked. Time folded strangely here, more a dream you forget in pieces as you wake. Light had no source. Air had no direction. It was a realm of pulse and pause. I began to understand why mortals feared death. Not because it was cruel, but because it was unknowable.
We moved in silence, but not the hollow kind. It was the hush of snowfall in the woods. Aïdes did not explain every place we passed. He only spoke when I lingered or when I reached for meaning he was willing to give.
We came to the Hollow of Wings.
The chamber opened wide and round, a great black dome overhead that shimmered with movement. I thought they were spirits at first. Then I realized they were birds. Pale, translucent, gliding in endless, soundless circles. Souls, perhaps, untethered from form. Unnamed. Unburdened.
“Do they wait for rebirth?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “They wait for the will to want it.”
There was something breathtaking in that. The idea that even in death, choice remained. I didn’t speak again until we left the soundless fluttering behind.
Next came the Grove of the First Grief.
It looked like a forest petrified in mourning. The trees were tall and black-barked, their silver leaves dripping not with dew, but tears—liquid sorrow, suspended. I reached out to one tree, curious, and the moment my fingers met the bark, I felt it.
Grief.Not mine. Someone else's. A flood of sorrow so raw and unspoken it pulled the breath from my chest. I gasped, but didn’t pull away.
“You don’t have to take it,” Aïdes said quietly. “You only need to witness.”
I nodded, but I kept my hand there and thought of all the things we push down just to keep walking.
Then the Garden of Forgotten Joys.
I recognized it before he spoke the name. Even in shadow, it bloomed. Violets, honeysuckle, hyacinth. Flowers that shouldn't have thrived here. The air was thick with sweetness, but not cloying. Laughter hung like light between petals, laughter that didn’t belong to me, and yet I felt it in my chest.
