Thalia came to, everything pitch black.
But this time, it was cold. Bitterly cold.
"What the…?"
Her fingers twitched instinctively, brushing against something that crinkled and resisted.
Nylon?
She tried to stretch her arms, but her movement was restricted. Every side of her felt confined, like the air itself was pressing against her.
Panic set in. She kicked, jerked, squirmed,
Jingle.
Not keys. Something metallic.
Again. Jingle-jingle.
She paused, focused.
Another shake. The sound was louder now.
Then she found it, her fingers brushed against a small metal piece. A zipper.
Pinching it with both hands, she pulled. The nylon parted like skin.
Fresh air rushed in.
She sat up, gasping.
Fluorescent lights above burned her eyes, and the chill of stainless steel beneath her made her wince. Her senses returned one by one. She was in a morgue on an autopsy table.
"So it was all real... I actually died," she whispered.
She tore at the rest of the bag, desperate to confirm one thing. Her legs.
She stopped.
They were there.
Both legs. Whole. Attached. Her breath caught. She grabbed them and squeezed tight, almost digging her nails into her skin.
Pain.
Sharp and real.
"Oh thank God," she said.
She swung her legs over the side of the table and took a moment to collect herself as she sat there.
The morgue was sterile, metallic, walls lined with body lockers and silver drawers.
Bright overhead lights buzzed softly above, casting a pale glow across the smooth linoleum floor.
Cold, clinical, lifeless.
Across the room were other tables, some with still-zipped black body bags atop them, completely motionless.
Labels marked their feet. Tags flapped gently from toe to toe.
She looked down at herself.
The gold dress she'd worn, the one that had shimmered last night like a second skin, was now torn, ragged, and bloodstained. It was now shortened to an almost lewd degree. Evidence of her that monster ripped her in two. The dress was no longer radiant, just evidence.
She shivered.
"Was all that stuff real?" she whispered.
"The Pale Crossing… or was that just my mind coping with a near-death experience?"
Her hand hovered over her thigh, remembering the feel of her legs being severed.
"No. I definitely lost them. That pain… it was unmistakable.
So that means… that conversation I had, it was real."
The double doors suddenly swung open.
A man entered with a clipboard in hand, scribbling notes absently as he walked.
White overalls, surgical mask, gloves. The coroner.
"Okay everyone, let's get these autopsies starte—"
He looked up.
The clipboard slipped from his hand and clattered on the tile. His body reeled back.
Thalia turned and locked eyes with him.
She looked like a corpse come to life.
Barefoot, half-naked, torn dress and dried blood.
But very much alive.
He didn't say a word. He spun on his heel and bolted back through the double doors, letting them crash against the frame behind him.
"Crap," Thalia muttered. "I should probably get outta here."
She stepped down, the cold morgue floor like ice against her bare feet.
She moved quickly to the doors, still swinging from the man's abrupt exit.
Pushing through, she found herself in a white hallway with sterile blue signs overhead.
⟵ Precinct 5
Loading Bay / Exit ⟶
She turned right, toward the exit.
Another pair of double doors, this time with a glowing green sign above them: EXIT
She pushed them open and sunlight greeted her like a flood. Warm, bright, and full of life.
The sounds of New York surrounded her. Honking cars. Distant sirens.
She stepped barefoot onto the pavement, barely clothed, but breathing.
Alive.
And the city hadn't even noticed.
By some miracle, Thalia made it back to her apartment building unnoticed. The sun was climbing steadily into the sky now, and New York's early morning chatter buzzed faintly in the background. She climbed up the three flights of stairs, barefoot and still half dazed, until she reached the familiar faded door marked 3B.
She knocked.
No answer.
She bent down beside the dusty plant pot that had been there since she was a kid and lifted it just enough to find the small rusted spare key tucked underneath.
Just as she was about to open the door, the soft creak of another one echoed down the hallway. Turning, she saw Mrs. Khan stepping out of her apartment, a silk shawl draped loosely over her small shoulders. Her voice, though aged and softened with time, still carried the weight of warmth and familiarity.
"Thalia, dear? Is that you?" she asked, her Pakistani accent still thick despite the decades spent in the States.
"Hey, Mrs. Khan," Thalia replied, lifting her hand in a tired wave and forcing a faint smile.
Mrs. Khan had been around for as long as Thalia could remember. She'd outlived her husband, two hip surgeries, and her family's relentless attempts to move her into a retirement home. "I may look seventy," she once told them, "but I have the soul of a twenty-year-old." She meant it.
The old woman stepped closer, her slippers making a soft scuffing sound against the hallway floor. "Come, come," she said gently, beckoning Thalia with open palms.
Thalia approached, unsure of what was happening.
Mrs. Khan took her hands into her own. They were warm, wrinkled, veined, but strong.
"You know beta, sometimes we have to let go of who we once were," she said, locking eyes with her, "to make room for who we are supposed to be. Remember your roots, your family, the woman who raised you, the friends you hold dear. If you do that, nothing will be able to control you. You are the author of your own story."
It wasn't just the words, it was the clarity in them. Mrs. Khan had never spoken like this. Not to her. Not to anyone.
Thalia stood frozen.
And then just as quickly, Mrs. Khan let go, gave a nod, and slowly turned to shuffle back into her apartment.
"Okay? Now you go. You have a lot to do."
The door shut softly behind her, and Thalia was left standing in the hallway… speechless.
---
Inside her apartment, the silence hit her harder than expected.
The TV had been left on, casting flickers of light across the walls. A news anchor was mid-report, but she wasn't listening. Her mom's coffee mug was still half full on the counter, and a damp towel was tossed over a chair. The kind of chaos that suggested she'd left in a hurry and hadn't been back since.
Usually, when no one was home, Kyle stayed downstairs with Chris's family. They were practically part of the same bloodline at this point.
Without wasting time, Thalia headed to the bathroom, stripping the remnants of her golden dress as she went. It was barely holding together anymore—torn at the thighs, darkened with dried blood, and reeking of sweat, fear, and death.
She stepped under the hot stream of the shower and didn't leave for almost thirty minutes.
The blood, the grime, everything from the previous night washed off in layers. As she leaned her head against the tiled wall, one thought rang louder than the rest:
"I'm alive."
---
An hour later, she stood in her room fully dressed, staring at her reflection.
She'd tried on a dozen outfits. Nothing sat right. Everything felt… wrong. Like her skin was crawling just at the thought of wearing colors.
But black?
Black felt like her.
She pulled on a fitted black hoodie and draped a tight fitting quarter-length leather jacket. Black jeans followed, then worn black boots, and finally her NY Yankees cap.
Only then did her body relax.
She looked in the mirror again.
Different. Still Thalia… but something else now too.
"If everything that's happened has actually happened… then I need to get to Harlem," Thalia muttered, pacing across the floor. "But dammit, I can't remember the name of the guy for the life of me."
Just then, something sparked in the air, a shimmer, a flicker, and before she could react, a flat, grey rectangular screen blinked into existence right in front of her face.
"AHH!" she shouted, stumbling backward. Her foot caught on a pile of clothes and she tumbled onto her backside with a thud.
The screen didn't vanish. It hovered mid-air, entirely unaffected by gravity or her panic. Floating, unwavering… following her every slight movement like a loyal ghost.
"What the fu—"
DING.
A sharp, clean notification sound rang out like a bell in an empty cathedral.
Thalia stared, still seated on the floor. She watched in wide-eyed disbelief as the words on the screen shifted and glowed:
WELCOME
[YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED AS A HERALD OF "DEATH"]
PLEASE TAP HERE TO AWAKEN.
"What is this??" she whispered.
She stood, cautious, as the screen rose with her like it was tethered to her presence. A dozen thoughts rushed through her mind, hallucination? Coma? Dream? Trauma-induced psychosis?
She tried to wave it away.
Nothing.
She blew at it, rubbed her eyes, blinked hard, but no matter what she did, the screen remained, unmoving. Her hand simply phased through it like mist.
"Okay… I guess this is real," she muttered.
Reluctantly, she reached forward and tapped the glowing word: HERE.
The second her fingertip made contact, her world exploded.
A surge of raw energy blasted through her body like a lightning strike. Her feet left the ground, lifted by some unseen force. Her fingers curled, toes stiffened, her eyes burned with blinding white light. Her heart beat so fast she thought it would explode in her chest.
A roaring gust of wind erupted from within her room. Clothes, papers, books, even her chair began to lift from the floor and whip around her like debris in a tornado.
She couldn't scream. She couldn't even breathe. Her body vibrated violently, every cell buzzing with unfamiliar power.
And then,just as suddenly, it stopped.
The wind vanished. The books and papers fell like leaves, the chair hitting the ground with a loud thud. The silence returned with eerie precision.
Thalia fell from her suspended state and dropped to one knee, gasping. Her hands trembled. Sweat dripped down her brow. She stayed like that, hunched and panting, until the trembling subsided.
When she finally rose to her feet, the screen had changed. The letters were cleaner now, more refined—like a proper interface:
NAME: Thalia Michelle Grave
LEVEL: 1
TITLE: Necromancer
JOB: Herald of Death
HP: 100
MP: 10
FATIGUE: 0
STRENGTH: 10
STAMINA: 5
AGILITY: 1
MAGIC: 1
INTELLIGENCE: 16
SKILLS: None
Thalia stared at the screen.
Then she looked around her wrecked room.
Then back at the screen.
"What is even happening right now..."