Eris Blackveil had always known she would die alone.
What surprised her was the silence that followed.
She had imagined screaming. Steel through the ribs. Maybe poison, maybe a curse. Her line of work had no shortage of endings. But when the moment came, there had been no blade, no fire—just a cold wind, and then... nothing.
She opened her eyes to a garden.
Not one of beauty.
The ground was obsidian, cracked and glistening with frost. Thorned vines curled through statues of headless angels. Flowers bloomed in impossible colors—midnight blue, bruised violet, sickly gold. And all around her, embedded in the trees, were knives.
Dozens. Hundreds.
Each different.
Each one hers.
She rose slowly, boots crunching bone-dry leaves. Her black cloak trailed behind her like smoke. Her hands found her belt out of instinct. Daggers. Still there. But none were familiar.
Her own blades had names—Whisper, Mother's Tongue, Last Mercy.
These had no memory of her.
She glanced at one of the knives jutting from a tree trunk—thin, curved, and stained. Her fingers twitched.
As she reached for it, a whisper curled from the shadows:
"Do you remember who you betrayed?"
Eris spun, blades drawn, but saw nothing.
No movement. No wind. Only the chill in her chest.
"Get out of my head," she hissed.
A soft laugh echoed around her. Feminine. Familiar.
"You think this is your head?" the voice said. "No, little thief. This is your soul."
Eris backed away from the tree, breath fogging. Her heart pounded—not from fear, but from something worse.
Recognition.
The garden began to shift. Trees twisting. The vines slithered along the ground, dragging with them small, childlike masks. Hollow. Cracked. One of them looked exactly like her.
"Enough," she muttered.
She drove a blade into her palm, letting blood fall to the earth. It didn't drip—it hovered.
The garden shuddered. The sky above flickered, and a new voice spoke:
"Eris Blackveil."
She turned. The figure in the gray cloak waited at the edge of the garden, standing atop a shallow staircase that hadn't been there a moment ago.
"You are remembered," it said.
"I'm not interested in being remembered," Eris snapped. "I came here to be forgotten."
"That is not your fate."
She walked toward the figure, wary. "You're not Death."
"No," it said. "Death is a door. I am only the one who keeps the hall."
Eris stopped a few feet away. "And what's behind the door?"
"A truth you've been running from for longer than you know."
The garden behind her trembled, and she heard the whispers again. Not words this time—just names. So many names.
Too many.
"I didn't come here for redemption," she said, voice low.
"You didn't," the figure agreed. "But you might leave with it."
A bitter laugh escaped her lips. "Highly unlikely."
The figure gestured behind it. A path had opened. A stone walkway over a black sea. At the end stood a structure like a cathedral turned inside out—ribs of bone, windows of shadow, a single violet flame burning atop its highest spire.
"Others have begun the journey," said the figure. "You will join them."
Eris narrowed her eyes. "Why?"
"Because something in this realm is hunting the memories of the dead. And of all the souls in The Veil, only you know what it is."
She froze.
"…I don't remember."
"Not yet," it said. "But it remembers you."