The Soul's Reckoning

Chapter 18: The Soul’s Reckoning

The air in the Styx was thick, not with the usual miasma of regret and lost dreams, but with a sharp, metallic tang, like ozone after a particularly violent storm. Hermes felt it prickle his skin, a dissonance that vibrated through his very bones. This was no ordinary escort. The souls he’d been tasked to shepherd across the obsidian waters had fractured, not in their essence, but in their very passage. They were scattering, fragments of what should have been a cohesive procession, pulled by unseen currents towards… somewhere else.

He’d been chasing them for days, or perhaps weeks. Time blurred in the liminal spaces, especially when the very fabric of passage was unraveling. His wings, usually a blur of iridescent speed, felt heavy, bogged down by an unseen resistance. Each beat was a struggle against a tide that tugged not just at his feathers, but at his resolve.