“Amadea is my cousin if you couldn’t tell by the freckles and the hair,” Céline explained through laboured breath. “My aunt moved to Turin when she was my age, married a man and took the name Moretti.”

Matthieu followed Céline up a rocky path higher and higher up the steep mountain slope. They had left the village behind and the pine forest not long after. Now nothing grew higher than their shins, and every step crunched against gravel rather than dirt.

“Our village is one of many that partake in Deathseeing—an old tradition, older than the Church. Amadea was a Deathseer; she disagreed with the teaching and became a nurse at the Cottolengo in Turin.”

Over the last incline, Matthieu began to see the edge of what looked like an old castle. The stone walls were left neglected and had long since failed the test of time, crumbling to the ground until all that was left was a skeleton. Only the tower stood undeterred, resisting the wrath of nature and all its vines which flowered across its face.

“But why did she want me to know about it?” Matthieu asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Céline replied, continuing past the incline and straight for the old tower.

“Well, why did she want me to find you?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Céline mused, heaving open the heavy, rotten tower doorway. “Because I’m one too.”

Céline disappeared into the tower, and Matthieu followed, losing sight of her upon entering the dark spiral staircase.

“Down here!” he heard her say. “It’s dark, so mind your step!”

Matthieu followed the voice, feeling his way down the narrow winding path with his remaining hand, his eyes refusing to adjust to the pitch black. He used the sound of Céline’s footsteps as his best source of direction while he cautiously stuck out one foot at a time.

He bumped into something much softer than a cold stone wall.

“Watch it!” Céline cried.

“Watch what? I can’t see!”

“Huh. Strange. Maybe I’m just used to it.”

Céline fell silent, and Matthieu waited in anticipation.

“Why have we stopped?” he asked.

“…Monsieur de Laval. I am going to open the door in front of us. Tell me what you see.”

“What am I supposed to—”

Céline pushed open the door with a healthy creak, and light streamed into Matthieu’s already abused eyes. He squinted, covering his face with his hand, seeing Céline press forward out of his peripheral vision. He followed her, immersing himself in the light until his vision adjusted and he could slowly lower his arm.

They were at the bottom of a hill, stretching to a clear and pristine sky. Green, swaying grass and blooming field flowers reached ever higher, while all around them was a deep, rocky ring valley. Céline walked forward, hair swaying in the wind as she turned around.

“Can you see?” she asked.

“Yes,” Matthieu uttered, the wind almost carrying away his words. “Where are we?”

“An underworld of sorts," she answered, shouting over the wind. "Mountains are valleys, autumn is spring, and besides the seasons, nothing ever changes. This is where souls rest after they die, Monsieur de Laval, and it is a great miracle you get to witness it.”

Céline beckoned him forward with a nod before starting a trek up the hillside. Matthieu followed, careful not to trample the wildflowers as he climbed and surveyed the surroundings. It truly was as Céline said, mountains were valleys, and valleys were mountains. Presumably, he was now climbing up to the village of Melone.

“What do you mean by underworld?” he asked. “Is this supposed to be hell?”

“No!” Céline shouted over the wind. “It is one world of many, and the only I can access. Amadea was at one point one of the Deathseers of Turin.”

“Well then, why is this place here?”

“To store souls, Monsieur, to give them a place to go besides oblivion.”

The wind strengthened as they reached the hill’s pinnacle, and Matthieu’s eyes came across the stone walls of a grand, medieval castle—pristine condition from battlement to moat, as if it had been built only the day before.

“So souls don’t go to heaven,” Matthieu muttered, catching up with Céline just outside the castle gates.

“They might,” Céline answered. “But you would have to ask an Angel if you wanted to know for certain. Come.” Céline walked forward and into the castle gates, from where the bustling noise of a market seemed to emanate. Matthieu followed her, stepping under the iron bars and into the castle proper.

The castle courtyard was, ironically, alive with energy. A hustle and bustle of life-sized wooden puppets meandered back and forth from fresh produce stalls to parlours and guilds, dressed with the sensibilities of many different ages. From medieval peasant garments to tailored suits, knights in full battle armour to flowing aristocratic dresses.

Each puppet talked from a boxy mouth, speaking in tongues Matthieu thought he could recognise until he listened closer. The haggling, shouting, chatting, and laughing sounded like German, Italian and French, but none sounded correct. He watched in awe as the puppets brushed past him, not a sign of gears, rails or even strings manipulating their movements.

“Very well made, are they not?” Céline mused. “Some have strings, and some have gears, but you’ll never guess until you really squint.”

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They kept walking through the courtyard, coming to a staircase that led to the inner wall’s walkway and ascending. Céline came to a halt, resting between a battlement before beckoning Matthieu to do the same. She seemed to be forever fixated on the view, but Matthieu could not tear his eyes away from the market below him.

“Who are they?” he finally asked, turning to Céline. She sighed, pointing with her chin at something in the distance. Matthieu followed her directions, and his eyes fell on a great monument he had originally assumed was a mountain obscured by blue haze. Its great stone walls grew in clarity, pearly white in the midday sun with razor-thin spires reaching for the sky. Its design was almost random, fused with the natural mountain it rooted itself in, and judging by the circumstances, Matthieu assumed it was something more than just man made. From the blue sky came a viscous, flowing cloud that funnelled into the castle, disappearing behind the great stone walls.

“Those are souls,” Céline explained. “Coming from our world, they drift to the Great Castle where they are given puppet bodies.” Céline pushed herself from the wall and meandered to a nearby castle guard. She approached the armoured puppet, a spear in his right hand and shoved him over the ledge. She grabbed his legs and finished the job, sending him tumbling down the wall.

Matthieu ran over as he heard a great crash of armour. He looked at Céline first, expecting some triumphant smile or malicious stare, but instead found a look of complete indifference across the young girl’s face. Matthieu peered over the ledge and found the mangled mess of wood and armour, limbs strewn at unnatural angles as though its strings had tangled.

Before long, the puppet began to reanimate, its limbs rotating in their sockets as if reversing the damage. The armour plates scraped against each other irritatingly until the puppet once more resembled a man. With a final shake, it began to walk through the markets and back up the stairs.

“None of these souls are alive,” Céline said. “They simply repeat habits from their lives and reenact old memories. This place is an archive of sorts, made by long-gone parlour magicians to remember the dead. It becomes a lonely place when you realise that.”

Matthieu looked beyond the mountains, seeing in the haze other castles and towns atop peaks and built into hillsides, wondering for just how long it stretched.

“So you come here and do…what exactly?”

“We cleanse the space,” she said as she walked further down the wall, aimlessly swinging her weight from one foot to the other. “Souls bring with them pieces of the overworld, good and bad. Little pieces, but those pieces add up over time like grime in a pipe drain. Too much, and the underworld will fall to ruin.

Matthieu only then realised the change in Céline’s demeanour. Being so enamoured with the grand sights before him, he had ignored his tour guide. A sense of maturity was about her, from the way she walked to the way she spoke; not a glimmer of the energetic, carefree girl remained. In her place was someone with responsibility who was wise beyond her years, the Witch who could see the blissful ignorance in his predecessor and the self-ruining pessimism in himself.

He smiled at her, surprised at the strange companion who had become the first friend he had made in years.

“You are brilliant, Céline,” he said. “For someone so young, it is a very noble thing you’re doing.”

The girl blushed, and her fingers started to fidget. She turned away as Matthieu chuckled, and he imagined she did not receive much praise for such a secretive line of work. She seemed to reassert herself, turning back while suppressing her smile.

“Most of the time I can cleanse it myself but—”

A profound rumble, thousands of times the might of a bombing raid, shook the castle, forcing Matthieu and Céline to their knees and the tens of puppets to the ground. Matthieu looked up despite the overwhelming force, his jaw dropping to the floor when he laid eyes on the cause.

A tear through the sky leading to some nebulous realm split the azure blue in two, and from it came a legion of airships. Fighters that zipped through the air like kites and bombers who cruised like vultures led the assault in the hundreds. Behind them came blimps, flying motherships reinforced with great beams of brass, fins and propellers. Evil incarnate, a thousand times more sophisticated and magnitudes more malicious than any deadly contraption he had seen watch over the battlefield.

“The Ninth Holy Crusade has been tough for us Deathseers!” Celine shouted, commanding Matthieu’s attention. The girl had risen to her feet, steel-capped boots firmly planted on the stone as she stared down the invasion. “Despite what I would have hoped, many souls die on the battlefield with resentment. The grime builds quickly, and this is what that grime brings forth!”

She clasped her hands together and closed her eyes, muttering something under her breath like a nun at prayer. A golden light shone from her skin and radiated outward across the cobblestone, its shine so brilliant the sun’s rays seemed to shrink in response. The light reached a zenith as she belted her prayer at the top of her lungs. The fighters drew nearer to the castle, firing with their chugging machine gun indiscriminately into the crowd. They flew by like dragons, laying down their fiery breath while the bombers peppered the distant mountains with explosion after explosion.

The peace was obliterated, and war had followed Matthieu into even the underworld. It would not let him escape, reminding him of exactly what he was spared, what dues he owed to those who fell under his command. He covered his ear as the chaos tore above him, squinting and bracing himself for the world to fall apart around him just as the bunkers had.

At the chaos's climax, a gentle hand held his wrist and lifted it from his ear. He looked up and saw Céline’s face smiling down on him. She pulled him back to his feet, and he noticed the ground was no longer shaking.

“Look up,” she said, and Matthieu did. Above them, the golden spark Céline had conjured hung high in the sky, matching the size of the malignant rift. From it, two hands protruded; gold, benevolent, the closest to a higher power Matthieu had ever felt. The hands drifted towards the fleet, pushing it back with its palms and through the rift. Airships crashed into each other, piling into a great mass as they were sent through the portal.

Matthieu looked back towards the golden spark where the body of a woman followed the great hands. A beautiful, gentle face adorned with flowing hair and flanked by delicate shoulders. Matthieu felt himself mesmerised by the God, unable to take his eyes off it. A word floated around the tip of his tongue, one he could not quite catch. Yet, when he saw the freckles across its cheeks and the bridge of its nose, the word seemed to spring forth with sudden urgency.

“Amadea….”

Céline seemed to come to the same conclusion as the deity repelled the last remnants of the fleet, using both hands to seal the rift shut. The hands slowed to a halt, and the deity ceased all motion. It began to fade, disintegrating into a fine golden dust that travelled with the wind until it disappeared into the infinite blue.

Only then, when the skies cleared and the bustle of the market restarted, did either speak.

“No….”

“What was that?” Matthieu asked. “Why did that thing look like Amadea?”

Céline, her expression contorted with horror, spoke in an urgent mutter. “Every underworld has a patron deity, a Deathseer that ascends to immortality in times of strife and mass death.”

Céline turned to him, looking as though she could not bring herself to believe her explanation. “My grandfather ascended during the unification wars, but it seems like he could no longer keep the grime at bay.”

“So you’re saying Amadea has become some sort of God?” Matthieu asked, and Céline fiercely shook her head.

“It's nothing so noble. She simply watches over the underworld, acting as a last line of defence when the Deathseers cannot handle the grime themselves. But she hated the Deathseers; she would have never ascended willingly.”

“So she was forced?” Matthieu asked, but it seemed that Céline did not have a clearer picture than him.

“Can we save her?” Matthieu asked, more than a tinge of desperation leaking into his voice. “Can we save her? Can we bring her back?”

Céline furrowed her brow and grit her teeth, refusing to meet with Matthieu’s eyes directly. She nodded slowly. “There’s a chance.”