I wait a solid ten to fifteen minutes before following Loki and Aloe in the direction of what must be the main building, where a congregation has already formed. Half of the discussion is about Miami, and the other half is on me. If I were any more paranoid, I’d be worried they were piecing the two together.

The first to actually notice and greet me is a woman wearing a dark, snug-fitting t-shirt and suspenders to hold her black jeans. She extends a built arm to shake my hand, and smiles at me. “You must be the new one, then. My name’s Rosa. My story’s probably the least bat-shit crazy in this place, but we’ll get to that. What’s your name?”

“Melody,” I reply dryly. “I don’t intend to stay long enough to hear everyone’s stories. Actually, I’d prefer to just know the way back.”

“You certainly are persistent,” Oriana’s voice says behind me. The others begin to wrap their conversations up as Oriana and Luna enter the building, taking center stage in front of the group of the others.

“Good morning, all,” Luna says. “I think we have everyone here today, which is great. Clearly, there’s some good news and some bad news, but I’ll start with the good, because she deserves that respect. As of yesterday evening, we were welcomed by Melody dropping in to join us here. Melody, we look forward to integrating you into our group. Something tells me you’ve got motivation to get stuff done. As for the bad news…”

Oriana steps forward to take over. “As I’m sure you’re all aware, we believe that Miami has left us. He was always sort of… teetering on the edge, and I’m still working to find out through arcane channels what may have happened to him, but it seems he’s no more. For those who wish to say something about him, I open the floor.”

I watch as a girl with straight black hair steps forward and begins signing something. Rosa begins translating for the rest of us. “As we all know, Tes and Miami were pretty close friends. Which, Tes thinks is ironic, seeing as she was sent here by ghosts. But… Miami was a friend to all, and always willing to keep a secret. A good spirit. May the second time be the charm.”

“May the second time be the charm,” the rest of the group repeats.

Tes steps back into the crowd, and a fairy hovers into the center of the group. Tiny tears are streaming down her face, and her chest heaves. “Like Tes, Miami was one of my closest friends here. He was always eager to help, even though the only thing he could life was spirits. And yeah, we all knew he was suffering from portal sickness more than the rest of us ever had, but… I’m going to… I’m going to need some time to process this.”

The fairy also returns to her spot, and when nobody else comes to say their peace, Luna returns to the center. “Thank you for your words, Tes and Dezz. We can afford some rest for the two of you for a while. We’ll hold a service for Miami in twelve hours. May the second time be the charm.”

Once again, the group repeats the phrase. It feels as if I’ve been dropped into a cult, although I logically know that this is just how they mourn their dead. I can’t imagine that many people have died since its inception, though.

Purity, who hasn’t said much to anyone since I’ve been here, stands aside Luna. “Thank you all, once again. Now, back on topic of Melody. I’m sure you all will make introductions with her at your convenience, but Melody, why don’t you come forward and talk about yourself? It doesn’t have to be a lot.”

“I’ll pass,” I say immediately.

“Oh, come on,” Luna says, raising her brows at me. “You’re stuck with us, you may as well let us get to know you a little bit.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I roll my eyes and take center stage. “Yeah, I’m Melody. Back in my… previous world, I was a pretty significant fighter, hoping to put an end to a pretty nasty person. But now I’m here, I suppose.”

“Do you have any superpowers?” Purity asks.

My eyes narrow with suspicion. Did she know somehow? Had Miami already told them somehow?

“How do you mean?”

“Well, for example, I have the ability to grow and shrink. Well, sort of. Normally I do, but here in the End Lands, it’s a bit more unstable than that. Do you have anything like that?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What did you fight for?”

“My freedom.”

An honest answer. Despite my situation, it feels good to give an honest answer.

“A man named Dr. Adrian Asgard fucked me up pretty severely, and I was fighting him right until the end.”

“Until he stabbed you with a sword,” Luna says, marking a spot on her chest where the sword had gotten me.

“Yeah, until then. But that was part of my plan. I was going to win that fight, if I hadn’t ended up here.”

“No, you weren’t,” another voice says, stepping forward. It comes from a man much beefier than anyone else here, wearing a loose jacket over a loose checkered shirt. “You were dead. You just happened to come here instead.”

“And what makes you the resident expert on my life?” I step forward, taken aback by his immediately standoffish vibe.

“I’m not. Name’s Herb, by the way. Just speaking from everyone else’s experiences. We all would have absolutely died if we weren’t brought here. Some deaths are more obvious than others, but it’s the truth. For example, Luna.”

“This is my story to tell, not yours,” Luna says, narrowing her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah.” The man steps aside, motioning for Luna to take the stage.

“I… was starving. Homeless and black in a city that cared for neither. And so I stole a strange box. It began beeping, and as I narrowed in on its source, I found the boxes owner: a mob boss. He had me immediately killed. I remember the bullet impacting me, and the next moment, I was here, with Oriana standing over me.”

“And how did you get here, Oriana?” I ask.

“Also at the same time as Purity and Luna,” she responds. “Mine was much less ceremonious. I fell off of a horse while being chased by corrupted mushrooms in the Great Forest.”

“Sure, I’ll pretend that makes sense.”

“I was crushed,” Purity says. “Shrank down to the size of a spider, and wasn’t paying attention. Unceremoniously flattened.”

“And what about you?” I motion to the man who had the audacity to interrupt my story.

“I ended a decades-long war by sacrificing myself with a nuclear explosion.”

He says it so matter-of-factly that I can’t help but laugh. “A nuclear explosion? Yeah, you died for sure. You… all died. Fuck, I was dead, wasn’t I?”

“And this is the progress we usually make day one,” Oriana says, stepping forward to offer her hand on my shoulder. “We’re all supposed to be dead, but we’re not.”

“So this is the afterlife, then. Not like any afterlife I’ve ever heard of.”

“Definitely not an afterlife,” Dezz says. “None I’ve heard of through divine channeling, at least. We had a woman here who called it the End Lands. Said she’d fought a creature from the End Lands once, with her wife. This is an island in the middle of a void between universes, as she explained it. And sometimes, there are—”

“Arcane anomalies,” Aloe says, putting theirself into the conversation.

“No, more like astronomical anomalies,” Loki says, turning to Aloe.

The taller of the duo turns to Loki. “We agreed on this. If it’s something we don’t know the math on, it’s arcane. It likely uses the Helminth theory of abjuration, meaning—”

“No way. The math is clearly there. It’s textbook Hoku’s Law of multidimensional travel. The fringe calculations of Hoku’s Law that weren’t solved in my time were likely the adverse side-effects we’re seeing as dying people being pulled from—”

“Whatever it is,” Dezz says, talking over the both of them, “there’s no way back through. We’re here in the End Lands forever, as far as we know. Neither of our brightest minds have had a chance to crack the code yet.”

I am dead. Asgard killed me. And now I’m stuck with no way back with a bunch of other dead people on an island floating in an endless void, where there is at least one confirmed—although dead—creature out there. And I’ve killed one of them already. If there’s any chance of me surviving here, I have to figure out how to control myself on top of avoiding being tied to the death of the ghost.

“All good?” Luna asks, lowering her voice as she approaches.

“Yeah,” I say, faking a smile. “Yeah. Just need some time to… process this.”

“Understood. If you ever need to talk to someone about it, my door is open.”

She gently places a hand on my shoulder, and I bristle. Then, she steps away to go talk to Herb, slightly raising her voice at him, as the meeting is apparently adjourned.