Jade
The fourth bowl sits innocently on the altar, simple and black, full of water that looks like it could be from any mountain spring.
But something about it makes my chest tight, like invisible hands are already trying to drag me under. It’s so deceptive I almost laugh. Because after blood, memory, and soul fire, they give me... water?
“What’s the catch?” I ask, because there’s always a catch. “This one can’t just be ‘drink the nice water and have a pleasant time.’”
“Here are your instructions.” Logan’s voice is tighter now, more controlled, as he picks up a small scroll beside the bowl and reads: “Find the Hecate Rose. Three blooms on one stem—white for the maiden, red for the mother, and black for the crone. Take only the red bloom. The moment you grasp it, you’ll return, and your journey will be complete. ”
“That’s it?” I study his face, noting how carefully he’s holding himself, like he might shatter if he moves too quickly. “Find a flower?”
“In the Underworld.” He sets the scroll down, his gaze locked on mine. “Where nothing is as it seems, and everything wants to keep you there.”
Every bone in my body turns to ice as the reality hits. I’m about to drink death water. Voluntarily. Because apparently, I trust this boy with the haunted eyes more than I trust my own instincts screaming at me to run.
“No pressure then.” I eye the innocent-looking water, my heart pounding harder. “Any tips for not dying in the land of the dead?”
“Firstly, since this is spirit travel, you’ll return to your body alive if you die in the Underworld,” he explains. “But this is your only chance to pass the trial. If you fail, the passages will be closed to you forever.”
Then, his eyes go distant and unfocused. Like he’s not even seeing me at all.
“Listen carefully.” His hands find my shoulders, and his grip is just shy of desperate. “When you arrive, you’ll be in a gray wasteland. Voices will call from it. They’ll sound familiar—people you know, people you trust. Don’t listen. Don’t look. Just move toward the river ahead.”
The specificity makes my skin prickle. “How do you know that?”
He doesn’t answer. He just continues with that thousand-yard stare that tells me he’s not really here with me anymore.
“A boat will come.” His voice has gone mechanical, like he’s reciting something memorized through repetition. “The ferryman will want payment. You’ll have something, although you won’t know what it is until you’re there. Give it freely. Don’t hesitate.”
“Logan—”
“Once across, follow the path of bones. Only the bones.” A bead of sweat rolls down his temple, despite the chamber’s chill.
“You’re scaring me.” The words slip out before I can stop them. Because how did he suddenly go from the steady calmness he had while he held me through the soul fire trial to whatever this is?
His eyes focus on mine, and the haunted look cracks just enough to show genuine fear underneath. “I’m sorry. I just—“ He takes a steadying breath. “I need you to be prepared.”
The desperation in his voice makes my throat tight. “Thank you,” I say, and from there, he tells me everything else I have to do.
He makes me repeat his instructions back to him until I could recite them in my sleep. After he finally nods his approval, I take a shaky breath, trying to convince myself I’m ready for this insanity.
“I’ve got this,” I finally say, definitely more to myself than to him. “After all, I survived the soul fire. How much worse can the Underworld be?”
He doesn’t smile. If anything, he looks more worried, his skin taking on an almost gray tinge. It’s like watching someone slowly unravel, thread by thread, and I don’t like it one bit.
“Are you okay?” I study him closer. “You look—”
“Drink.” He steps back, gesturing to the bowl. “Before you lose your nerve.”
But I’m not worried about my nerve anymore. I’m worried about him. About the way his hands shake as he pulls away from me. About the exhaustion that seems to be drowning him from the inside out.
“Please, Jade.” The raw emotion in his voice stops me cold.
Whatever this is costing him, he needs me to do this. Right now. No more questions, no more delays. And after everything we’ve been through together, after he held me through that soul fire, after he’s saved my life more times than I can count, I can’t let him down.
So, I pick up the bowl. The water is heavier than it should be, dense with magic that makes my arms ache just from holding it.
“See you on the other side,” I say, trying for brave and probably landing somewhere around terrified.
“I’ll be here,” he promises, and something in his eyes breaks my heart. “I won’t leave you. Not for a second.”
“I trust you.” I nod, raise the bowl to my lips, and drink.
The world tilts, spins, and dissolves, and then I’m standing in a gray wasteland under a starless sky. There’s no transition, and no falling. I’m just suddenly here, my body whole, but wrong.
The ground beneath my feet is ash that shifts with each step, and the air tastes like dust and bones. In the distance, a garden glows with a sickly light that hurts to look at directly. Withered flowers twist toward a sky that doesn’t exist, the only break in the endless gray.
Between me and that garden flows a river of shadows. It’s wide, dark, and moving with the slow certainty of something that has always been and will always be.
“Jade. Turn back now.” Logan’s voice drifts from the river. “It’s too dangerous. You don’t understand what you’re risking.”
My feet freeze. Because that’s definitely Logan. The same voice that counted me through soul fire, that promised to keep me safe through this fourth and final trial.
“You can still leave,” he continues, and I can almost see him in the shadows, reaching for me, promising to hold me steady. “Just turn around. Walk away. I’ll find another way to help you. I’ll always help you. You trust me, don’t you?”
Every muscle in my body wants to obey. To turn back, find the way out, and return to where Logan’s guarding my body.
But his words from earlier echo in my memory: No matter who you see and what you hear, don’t listen. Don’t look. Just keep moving toward the edge of the river.
So, I force one foot forward. Then another. And another.
Each step feels like betrayal.
“Jade, sweetie, what are you doing?” My mother’s voice joins Logan’s, crisp and disappointed. “This isn’t what we raised you for. Come home. We’ll figure out Yale. We’ll figure out everything. We always do.”
My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
“You’re being stupid again.” Chase’s voice now, lazy and dismissive. “Just like with the college applications. You never think things through. You never actually cared about your future. You don’t have it in you to pass this trial. You never have, and you never will.”
More voices join the chorus. Friends who abandoned me. Teachers who doubted me. Every person who ever made me feel small. They blend into a symphony of turn back, give up, and you’re not strong enough.
But I am strong enough. I survived bleeding myself weak. I sacrificed my last good memory of my parents. I held my hand in soul fire for sixty seconds while it tried to burn away everything I am.
After all of it, I’m still standing. Still fighting. Still here.
And so, I continue forward, blocking out the voices with each step along the way.
The moment my feet touch the riverbank, the voices cut off like someone flipped a switch. The silence is almost worse than the noise. Then, mist rolls across the water, thick and clinging, and a boat emerges—ancient wood that looks held together by will alone. And standing at its helm...
Charon.
He’s exactly what you’d expect from the ferryman of the dead. Skeletal hands grip a pole that disappears into shadow water. Empty sockets where eyes should be somehow manage to stare. Tattered robes move without wind. He smells like earth, rot, and things that should stay buried.
He extends one bony hand, palm up, waiting.
Payment.
Logan said I’d have something. That it would become clear to me what that thing was in this moment.
I search my body, and when my hand goes to my throat, my fingers find the jade necklace from my parents.
The one from the memory I just sacrificed, the one that should be nothing but smoke and faded photographs in my mind.
But here it is, warm against my skin, the last thing my parents gave me before their faith in me was torn away in a single day.
The sacrificed memory floods back in perfect clarity, and I want to hold on, to keep it with me.
Then, Logan’s words echo in my mind.
Give it freely. Don’t hesitate.
So, with trembling fingers, I unclasp the necklace, the jade glowing green.
For one heartbeat, I let myself mourn what I’m about to lose.
Not just a necklace, but the last thread connecting me to who I used to be—the girl whose parents were finally going to be proud of her, who had a future mapped out in Ivy League acceptance letters and family legacy.
Then I place it in Charon’s skeletal palm, his fingers close around it, and the necklace vanishes at the same time as any remaining emotions I felt along with it. Absorbed into whatever passes for his essence. The last of my parents’ love, given to Death itself as bus fare.
He nods once—a motion that makes every bone in his neck creak—and gestures to the boat.
The wood groans under my weight when I climb aboard, each plank feeling like it might give way at any moment, dropping me into the shadow water below. And up close, I notice the boat is carved with names. Thousands of them. Millions. Maybe every soul who’s ever made this crossing.
Will mine appear when this is over? Will anyone read it and wonder who Jade Harrington was? Will anyone care?