5. Thanatos’s Temple #2
It was strange, but a part of me already wanted to go back. There were no flowers here, no asphodels, nothing truly alive. The crystals were supposed to be made out of the same energy, but they felt entirely different.
Iaso veered into a smaller corridor and stopped. She held onto my arm so tightly I couldn’t take another step. A good thing, too, because only a few steps ahead of me lay a dark abyss.
“Here we are. We have to wait a little, but don’t worry. It shouldn’t take long.”
I wasn’t worried. At least, not about the amount of time I’d have to wait. I wanted to immediately go back to my room.
Squinting, I tried to distinguish anything that could be lurking down below. It was about as pointless as trying to fight the Thorn-Sickness on my own.
The snakes in Iaso’s hair nudged my cheek, as if sensing my unease. Their touch was strikingly comforting. I forced myself to relax, to wait like Iaso had told me.
After all, Asphodelia didn’t abandon its brides. Iaso had helped me so far. There was no reason why she’d want to hurt me.
The dark abyss started to crack, like ice during the spring thaw. A dense fog spread around our feet, very similar to what had greeted me when I’d first stepped onto Charon’s barge.
“Take a deep breath and close your eyes,” Iaso instructed me.
I obeyed, pressing my eyes tightly shut. Iaso pulled me along, and I stumbled forward, trusting her to lead me to safety.
I should have fallen into the dark pit below.
Instead, I just… seemed to float. For a few moments, the world itself fell away.
The weight of Iaso’s hand on my arm vanished, as if someone had erased her from existence.
I couldn’t even feel my own body anymore.
Even the mild pulse of the thorns faded into pure nothingness.
I cried out—or at least, I thought I did. I couldn’t hear my own voice, my own breath. But a strange certainty kept the panic at bay. Even now, here, in the dark, I could have sworn the scent of asphodels followed me.
“Keep your eyes closed,” a voice whispered in my head—and it wasn’t Iaso’s. “Wait.”
I waited. I held on and hoped it would pass, like I had so many times when the Thorn-Sickness had lashed out at me from within.
Finally, after an eternity that might have only been seconds, I stepped forward. Sound assaulted my ears again, and I flinched at the sudden shift.
“Easy there,” Iaso murmured softly. “The first journey is always difficult, for everyone. Crossing the threshold can be a challenge.”
Yes, that was what Charon had said. It hadn’t stopped me the first time, and it didn’t stop me now. But if there was another threshold, even in Asphodelia, did I need to pay another price? Or was this another gift, like Aion’s scroll?
There was no turning back now. For good or ill, I was here. I focused on the lingering scent of asphodels and opened my eyes.
The sight that greeted me was unlike anything I’d expected. Not because it was alien to me. No, that I had braced myself for. But because it was so strikingly familiar.
I was standing in Fera’s hut. The hut I’d been raised in, where I’d almost died. Where the asphodels had first found me and guided me away.
I let out a choked sound. Impossible. I’d left that life, that world behind. Korinos was lost to me, forever.
Iaso’s snakes hissed, their eyes glowing an ominous red. Fera’s hut slowly began dissipating around us. One by one, pure darkness swallowed every precious corner of my home. The only thing that remained in its wake was an endless corridor.
For a few moments, I was afraid my memories had been stolen again. But no, this was something different. If I thought back on my home, I could still remember it just as vividly. Maybe more so now.
I turned toward Iaso, grasping for words. “What is this place?” I whispered.
“It’s complicated to explain,” Iaso replied. “No human ever comes here. Only the woven ever tread these paths, and even they, very rarely.”
“I’m not sure that’s very comforting, Iaso,” I admitted.
“I know what you saw was probably a shock. But when it comes to Thanatos’s gifts, it’s better to show you than to explain.”
Without another word, Iaso guided me down the expansive corridor. I forced myself to move forward, but even the air down here seemed heavier. Not dead, not exactly. Not like it had been in that strange space of transition. Just very… still.
“The people of Asphodelia cannot die, not truly,” Iaso explained. “But we can be harmed beyond the Moirae’s ability to assist us.
“When that happens, when an injury cripples one of our people, it is customary for them to retreat here. It is a sanctuary, a place to rest until they have earned the right to be unwoven.”
That was… incredibly sad. Or… Was it? Iaso didn’t seem to think so, and Asphodelia was so alien to me, in every way.
“The sanctuary is different for everyone,” Iaso continued. “Thanatos’s power responds to your memories, to what you might have found comforting at one point.”
As she spoke, the corridor morphed again, into something that looked like a strange form of… healing chamber. Death crystals hovered in the air, drifting around shelves packed with vials and tomes.
In the center of the chamber stood a man. He was bent over his worktable, studying something with great interest.
When he heard us approach, he abandoned his work and turned toward us. A thick band of dark silk wrapped tightly around his eyes. Instead of hair, he had a hissing crown of black snakes. They pinned me with their own crimson gaze. “Well met, Ianthe,” he said. “Welcome to Thanatos’s Temple.”