3. Virgil
VIRGIL
A new man arrived today.
That's hardly notable, considering where we are. Fresh souls arrive like blooms on a hillside in early spring—abundant, inevitable, and largely unremarkable. I scarcely notice most of them anymore. After all, few are salvageable.
This one doesn't appear to be either. Yet something about him gives me pause.
He continues walking through his dreamscape, tall and severe and handsome, with dark eyes that cut like winter wind and a jaw carved from marble and perpetual dissatisfaction. Even within his own perception of himself, he's beautiful. Which is curious, being as he's here.
His reality has become clearer as I've watched him march down the street he's conjuring. It's Manhattan. I’ve seen this environment in countless other minds. But this version is unlike any I've encountered.
The first time I witnessed New York City through another soul's memory, it was vivid—a vivid hell, certainly, but vivid nonetheless. Taxis carved reckless paths around pedestrians, horns blaring their mechanical fury. Pigeons roosted and squabbled over scraps of foods I still can’t name.
Sunlight ricocheted off endlessly tall buildings so brilliant I had to shield my eyes against the onslaught.
This is the same city, but hollowed out. Gutted.
The same towers rise, even higher than I remember, disappearing into low-hanging clouds that spiral with the lazy malevolence of a dragon's breath.
The streets stretch long and empty, populated only by the echo of footsteps that aren't there.
There's something profoundly cold about it, not in temperature, for I can feel nothing so simple as that.
No, this is the cold of a life lived in isolation, of warmth deliberately turned away.
A sigh escapes my lips and dissipates. I've had many years to accept the reality I inhabit.
"Fresh blood, Virgil?"
I straighten but refuse to acknowledge the demon who has materialized beside me.
Malrec moves deliberately into my line of sight, unwilling to be dismissed so easily.
He's handsome—they all are, demons—with sharp cheekbones that remain defined despite the glum lighting of our newest visitor's imaginings.
Malrec drags a hand through his dark hair, and the gesture makes the heavy muscle of his forearm flex with calculated grace.
"Why do you persist in this?"
"It keeps me busy," I answer, my voice dry as winter grass. I learned long ago not to encourage demons. If one becomes tedious or boring, they lose interest. It's fear they feast upon, terror they bundle like harvest wheat.
Malrec practically radiates with stolen anguish today. It vibrates off him in waves, coiled energy that sets his eyes ablaze and makes his olive skin gleam. He’s always been hungry, even for his position.
Something sharp flickers across his features, annoyance that his lure hasn’t taken. There was a time he could bait me, draw me into arguments that would spiral into precisely the kind of passion he craves. But that was centuries ago by any mortal measure of time.
"Why do these souls compel you?" His eyes narrow to slits. "You could feed on that energy instead and feel again. You’re trapped here for eternity. Don't you long to taste summer fruit once more? To feel rain against your skin?"
The words find their mark. He has no idea how deeply I hunger for such things, how the desire sometimes creeps up on me like the call of sirens perched upon distant cliffs, their song so sweet it would be easy to leap from the ship and let the rocks claim me.
It's only knowing that my destruction wouldn't be mine alone to bear that keeps my hands steady on the wheel.
"I haven't hungered in many years," I say.
He scoffs. "You're a terrible liar." Then his gaze slides to our newest arrival, to the tall man in the expensive coat. "He carries such exquisite suffering. Shall I show you my work?"
His tongue darts out, serpentine and eager. I'm grateful that my heart cannot race, that my cheeks won't flush or pupils dilate to betray me. It's perhaps the only mercy of this half-existence I inhabit, if such a thing can be called existence at all.
I offer the barest shrug. Show even a flicker of interest, and he'll torment the man before me until his screams echo through these empty streets. Until he begs. Until he bargains away whatever fragments of soul are left to him.
"I'm merely observing the architecture," I say. "Manhattan fascinates me."
Malrec rolls his eyes with theatrical disgust. "In case you've forgotten, poet, you're dead. You'll never walk those streets."
"Not through my own eyes, perhaps." The words emerge measured, calm, utterly disinterested.
He takes a step toward the man, hunger sharpening his beautiful features into something wolfish.
"There's a priest three realms down," I mention casually, lazily. "Arrived not long ago. Spent decades preying on altar boys."
Malrec's eyes ignite, and his smile stretches until it's no longer remotely human; instead, it’s all teeth and terrible promise. "Now that sounds delicious. Which way?"
"Follow the swamp until the path forks, then take the left route. You can't miss him, he'll be the one trying to hide."
Malrec is right about one thing. I am indeed a terrible liar. Which is precisely why he knows with absolute certainty that what I'm telling him now is true.
He vanishes in a blur of shadow, leaving behind only the faint energy of his anticipation.
It's only after his presence fully dissipates that I allow myself to turn back to the man who has, for reasons I cannot name, captured my attention so completely.
In his imagined Manhattan, he continues walking through the lonely streets of his own making, searching for something that no longer exists and perhaps never did.
Time doesn't exist here, at least not in the way it does for mortals.
But I allow what someone might call time to pass, watching as the man traces the same path through his conjured world.
He never falters in his stride. Each step is measured, intentional.
His chin remains raised, his eyes fixed on some distant point that exists only in memory.
I don't know why he fascinates me so.
He's so thoroughly enraptured by his own imaginings here in limbo that he doesn't realize where he is. Doesn't even comprehend that he's dead. The living cling so desperately to their patterns, their routines, and their masks that death becomes just another room they refuse to acknowledge entering.
I've witnessed souls spend lifetimes doing exactly this—walking the same loops, tracing familiar paths through landscapes of their own creation, never recognizing the journey that awaits them beyond the comfortable prison of repetition.
Sometimes I wonder if ignorance isn't the greater mercy to what I offer.
The millennia—at least by mortal measure—have worn me thin as parchment. There was a time when I believed every soul could be saved, when I threw myself into each rescue with the fervor of the recently converted. Now I know better. Most prefer their cages to the terrifying prospect of flight.
But this one... this one walks his loop with such precise determination, such beautiful, futile purpose. As if sheer will could resurrect the life he's lost. As if discipline could defeat death itself.
It's been so long since I've seen someone fight the inevitable with such elegant stubbornness.
Perhaps that's what draws me, the echo of my own ancient refusal to accept what cannot be changed. Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe I'm just tired of watching souls surrender before they've even begun to understand what they're surrendering to.
The man looks at me. Or not at me, his eyes never meet mine, his gaze slides past my form as if I'm made of morning mist. But somehow I sense he feels the same pull I do. The same inexplicable curiosity threading between us like an invisible cord.
That's when I decide to cross into his loop.
It's not a decision I make lightly.
Every time I step into another soul's mindscape, they leave an imprint on me. The ones who fail, whom I fail, cling to me like shadows. Their fear licks at my feet, gnawing like a trapped thing at the edges of me, their sorrow swallows me in dark waves, and their despair haunts me.
There's no sleep here. No refuge from the accumulated misery of every person I've failed to guide across. If I cannot help this man find his way, his pain will live on in me—another millstone hung about my neck, dragging me deeper into the weight of countless defeats.
Malrec asked why I persist in this work.
More and more, I wonder myself.
Perhaps it's because without this purpose, hopelessness would consume me entirely. And I have a very long existence stretching ahead of me yet, an eternity measured in failed salvations.
I step across the threshold into his imagined realm.
His mind links with mine in a sharp collision sending fractures through both.
In centuries of guiding souls, I've grown accustomed to slipping into minds like stepping through gossamer—gentle, barely perceptible.
This connection feels more like shattering glass than parting silk.
That has never happened before. I stumble, steadying myself against the sudden intrusion of his consciousness.
As I straighten, the man passes directly beside me without the slightest acknowledgment. He is every bit as striking as I'd observed, not a single hair displaced, his skin luminous with health, his athletic form evident even beneath the expensive coat that armors him.
A man who wields his appearance like a weapon, then. Likely perfectionistic. Unforgiving of weakness in himself and others.
I catalog these observations with the practiced eye of centuries. This isn't my first descent into a tortured soul like his. Humans aren't as unique as they believe themselves to be. Perhaps two dozen fundamental wounds cause most mortal suffering.
And yet something about this one—this proud, dark tower of a man—has seized my attention completely.
I turn to absorb his conjured city with clearer sight.
The moment our minds connect, the details sharpen into heartbreaking focus, not as I perceive the world, but as he sees it.
It's devastatingly quiet, filled only with the decisive motion of his footsteps against cracked pavement.
His reflection moves like a specter in gleaming windows that reveal nothing else.
The scene is as dark and solitary as an empty funeral procession.
There are no shop signs, no vendors hawking their wares, no other souls walking these streets. Just one man traversing a metropolis as if he owns every stone and steel beam. A city built for an audience of himself alone.
A world where he is both king and only subject.
The loneliness of it strikes me unexpectedly—this magnificent, terrible isolation he's built around himself. There’s nothing for me to do now but attempt to break through his carefully constructed solitude.
Given how solid his vision appears, it will likely take hundreds of attempts before I register in his awareness.
Fortunately, time is one of the few commodities I possess in infinite supply.