Ashes of the Council of the Dead

Slam! Thud!

Soft pounding sounds of rubble echoed, my eyes blurring on the the ceiling.

Breathing.

Through the ringing in my ear, I felt hands shaking me back and forth.

“Ash! Stay with…”

The voice was swallowed by rubble. The shaking slipped away and everything went still.

*******

White.

Whiteness.

The entire ground was white, stretching into forever.

For a heartbeat, I thought I was headed to the light but then —something brushed against my feet. A weird texture. A presence?

Snow?

I didn’t know the word a moment ago, but now it slipped into my mind, with heavy familiarity.

Where was I?

I bent down and touched the stuff. It sifted through my fingers, soft and squishy like cold sand melting into my palm until water ran down my wrist.

Then—snap.

My feet moved on their own, like they were dragged by someone at supersonic speed before stopping suddenly with a screech.

I was standing in an alleyway.

The odour hit me first. A pungent, choking and metallic. It clung to my throat as I breathed it in. The pathway was painted with blood, pooling into grooves and cracks on the surface. Various cards were scattered across the ground and on the two opposing walls, each streaked with blood.

Footsteps. Bare feet from the looks of it, slapped against the snowy stone, leaving a clear trail for me to follow, pulling me deeper still. And I did, though I didn’t understand why.

One step, two steps. Three.

A body slumped in the shadows. No —two of them. Motionless, crumped together like abandoned dolls. I got closer and both had holes roughly the shape of small pebbles, oozing blood from where I started.

Then more footsteps echoed ahead. I raised my eyes to see two silhouettes retreating, boys or men, I couldn’t tell. But something in my chest lurched: I knew them. The recognition gnawed at me even as my feet carried me forward, chasing.

They stopped at the corner. One turned, their breath hitching, voice trembling.

“Forgive me, Ar....” the last syllable slipped away, swallowed by static. “Forgive me. It wasn’t my idea, it was Ryuuji’s…”

Snap.

I didn’t hear the rest. Now I was staring upward.

Red skeletal beams clawed at the sky, rising higher than my vision could follow. The structure was less a building than a shrine to something monstrous—an altar piercing the clouds.

A tower.

Tiny figures peered down at me through a glass floor high above like insects looking out of their hive. It was unlike anything I had seen before. This wasn’t Halvas or anywhere I knew.

Yet the name struck me like lightning at the tip of my tongue:

Sapporo.

My breath caught—and then it wasn’t even my breath anymore. It was similar to what happened with CIX but also not the same. I can’t explain it. My lungs pumped air I hadn’t chosen to inhale. My legs pounded against the icy pavement and the Sirens howled. Vehicles with strange written symbols across their body blurred past me, symbols I shouldn’t know but somehow read as easily as picking up my shovel. At the back of my mind, I knew they were headed to where the two bodies were but my hands —my hands were slick with blood.

Snap.

The sun was shining overhead, but slightly covered by the clouds. Snow was still on the ground but not quite as much as before. I walked into a building, A school. A hallway swallowed me at the push of the door. Fluorescent lights buzzed on the ceilings, flickering like dying insects and ahead.

Rows of students lined the walls, faces bent with sorrow but their grief wasn’t for themselves. Was it for me? Some held flowers trembling in their hands, offerings of food weighed down their arms. Step by step, the gifts were passed forward until I reached the end.

Another door opened on the other side.

A girl waited there, her smile was soft hiding behind extreme sadness. She held out her arm, the cold wind blowing her hair every which way. As I moved to grasp it, the scene convulsed.

Snap.

Snow crunched underfoot again, my boots dragging me to a house. Paper bags dangled from my hands, stuffed with cans and packets. I slipped off my shoes at the entrance and padded into a cramped apartment.

A humming computer screen glowed in the dark. Across it, words moved from left to right on the screen:

“Solve Me, Become God.”

I clicked.

The screen flashed white.

A jolt ripped through me, violent as lightning. My vision blurred and then the humming of the ceiling fan overhead shuddered…reversed…then slowly stopped.

[WELCOME, PLAYER. YOU HAVE ENTERED: GODHOOD.]

Then darkness.

*********

A darkness without end, until a voice slithered into it.

“You’re late.”

I turned to see a man with slicked back purple hair, wearing a crisp white suit his hands in his pocket.

“Yo! Ryder, I don’t think he knows what you look like yet.” Another voice cracked from the dark.

My throat tightened. “Wait…..Ryder, Jax Ryder? Is that you?”

Ryder stepped forward and smiled. “Yes, Ash, it is. We need to talk.”

“We?”

Two figures peered out of the dark, shadows thickening like bodies like old gods forming from smoke.

“Yo, Ash. Long time no see.”

My breath caught.
It was Callen— Hero#33 himself. His black vest clung to his muscles, his hair tangled wildly, tied loosely by that stupid bandana he always wore.

“Callen? Am I dead?”

He chuckled. But before he could answer, a thunderclap of a voice interrupted.

“Relax, little worm. You’re not dead…yet.”

I knew that voice from anywhere, I turned around to see, his face although it was the first time seeing it, was exactly how I’d imagined.

CIX.

Huge scar slashing across the bridge of his nose but his face was brutal and surprisingly beautiful. If we’re talking hair, his was even wilder than Callen’s, falling onto his shoulders. But the comparisons didn’t end there; his arms were thicker and carved with tattoos and a rune crosshatched with burns shaped like a lightning bolt. And for some reason, he wore a beast’s skin across his shoulders, probably from one he had killed with his bare hands.

His eyes cut through me like fire through paper.

“Let’s get on with it before his puny mind wakes.”

I thought I was slowly understanding my ability, this cursed resonance. But every time something different came up that made my head spin. Here I was, in front of three heroes, no weapons in sight, so I wasn’t in the living world.

This place —this void—was something deeper. It didn’t feel right in my mind.

“I agree with CIX,” Ryder murmured, stepping into the circle. His voice cut smooth as silk. “Let’s make this easier for all of us. Sit down.”

The void rippled like water violated by a dropped stone. The darkness slowly peeled away like feathers scattering into nothing.

And then we were inside a room so white it seared my eyes.

At its centre, four chairs waited.

For the first time, I saw them as more than fragments of power, more than weapons left for me to wield.

Heroes. Corpses. Legends.

And now, my council of the dead.

The chairs scraped as if unseen hands dragged them into place. The sound wasn’t metal, wasn’t wood— I don’t know what the hell it was.

“Sit,” Ryder repeated. His voice wasn’t loud, but it bent the air all the same.

My legs moved before my brain could argue. The chair was cold against my skin, though I didn’t remember sitting. My fingers tightened on the armrest, and for a heartbeat, I wondered if I was a prisoner.

The three of them took their places opposite me. Ryder, immaculate, leaning back in perfect posture like the room was his courtroom. Callen, slouched but watchful, the red bandana shadowing his eyes. And CIX—he didn’t sit so much as collapse into the chair, his beast-pelt spilling across the arms like a throne. Still staring at me.

I swallowed hard. “Why… why am I here?”

“You’re awake, buddy,” Callen said smoothly, flashing an honest grin. “About time, too. I was beginning to think you’d gotten lost in here.”