Slowly, without sound, Tandra opened here eyes, or thought she did for she was met with nothing but engulfing darkness.

Fear immediately gripped her heart as she lay perfectly still, trying to gain as much information as she could from her surroundings.

She could not see anything but darkness, could not hear anything but her own breath and she could not feel anything but what she thinks is dry grass underneath her body.

She decided she wasn’t dead, since her body felt cold, causing goosebumps to rise and shiver.

But she has no idea where she is, much less how she got here.

The last thing she remembers is being burnt alive by a strange engulfing acidic substance, when she had jumped down that hole.

She was sure she had died then and had expected to be revived in the nearest resurrection point.

However she seems to have revived here: in darkness and on dry grass.

Making a decision, she stands up slowly causing much noise as grass crackles under her movement.

Opening her inventory, the screen doesn’t appear, or so she thinks till she presses again and again in the air causing something to appear on her thigh, dragging her down slightly with a chink of wood.

She can’t see the inventory, but it’s still there.

Closing her eyes in thought, she tries to figure out where her bow may be.

A few minutes of deep thought and a few more of pressing randomly in the air, she finally feels the tendon string press against her chest.

Trying her best to grab whatever fell on the floor in front of her, she places them back in her inventory before closing it.

Stringing her bow and knocking an arrow with practiced ease, she begins walking through the darkness.

She may see nothing, but sure as hell she would be able to hear something if it moves, due to the grass.

And whatever it may be that moves, in this darkness it’s not likely to be friendly.

Her soft leather boots crunch along the grass for the better part of five minutes, before she notices a sharp drop in temperature.

It was cold before, not she could feel her blood retreating from her extremities, leaving chilled, unbending fingers in their wake.

Stopping, she drops down onto one knee.

Tearing her sleeve off and wrapping it around an arrow, she then tries to find her flint and steel from her inventory, luckily finding it within only a few tries.

Violently shaking, teeth chattering, she strikes the flint and steel together, causing a small spark.

Striking again, the spark catches onto some linen setting a tiny part alight.

The welcoming light of the fire almost sends tears down her eyes and she strikes again.

Now she can see the dim tips of her fingers and heartened by the slight burning, she strikes again

After another two strikes, the linen properly catches fire, reaching the feathers and hungrily burning those too, sending flames spiraling up energetically.

However the warmth does not combat this chill, almost unnatural in its being.

The small blaze lights up a small radius around her and she notices a pair of hanging, grayish blue and transparent feet, floating an inch or two in the air.

Within a single beat of her heart, her head swings up with the fire, revealing a human face with a languid jaw and rotting skin, all transparent.

Before a scream can leave her mouth, the strange being enters it, sending a spiking cold into her heart, snuffing out the fire in the process.

Another seems to enter her right shoulder, another in her left thigh.

Within barely a second, her body seems frozen solid, invaded by a horde of these things wracking her with pain, almost ripping her apart with it.

She feels a sudden force deep from within her, sending her flying into the air, dim grayish blue blobs flashing as she tumbles.

Standing back up, she quickly sees darkness and whirls around to see a huge clump of these things surrounding…her…her body, but not her...?

She is kneeling, mouth wide open in a scream, yet body unmoving and no sound escaping it.

These things seem to enter her body, pushing others out, which silently tumble and return like a pack of ravished hyenas towards her.

Before her mind can fully process what is going on, her body rips apart with a disgusting tear from the spine as it collapses on the grass in two.

Her skin explodes into chunks and her bones break into dust.

Within three seconds, her remains lie in a heap of ripped meat and bone dust, only her eyes remain intact, staring right towards herself.

While watching this happen, Tandra wants to vomit, but can’t, wants to scream, but cant.

All she can do is stand there, shocked, still as stone as seeing herself die like that made her feel empty, languid with nothingness.

Even when a sudden blinding blue light pops up in front of her, she does not flinch in the slightest.

It blocks the view to her corpse and so she naturally lays eyes upon the screen, reading morosely through the lines over and over again.

Slowly, her mind begins to function once more only to be rattled to its core.

The lines became words, and words became meaning. Meaning became fear, terror and dread.

This blinding blue screen told her in a factual manner that she was now a Chthon; the embodiment of a living being, usually embedded in flesh and blood, but in her case she was free of all earthly restraints…a spirit of Khthon.

Letting the fact sink in; the fact that she has no body anymore, she slowly walks back, or tries to.

The screen seems to follow her, yet even when she closes it she notices she’s not getting any further away from the remains of her corpse.

Turning round, she runs without moving, cries without tears and screams without sound, trapped within a grayish blue ethereal body which is named a Chthon.

…

“Hello there traveler, do you have coinage for the ferry?” Karon, a skeleton in a thick hooded black robe leans on his oar as he looks up and down at the seemingly human fellow.

“Coinage? Hrm I do have some gold but by the look if it, doesn’t look like you need that sort of gold” The man muses with a gentle voice.

Karon watches the man muse, musing himself as to how this human was able to make it here, since no human could pass through a portal and live.

After a few seconds, the man takes the book from his side and begins to flip through the pages, muttering incoherently.

Although Karon has no eyes, he still clearly spotted the name of his Master on the front cover.

“Traveler, come aboard” He bows towards the man, clearly showing his importance.

The man just raises an eyebrow and makes suspicious face.

“Why am I suddenly allowed on?” He closes the book, tucking it back underneath his right arm.

Karon points at the book “You serve our Master”

“Huh” The man shrugs his shoulders and boards the rickety old two man boat, sitting on the rotting yet still strong wood.

Karon begins pushing the air with his oar, sending them slowly moving through the black sky and away from the long row of torches that were lined down the stairs.

The man did bring a torch on board in good hindsight, allowing him to see the boat but not much else.

“So, what is this ‘coinage’ you had asked for me?” The man turns around, trying to make conversation.

It was not Karon’s place to question the strange man, but to transport him and answer any questions he desires, since the holder of the book is of much higher power than he.

“It is just a simple gold coin, but it is brought to this world through the mouth of the dead”

“Oh so, those who die are buried with a coin in their mouth so they can pay for the ferry?” The man questions, as if already knowing the answer.

“Yes, though it seems the Overworld has forgotten this, making life quite boring for me” He sighs, reminiscing of the days when he could go to the Overworld and spend a day in a fair, hidden as a normal human. That was when he could still afford it.

“So, when someone dies, no matter whom, they end up coming here?”

“They do not, their Chthon selves do…however as of late, almost none arrive here, only those dragged back by our reapers”

“Chthon?” he raises an eyebrow at the foreign word

“Souls as those in the Overworld would call them. However a Chthon is a being able to survive without the bonds of flesh and blood, quite different from a soul indeed."

He nods, digesting the information before moving onto the next question.

“I assume that ‘as of late’ means since a few hundred years ago?”

He nods “At the end of the first age, the Overworld changed drastically. This one too was both created and

destroyed, but you know of that already don’t you?”

The man just looks away, as if satisfied by the conversation and looks into the blackness once more.

They both look towards the darkness, one seeing nothing and the other seeing endless fields of dead grass, with only a few hundred thousand chthon’s wandering about aimlessly, not even taking up a small portion of the wide expanse that is the land.

Within a few more minutes of rowing, Karon lets out a sigh of relief at seeing the gravestone castle, his home, in the far distance, surrounded by mostly empty fields.

“Welcome to Khthon”

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Author's Corner:

Woo i'm baack!

Anyways, really short chappie today, just to you know start it all off.

I presume this arc won't last much, maybe only a couple of chapters?? depends on what happens yadayadayada.

Also, hope you enjoyed it! even though Tandra's been completely fkd over!

So please comment, review and reread :P

I don't know when the next chappie will come out, but sometime before the weekend is a good shout

-TRUE NORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD