Skye is dead.
How she perished is a mystery. All she knows is that she is trapped in After, a makeshift city of souls surrounded by infinite darkness and terrifying monsters that tear ghosts apart.
But while all other ghosts accept the eternity of...
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"Death is not a foe, but an incredible adventure,"
- Oliver Lodge
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Dead people make a lot of goddamn noise.
The thundering bass of mountains of stacked amps rocked the black, skeletal high-rises of After. I sat at the edge of a wavering skyscraper, legs dangling over the side, watching the activity hundreds of stories below through the red lenses of my mask.
Thousands of souls writhed and grinded in rhythm to the pulsing red lux-light and the noise that was barely music. Their glowing white halos entangled together. There was no way to tell one dancing soul from another from so high up. All the partiers had all become one teeming, undulating mass and it was all so hypnotizing.
There'd been tons of celebrations since the sun had risen in the sky for the first time in centuries, and even more after we destroyed the wall that used to surround the city. The heel of my combat boot bounced against the rusting side of the building in time to the beat. I really wanted to join the impromptu celebration. Back when the sky had been dark, and monsters clawed at the wall of After, I would have.
With a groan drowned out by the mayhem, I tore my gaze from the people clambering on top of the mountains of pounding amps and lay back on the rooftop. I pulled my mask off and held it to my face, frowning into the round red eyes of the smiling leather face.
I'd made a promise to some friends that I'd keep this city safe.
Didn't matter to me if those friends were no longer around.
I stared out into the desert that surrounded the city. Now that the massive wall that had once kept the ghosts of After protected from the monstrous shadows had been obliterated, I had a perfect view of the rolling black dunes and the dark mountains cresting the horizon so far away.
The Dim.
What was once a pitch-black wasteland inhabited by only shadows and the most stupid ghosts like yours truly, was now a sweeping landscape of sand and stars. Time never passed. It was never day or night, forever something in-between—a realm of eternal twilight. Or eternal dawn, depending on your perspective, perhaps. But I was a glass-half-empty kinda guy.
