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...
"Every morning, you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them."
-Anonymous
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The new king of After had no halo, and the ceremonial crown was suspiciously missing, but Reynard Gagnon was coronated in the still smoldering ruins of his predecessor. Surrounded by white-robed acolights, his first decree was to tear down what remained of Blackburne's palace and use the materials to rebuild the city.
It was so much easier to destroy than to fix whatever had been broken, but the ghosts of After dove headfirst into the task of rebuilding. Reynard was always right beside his people, erecting scaffolding and clearing streets of rubble.
While rejuvenated skyscrapers ascended into the sky around me, I set about my own task. The woman I knelt beside jolted awake at my touch, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes of the catatonic fog. Her brows drew together as she gawked at the halos some ghosts hustling past us wore.
"Neat, right? You can get a halo, too," I said to her. I pointed toward the robed ghosts that assisted and comforted the recently awakened. "They'll help you."
I stood in what was formerly the graveyard. Now it was a sector run by the acolights, a place for ghosts to heal. The woman I had just awoken appeared dazed-understandably. There was no telling just how long she had been asleep for, and I was sure that the After she woke up in was way different from the one she fell asleep in. She wandered over on unsteady legs to join up with the other awakened ghosts. The haloed leader of the acolights welcomed her with open arms. Once she recouped and got caught up on everything that happened, eventually she'd be guided underground where the remaining shadows were looked after, where she and all the others would hopefully find their other halves.
I wandered the streets and peeked inside every building in search of any other catatonic hollows in need of awakening. When, at last, I couldn't find any more, I left satisfied.
After looked livelier as the never-ending day went on. The city warmed from the healing ghosts and the sunlight we were all able to feel now. Skyscrapers gleamed, shiny and polished. The market was packed full of even more wares now that the Dark had been illuminated and the monsters gone. Blackburne's palace had long been demolished, and the horrid Pit freed of ghosts and filled in. Any of the old king's zealots had long gone into hiding.
I paused where the stories-high statue of the king of monsters used to stand, enticed by the sound of hissing spray paint. The statue of the shadow looked less like a demon and more like a guardian angel, having since been given black wings and a halo of red lux. Vale stood atop one of the angel's shoulders, finishing up the last part of the mural on one of its wings, and I climbed up to join her.
"What do you think?" she asked as she tossed aside a spent can.
I gazed at her creation. A black ziggurat was silhouetted against a rather striking sunset in the coverts of the wings. At its base was a remarkably detailed painting of Aḫ-ḫur, in all its former glory. And from the apex of the temple, lines of crows flew toward the viewer, becoming larger and more detailed the closer they got to the angel's primaries. Their black forms melded together into feather shapes, tricking the eye that they were becoming the feathers of the statue.
