By the time I reached the deeper parts of the Underworld, I had learned three important things.
First, the dead were terrible at giving directions.
Second, every path somehow looked worse than the last.
And third, apparently being Orpheus came with a complimentary tour of places no living person should ever have to visit.
I had already crossed enough darkness to make me seriously question the life choices that had brought me here. My clothes were covered in ash, my legs were starting to ache, and my lyre had gone from a legendary instrument of divine music to something I mostly carried around like an expensive suitcase.
Still, I kept walking.
~~~•••~~~
The older shade jerked his chin toward a stretch of ground that looked like the earth itself had been punched repeatedly from below.
“That way,” he said. “The Spite Cliffs. Stay on the ridges. Fall in and no one knows where you go. Not even us.”
I stared at the network of black fissures. Some were narrow enough to step over. Others opened into cliffs that dropped into a darkness so complete it felt personal.
From somewhere far below, a faint sound rose — not a scream exactly, more like the echo of someone still arguing with a door that would never open again. One of the shades noticed me listening and smirked.
“You hear them too? Voices that never get answered. They designed it that way. Wanted the drop to feel like every time someone shut them down and walked away. Nasty little detail.”
I had no time to ask who ‘they’ were.
The thin, flickering shade stepped forward, already speaking over the others.
“Now. About the message. Tell my brother the money he stole—”
“No,” another cut in. “Mine. Tell that damn old woman the child isn’t hers and never was.”
“Both of you shut up,” a third voice snapped. “We agreed on the strongest one.”
They argued in overlapping, ugly bursts — each trying to make their cruelty the one that would reach the living. Finally the oldest shade raised a hand and the others fell into a reluctant silence. He looked at me.
“This is the message. Deliver it exactly.”
He spoke the words without emotion, the way someone recites a recipe.
“There was this girl. So gorgeous. Yet so lonely. She’d go into the market every morning and buy oranges for her dead mother.” He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and fixed them on me like a blade. “Tell her the truth. That her mother only kept her breathing for the death benefits. That every soft thing she remembers was calculated down to the last false smile. That the woman she still calls ‘mother’ would have sold her to the highest bidder without blinking if the price had been better — flesh, bone, and all. Tell her the love was paperwork. Insurance forms. A transaction.”
“And tell her we all watched every quiet year of it and said nothing. Not once.”
The sentence sat in the air like something spoiled and still warm.
My stomach turned. It wasn’t just mean. It was precision-engineered to take the last clean memory someone still had and rot it from the inside out. The kind of truth that didn’t free anybody — it only made sure the living hurt the same way the dead did.
“That’s the price,” the thin shade said flatly. “One true message. You already agreed.”
I wanted to refuse. The refusal sat ready on my tongue. Then I saw Quynh’s face the moment the snake struck, and the refusal died.
“…Fine,” I said. The word tasted like ash. “I’ll deliver it.”
They looked satisfied. A couple of them even laughed, already turning back to their favorite topic: the voiceless shade Kyrios had ruined. They mocked the way his mouth still moved, the silent shapes of words no one bothered to read.
The sound of it scraped against the inside of my skull.
I stepped onto the first ridge of the Spite Cliffs.
The path was barely wider than my foot in places. Black stone, uneven, with the kind of slight tilt that made every step a negotiation. The lyre hung from one hand. The snake — Consequences — was coiled in the other, and the bastard had chosen this exact moment to develop a personality.
It kept shifting its weight on purpose.
“Stop that,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “You think this is funny? You’re not the one balancing above an existential plot hole.”
The snake gave a slow, deliberate flex that nearly changed my center of gravity. I could feel the smugness radiating off it like heat.
“Oh, you’re enjoying this. Look at you. Tiny venomous chaos gremlin. One day away from a wedding murder and already acting like you run the underworld.”
A gust of non-wind moved through the cracks. From below, those unfinished voices rose again — thin, looping, never answered. I froze, heart slamming, then forced the next step.
Behind me the shades kept talking. Their voices carried too easily across the open fissures.
“—still tries to say Kyrios’s name like anyone cares—”
“—should’ve finished the job, left him without a mouth entirely—”
Each casual cruelty landed like a push between my shoulder blades. My jaw locked. I wanted to turn around and tell them exactly how small they sounded. Instead I stared at the next narrow ridge and tried to breathe through the anger.
Consequences chose that moment to thrash.
My foot slipped.
The edge of the crack crumbled under my sandal. For one pure, vertical second I felt the drop open beneath me — the unfinished dark Quynh had written when she was hurting and wanted the world to hurt with her. The lyre swung wild. The snake’s coils tightened like it was prepared to survive the fall even if I didn’t.
I threw my weight sideways, slammed a knee onto solid stone, and scraped both palms raw catching myself. Blood welled bright against the black rock. Below me the darkness made no sound at all except those distant, unanswered voices.
I stayed on all fours for several long breaths, forehead pressed to the cold stone, the snake still gripped in one shaking hand.
“You’re a menace,” I whispered to it. “A pure, concentrated menace. When we get her back I’m leaving you in a shoe.”
The snake, predictably, looked pleased with itself.
I stood again, limping worse than before, and kept moving ridge by ridge. The shades’ laughter faded slowly behind me, still mocking the silent and the broken. Every step was a small refusal to fall into the kind of story Quynh had once written when she was hurting and wanted the world to hurt with her.
I did not look down again.
I just kept the lyre tight, the cocky bastard of a snake tighter, and the promise I already regretted locked behind my teeth — one more debt paid in advance so I could keep walking toward the only person I refused to leave in the dark.
~~~•••~~~
The last ridge finally leveled out into solid ground.
Behind me the Spite Cliffs dropped away into their unfinished dark. The shades’ voices had thinned to distant whispers, but one of them still found the energy to cup his hands and shout across the distance:
“Good luck, warm boy!”
The words arrived soaked in mockery. I kept my eyes forward and swallowed the reply that wanted to come out. Anger would only make the next steps sloppier. I had already paid enough blood to the landscape for one day.
I limped on until the black stone gave way to a softer, ashen soil scattered with pale vegetation. Some of the plants looked almost ordinary until you noticed their leaves grew in perfect, repeating patterns that never occurred in the living world.
I crouched, tore several of the broadest ones free, and used them to replace the blood-stiff bandage on my calf. The new wrapping smelled faintly of dust and old paper, but it held.
Consequences watched the entire process with the judgmental stillness of a creature who believed he could have done it better.
“Don’t start,” I told it. “You’re lucky I haven’t used you as a tourniquet.”
The snake flicked its tail in pure disdain.
The landscape changed the farther I walked. The air grew thicker, almost humid, and the red light filtered through high tangles of vegetation that should not have been able to grow without sun.
Vines as thick as my wrist hung in still curtains. Flowers the size of my palm opened and closed in slow, silent rhythms, revealing centers that glowed a dull, unhealthy blue.
It was beautiful in the way a fever dream is beautiful — every detail sharp, every color slightly wrong, the whole place humming with the quiet threat that it could close on me at any second.
Then the ground dipped and I stepped into the mouth of a tunnel.
It was enormous. The “roof” was a dense, woven slum of plants — roots, vines, and broad leaves layered so thickly they blocked out most of the red light and left only narrow shafts of it stabbing down like dirty spotlights.
The walls were packed earth reinforced by more roots, some of them still slowly twisting as if the tunnel itself were breathing. Small clusters of phosphorescent fungi clung to the higher curves, casting a sickly green shimmer across the path.
Here and there, abandoned objects hung suspended in the vines: a broken sandal, a child’s wooden comb, a single cracked mask that watched me pass with empty eyes.
For the first time in what felt like hours, the place almost looked interesting instead of purely hostile.
I made the mistake of slowing down.
“Okay,” I muttered, tilting my head back to stare at the living ceiling. “This is actually kind of cool. In a ‘nature wants me dead but has style’ way. Quynh would’ve taken notes. She would’ve named every vine.”
I reached up with the lyre and tapped one of the thicker roots. It gave a low, hollow sound. Consequences shifted in my grip, clearly unimpressed by my sudden tourism.
“What? I’m allowed to look. I’ve been chased, bitten, nearly impaled, and forced to accept the world’s worst messenger job. I can have three seconds of—”
A war cry exploded through the tunnel.
It was high, layered, and completely unhinged — the kind of sound that shook the entire plant-slum roof and sent loose leaves raining down like confetti. Before my brain could finish the sentence what the hell was that, bodies dropped from every direction at once.
Something hard slammed into the back of my knees. Another weight hit my shoulders. A third force yanked the lyre sideways while a fourth pair of hands went straight for the snake.
I barely had time to shout before I was already on the ground, arms pinned, legs folded under me in a hold that felt insultingly practiced. The whole takedown took less than two seconds and had the chaotic, overcommitted energy of a plan that had been rehearsed a hundred times for fun.
I lay there in the dirt, cheek pressed against cold earth, completely captured, still not entirely sure by what.
Consequences, naturally, looked like it was trying not to laugh.
They celebrated like they had just taken down a legendary monster.
High-pitched whoops echoed off the plant-slum walls. Someone started a victory chant that made no sense. Two of the smaller ones immediately began arguing over who had landed the cleanest hit on my knees. The gap-toothed leader planted one foot on my back in pure theatrical triumph and raised both arms like she had conquered the entire underworld.
I was still face-down in the dirt, completely confused and significantly more terrified than I wanted to admit.
“Please,” I managed, voice muffled by ash and residual dignity. “Please don’t kill me. I’m just passing through. I have people waiting. Well — one person. Sort of. It’s complicated—”
A pair of translucent hands yanked Consequences out of my grip.
The snake went from zero to pure murderous outrage in less than a second. It thrashed so hard the kid holding it had to use both hands and still nearly lost control. The others immediately crowded around, poking, prodding, and trying to make it coil around a stick like a living toy. Consequences looked like it was planning several generations of revenge.
“Take the snake instead,” I offered desperately, still pinned. “He tastes better. Very gamey. Notes of poor life choices and wedding trauma. You’ll love him.”
The leader paused. Her eyes lit up with something dangerous and delighted.
“You think we’re with Kyrios,” she said, testing the idea.
I latched onto the misunderstanding like a lifeline.
“Yes. Obviously. Kyrios’s people. Extremely scary. Huge reputation. Please accept the snake as a peace offering and let the warm idiot go.”
That flattened her in the best possible way. She straightened, puffed her chest out, and immediately started performing the role of a mid-level underworld enforcer who definitely worked for the most feared shade in the district. The rest of the pack followed her lead without missing a beat.
What followed was pure, concentrated childish tyranny.
They made me kneel and apologize to each of them individually for “trespassing.”
They made me compliment the leader’s gap tooth in three different poetic styles.
They made me hop on one foot while holding the lyre above my head and reciting that I was a “sorry living trash who should’ve paid the crossing fee.”
They made me invent a victory song for their gang on the spot.
I did every single thing.
I hopped. I recited. I praised the gap tooth like it was a national treasure. I sang. I obeyed like the world’s most traumatized puppy because every order was delivered with the absolute confidence of children who had already decided they were terrifying, and I was still half-convinced they might actually feed me to something worse if I refused.
Consequences was currently being worn as a living necklace by one of the smaller ones and looked like it was contemplating absolute violence.
I was mid-hop, lyre raised, halfway through a second verse of the victory song, when the details finally lined up in my head.
The height.
The voices.
The gap tooth.
The way they argued over who got to hold the snake like it was a new toy at Tet.
I stopped hopping.
“…You’re kids.”
The leader blinked.
I stared at the entire pack of translucent, barefoot, gap-toothed little tyrants who had just made me write them a theme song.
“You’re actual children.”
My voice cracked into pure frustration.
“I got jumped by a baby gang?!”
They burst out laughing.
Not polite laughter — full, high-pitched, falling-over-each-other laughter that bounced off the plant-slum walls and made the vines shake. The gap-toothed leader actually had to sit down she was laughing so hard. One of the smaller ones pointed at me and wheezed, “Baby gang!” until he ran out of air.
I stayed on my knees in the dirt, lyre still half-raised from the victory song, feeling every single life choice that had led to this moment.
“Elementary school ghosts robbed me,” I muttered. “Quynh is never hearing about this. No one is hearing about this.”
The leader wiped her eyes, still grinning, and finally took pity on me.
“This is our territory,” she said, spreading her arms like she owned the entire tunnel. “Root Road. We jump anyone who looks soft or warm or both. You’re lucky we didn’t feed you to the bigger roots.”
I stared at her, still dumbfounded, and quietly cursed every over-confident bone in my body.
She thumped her thin chest.
“I’m Chủ Tịch Nhỏ. Small Chairman. Leader of the Root Road Gang.”
Of course she was.
“What about the rest of you?” I asked, glancing at the pack.
Chủ Tịch Nhỏ shrugged.
“Don’t know. Nobody knows. Once you die, the real name falls off. Just gone. I made mine up because ‘hey you’ got boring.”
That landed harder than I expected. I filed it away with the rest of the underworld’s quiet cruelties and decided not to poke it right then.
I cleared my throat and tried to reclaim a little dignity.
“I’m Orpheus. Legendary musician. Very famous. Extremely serious person who does not get captured by children.”
They looked unconvinced.
One of the smaller shades pointed at the leaf bandage on my calf, where blood had started seeping through again.
“Why’s a warm man down here anyway?” she asked, head tilted. “Warm ones don’t come this far unless they’re stupid or looking for someone.”
The question hit the exact nerve I had been trying not to touch.
Quynh.
The wedding. The snake. The way her weight had gone slack against my shoulder. The entire reason I was bleeding in a plant tunnel talking to dead children.
I stood up, brushing ash off my knees.
“Yes. I’m looking for someone,” I said, quieter. “I need to keep moving.”
Their faces fell in perfect, unguarded unison. Chủ Tịch Nhỏ tried to look tough about it and failed. The one still holding Consequences actually hugged the snake tighter for a second before the animal’s pure fury made her reconsider.
I held out my hands.
“The lyre and the snake are mine. He’s… my companion. Unfortunately.”
They hesitated, then reluctantly returned both. Consequences immediately tried to bite me out of pure residual rage at having been used as a toy. I took it as a sign of affection.
I turned toward the far end of the tunnel, ready to leave.
Behind me the silence felt too heavy. I glanced back. The whole pack was still standing there, translucent and barefoot and suddenly looking exactly as young as they were, watching the first interesting thing that had happened to them in who knew how long walk away.
I lasted three steps.
“…One game,” I heard myself say. “I’m not staying long. But fine. One game.”
The way their faces lit up was almost unfair.
Consequences, still coiled in my hand, gave me a look that clearly translated to ‘you are the weakest man I have ever met.’
I ignored it and turned back toward the Root Road Gang.
It was, indeed, not one game.
The first was “Root Dodging” — the vines above would suddenly whip downward at random, and you had to drop, roll, or shove someone else into the path instead.
The kids moved like they’d been born in the tunnel. I moved like a university student who had already been stabbed by the landscape once today.
Consequences was forced into the role of living obstacle; every time a vine came down the snake was expected to lunge and “tag” whoever was closest. It hated every second and somehow still managed to look smug when it clipped my ankle.
I was supposed to leave after that.
Instead I heard myself say, “Best two out of three.”
The second game was “Echo Racing.” You ran the length of the tunnel while the walls threw your own voice back at you in warped, delayed copies. If you flinched at your own distorted shout, you lost.
The children screamed nonsense at the top of their lungs and never flinched. I tried to stay dignified and ended up yelling an old lecture-hall motivational speech that came back sounding like a dying appliance. Chủ Tịch Nhỏ laughed so hard she had to sit down again.
By the third game I was fully gone.
We played “Ash Ball” with a tightly packed sphere of the pale, brittle flowers that crumbled if you squeezed too hard. The rules were simple: keep it in the air using only your head, knees, or the snake.
Consequences was not consulted. The first time I headed the ball successfully the entire gang erupted like I had scored in a World Cup final. Something warm and stupid opened in my chest.
I pointed at Chủ Tịch Nhỏ.
“You and me. Formal challenge. Three rounds. Winner gets bragging rights and the loser’s eternal respect.”
Her gap-tooth grin could have powered a small city.
We did staring contest first (I lost).
Then single-leg balance on a narrow root while the others threw small stones (I lost with dignity).
Then a full insult duel where you could only use underworld-themed burns (I won by calling her “the interim chair of a committee that meets in a plant”).
She demanded a rematch. I accepted. The snake was drafted as referee and immediately began abusing its power.
Between rounds the conversation turned, the way it always does with children when the games pause long enough for real things to surface.
“How long have you been down here?” I asked, still catching my breath.
Chủ Tịch Nhỏ shrugged, suddenly quieter.
“Don’t know. I couldn’t remember how it is to be warm anymore. I remember a road. A truck. Then it was dark and I was here and the big ones didn’t want us.”
One of the smaller boys, the one who still carried Consequences like a reluctant pet, spoke without looking up.
“I waited for my mom for a long time. She didn’t come. So we made our own place.”
The words were simple. The way he said them was not. There was no performance in it, no attempt to sound tough. Just the calm, terrible acceptance of someone who had already finished waiting.
I looked at the whole pack — barefoot, translucent, running a territory out of vines and stubbornness because no one else had claimed them — and something ugly and protective settled under my ribs.
Hades.
The one Quynh always defended. Her favorite. She used to say he wasn’t cruel, just fair. That he had a quiet kindness people missed because they only looked at the helmet and the throne. She had argued with Minh about it for entire evenings, eyes bright, completely certain.
Sitting in this tunnel full of abandoned children, I decided she was wrong.
Fair didn’t leave kids to build a gang in a plant-slum because the rest of the underworld couldn’t be bothered. Fair didn’t design a system where names fell off and mothers never arrived. Fair didn’t look like this.
I didn’t say any of it out loud. I just accepted the next challenge, let Chủ Tịch Nhỏ beat me at root-climbing, and stayed longer than I should have, teaching them a ridiculous Saigon hand-clapping game while the snake plotted my eventual demise.
The seed of dislike for the god of the dead had already taken root. And for the first time since I stepped through the portal, the journey toward the palace felt like it had more than one reason.
