The Living World

Serenica went into the waves and dived. Under the surface, she heard a scream that made her dead body freeze.

Thinking immediately that the ferryman was bullying some poor girl on the shore, she jumped back up and found herself not in the ocean of the afterlife, but on a wooden table in a room illuminated by a corpse candle. The scream was her own. She was hurting all over. It was much like waking up from a fever dream, her limbs aching and her heart racing.

A man was looking at her, chuckling. He wore the dramatic uniform of the Order. What little could be seen from him was dark and handsome.

Serenica waited for her breathing to get even again.

"I suppose I have a right to ask where the hell I am right now and what the hell has just happened, don't I?" she asked.

"You do have a right. Damn, I waited for a whole week. You just wouldn't die, even after taking that much poison into your veins."