Hermes's Arc

Chapter 3 of 13

The chains worked, but the bunching did not. Each dawn, souls drifted up to the bronze and obsidian doors in a loose, wobbling crowd, visible to anything that might look up from below. Hermes watched them clump like sheep at a fence and clicked his tongue. "You're standing on the welcome mat," he muttered. "Might as well ring a bell." He needed a quiet pen. A staging spot off the path, where he could tie his chain in peace. He walked back up the red broken slope and found a shallow hollow behind a leaning slab of stone, just out of sight of the gates. He planted his winged staff in the dirt at its mouth. The snakes on the shaft uncoiled, stretched along the ground, and made a soft, breathing line in the dust — a threshold only souls could feel. He tapped the rim with his knuckle. "Here. Wait here." One by one, the souls drifted off the open path and gathered behind the slab, quiet as held breath. From the gates, the approach now looked empty. Hermes tied his laurel chain in the hush of the hollow, thirty wrists at a time, and led each group out only when the doors were ready. He pinned a fresh note to his map: hidden pen, then gate. The bleeding had slowed again. But as he coiled the rope for the next trip, he frowned at the dust. Thirty sets of footprints led from the hollow to the doors. A clean, obvious trail. Someone, eventually, would follow it back.