I swallow hard. Force myself to breathe.
“What happens now?”
He lifts one weathered hand. Not commanding. Welcoming.
And his expression shifts — ancient and knowing, like someone who has been waiting a very long time to see this moment.
“Now?” He gestures toward the Gate. Toward the blazing white light. Toward whatever waits on the other side. “Now you do what Valkyries have always done.”
He turns to face the shadow army. The souls. The lost.
His voice carries across the plateau — not loud, but infinite. Reaching every bowed figure, every waiting spirit, every Ed who’s held on for centuries.
“Rise.”
They do.
Slowly. Reverently. The named shadows first — Bob snapping to attention, Patricia tucking her notebook away, Mouse stretching like he’s been waiting for this his whole existence. Walter pulses once, twice, bright and steady.
And then the Eds. Rising in a wave. Tens of thousands of identical shadow forms straightening up, shuffling slightly, ready to finallymove.
Thousands of faces turn toward me. The named shadows with expressions I can read — pride, hope, love. The Eds with… well. Ed expressions. Vaguely patient. Vaguely ready to get this whole “being dead” thing sorted out.
The God looks at me one last time.
“Come, Valkyrie. Your dead are waiting.”
The Gate pulses behind us. Its hum deepens — a sound I feel in my bones more than hear. The light shifts from blinding white to something warmer. Something that feels like welcome.
Like home.
Chapter 2
Finn
There are so many Eds.
I cannot stress this enough.
SO. MANY. EDS.
They’re shuffling toward the Gate like the world’s longest, most depressing conga line. Thousands of identical shadow blobs, indistinguishable from each other, moving with all the urgency of a glacier with commitment issues.
Kaia stands at the threshold, wings spread, looking like a goddess made of starlight and shadow.
And the Eds just… shuffle past her.
One of them bumps into another. They both wobble. Neither acknowledges it.
“This is the most anticlimactic apocalypse I’ve ever seen,” I say.
Torric grunts. “Shut up, Finn.”
“No, seriously. We fought a god. Okay, we didn’t, but we would have. We aligned six bloodlines. We literally opened a Gate to the afterlife. And now we’re watching—” I gesture at the endless stream of identical shadows. “—traffic.”
An Ed shuffles past. Then another. Then three more in a clump that looks suspiciously like they’re trying to cut in line.
“Bye, Ed,” I call out.
