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Nathan drifted through an empty void. No sound, no light, nothing. His body, if he still had one, was numb. He couldn’t tell which way was up or down, only that something of him still existed. His mind, perhaps. Everything else had vanished.
Then it hit him, like a stone tumbling off a cliff.
He was dead.
Nathan couldn’t feel his body because it was gone. All that remained were his thoughts, his essence, his soul. The part that made him him.
The thought should have frightened him. He was dead, for goodness’ sake. But fear required a body, a heartbeat, a nervous system, and he had none of those anymore.
Without sight, without sense, Nathan floated in darkness. Alone. When he tried to recall his last moments, he found only fragments: the flicker of the television, the bitterness on his tongue, a voice calling his name—though he’d thought he was alone.
And then... silence. He hadn’t expected the afterlife to be so vacant.
If this were Heaven, it was lonelier than he imagined. If Hell, kinder than he deserved.
He waited for someone to find him—an angel, a messenger, a demon—but no one came.
Instead, something flickered in the distance. A light, though it came from within, not beyond. A vision took shape, faint and grainy at first, like an old film reel. As he focused, the picture sharpened.
It was his family.
Katherine stood in the kitchen, phone pressed to her ear, with an overdue bill in hand. Her voice wavered as she begged for an extension. Ben sat at the table, pretending to do his homework, although his pencil had been still for minutes. And Esther leaned against the window, frowning at the smoky skyline.
None of them knew yet. The police hadn’t called. It was still too soon.
It wasn’t fair to burden them with another loss. Katherine’s divorce had only just been finalised. She was struggling to stay afloat as a single mother. Plus, the kids hated the city and their new school. His death would be one more weight pressing down on them.
The image faded, and another replaced it.
The hotel.
The Undervale looked worse than ever: cracked windowpanes, rusted gutters, and a roof sagging under neglect. It had always been dying, which was perhaps why so many ghosts clung to it. It felt like home to the broken.
The vision narrowed to a single room. His room.
Nathan saw himself slumped in his armchair, jaw slack, eyes glassy, utterly still. His corpse looked like a hollow puppet, waiting for its puppeteer to return.
And at his feet—
Abaddon.
The boy was curled against his legs, head bowed, eyes closed as if asleep. But Abaddon didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. For a moment, Nathan thought he was dead too, until the boy shifted slightly, leaning closer against his lifeless body.
Nathan’s chest ached.
“Kid...” he whispered.
He remembered the day he found him, trapped at the bottom of a ditch. Eyes too old for his face. He’d claimed he didn’t need help. A lie Nathan had believed was false bravado, but now he knew better. Abaddon had understood cruelty long before he’d met it.
There was something ancient in him, something dangerous. A demon, yes, but Nathan had seen something else. Fear, maybe. Or longing.
Maybe that’s why Abaddon stayed. He wanted company. To be treated as human, even if it was only pretend. And now, with Nathan gone, Abaddon was alone again.
Nathan wanted to reach out and comfort him, but without a body, all he could do was watch. He wished he could say sorry, to tell him even demons deserved family. He shouldn’t have to be alone.
He thought he wanted peace, a break from the endless struggle of living. But now, looking at Abaddon, the eternal child by his corpse, Nathan hesitated. The boy had stayed. He had no one else.
Then Nathan thought of Katherine and the kids—their bills, their loneliness, their fragile hope. They needed him, too.
The vision dissolved, leaving Nathan in darkness once more. A choice hung before him, glowing like a neon sign.
He could move on, cross whatever waited beyond this void. Be it Heaven, Hell, or nothing at all.
Or he could return.
Not as a man; his body was long gone. But as something else. A whisper in the walls. A flicker in the moonlight. Still himself, but not quite whole.
A ghost.
Nathan knew what he would choose.
Light surged through the darkness, pressing close, pulling him backward toward the world he’d left behind. When he opened his eyes, the hotel ceiling loomed above him, dust floating in the air like stars.
He was back. And this time, he’d do right by his family—all of them.