[Author’s note:  Again, this is fiction for the Empire LARP campaign run by Profound Decisions. I don’t own the setting or the world, and am writing this as a player with no special knowledge of either]

Cold. 

Always, always cold. 

Even when the sun bakes the cobbles of the streets foot-blisteringly warm and the air burns like furnace-heat, the waters of Caricomare keep the chill of corpse-flesh, stealing the breath from living lungs with the shock of immersion. 

It’s a different world, down there – silent, dark, cold as the grave – and Nico slips his way through it like a ghost, a living, breathing shadow in a city owned and guarded by the eyeless, skinless dead. 

Trespasser. 

Interloper. 

Thief.

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EDIT: Now with an illustration by the wonderful Lizzie Jones (Estantia)!
[Author’s note:
Context bit first – this is fiction for the Empire LARP campaign run by Profound Decisions. I don’t own the setting or the world, and am writing this as a player with no special knowledge of either. 
This particular bit of fiction is based on events which happened at the Summer Solstice event this year and, specifically, how my character (Levi of Zephaniah’s Lament) died. The second half of it is very much acanonical when it comes to existing knowledge of how the afterlife works in setting, but I like it and so it’s staying.
Also heavy CW for suicide by blade, which is why the whole piece is under the Continue Reading link]

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