Join the Dear Soul Mail Club and receive exclusive illustrated prints delivered to your door every month, featuring carefully crafted artworks and stickers based on The Soultihon, created as collectible pieces of inspiration.

The fog pulled back like a tide going out, and what it left behind hit her all at once.

The subway car. The murky yellow light. The stone scales. The number burned into her wrist. It was too much to hold, and for a while, she didn’t try. She just sat where she’d landed, knees pulled to her chest, and let herself cry the way she hadn’t let herself cry in a year. Not carefully. Not quietly. The whole weight of the last twelve months came up at once, the debt, the double shifts, the version of herself that used to have a life before it got replaced by a commute and a spreadsheet of medical bills, and underneath all of it, the one thought she didn’t let herself finish.

Jin would know what to—

She stopped herself before the sentence could land anywhere. Some thoughts about her sister she’d learned not to walk all the way to the end of.

Eventually, the crying wore itself out, the way it always did, and left her hollow and a little embarrassed, like she’d made a scene in front of an audience that didn’t care. She wiped her face and looked at her own hands, and there it was again, that faint blue at the edges of her, so pale she kept doubting she’d really seen it.

What am I even supposed to do with this?

She didn’t have an answer, so she did the only thing that had ever worked for her when a problem was too big to solve in one sitting: she got up, and she started moving, because moving was easier than sitting still with it.

The city, once she was inside it, wasn’t what she expected. From the outside, it had looked like something dead, towers and gears and fog. Inside, it was full of people. Souls, she corrected herself, except they didn’t look like ghosts; they looked like a crowded street back home: something that resembled shopping. It was almost funny. It was almost comforting, in a horrible way, proof that whatever this place was, it hadn’t stopped being full of people trying to hold onto normal.

She let herself wander a little longer than she should have, half out of shock, half because some small stubborn part of her was hoping. Hoping that if she just kept walking, kept looking at stores, handbag boutiques, watch counters, a whole economy of the dead going about their faces, she might see one she recognized. It was a stupid hope. She knew it was stupid. She kept walking anyway.

If people end up here when they die, and Jin—

She didn’t finish that one either. Jin wasn’t dead. Jin was in a hospital bed with a feeding tube and amputated legs, waiting for a mind that hadn’t come back yet. That was the whole reason Gina had spent a year working herself into the ground. That was the debt on her phone. That was the thing she was supposed to be protecting.

So why does some part of me feel like I’d almost be relieved to find her here?

She hated the thought the second it arrived, hated herself for having it, and shoved it down hard enough that her chest actually hurt from the effort.

That was when the soul walking toward her lurched violently and slammed into her, hard enough to nearly shatter her thin, translucent body.

It was a dark-haired girl about Gina’s age, but her soul was as turbid as stagnant water, mottled with a sickly yellowish-green. The moment she brushed past, a pungent wave of industrial sulfuric acid rolled off her, sharp enough that Gina’s eyes stung.

Gina stared, unable to look away. The girl’s feet seemed sunk into some invisible mire, each step a visible fight against a weight nobody else could see. Worse, far worse, her skin was completely encrusted with luxury handbags, dozens of them, erupting from her flesh like malignant tumors, some trailing along the ground behind her, dragging with a sound like something being torn. It looked like the sheer accumulated weight of them had anchored her in place, like she’d spent so long collecting things that the things had finally started collecting her instead.

Gina’s stomach turned, not from disgust exactly. From recognition of something. Whatever this place was, it clearly didn’t let you leave your worst habits behind. It turned them into something you had to carry, literally, in your own skin.

The commotion drew attention, but not toward the girl. Gina realized it a half-second too late. Dozens of dull, glassy stares had already swung toward her instead, and a ripple of hushed, urgent whispering spread outward from where she stood.

She hated it instantly, the vulnerable, pinned feeling of being looked at like a specimen. She ducked her head and quickened her pace, aiming for a narrow side alley, already half-panicking.

“Strange,” she muttered to herself, once she was clear of the worst of it, looking down at her own hands. “Is it my color?”

She lifted her arm and sniffed it. Nothing. No acid, no chemical reek, nothing at all. Not like the girl, not like anyone. “No smell either,” she said, quietly, mostly to hear her own voice say something ordinary. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what they—”

She didn’t get to finish the thought.

The whispering hadn’t stopped when she ducked away. It had spread. A man near the mouth of the alley slowed as he passed her, the way you’d slow near a bakery without meaning to, drawn by something before he’d consciously registered why.

Then he turned around.

Gina kept walking, faster, telling herself it was nothing. But a few seconds later, she heard footsteps behind her, his, and glanced back to find him closer than he should have been, his head tilted, nostrils, if that’s even what they were anymore, flared like he was trying to place a smell he couldn’t quite name.

“You,” he said, low, almost reverent. “What are you?”

“Nothing.” She kept moving. “Sorry. Excuse me.”

He didn’t back off. Worse, two more souls nearby had stopped what they were doing and turned, drawn by nothing she could see or hear, just some current in the air that apparently ran straight through her. A woman broke off from a shop doorway and drifted toward her, unhurried, her expression gone slack and hungry in a way that had nothing to do with hunger for food.

“Do you feel that?” the woman said to no one, to everyone. “Do you feel that?”

Gina’s heart kicked hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

More turned. Five, then eight, then more than she could count, all of them drifting toward her the way iron filings drift toward a magnet, slow at first and then not slow at all. Someone’s hand grazed her arm, and she flinched back so hard she stumbled, and the contact seemed to do something to the person who’d touched her. Their aura flared, brightened, and their face went slack with something that looked disturbingly like relief.

They can feel it, she realized, with a cold drop in her stomach. Whatever I am. They can feel it, and they want more of it.

“Please,” she said, backing up, hitting a wall of bodies behind her that she hadn’t seen coming in. “I don’t have anything.”

“You smell like nothing,” someone murmured, close to her ear, and it should have been a strange thing to find frightening, except it wasn’t strange at all. It was the tone. Craving.

The crowd tightened. Hands, more of them now, reaching. Not violent, not yet, just desperate, the way a starving person reaches for bread without thinking about whether it’s rude.

Gina did the only thing that made sense in the half-second she had to decide. She went low, ducked under an outstretched arm, and shoved sideways into the gap between two bodies before it could close. She didn’t think about it as a strategy. It wasn’t a strategy. It was the same animal instinct that had once gotten her out of a stalled elevator packed too tight to breathe in. Move first, panic later.

She broke free into a side alley and ran without looking back, her lungs burning in a body that technically didn’t need to breathe, until the sounds behind her thinned out and finally stopped.

She pressed herself against a wall of cold brass and shook.

They wanted something from me, she thought, and the thought was so absurd and so true at the same time that a small, horrified laugh came out of her before she could stop it. Not my body. Whatever’s inside it.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

She spun, half a scream already in her throat, and found an old man standing a careful distance away, hands raised, palms out, like he’d seen this exact reaction before and knew better than to get close too fast.

“I’m not one of them,” he said gently. “I promise you that much. Though considering what you just walked through, I understand if that promise isn’t worth much right now.”

Gina stared at him, chest heaving, and for once didn’t have the energy to be suspicious. “What am I?” she said, and her voice cracked on it, small and scared instead of demanding. “Why did they look at me like that?”

“I’m William,” he said, not answering yet, which somehow felt kinder than if he had. “Let’s get you somewhere quiet first. Then I’ll tell you everything I can.”

She looked at his wrist without meaning to and found a faint, glowing number. 85.50.

“Is that the same thing?” she asked. “The thing they wanted from me.”

“Yes,” he said. “And no. It’s a long answer, and you’re standing in the open.” He glanced past her shoulder, toward the mouth of the alley, where the murmur of the crowd hadn’t quite faded. “Please. Walk with me.”

She almost said no. Some old habit, some year-old instinct to trust no one who offered help for free.

Then she thought about Jin, about how the whole reason she was even letting herself hope this place had answers was Jin, and the fear in that thought was so much simpler and cleaner than the fear she’d been drowning in a second ago that she let it decide for her.

“Okay,” she said. “But you’re going to answer me. All of it. I have someone I need to find.”

Something in the old man’s face changed. Not suspicion, something softer, almost sad.

“Then you’re not the first person to walk into this city looking for someone,” he said. “Come on. It’s not safe to talk about either thing out here.”

© 2026 Lexi. The Soulithon (楼魂) and all associated characters, settings, storylines, artwork, and worldbuilding elements are the intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, adaptation, distribution, AI training, or commercial use of this work is prohibited without written permission.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Join the Dear Soul Mail Club and receive exclusive illustrated prints delivered to your door every month, featuring carefully crafted artworks and stickers based on The Soultihon, created as collectible pieces of inspiration. Link: https://www.thelexistudio.co.uk/products/dear-soul-mail-club-1

The heavy bronze subway doors slid open with a low, metallic groan. Beyond them lay a world that defied human reason.

Inside the carriage, passengers stared out, paralyzed by a terror so visceral it hung like a physical weight. They recoiled instinctively. The expanse outside mirrored the exact same eerie, dead silence of the carriage.

“Move,” someone whispered from behind, a sharp, trembling shove to Gina’s shoulder. “We have to move!”

But there was no time to hesitate. Behind them, the modern subway carriage was rapidly warping, twisting into a mechanical monstrosity of grinding, dark-bronze gears before dissolving into a shimmering phantom. With their retreat cut off, panic erupted. The crowd surged forward, tumbling out of the carriage in a desperate, chaotic scramble.

Hysteria spread like a plague across the platform. Some ran blindly, screaming and searching for an exit; others collapsed onto the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Most simply stood frozen, staring blankly as despair swallowed them whole.

“Is this a joke? Where are the stairs?! Where is the exit?!” a woman in a business suit shrieked, clutching her head.

Gina didn’t cry, but her chest heaved, a fragile dam holding back the storm raging inside her.

“Where on earth are we?” she thought. “Dream, or…death?”

As the word crossed her mind again, the face of her younger sister, Jin, flashed before her eyes without warning. A sharp pang of grief hit her, and the tears she had been holding back finally spilled over. What a cruel, absurd joke. A year ago, Jin had made the desperate choice to jump from the school building, a terrifying leap to end her own life. She survived the plunge, but her soul remained cruelly tethered to reality, trapped inside the quiet vacuum of a hospital coma.

Gina had spent the last year fighting with everything she had, trading her dignity for a pay check just to fund Jin’s care. Having all that effort stolen from her on an ordinary Monday commute was a sick, twisted joke.

Still, a stubborn part of her refused to believe the world was entirely heartless. If she died, Jin would be left utterly unprotected.

“What will happen to my poor sis?” The thought struck like a physical blow. A sudden, suffocating panic gripped her chest, and her knees buckled under the weight of it.

Wiping the tears from her face, Gina took a deep breath, forcing the rising grief and the sheer, terrifying helplessness back down into her chest. She didn’t have the luxury of sorrow. Steeling herself, she hurried to keep pace with the terrified crowd ahead.

Screams, wails, and the echoing thuds of people throwing themselves against the sealed bronze doors reverberated across the cavernous platform. The fat man wearing the luxury gold watch sat paralyzed on the ground, staring at a pile of cash that had just disintegrated into ash before his eyes. His face was paper-white, his lips moving in a frantic, manic whisper: “No... my money... no..no..no..”

Screeech!

The agonizing shriek of scraping metal suddenly shattered the din, instantly silencing the crowd. A heavy wave of heat, thick with the stench of rust and sulfur, slammed into them, sending dozens into fits of violent coughing. Gina tracked the sound, her pupils shrinking.

This was no subway station.

They stood in a colossal, indescribable alien expanse. There was no sun. High above, shrouded in a dense, swirling mist, a labyrinth of massive bronze pipes hung like the veins of a dying leviathan, violently spewing clouds of murky green steam from their seams. The air itself felt heavy, vibrating with a low-frequency hum that rattled the teeth in Gina’s skull. Through the haze, an immense steampunk metropolis loomed, a chaotic jigsaw of bronze buildings, towering gear-fortresses, and suspended conveyor belts. Massive mechanical structures ground against one another with deafening, ceaseless roars, sounding less like machinery and more as if they were devouring something unseen.

And standing like an immovable spike at the edge of the platform was an Ore, iron giant.

He stood over eight feet tall, his skin a cold, coarse, dark gray that looked less like flesh and more like an industrial sculpture forged from raw pig iron. He wore a tattered leather apron. In his right hand, he gripped a black iron whip as thick as a man’s arm, its surface crackling with arcs of eerie blue electricity.

“New souls!” the Ore boomed. His voice, like rolling thunder, rattled the bronze pipes overhead. The fresh arrivals blanched, instinctively clustering tighter together.

But the wealthy fat man was still trapped in the delusion of his former privilege. Used to ordering people around in the real world, he boldly broke protocol, marching to the front of the crowd and pointing a trembling, manic finger directly at Ore’s face.

“Who the hell do you think you are?!” he demanded, his voice cracking with a mix of terror and anger. “Do you know who I am? Let me out of here right—”

The Ore did not blink. He did not look insulted, or angry, or even amused. His gray, iron-sculpted face remained utterly vacant, his gaze passing over the wealthy man as if analyzing a glitching asset.

Crack!

The whip sliced through the air. With barely a flick of his wrist, the Ore’s black, lightning-laced iron whip blurred, striking the fat man square in the chest.

“Aaagh!”

The man let out a blood-curdling shriek. As the blow landed, Gina watched in horror as the thick, muddy brass-colored aura surrounding his body shattered, dissolving into glittering specks that scattered into the gloomy air. Like a deflating balloon, the man’s solid form instantly turned dim and translucent. He collapsed onto the freezing bronze floor, twitching violently, stripped even of the strength to scream.

“Arghh..Dross!”

the Ore spat, his voice dripping with contempt. “Low-grade dross through and through. Look at that muddy essence.”

He slowly uncoiled his whip, his frigid gaze sweeping over the trembling crowd.

“This is the bottom of the Tower, The Bronze City!”

Cowed by absolute violence, any remaining resistance evaporated. The passengers, once dignified executives and office workers, sobbed as they fell into a ragged line, taking their first trembling steps forward.

“Just keep your head down,” a young man in front of Gina muttered to himself, his whole body shaking. “Just don’t look at him...”

Gina silently slipped into the very back of the line. Forcing down her panic, she kept her eyes moving, absorbing every detail.

“Dead,” she thought, a hard, ugly knot of resentment flaring hot in her chest. “I’m really dead. And this is… hell? Seriously?”

Waking up here was the ultimate insult. She felt like this ending was actively mocking her pathetic, soulless life.

“Why am I here?” she thought, the fury finally boiling over. “I worked myself to the bone. I spent my entire existence driving myself like a beast of burden, tolerating every toxic, absurd demand my bosses threw at me”, she thought. She had never hurt a single person. She had spent her whole life being invisible, harmless, and compliant, doing exactly what she was told.

And this was her reward? To be dumped into the absolute garbage tier of the afterlife, forced to suffer alongside a chaotic sea of frantic, muddy souls?

“And what exactly was the iron giant?”

Looking at the enforcer herding them into a flawless queue, Gina felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold floor. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t even look malicious. He looked like an administrator fixing a broken line of code. Unbending. Unfeeling.

“Next! Move it!”

The Ore’s impatient roar snapped Gina out of her thoughts. Looking up, she saw him herding the souls toward a colossal staircase that stretched infinitely upward into the smog. Through the dense fog at the summit, she caught the silhouette of a towering, monolithic stone statue. It possessed an acronymic, gigantic face, and its outstretched hands held aloft an ancient, massive pair of scales.

One by one, the figures ahead stepped onto the platform. Each time a soul boarded, the scales groaned under the weight, tilting slightly. Then, with a harsh mechanical hum, the person would vanish into the mist

.

Finally, it was Gina’s turn. Her heart hammered violently against her ribs. Standing at the base of the colossal monument, she truly felt like nothing more than a speck of dust trapped inside a vast, unfeeling machine.

GONG!

A deafening chime exploded out of the void.

A searing, branding heat shot through Gina’s right wrist. Gasping, she instinctively clutched her arm. When she pulled her fingers away, terror gripped her. Glowing beneath her skin with a cold, deathly light was a string of digits:

0.00

“What... what is this?”

From the mist above, a cold, disembodied mechanical chime echoed, as if logging her entry into a grand, unyielding ledger. Before she could even process the bizarre number, the surrounding fog surged forward like a tidal wave, swallowing her whole. Beneath her feet, the stone scale groaned and tilted, plunging her down into the unknown abyss.

© 2026 Lexi. The Soulithon (楼魂) and all associated characters, settings, storylines, artwork, and worldbuilding elements are the intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, adaptation, distribution, AI training, or commercial use of this work is prohibited without written permission.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Gina was pressed hard into the corner of the carriage, swaying with the rhythmic, suffocating surge of the crowd. She glanced instinctively at the commuters around her. Some had vacant, glassy eyes; others stood with their eyes closed, faces etched with profound exhaustion; many more were staring blankly at the floor. Most, however, were hunched over their phones, obsessively scrolling through an endless stream of mundane tasks.

Hiss…

The subway doors slid shut. With her right hand gripping a hanging strap for stability, Gina struggled to swipe through her phone screen with her left.

“Ugh, another gruelling Monday”, she thought.

For the first time ever, Gina did not open her work email. Instead, her eyes were locked on a notification, her brow furrowing into a tight knot. It was a past-due notice from the private nursing facility. The cold, black digits reminded her that payments were now two weeks late.

She killed the screen in frustration and shoved the phone into her pocket. A second later, driven by a desperate, irrational impulse, she pulled it back out.

“Should I call James? See if the café is still hiring part-timers for the weekends?”

After a moment of deliberation, Gina let out a long, ragged sigh and locked the screen again. She was truly, utterly spent. She fought to restrain herself, terrified of slipping back into the agonizing memories of a year ago. But every time she thought of that night, the moment the police called to tell her that Jin had fallen, she felt a visceral, nauseating revolt in her body. She would never forget that sudden, high-pitched buzz in her brain, followed by a piercing tinnitus, and then an abyss of absolute emptiness.

Clack-clack. Clack-clack.

The screech of the subway wheels against the tracks sharpened suddenly, jerking Gina out of her thoughts. She opened her eyes to the same crush of suits and ties. She took a deep breath, her heart a tangled mess of emotions: anger, regret, heartbreak, numbness, and that tiny, pathetic, lingering shred of hope, the hope that, perhaps, Jin might suddenly wake up.

Suddenly.

BANG!

A dull, thundering sound, like a primordial beast awakening beneath the earth, exploded from under the carriage.

Before anyone could react, BOOM!

Another deafening roar detonated, not in the air, but seemingly deep within their very minds.

In a heartbeat, the subway was plunged into absolute, crushing darkness. Then, a pain so searing and all-consuming that it felt like incineration swept over Gina. She could not even manage a scream before she saw towering walls of fire roaring from the neighbouring carriage, hungrily licking their way toward her. It felt as if a red-hot, jagged blade were being driven straight into her crown, tearing her flesh, her memories, and her very soul from the marrow of her bones.

...

Time lost all meaning.

A bizarre, unnatural silence fell over the carriage. The raging fire vanished into thin air.

The next second, gravity failed. Gina snapped her eyes open, her stomach lurching. She, along with the office workers and the scattered leather briefcases, was floating in mid-air.

“What is happening?”

“Did the tracks snap?”

As terrified screams erupted in the darkness, the overhead fluorescent lights began to flicker erratically. Each time they pulsed, the cold, modern white light decayed into a dull, lifeless bronze.

Cough. Cough!

Gina plummeted to the floor, gasping for air. The incinerating pain had vanished, replaced by a strange, weightless sense of emptiness.

She scrambled to her feet, dazed, and looked around. She was still in a subway carriage, but everything had changed. The modern interior of stainless steel and industrial plastic had been replaced by rough, dark, verdigris-covered bronze. On the carriage walls, countless massive, rusted gears clicked and groaned, grinding against each other in slow, heavy rotation.

People lay scattered across the floor in disarray.

“Where is this? Did Line 3 derail?” A fat man wearing a luxury gold watch scrambled up, clutching his head. When he saw the eerie, rust-caked bronze surroundings, his composure shattered. He frantically pulled out his wallet, slammed a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills onto the floor, and shrieked, “Get me out of here! I will pay! Ten thousand in cash! I can wire it right now!”

When no one answered, he shouted, his voice cracking, “Twenty thousand! Twenty!” The veins on his neck bulged, his face turning a deep, congested shade of purple.

Yet, the moment the banknotes touched the bronze floor, the green ink faded instantly, crumbling into fine, grey ash that vanished into nothingness.

Gina did not have the energy to spare for the man. She reached instinctively for her phone. It was dead, it would not turn on. But as her gaze fell upon her own hand, her pupils constricted. Her skin appeared translucent, a ghostly, semi-transparent haze.

She scanned the other passengers, who were now beginning to stir. Each of them emitted a faint, muddy, brass-coloured aura. She alone possessed no light; she was as clean and hollow as a void.

Gina’s heart skipped a beat. She turned her head, rigid, toward the window.

There were no tunnels, no cold steel rails. Outside was a bottomless, roiling abyss of thick fog. High above the mist, she could vaguely discern the silhouettes of countless, gargantuan mechanical structures.

Silence.

After the initial shock, mindless panic began to spread through the carriage. Some slammed their palms against the bronze doors in a desperate attempt to pry them open; others mashed their dead phones again and again, trembling.

Looking at the indescribable, mechanical monoliths beyond the window, Gina’s heart sank to the very bottom of her chest. A thought, absurd yet crystal clear, surfaced in her mind:

“Am I... dead?”

Just then, accompanied by the heavy, grinding rotation of gears, the bronze doors slowly slid open…