...A ferryman poled his skiff across waters so still they held no reflection. The coins he collected from the dead rattled in his pouch, and he did not speak, for words had no meaning here where all debts were paid in silence. On the far shore, a figure stood cloaked in absence itself, regarding the procession with eyes that had witnessed the fall of civilizations and would witness the fall of stars. When he gestured, the newly dead stepped forward without fear. They had been promised nothing. They would receive nothing. Yet in that nothing, somehow, they found peace....