Cerberus and Alethea

I have no heartbeat. No breath. No sleep.

But I wait.

For millennia, I have stood sentinel at the threshold of the Underworld, where the very air hangs thick with ash and forgotten souls. Silence reigns here and not the gentle hush of peace, but the weighty stillness of oblivion. Beneath my claws, the stone is scorched black by ages of sorrow, etched with the footprints of the dead. My three heads do not slumber; my eyes remain forever unblinking. I am the final gaze that greets the souls of the departed, the last witness before their names are swallowed by Lethe’s tide and lost to time.

I am Cerberus, guardian of the boundary between life and death. I do not question. I do not think. I obey.

Until the day someone escapes.

It begins with a scent. Strange — warm, fleeting, alive. It curls through the still air like a flame that refuses to die, a thread of sunlight where no light belongs. It is wrong, this scent. It does not belong in the land of the dead.

The soul is small, newly dead. A child.

She should have crossed the Styx, faded like all the others. Instead, she turned her head — looked back — and ran. No soul has ever done that. No one dares.

Hades’ voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, deep as the river and cold as old bone. “Bring her back,” he says.

So I rise, shake the stillness from my fur, and walk.

For the first time in an age, I leave the Underworld.

-

The mortal world is loud;

The wind stirs the trees relentlessly, and birds cry out like distant alarms. Grass bends beneath my weightless tread, and sunlight scorches the back of my exposed skull — searing, intrusive, and far too alive. Everything here moves too swiftly, too brightly, too loud for one born of shadow. I wear but a single head in this realm; the others slumber beneath my skin, coiled and waiting. I have taken a shape to still their fear — a towering black hound, as large as a warhorse, with eyes that burn like twin suns. My passage leaves no prints, no scent. Only unease.

I follow the scent northward, through silent valleys and trembling cities, through thunder and moonlight. It smells of thyme, smoke, and cold iron. It smells like memory. The living do not notice me. Once, a child looks directly at me and smiles, but when her mother turns to see what she’s pointing at, I am already gone.

At last, I find her.

She is curled beneath a twisted tree at the edge of a meadow, knees pulled to her chest, hair plastered to her face with tears and dirt. She does not flinch when I emerge from the woods. Her eyes meet mine, and she does not look away. Instead, her face softens.

“You came,” she whispers. “Skýlos.”

The name strikes something inside me — not pain, not exactly. A tremor. A cracked bell. Something buried.

“You remember me,” she says. “I hoped you would.”

She is just a child, no older than ten, but her words are far older. The scent clings to her like a secret, like she has walked through more than one lifetime to reach this place. I do not speak, but she seems to understand the silence between us.

“I don’t belong down there,” she says. “She told me. Hecate.”

That name hits harder than the first. Hecate. The torchbearer. The shadow-walker. The goddess of thresholds and forgotten dogs. For a moment, the trees seem to bend inwards. My vision darkens.

Then—flash.

A flicker.

A memory.

A temple. Stone walls. Firelight dancing on marble. A small black dog curled by a fire, ears twitching at the sound of singing. A girl in white robes — not unlike the one before me now — stroking my head with ink-stained fingers.

“Good dog, Skýlos,” she whispers.

I stagger backward. The woods sway. The child rises to her knees and reaches toward me.

“You remember, don’t you?” she says. “Before all this. Before the Underworld.”

I growl. Not at her, but at the surge of heat in my ribs — of feeling. It is a dangerous thing, to feel. I have not done so in eons. I remember flames. A temple burned to ash. Screams. And then a voice — a god’s voice — promising me purpose. Binding my body into something monstrous.

“He needed a guardian,” the girl says. “So Hecate gave him you. But you weren’t always that. You were mine.”

I do not remember being hers. But I remember being… someone else. Something smaller. Warmer. Loyal in a way that didn’t taste like chains.

We walk.

She says her name is Alethea. She remembers drowning. Cold water. No air. Then darkness, then waking where she did not belong. And a voice — Hecate’s voice — telling her to run.

“I don’t know why she told me to find you,” Alethea says. “But I think… maybe I did something wrong. Maybe this is a second chance.”

The mortal world feels wrong beneath my paws. Too loose, too soft. But I keep walking. I do not know where I am leading her — only that the pull of the Underworld grows stronger as we go. We pass a still pond, and in its reflection I see all three of my heads: one calm, one snarling, and one weeping.

That night, I dream for the first time in a thousand years.

I dream of the priestess — of her laughter echoing between temple walls, of chasing her through sunlit fields. Of her calling my name not in command, but in joy.

I wake with a whimper.

Alethea is already awake. She strokes my head like she’s done it a hundred times before.

“I used to call you Skýlos because I didn’t think you had another name,” she says softly. “Maybe you didn’t.”

-

We reach the clearing where the veil between worlds shimmers like heat over a summer road. I know it well. I have stood on the other side for eons, keeping the living out and the dead in.

Now I stand before it with her.

The pressure returns. A weight behind my eyes. A voice without words. Return her. Obey.

The second head stirs beneath my skin. The third begins to breathe. I was made for this. To retrieve, to return, to guard.

“I didn’t mean to run,” Alethea whispers. “I just remembered you. I thought maybe—if I found you—you’d remember me too.”

She lays her hand against my muzzle. Her fingers tremble. I feel it — a heartbeat, hers — and something else. A flicker. A pull.

“You protected me once,” she says. “Will you do it again?”

The air goes still.

Then the veil opens.

The trees bend toward it. Shadows slide along the grass. I feel Hades’ presence. Watching. Judging. Expecting.

I take one step toward the gate.

And then I turn — and place myself between her and the void.

The growl that tears from my throat splits the air. Birds scatter from the trees. The grass withers at my feet.

“She is not yours,” I say. I do not speak with words. But I am understood.

The shadows rear back. The air crackles. For a moment, the gate pulses — wide, hungry — and I feel the full force of the Underworld pressing against me.

But I do not move.

I remember.

I remember what I was.

Not a monster.

Not a tool.

A dog.

And hers.

The gate begins to close. The pull fades. Hades says nothing. Perhaps he remembers, too.

Perhaps even the gods grow weary.

-

When it is done, Alethea falls to her knees.

I lie beside her, pressing my head into her lap. She does not speak. Neither do I.

We are quiet together.

I do not know what comes next. Perhaps they will send something worse after me. Perhaps I have doomed us both.

Or perhaps… this is what Hecate intended all along.

To remind a guardian that even in death, there can still be love.

For now, I stay.

No longer a jailer.

Just a dog.