Watcher of the Dead

The Dog at the Gate

They call me Cerberus, but that name’s too clean. It sounds like marble statues and old men in robes. Out here, they just call me “the hound.”

I’ve got three heads, yeah. Used to have four, but one rotted off during the Long Silence. Don’t ask. I don’t miss it.

I was born from monsters — Echidna and Typhon. You don’t need to know them. They birthed hydras and chimeras and worse. I came out barking.

My job? Guard the gate. Keep the dead in. Keep the living out.

Easy enough.

Most days, I just pace. The River Styx hums low behind me like a dying throat. Souls drip down its banks like oil — quiet, numb things. No shouting. No wailing. No sound, unless I make one.

I don’t need to eat. I don’t sleep much. Time’s more of a suggestion here. Still, I remember some things.

Like the first time someone tried to sneak in.

He was wearing a lion’s skin. Big man. Mortal, but half-divine. Smelled like sweat and stormclouds. That’s how I knew he was a son of Zeus.

He played a tune on a lyre made from a tortoise shell, and I’ll be damned — it made one of my heads cry. The other two snapped at him anyway, but he got past. He always did.

Heracles.

Bastard.

He took someone out. Or maybe brought someone back in. I forget. It all blurs after a few millennia.

I don’t like the living. They’re noisy, full of heat and questions. Most come for love or vengeance or both. They think this place is a door.

It’s not. It’s an end.

But sometimes, one of them makes it interesting.

Like the girl.

She came barefoot. Wrapped in a red cloak, soaked in ash. Skin thin as leaves, eyes like flint.

Didn’t sneak. Didn’t run. Just walked right up to the Gate.

“Name,” I growled.

She didn’t flinch.

“Lyra.”

“No living souls beyond this point.”

She held something out. Not gold. Not iron. Not even magic.

A collar.

Leather, worn. A dog’s collar. The name tag said “Ash.”

Something inside one of my heads whimpered.

“My dog,” she said. “She died. Got hit by a carriage. I need her back.”

I laughed — a low, rattling sound that shook bones from the cliff walls.

“You think I trade? You think this is a market?”

“I think you’re a dog,” she said. “And dogs understand love.”

I should’ve torn her apart. Just one lunge, and her mortal blood would’ve stained the stones. But I didn’t move.

Because I remembered Ash.

I remembered every dog that came through.

Ash was a mutt. Part collie, part crow somehow. Never barked. Always wagged her tail, even as she crossed the river, her ribs showing through her fur.

She’d looked at me with eyes that said, I was good, wasn’t I?

Yeah, Ash. You were.

I let Lyra through. Told her she had one hour. No more.

She vanished into the mist, the collar swinging in her grip.

I waited.

Hours passed. Or maybe days. Like I said — time’s weird here.

When she returned, she wasn’t carrying Ash.

She was carrying the leash, empty.

“She wouldn’t come,” Lyra said. “Said it wasn’t right.”

I nodded. Ash had always been better than most humans.

Lyra sat beside me then. Didn’t speak for a long while.

Eventually, she asked, “Why do you stay here?”

I didn’t answer. None of the heads did.

But I thought about it.

You think I guard this place because I want to?

No.

It’s because someone has to.

Because the dead get restless. They forget they’re dead. They try to climb back into flesh.

I stop them. Tear them apart if I have to. I don’t enjoy it. It’s just the rule.

But some part of me wonders — who made the rule?

Who decided I had to be the one?

There’s a story I heard, once. Hermes told it during a rare visit.

He said the Fates tried to cut my thread once, but the shears broke.

“Too knotted,” they said. “Too tangled in the world’s edge.”

So maybe I’m not alive. Not dead either.

Just necessary.

Fine.

Then one day, I heard it again.

Music.

Soft. Melancholy. Not Heracles this time.

Another mortal.

He sang of a girl. His wife. Died on their wedding day.

He sang so sweetly the river stopped.

Even the damned turned to listen.

I stepped aside.

He walked past.

That was my mistake.

Because when he looked back — just once — she vanished.

He screamed.

I didn’t laugh.

He never came back.

The rules are simple, but they break hearts like glass.

The girl — Lyra — visited again.

Older. Eyes duller. Carried no collar this time.

She sat beside me again.

“Do you ever get tired of guarding ghosts?” she asked.

I said nothing.

She leaned against my left head and whispered, “You were good, too.”

That made something ache inside my chest.

Later, when she died, I made sure Ash was the one to greet her.

Fair’s fair.

And me?

I’ll keep guarding.

Not because I was told to.

But because if I don’t, the dead will flood the world like blood from a wound.

And someone has to stand at the gate and say, No.

Even if it’s just a dog.

Even if no one remembers why.

The Cracks in the Stone

It started with a whisper.

Not from the souls, not from the river. From the stone.

The obsidian walls around the gate began to hum. Not a sound you’d hear with ears — but one you’d feel in your teeth. Like something ancient was waking up.

I pressed a paw to the ground. It quivered.

“Earthquake?” my right head muttered.

“No,” the center replied. “This is deeper.”

I’d seen rebellions before. The occasional necromancer trying to break into Hades. A demigod trying to bust someone out. But this felt different.

This felt internal.

The dead weren’t trying to escape.

The Underworld was trying to collapse.

Then came the breach.

It started with the child.

He looked about five. Curly-haired. Blue tunic soaked in blood. Walked out of the mist like he’d been waiting.

I rose.

“You’re not allowed past this line,” I growled.

He looked at me. Smiled.

Then walked forward anyway.

I lunged.

My jaws passed straight through him.

No flesh. No soul. Just smoke.

He faded.

Then ten more came.

Children, elders, warriors — faces half-remembered from centuries past. All of them empty. Pale shadows of the real dead. But they walked freely, ignoring the Gate.

Something was wrong. Fundamentally wrong.

I called for Charon.

No answer.

I howled, low and long, a call meant to wake gods.

Only silence returned.

Then, out of the mist—

Lyra.

Not dead. Not alive.

Changed.

Her cloak was ash again, but her eyes… no longer flint. They burned like torchfire.

She crossed the line.

“Stop,” I said.

She didn’t.

“You’re not Lyra,” I growled.

“I was,” she said. “But not anymore.”

“What are you now?”

She smiled, sad and knowing. “A messenger. A warning.”

“For who?”

“For you.”

She reached out and touched the Gate.

The stone cracked.

A single fracture, running like a vein through obsidian.

It wasn’t much.

But it was enough.

I felt the shift in the world. Somewhere up above, mortals would start to dream of their dead. Not memories — actual visitations. The boundaries were thinning.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because no one remembers death anymore,” she said. “They buried it beneath comfort. Under rituals. But they never made peace with it. And now it’s coming back the only way it knows how.”

“You mean through me?”

“No,” she whispered. “Through absence. Through what happens when you’re gone.”

I bared my teeth. All three mouths.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You can’t hold the gate forever.”

“Watch me.”

She knelt beside me.

“You were never meant to be alone, Cerberus.”

“No one else would do it.”

“Then it’s time to find someone who will.”

That stopped me.

Because I’d never considered it. Not once.

I’d always believed I was made to guard. That this was my function. My curse. My place in the story.

But what if I was only the first?

Not the only?

Lyra stood. The fire in her eyes dimmed. Her form wavered.

She was leaving again.

“You know where to start,” she said. “Find the ones like you. The half-bound. The unchosen. The creatures no one wrote endings for.”

Then she was gone.

And the crack remained.

The gate still stood, but barely.

And I realized- if I didn’t act now, if I didn’t adapt, the flood would come.

The ghosts would rise.

And the living would forget how to die.

So I did something I hadn’t done in a thousand years.

I left my post.

Not all the way.

Just far enough.

Into the outer rings, past Lethe’s bend, where the forgotten souls cluster like dust.

I sniffed the wind.

Looking for scent.

Looking for myth.

Looking for a successor.

Maybe a jackal god, left over from the old desert kingdoms.

Maybe a barghest, hiding in the edges of nightmares.

Maybe even a mortal, brave and mad enough to understand.

I still guard the gate. But now I hunt, too.

For help.

Because the world’s shifting.

And even a dog, even a three-headed monster chained by fate and fire, knows-

You don’t hold the dark alone.

Not anymore.