Liam opened his eyes to the taste of cold air and the smell of wet asphalt. He was standing on a city street in the middle of the night, the silence broken only by the distant hum of a single car. A flickering streetlight cast a jaundiced glow over the pavement. It took his mind, still sticky with the warmth of his bedroom and the scent of his newborn son, several disorienting seconds to place the building before him. The black door. The discreet, brushed-steel plaque. The club.
A figure leaned against the brick wall beside the entrance, shadowed. As Marcus’s—no, Liam’s—consciousness fully clicked into place, the man pushed off the wall and stepped into the weak light. Liam recognized him instantly, the knowledge surfacing not from his own memory but from the Deep Pool’s archive. This was the quiet one. The ghost who visited Elena’s senses with a frequency so low it was almost a rumor. His presence in the chorus was a soft hum, not a scream.
The ghost was younger than Liam remembered from the fractured memories, or perhaps death had simply smoothed the edges. He had a kind, unremarkable face, and his eyes held none of the predatory gleam of Marcus or the frantic joy of Jonathan. They were calm. Watchful. He smiled, a small, genuine thing, and looked directly into Liam’s eyes.
And Liam remembered.
The private room, air thick with sweat and sex. Liam on his back on the couch, Elena astride someone else in the center of the room, her cries a melody he was still learning. This man—this ghost—had knelt on the floor between Liam’s spread legs. He hadn’t spoken. He’d simply looked up, a question in his gaze, and at Liam’s dazed, surrendered nod, he’d bent his head.
The memory was shockingly vivid, a clear channel in the static. The wet heat of the man’s mouth. The skilled, reverent suction. The way his hands had steadied Liam’s hips, not to control, but to hold. It had been an act of service, not conquest. A gift given in the midst of the storm. Liam had come in his mouth, a sharp, guilty release, and the man had swallowed, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and given Liam that same, small smile before melting back into the orgy to find Elena.
“You remember,” the ghost said. His voice was softer than Liam expected, a low tenor that matched his eyes.
Liam could only nod, his throat tight. The sensory echo of that oral sex—the specific pressure, the slick friction—lingered in his groin, a phantom imprint.
“My name is Joel,” the ghost said. He took a step closer, not invading, but closing the distance of the empty street. “I never told her. It didn’t seem… relevant, in the moment. All that was relevant was her. Being allowed to touch her. To be inside her.”
He said it without lust, with a pure, staggering awe that made Liam’s chest ache. This was the reverence Liam had sensed in the archive. The appreciation.
“Why are you here?” Liam’s own voice sounded rough, scraped raw from the recent labor, from the screams he’d swallowed in the red room.
Joel’s smile returned, tinged with something like sadness. “When the ritual captured us… when it tore that perfect, final moment from each of us and sealed it in her… I had a piece of you in me. Your essence. Your release.” He touched his own lips, a fleeting gesture. “It was inside my body when my soul was drawn out. So the fragment that exists in the Deep Pool, the echo that I am… it is not purely Joel. It is also a tiny, tiny piece of Liam Carter.”
The revelation landed softly, a feather with the weight of an anchor. Liam stared. This ghost, this echo of a stranger’s climax, contained a shard of his own.
“The others,” Joel continued, his gaze steady. “They are pure hunger. Pure memory. They want to relive, to conquer, to consume. They have no past before her, no future after. They are the moment. I am… also the moment, but each time I seek to relive it, there is dissonance within me. A twinge of regret, a momentary hiccup of conscience. The times I do relive the moment with her, each time I finish inside, our eyes meet for one moment, and….”
“And what?”
A tear started to form in his eye. “I see her eyes….as you do. And the revulsion of what I have just done to her forces me to leave. You inside me, however small a shard it might be, causes a split in desire, in urge.”
Liam didn’t understand what Joel was trying to convey. Joel recognized this and continued. “The others, except Marcus, are of one mind. Desire for Elena. They are flat, two dimensional entities that will only have one directive. But you,” he pointed at Liam, “you are inside me, even if it is a tiny splinter. That splinter is enough to split my attention. I am three dimensions, I feel. I think. I understand.”
Liam shook his head. “I’ve been in your body, all of you. I know what each time you all had with my wife felt like. I’ve been in your ‘mind’, all of your minds. There is nothing there. Just her. Her body. Your conquest.” He pointed at Joel accusingly. “Don’t dare tell me you feel anything!”
Tears were welling in Joel’s eyes. “I….I didn’t feel, not at first. I was truly a ghost. I hungered for her body. I went to her early on, when the others were also first starting to emerge after the ritual. I was back in the red room with her. I was drawn, and I feasted. But then, at the end, our eyes met and I felt something else, I didn’t know what it was. But it stung, I felt pain. I fled back into the Deep Pool, not knowing what was happening, and I stayed there. But the hunger returns and grows and eventually I would have to emerge and go to her again. It was always the same: feast, eyes, pain, retreat. Always the same. That is,” he stared straight into Liam’s eyes, “Until you were punished.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you were punished, you were forced to relive each of our memories, over and over. I know it felt like you were in our bodies, but remember, the ghosts are simple two dimensional constructs. If anything, it was like wearing a mask. They had no awareness you were there, just like a mask isn’t aware of you wearing it. That is, except for me. When you wore me, the part of you in me came alive. Like a hot sliver of steel, I could feel a burn. It responded to you, and became active within me. Like a cancer, it grew, it sent tendrils out through me, reacting with the, I guess, DNA of whatever us ghosts are. I started to remember who Joel was….is….I don’t know. I was transitioning from that two dimensions to three.”
There was still confusion in Liam’s face. “Aren’t the ghosts…..people? Don’t they think?”
Joel chuckled and shook his head. “Lord no. They are nothing but echos of one of the most intense, pleasurable moments of their lives. Think of…a….” Joel fumbled for a second to remember the right word, “yeah, photograph! The picture is still, a capture of a moment, the only life it has is the memory it captures. Those are the ghosts. They only have the memory of that moment with Elena. It’s why they assault her mind constantly: they are only memories, they need someone to remember them or else they wouldn’t exist.”
“But not you, right?”
“No. Well, not anymore, that is.” Joel had the look of someone who was figuring out thoughts for the first time. “Look, at the end of the day, I am still just a ghost. But, I’m a ghost that now remembers. I KNOW who Joel is. That already makes me infinitely more than any of the others.”
Liam shook his head. “What do you mean by that?”
“You know the names of them. David, Jonathan, Leo - it feels like they are people, they have personalities, right? But it’s not the case. That is who they were the moment they were with Elena. The actual people, the men who physically were there that night, are real people who have gone on with their lives. To them, it was a few exciting moments of, pardon my crudeness, a hot fuck with a beautiful woman. Perhaps they remember vividly, perhaps not. A good number of them are also priests, so they’ve probably have taken part in a dozen more rituals since then.”
Liam lifted an eyebrow, a word caught his attention. “Priests?”
“Well, yeah, that’s what they do. Why else would….they….be here…” Joel saw the complete confusion in Liam’s face. “Ah, you still think this building is just a sex club.”
“Is it not?”
Joel took a deep breath and smiled sympathetically. “No my friend. This,” he gestured towards the building, “this is a temple to Ashanti. She is a fertility goddess afterall, so sex is a key part of the whole thing, so the confusion is only natural.”
Liam’s jaw dropped. It seemed unbelievable at first, but as he considered it, it made sense. What better way to worship a fertility goddess than by the act fertility is tied to. So, disguise it as a sex club and you could have a endless supply of “worshippers”. “So, when the ‘Single Males Night’ was advertised….”
Joel saw the understanding starting to wash over Liam. He nodded, “Yep, that’s how you get men for a Ritual, even if they have no idea what they’re doing.”
“The women? Do they know what they’re getting into? I know Elena didn’t.”
Joel shook his head. “Some do, but most don’t. Many don’t get past a guy or two before it becomes too much and they leave, or the husband can’t take it and stops everything. It’s not very many who can actually complete a Ritual.”
Liam closed his eyes and sighed. “I wish I could’ve been one of those husbands.” He paused as a realization dawned on him about what Joel was saying. He looked Joel in the eye. “How do you know all this?”
Joel knew the question was coming and took a deep breath. “I know you’re not going to like what I’m about to say, but understand, I would not be able to have this conversation with you if everything I have already said weren’t true. So believe me when I say that I am truly here to help.” Another deep breath. “Okay. Joel, the person, is a priest of Ashanti.”
Liam’s eyes went wide. “What?? And you expect me to trust you?!”
Joel raised his hands in front of him. “Look, I know it sounds bad. But remember, Joel the person is a priest. Me, Joel the ghost, had no idea I was - he was - whatever, was a priest. And the priests aren’t intentionally trying to hurt anybody. They don’t witness what happens to the women after, or the husbands. If they knew, if they saw what I have, I think there would be a lot fewer of us.”
Liam was still angry, but in the nine months since the Ritual, he had found no one to talk to about any of this. If it was a trap and he got punished, well, he survived it before. But if Joel truly was an ally, he knew he couldn’t pass by this chance. And there had to be at least some truth to what he said. Afterall, he was the only ghost to talk to him directly, other than Marcus. Wait, Marcus? “How does Marcus speak to me?”
Joel nodded solemnly. “Because he is more than a ghost just by his nature. He is always the chief priest, the First of the Ashantaba.”
“The what?”
“I’m sorry, I thought you were aware of the term. Ashantaba. The Children of Ashanti. It is the name of children that are born from the seeds planted by the men during the ritual. The triplets inside Elena right now, they are Ashantaba, as are the twelve that will follow after. And Marcus is always the first one.”
Liam was incredulous. “So what, he’s like an immortal or something?”
“No, nothing like that. The Marcus you met in the temple that night, he was the first with Elena. He is always first, his seed takes root first, grows first, is born first. Well, that is, after the Firstborn, but you know that. That man Marcus, the real person, is an Ashantaba himself, conceived when his father, also a Marcus, was a chief priest who went first in a Ritual. His progeny is in an unbroken line of descent going back to the first man to lie with Ashanti herself during the first Ritual.”
Liam shook his head. “This is crazy.”
“It really is, and I’m sorry, but you have to know and understand this. Marcus is first. His ghost has thought, purpose, and power. He directs the ghosts and is there to make sure that the Firstborn is birthed, that the Ashantaba are born, and that the claim upon the Vessel is protected. Believe me, you are not the first Keeper to try to take back their wife.”
Things were starting to make sense. It certainly explained how Marcus was able to do some of the things he had. But Liam was getting desperate and wanted answers. “Okay Joel, let’s say I believe you since I’m running out of options. How can you help me?”
Joel nodded, grateful that Liam was at least willing to listen now. “You’ve made some great attempts at reclaiming Elena, but you’re going about it wrong. You’ve tried to force your presence into the Deep Pool, you’ve tried to use the knowledge as the Keeper to fend off the ghosts. But you will never win this way. You’re trying to play a game where Marcus can change the rules against you. There is only one way to get Elena back.”
“How?”
Joel looked straight into Liam’s eyes. “Get rid of the Deep Pool. Rip out the roots that have grown into her. Erase all traces of Ashanti and the Ritual from her.”
This was the answer Liam had been searching for. “How do I do it?”
Joel nodded solemly. “In every temple, there is a special room. Near the Ritual rooms - uh, I believe you call them the Red Room. Near there is a door that only a Keeper may open or close. Inside is the Altar of Sundering. That is the only place the Deep Pool can be removed.”
“Why would the cure be in there next to where the whole things starts?”
“Because the Vessel, any Vessel, has the freedom to choose to end their role at any time. And it has to be their choice, not the Keeper forcing her into it. But yes, should you walk into the temple and say ‘we want to quit’, any priest will gladly direct you to the Altar.”
Liam was furious. “Are you fucking kidding me?! That’s it? No one told us this!”
Joel, for the first time, looked truly sad. “I know. It’s because of this particular Marcus. He’s drawn to Elena, he doesn’t want to let her go. I can hear his ghost speak, pontificating to ghosts who can’t listen but he speaks anyway. He talks constantly about how she is the most perfect woman since Ashanti herself. And he’s also why this will be supremely difficult for you.”
“How could it be difficult for me? He may be a more powerful ghost, but he’s still a ghost.”
Joel was patient. “Right, and for sure his power over you is not as strong now as it was. Believe it or not, he recognizes you as a very challenging Keeper; you’ve been a very worthy adversary to him.” He stopped to take another breath, he knew it wouldn’t be easy to hear the next part. “What you have to worry about is the power he has over Elena, or more, her mind. The minute he knows what you plan to do, he will do whatever he can to stop it. And the one thing he can do is lock her away in the memories. Make them so intense, so real, she’ll be unable to do anything else. Much less make a willful decision to enter the Altar. The only time the priests will try to stop you in the temple is if they see a hint that you are trying to force her inside the Sundering.”
Liam believed Joel completely now, but he knew there had to be a way. “I’ve learned to block when the ghosts attack.”
“But not an assault like this. It will be every ghost, every which way. You’ve learned to stop a drain. Try stopping the tide.”
Liam was desperate. “So what do I do? He’ll know as soon as I tell Elena, as soon as we start heading to the club, er, temple.”
“Yes. That’s where I come in.”
“What do you mean,” Liam asked.
Joel seemed to stand a bit taller. He looked stronger. “Remember, I’m three dimensions. I have more power than the other ghosts. I learned how Marcus is able to do this, bring you into the mindscape. I know other things as well.” He gave Liam a smile, a glint in his eye. “The other ghosts won’t be the problem, they’re paper before me. Marcus though, he’ll be strong. But I will try to hold him back. I will fight for you, for Elena. I will be your shield.”
For the first time since meeting him, Liam actually felt touched. A tear formed in his eye. “But, you’re a ghost too. Why do this?”
Tears were forming in Joel’s eyes as well. “During your punishment, the second time around, after Marcus broke you. It was different. He dragged you back into the loop, made you live through it all again. But Elena followed you in. She brought herself into it so she could touch you. And when you wore me, I was already aware of myself, of you. She looked you in the eye, but also me, and said “We are together forever”. I saw her. I saw her as you do. As the most perfect woman in the world, your wife. And I knew that the only mission that I had was to protect her. That means getting the Deep Pool out.”
Liam flung his arms around Joel and embraced him tightly. Joel hugged back and the two sobbed as though they were long lost brothers. After a moment, they let go and Liam wiped the tears from his own eyes. “Thank you, Joel.” But then, a realization set in. “Joel….what happens to the ghosts when the Deep Pool comes out?”
Joel, with a smile still on his face, a look of quiet dedication. “Ghosts can’t exist outside of the vessel.”
“No! You’ll die!”
“I’ll die doing the only good I can. It’s the only way.”
“And the other children?”
Joel said nothing, just silently shook his head. Liam understood. It would be hard for Elena to hear that. But just as he was thinking of a plan, the ground started to shake. A far off roar, like an avalanche, could be heard. Liam was terrified. “What is that?”
Fear was in Joel’s eyes as well. “Oh no, I should have known this would be coming now.”
“What is?”
Joel grabbed Liam by the shoulders and looked intensely into his eyes. “I’m going to send you back, but it may take a second. I’m new to this. When you wake, you will need to help Elena. Immediately. It…” he looked up at the rumbling sky, “Yeah, you won’t be able to stop it, but you can help keep her together as it’s happening. And then,” he held the back of Liam’s head, looking even more intense, “You have to bring back out of this. It’s imperative. She has to choose to go into the Altar. Understood?”
Liam was shaking, he didn’t understand. “What? Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s Marcus.” The words shot ice through Liam’s veins. Joel was still dead serious. “The Firstborn has been birthed. It’s time for the Ashantaba, and Marcus is always first. He will want the baby to grow, and he wants it now. He’s going to Elena now in full force.”
It felt like a weight dropped in the pit of his stomach. “I have to stop him.”
“I don’t think you can, not in time. You just have to try to keep him from damaging her too much. You have to bring her back after. This is something only you can do. But you can do it. I know you can, I’ve seen it.”
Liam nodded, still shaking. “Okay. I’ll do it. How do I let you know we’re going to the temple?”
The wry smile came to Joel’s face. “Oh, I’ll know. And you’ll also know it when it happens. Okay, let’s get you home.”
Elena opened her eyes to the red room. The velvet walls pulsed, the air thick with the scent of sex and incense. For a breath, she thought it was another memory, another echo. But the sheets under her back were too crisp, the weight in her chest too immediate. This was now.
Marcus stood at the foot of the bed. He was not the ghost she knew—the cold, possessive rhythm. He was a monument. His form seemed to draw the light from the room, casting him in stark relief, larger, more solid. His eyes held no playful cruelty, only a terrible purpose. “It is time for the first child to come,” he said, his voice the grinding of stone.
He moved onto the bed, the frame groaning. His hands found her hips. His grip was not an invitation. It was a claim. Fingers dug into her flesh, a bruising pressure that pinned her to the mattress. She gasped, the sound swallowed by the room’s heavy silence.
He positioned himself. She felt the blunt, immense pressure of him at her entrance. He was bigger. Not a trick of memory, but a physical truth. A thickness that stretched her just in the promise. She was wet—a traitorous, eager slickness that welcomed the violation.
He pushed.
The stretch was an agony of fullness. A slow, relentless invasion that burned. He wasn’t just inside her. He was displacing everything. Her breath hitched, caught in a sob that was also a moan. He seated himself fully, and she felt him everywhere, a presence that touched the deepest, most secret spaces of her womb.
He began to move.
His thrusts were not rhythmic. They were punitive. Each drive was a hammer-blow, a brutal piston meant to reshape her from the inside. The slap of their flesh was a wet, meaty sound in the quiet. Her body jolted with each impact. Pain bloomed, sharp and bright, but it was woven through with a thread of pure, desperate need.
She needed it. The thought cut through the haze. This brutality was a completion. He was driving out the ghosts, the echoes, the chorus. He was filling the hollows he and the others had carved. With every punishing stroke, he was claiming the space for something new. For his child.
Her hands scrambled against his forearms, not to push him away, but to pull him deeper. Her hips arched, meeting his drives with a frantic hunger. “More,” she gasped, the word torn from her. “Please.”
He looked down at her, his face a mask of divine concentration. He saw her surrender, her complicity, and it fueled him. His pace became frantic, a final, furious race. The bed rocked violently. Her cries were continuous now, a stream of sound that held both torment and ecstasy.
At the peak, Marcus reared back. His neck corded. A guttural, triumphant roar tore from his throat as he slammed into her one last time, a thrust so deep she felt it in her throat.
He released.
It was not a climax. It was a flood. A torrent of searing heat that poured into her, utterly filling her. She felt it spill into every crevice, a claiming tide that left no room for anything else. Her own orgasm ripped through her, a convulsive, blinding wave that felt less like pleasure and more like being unmade.
In the white silence that followed, as the heat pooled and settled within her, she felt a hand on her cheek. A touch so gentle it was a shock against her ravaged skin.
“Elena.”
Liam’s voice. Not a memory. Not an echo. A lifeline thrown into the deep.
She blinked, trying to focus. The red room wavered. Marcus’s heavy weight was still upon her, inside her, but the voice was real. It came from outside the temple, from the world of sheets and moonlight and their sleeping son.
“Look at me, love. Come back.”
She turned her head toward the sound. Her vision swam, then cleared. Liam’s face hovered above hers, his eyes wide with terror and a fierce, protective love. He was in their bed. She was in their bed. But the sensation of being utterly, completely filled… that remained.
“I can still feel it,” she whispered, her voice raw from screaming in a room that didn’t exist. “Inside me. It’s… hot. It’s still there.”
Liam’s hand, which had been stroking her hair, stilled. The confession hung between them in the dark bedroom, more intimate than any touch. He saw the truth of it in the way her body lay utterly spent, yet thrumming with a residual energy that wasn’t hers.
“It’s not memory,” she said, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “It’s a… residue. A physical echo. Like he branded my insides with it.”
He knew she was right. The air around her felt charged, thick with the scent of sex and power that had no place in their quiet home. The heat she described was a phantom furnace in her core, a completed circuit. Marcus had planted something. Not just a memory, but a seed in truth.
“Joel told me,” Liam said, the name foreign on his tongue. “He called it the first Ashantaba child. Marcus is making it real. Now.”
Elena turned her head slowly on the pillow. The movement seemed to cost her. “Joel?”
“The ghost who… who was with me. Before you.” Liam’s throat tightened. “He’s different. He has a piece of me in him. He wants to help us end this.”
Her eyes searched his face, looking for the crack, the sign of another trap. “How?”
“There’s an altar. In the temple. A place of sundering. He says we can go there, to the real place, and… remove the Deep Pool. All of it.”
A shudder ran through her. “The real place. The club.”
“It was never just a club.”
She closed her eyes. A single tear tracked through the sweat at her temple. “I can’t go back there, Liam. I can’t.”
“You’re already there,” he said, his voice gentle but unflinching. “Every night. He’s building a child inside you using that memory as the foundation. If we don’t go to the source and break it, this will be our life. Forever. A new harvest, every time.”
Her hand crept to her lower abdomen, pressing flat. As if she could feel the new architecture being laid down in the dark, fertile soil Marcus had just flooded. “He’s so strong.”
“I know.”
“It won’t be like the others. Not like Samuel. This one… it will be his. Wholly.”
Liam leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers. He could smell the salt on her skin, the faint, clean scent of their baby from the bassinet, and beneath it, the unsettling, musky perfume of the red room. “Then we go to his temple. And we tear it down.”
Her eyes opened. The fear was there, a bottomless well. But beneath it, he saw a flicker of the woman who had walked into that club, who had met his gaze and nodded. A spark of defiance. “When?”
“Now,” Liam said. “Before the anchor sets. While you still feel the heat. Joel said he’d shield us, guide us. But we have to choose to walk in.”
Elena took a deep, trembling breath. She looked past him, toward the window where the first grey light of dawn hinted at the world outside their private haunting. Then she looked back at him, and nodded. “Okay.”
It was the bravest word he’d ever heard.