THE REJECTED STONE IS A BILLIONAIRE

Chapter 9

Nathan awoke with a gasp in a strange, fog-drenched afterlife cityscape that was neither ancient nor modern.

The sky was a dull grey with no visible sun, and the place had a ghostly urban pulse.

Nathan stood dazed in the middle of the street, instinctively checking his chest. No heartbeat. No breath. Yet he was standing, thinking, moving. Alive… in some other way.

“New arrival?”

That was the voice of a man cleaning his booth, a faded hat sat crookedly on his brown hair.

Nathan nodded slowly. “I think so…”

The man approached and extended a hand. “Name’s Donald Shaw. You’re in May cross, afterlife. Not heaven, not hell. Just… between.”

Nathan shook his hand, trying to ground himself. “This is real?... I mean, am I dead?”

“As real as anything else. Everyone here is dead…was dead.”

Donald said, glancing at the leather pouch swinging gently from Nathan’s side. “You’ll want to check that.”

Nathan looked down, and for the first time, he saw the pouch and reached for it.

Inside, dozens of silver coins shimmered like Robinhood’s loot; cool to the touch and heavier than they appeared. Among them, a single golden coin gleamed more brightly, unlike the rest.

Donald raised an eyebrow. “Impressive. Not many dead people show up with gold.”

“What do they mean?” Nathan asked.

“They’re your worth. Coins are based on the good you did in life. Sacrifices. Compassion. Things that cost you. That gold one? Means you did something truly selfless.”

Nathan’s mind reeled. “And what are they for?”

Donald pointed through the fog. “There’s a portal at the end of this place, which is guarded. If you’ve got enough coin, you can repurchase your way to life.”

As they walked together, Donald explained further. The realm was home to countless wandering souls, most of whom didn’t have enough coins to leave. Some wasted them trying to send messages back to the living. Others faded into the mist once their coins ran out.

They reached a plaza where many moved slowly, all clutching their pouches like lifelines. A few sat alone, defeated, their eyes glazed over. A sadness hung over the place like smoke.

Donald and Nathan sat at the edge of a ruined fountain.

“Let me guess,” Nathan said. “You’ve been here a while.”

Donald smiled faintly. “Two weeks, give or take. I died on my way to the hospital, where my wife had just given birth to our daughter. I never got to meet her.”

“And it's painful, I might never get to meet her again, now or after.’

Nathan saw the pain in his eye. Regrets hung over him like a cape.

They both sat in silence before Nathan spoke. “I heard in the afterlife,you can know how you died.”

“Yes…but it is not cheap either. It’ll cost you, though.”

Nathan quickly headed for the dimly lit booth at the edge of the square. The machine chimed, and a stony-faced clerk inside held out a gloved hand, which Nathan dropped a generous portion of his coins into.

The clerk tapped the monitor and turned it toward him.

There, in grainy footage, Nathan saw it: the dinner at Graymon’sestate. He himself, seated and smiling. And then alone in the kitchen, Isaac, one of the estate’s senior staff, was calmly sprinkling a liquid ointment into Lord Graymon's food.

Nathan stared, rage surging through his heart as the truth unfolded before him.

Bastard. He had eaten the poison meant for Lord Graymon.

He stumbled back to Donald, visibly shaken. “Isaac poisoned me.”

Donald nodded, not surprised. “Everyone sees something ugly in that booth.”

But there was no time to process the betrayal as they hurriedly joined the queue, which took forever before it came to their turn to pay for their clearance back to life.

Just then, a low chime rang out.

Donald’s eyes widened as two tall, unsmiling security sentinels emerged from the mist.

“My time’s up,” he whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve got no coin left. I’m being taken to the deeper places. I can’t stay here.”

As the guards moved to take him, Nathan stepped forward.

“Wait,” he said, pulling off his pouch. “Take mine.”

Nathan saw as his eyes went wide. “Nathan, no—”

Nathan replied, his voice filled with grief. “What's the point? I'll still die anyway from my terminal illness.”

Nathan persuaded, and the coins were handed over. The guards paused, then nodded. Donald’s fate was changed.

Donald turned to him, voice trembling with emotion. “Brother, I'll never forgive this sacrifice you've just made. I… I’ll never forget this day.”

Then, with tears in his eyes, he disappeared into the portal.

Nathan stood alone in the fog, his pouch now empty. Except for the gold coin still resting in his palm, untouched.

The fog thickened as Nathan stood still, gold coin clutched in his hand, watching the last ripple of Donald’s departure vanish into the blue-lit portal.

He approached the portal once again and was met by a towering Security guard whose face, hidden beneath a mask of smoke, had no emotion.

“I want to go back,” Nathan said.

The guard’s voice rumbled like distant thunder. “Payment required.”

“I have this.” He held up the gold coin.

The guard didn’t move. “Hmmm.A coin of sacrifice. Uncommon.”

“Is it enough?”

“No silver remains. You gave all your deeds away. Only the weight of this remains.”

Nathan’s chest tightened. He hadn’t second-guessed, not for a second, his choice to help Donald, but now he stood between two impossible walls: an afterlife he didn’t understand and a return to a life he wasn’t sure was safe.

“What is this coin worth?” he asked.

The guard turned, a wide glass panel emerged from the mist, and Nathan was shown an image from the living world: a boy lying unconscious on a sidewalk, wrapped in a fire blanket. EMTs surrounded him. In the background was Nathan’s soot-streaked face and eyes burning with adrenaline.

“That moment,” the guard said, “exceeds the measure of a hundred other acts. One life pulled from death’s edge. That is why the coin is in gold.”

Nathan exhaled. That boy… he had almost forgotten. The fire and the risk. It hadn’t felt like heroism; it was just instinct. But now, here, it was his only lifeline.

He stepped closer to the portal. “Will it take me back?”

“Yes. If used, the path reopens. One passage. One return.”

He stared into the swirling energy within the portal. It was dark and luminous at once, like a storm contained behind glass, and He thought of vengeance.

The Sentinel stepped aside. “Throw it into the fog!”

Nathan held it out and flung it far into the misty void ahead of him, and a brilliant, brilliant glow pulsed through the fog like a beam.

And then — silence.

Nathan descended into the mist and felt himself dissolve piece by piece. There was no pain, only pressure and a weightless squeezing from within, as if his soul was being re-threaded into something organic.

And just like in a dream where you freely fall to your death, his soul plunged into his mortal body.

Then, darkness.

Complete and perfect.

Then, air.

Sharp, cold and organic.