Chapter 1: The Ticket Left Behind

From Hurried Ascensions
by Esi Noire

Rene Dey had never seen her grandfather cry.

Not when the doctors said the words “Stage Four,” not when they sold the family land, not even when the last of the trees he planted were bulldozed to make way for a fiber optic station. But something changed the day she found the ticket.

It was tucked into the pages of her grandmother’s old Quran – yellowed, fragile, and inked with a shimmer that pulsed when she touched it.
No date. No destination. Just the words:

“Admit One – Soul Ascension Line, Platform 1885”

She brought it to his bedside without a word. His hand trembled as he touched it, and a tear slipped down the ridge of his cheek like water breaking through drought-hardened earth.

“I thought I missed it,” he whispered.

The machines beeped behind him. Outside the hospital window, drone ambulances buzzed over broken roads. But inside, everything stood still. The air smelled like copper and sage. Rene knew then what she had to do.

The train wasn’t a metaphor.

And she had a ticket.