To enter the afterlife, every soul must fulfil its truest desire on earth. Those who never discover their purpose remain trapped between worlds, endless echoes in an unfinished story.

Edward Willoughby sat at his desk, fingertips hovering over the old typewriter. The cancer in his lungs had inked a deadline across his days, but it couldn’t silence the voice that had echoed in his head for decades—the voice of the novel he’d always meant to write.

Each evening, he coaxed words into being. He wrote of love and war, of ordinary heroes and quiet betrayals. He lost count of how many pages he’d torn out and set aflame in the grate. Every draft was a confession, every sentence a step closer to the truth he’d buried beneath years of practicality.

He spent his final week holed up in the attic room, the small window framing a shivering autumn sky. Outside, the wind rattled the loose panes. Inside, Edward wrestled with his opening line, then his last. The hospital visits, the pill bottles lined like mournful sentinels on his bedside table—each reminded him that time was both enemy and muse.

On the night before he knew he would leave his body, Edward finished the manuscript. He pressed the carriage return one last time, and the bell chimed softly, like a farewell. He read the final paragraph in the dim lamplight and felt a calm he had never known.

He closed the typewriter, slid the last page into the folder, and rested his head on his arms. At dawn, with his true desire finally realised, Edward’s soul slipped quietly into the light beyond, the echo of his finished chapter guiding him home.