Circe warned him. The living are not invited. You consult, you receive, you go. Stay too long and the queen of the dead may decide you belong here. Persephone could send the Gorgons, creatures who turn men to stone, and they would not kill him. They would freeze him there, conscious, surrounded by the dead, forever. He thinks of this when the air thickens and the shades around him stop being weak ones and start being warriors and stranger things, and an ear-splitting cry comes from somewhere in the fog. Even the shades fall silent. He does not stay to see what made the sound. He runs through mud and dark, slipping, the men behind him, and does not look back until the warm wind hits his face and the sky is blue again. The lesson is older than the underworld itself. Visit the dead and you become them.
The Dead Will Not Let You Leave
Persephone's domain. Stay too long and the dead keep you. The cry rises through the fog, and Odysseus runs.