From the darkness, she steps forward.
Tall. Cloaked in black. A scythe in her hand. A raven on her shoulder.
She looks like me—except somehow more me than I am. Her clothes are darker, her scythe beads are black instead of white, and her raven? Smaller than Pain, with a longer beak and, dare I say, suspiciously kind eyes.
There’s no inkling of a smile on her face. Just cold calculation. She’s me, but… like the version of me I was before. Not now.
She looks at me. I look at her. Her chin tips up, her ghostly forehead creasing just enough to show the faintest hint of confusion—but not enough to register as a real emotion.
“This is my jurisdiction,” she says in a monotone so flat it makes the concept of emotion itself feel like a myth. Then,without so much as a glance at the living people in the room, she turns her attention to Laura’s soul.
The moment she speaks, the temperature here plummets. It’s not just a chill—it’s the kind of cold that seeps into your marrow, hollowing you out from the inside. My breath doesn’t fog, but I feel like it should.
Which is stupid. I am literally the same supernatural being as her. I should not be affected.
And yet, here I am, reacting just the same as the guys.
I glance at them. I can see the shivers on the exposed parts of their skin, though they all pretend they’re not affected.
“That so?” Talon drawls. “Because from where I’m standing, she’s already halfway to nowhere.”
The woman steps closer, her boots making zero sound on the stone floor. The raven on her shoulder flutters its wings but doesn’t take flight. It seems glued to her, which is the total opposite of how Pain and I are.
But she doesn’t even acknowledge Talon. Probably, just like I did in the past, she doesn’t even consider the possibility that a mortal could see her. Nope. She’s all business, laser-focused on her job. Only when her gaze lands on the soul in front of her does her expression shift—just barely. A flicker of something. Recognition? Disgust? Hard to say.
“So the time has come,” she mutters to herself, slowing her movements.
I glance at Cassian, expecting indifference, but instead, he’s staring right at me. And not in his usual “whatever” way. His eyes narrow, just slightly. Like he’s actually uncomfortable being this close toher.
Like he’s caught the same strange, creeping feeling that’s twisting in my chest.
Something’s wrong here. I’ve met others like me before—rarely, but it’s happened. And every time, it was like two deliverydrivers passing each other on their routes: cold, impersonal, a nod at best. We did our jobs and moved on. I never felt like they were anything more than passing shadows in the afterlife, just fellow cogs in the great, cosmic death machine. Now? Now I feel like I’m standing next to a glitch in the system. A “you were never meant to see this” kind of mistake.”Do you know this soul?” I ask, noticing the weird, laser-focused look in her eyes.
She doesn’t even look at me. Just tightens her grip on her scythe, fingers curling around the shaft with the kind of force that makes metal groan.
But she answers.
“I do,” she says, steady as a heartbeat. But there’s something under her voice—something weighty, like history pressing against her tongue. Like she wants to explain, but the universe has other plans.
Because before she can say another word, Talon moves.
Fast.
Faster than she can react.
The Skystone flashes as he flicks his wrist, sending it sailing toward the tiny blue soul floating above Laura Collins’s corpse. I don’t know if it’s instinct, training, or whatever got her so fixated on this particular soul, but the Grim Reaper reacts instantly—her scythe blazes with silver light as she swings in a downward arc, aiming to slice through the soul before it can be taken.
She’s too late.
The Skystone collides with the flickering blue light, and in an instant, Laura’s soul is gone. Sucked inside, sealed away. No afterlife. No judgment. No peace.
Just… nothing.
The Reaper freezes. The raven on her shoulder lets out a sharp, echoing caw—a noise that feels like it just clipped my soul on the way out.
And I recognize it. Because I reacted the exact same way.
Her gaze snaps to Talon—the bastard responsible for the tiny, seemingly harmless marble that just snatched her target away.
