“Try reaping it!” I bark, because that’s all my brain can manage at this point.
It doesn’t matter that this thing does not, in fact, look like a soul. It should be one. It should be something we can destroy.
“Pick up your scythe and reap it!”
She doesn’t move.
And, technically, I shouldn’t help her. This is not my problem. This is not my soul to reap, and I don’t feel the pull of it. But does my body give a single damn about the rules? No. No, it does not.
So, against all common sense, I extend my hand toward Pain. The scythe materializes in my grip, and I clutch it tight.
“Come on,” I mutter, catching the Grim Reaper’s wrist just before she collapses. She slumps against me, shaking, breath shallow and ragged, and yet—still—she reaches for her scythe again.
But the thing in front of us?
It doesn’t wait.
It shifts.
And gods help me, the way it moves is wrong. Not unnatural. Not even demonic. Justwrong.
The shadows around us react immediately—lurching, peeling away from the ground like they’re sentient now. They stretch impossibly long, slithering toward us.
My body figures out what’s happening before my brain does.
Every instinct is screaming at me. Run, run,run—but I don’t move. I can’t. We don’t need to escape it. We need to end it.
Beside me, the Grim Reaper clenches her jaw, her breath scraping hoarse from her throat as she swings—pouring every last ember of strength into her strike.
The scythe carves through the thick dark—throughit.
And then it stops.
It doesn’t slice.
It doesn’t even graze.
It stops. Mid-air.
For a second, my brain short-circuits, scrambling for an explanation. I reach for logic, for rules, for some kind of universal constant to explain why the weapon designed specifically to reap souls has just been full-on denied—but nothing comes. Then, the darkness shudders—spreading wide.
And I see it.
I see the thing gripping the scythe’s blade.
My dead heart stops.
Because Laura Collins’ soul has become… something.
Something that should not be.
And it’s looking right at us.
She has a face—well, half of one. The left side? Fine. Aged, wrinkled, a little worse for wear, like she’s lived all the years she never got to. But the right side—oh, buddy, the right side—is missing more than just flesh. It’s missing self. Identity. It flickers like a broken film reel, cycling through rage, grief, terror—expressions peeling away from her like she’s unraveling thread by thread, piece by piece, caught between existing and being gone.
Where her right eye should be, there’s nothing. No, worse than nothing. A hole. A black-hole-level fuckery wound in reality itself.
The men freeze.
