Who knew warm mist would taste like this?
I fall into the darkness willingly this time.
No force pulls me under. No wraith dragging me into oblivion. No cold hands clamping around my throat, suffocating me into nothingness.
This time, I let go. I surrender.
Because... well. Because I just let a human serial killer finger fuck me after I shattered the ultimate rule of a Grim Reaper and saved his friend. A friend who shoved his tongue down my throat at the same time.
So, yeah. Maybe I should have seen this coming.
I might be dead, but damn. Nothing could have prepared me for this kind of debauchery, for the way my existence keeps twisting into something even more unrecognizable. Yet here I am—wrecked, unraveling, and in deep fucking trouble.
Because whatever just happened? That wasn’t normal.
I drift in the nothingness, weightless, untethered. If I could, I’d bury my head in my hands and scream into the void. But I guess that will have to wait until I claw my way back to the living realm and find some quiet place to destroy my already-raw vocal cords.
A cold laugh slithers through the void.
Not mine.
Not theirs.
Something else.
I go still. My stomach turns to ice. I know that sound.
It comes again—low, deep, amused. And then—
“There are far worse things a Grim Reaper like yourself can do than pretend to procreate, Miss Skye.”
The voice wraps around me, silk and steel, a noose made of velvet. No. No, no, no.
Death.
Not death, the concept. Not just another Reaper.
The Death. The one who governs the afterlife. The whisper in every bone of every Grim Reaper. The entity that does not speak unless absolutely necessary.
In my entire career as a Grim Reaper, I’ve heard him exactly once—right at the beginning, when he oh-so-graciously gave me thechoice.
Something tells me this visit is going to be... different.
“It's interesting you thought it was your own decision to appear in the void,”he muses, all silky and omniscient.“I assumed a Grim with abilities as unique as yours would feel my direct call instead.”
Uh. What?
I did not, in fact, feel any such thing. I thought I was just having a totally normal, existential crisis. The void seemed like a good place for that. A nice, cozy, endless abyss to scream into.
But now that I think about it… yeah, I did almost get trapped here forever. Which seems... not ideal.
So why did I come here?
Was it really because of him?
“Don't be so surprised,”he purrs. It's clear he can read my thoughts.“I am not the kind of presence one can ignore.”
Oh, I bet. He’s everything. The universe, the cosmos, the omnipresent, all-powerful CEO of Death. And me? I’m just a tiny, defective cog in his celestial machine.
