“Seriously?” I say—or think—or just throw into the nothingness. “You couldn’t give me five minutes to tell Cassian it’s all okay? Or at least, I don’t know… drink water?”
A ripple cuts across the emptiness, like a breath big enough to bend the universe. It’s not a sound—it’s a feeling. A presence. The arrival of something so far beyond me, it barely makes sense to call it anything at all.
But I do.
Death.
Or as I’ve started calling him—Big Daddy Death.
I think he’d hate that if he knew, and that’s why I like it so much.
It takes him a moment to answer, like he’s filtering his response through ten layers of ancient judgment to decide if I’m even worth the trouble.
“You exceeded expectations,” he says at last, the words slipping into existence like gravity tilting sideways. “Overwhelming her with your own pain. Feeding her what she craved until she ruptured.”
A pause. Weightless silence.
“A mortal solution.”
I blink—except, yeah, I don’t have eyelids here.
“Oh. Was there another way?” I shoot back. “Because from where I’m floating, I ripped apart the whole balance of karmic physics to try and kill her the other way. And let’s be honest—nothingelse really worked on her.”
The void almost… smiles.
"There were plenty of ways. Most Reapers follow the law to restore balance. But you… you turned emotion into a weapon. Saturated her with suffering. It worked."
That’s not an answer. But whatever.
"Cool," I mutter. "Glad my emotional baggage finally came in handy. I did what you asked. She’s gone. Dead. Not coming back. So… are we done?"
Silence.
Too much of it.
Which is never good.
"No," he finally says.
And yeah. That’s on me for even asking.
"Excuse me?"
"This wraith was only the first."
Um… What?
"No, no, no," I say fast. "That wasn’t the deal. The deal was one wraith. Singular. You gave me a body, made me your cosmic bug zapper, and that was supposed to be it."
"You misunderstood. Or chose to interpret it that way."
"What?"
"I told you to fix your mistakes—and theirs."
A beat.
"They used multiple skystones," he says. And I feel it—how he speaks their names without actually saying them. Cassian. Nathaniel. Talon. Each one lands like a pebble in a still lake, sending endless ripples.
