"Each stone created a trap. A kind of spiritual prison. But those prisons aren’t permanent."
"They used them to contain murderers," I say. "To keep their souls locked in place."
"Yes. But souls—like energy—can’t be held forever. Laura Collins escaped quickly. The others… will follow. Slowly. In different ways. But eventually."
My mouth—well, what used to be my mouth—goes dry.
"You’re saying… I have to do that again? More than once?"
"Yes."
"Nope," I say right away. "No thanks. I’m out. I barely survived this round. I had to detonate emotionally just to kill her. And now you want me to pull that off again and again? I’m not some spiritual nuclear reactor."
"You’re something far more unstable than that."
"…Thanks?"
He goes quiet again. Which is never reassuring.
I swear I can feel the void watching me, even though it doesn’t have eyes. Death is watching me. Like I’m some chess piece that started moving on its own.
I really hate that feeling.
My voice drops. There’s fear threading through the sarcasm now. “Why’d you even give me this body?”
“To help you.”
“Really?” I laugh, sharp and bitter. “Because so far all I’ve done is glitch, spiral, and lose my damn raven.”
“That was… a side effect.”
I freeze.
“A side effect?” I echo.
“Of your choice,” he says, slower now. He’s different—sharper, colder, heavier. “You separated yourself.”
“I did what?”
“You split your soul. You wanted to be human again. In doing so, you rejected your power.”
I blink again—pointlessly, but still.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
And then it hits me.
Like a memory that was always there, just waiting to be noticed.
The boy.
The teen Grim Reaper with those too-old eyes, who showed up when I tried to summon the wraith. The one who shouldn’t have existed. Who knew things he shouldn't know.
I say it before I even believe it.
“…That kid. The one who tried to save me. He’s not a Reaper, is he?”
The void trembles.
