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Their threads swirled around them in a knotted snarl of violence, frozen in a single, brutal moment. Hers was fraying, a bright silver filament stretched to breaking, seconds from being sawed through. This wasn’t a peaceful sight. It wasn’t a justified end. It was a theft.

And his thread was a nest of rot. Dozens of ghostly strands trailed from him, each one severed too soon, each one screaming silently. I recoiled as I slid to a stop beside Nat. The understanding hitting me like a physical blow before Nat could even speak.

This man was a serial killer. Worse, he was a collector. A monster in human form.

But it wasn’t his thread we’d come to end.

It was hers.

“Observe,” Nat said from beside me, his voice a flat, emotionless prompt. He was a silhouette against the grimy brick, more shadow than man. “Her thread is under assault. His is a tangle of rot. Your task is not to judge. It is to complete the pattern as it is meant to be completed.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life is rarely fair.” His voice was detached, clinical. How many times had he stood witness to this kind of horror, bound by rules that favored completion over justice?

I clenched my fists at my sides, trembling with a rage that had no outlet. The woman’s thread, a vibrant, silver strand that had once reached into the future with a thousand shimmering possibilities, was screaming. Not with sound, but with color, with light, with the sheer wrongness of its end. Entire sections of the weave connected to her were dimming, moments and memories about to be erased before they could ever exist.

And the man’s thread, a greasy, black snarl, pulsing like a parasite, was feeding on hers. Drawing strength from the violence. Consuming her potential to fuel its own twisted continuation.

Who decided this? What cosmic ledger said his corruption had more right to continue than her light?

“The protocol,” Nat continued, as if reciting from a manual, “is to ease her passing. So her thread ends cleanly, with minimal trauma to the surrounding tapestry. Once severed, we’ll escort her soul to rest. His thread will continue its ugly path until it meets its own natural end, or until another Reaper is assigned to its termination.”

Natural end. The words tasted like ash. This man’s thread was a cancer. It wasn’t meant to end naturally; it was meant to be cut out.

“He’ll just do it again.”

“That is not for you to decide.”

The woman’s thread shone with unfinished business. His thread offered nothing but more knots. More suffering.

The temptation roared in my chest.

“You can’t save them all,” Nat said. “We aren’t gods.”

“Then fuck the gods.” I reached into the weave. The threads hummed under my touch, cold and electric. I took the woman’s silver strand, already fraying to translucence, and wound it with memories I stole from the edges of the frozen moment, the scent of rain on pavement, and the stubborn beat of her heart. I braided survival into her final inch, knotting it tight, but careful to keep it from snagging, and watched it fuel her fight.

Rain pattered. The attacker snarled as if enraged by her continued resistance.

I wanted him to see me as a nightmare of death, come to erase his horror from this world and terrify the demon wrapped in mortal flesh.

I lunged at them, breathless and furious, tugging at my power and yanking on that humming link between me and the warehouse, ripe with pain and energy from the snarled weave.

Something cracked open in my chest. Like a door I hadn’t known existed swinging wide.

The shadows deepened. Then they moved—coming to life, spitting darkness from the depths of hell itself. Something erupted from the ground. Not at our feet, but close enough. For half a heartbeat, I feared I’d pulled Erlik from his realm of nightmares. But it lacked any sense of intent. Focused only on me, it shambled my way.

Time lurched from frozen, stuttered moments to shadows emerging in shuffling shapes. Hollow eyes. Sloughing skin. Partially naked bones. Easily a half dozen appeared as if summoned, stepping from the darkness, coming to my call.

The killer’s gaze found me then. Wide. Terrified. He saw me, not as a man in pajamas, but as Death. The hooded figure from his worst nightmares. The judgment he’d spent his whole life trying to outrun.

And behind me, the dead moved, single-minded, focused.

The attacker tried to scramble backward, but his heel caught on the curb, and the first of them reached him.

Bony fingers closed around his wrist. Another grabbed his ankle. Gripping like iron shackles to hold him in place.

“What,” His voice cracked. “What are you—get off me!”