14. Midnight
Midnight
C andidates are called.
One after another they leave their seats to walk down the main aisle and vanish through a door at the back of the stage. None of them return.
Lex, Bastien and I are fine until the first scream tears through the hall. It’s loud and all-encompassing, like the tower sucked the sound into the walls and spat it out again. All three of us hold our ears and lean against each other until it fades. All three of us paler than before.
The longer we wait, the more my gut hardens and my nails cut moons into my palms. I hunger for this challenge and waiting is an exquisite form of torture.
Three hours in, the first candidate dies.
We know because the hall blooms in a swarm of entropy moths.
The howling screech that rips through the hall wounds something inside me.
Was that their last breath for a grieving friend?
Lex and Bastien both grab my hands, as if clinging to each other can save the candidate, or maybe it’s the vain hope it will save us.
It does neither.
Another hour goes by, and two more candidates die. Each time, their shriek buries itself in my mind. This is so much worse than reaping a soul. Vacant looks and fear I can cope with. But these howls are pure loss. Grief. Anguish and pain as all their possible futures vanish.
With each death comes another swarm of entropy moths. Their fluttering wings growing until the hum is a hiss and rumble that makes the hall vibrate.
This is what I hate the most. I’ve never liked the moths. Harbingers of souls that need reaping, for me anyway. The more they flutter and fill the hall, the more I fidget, unease coiling like worms inside me.
After the fourth candidate dies, the swarm is so big that the Severance Rite has to pause to clean out the little dustfuckers.
When they reset, Lex is called.
I squeeze her hand. Bastien stands and hugs her. The way we all cling to each other, you’d think we’d known each other our whole lives. But there’s something galvanising about this room and this ritual.
Witnessing death after death.
Soul after soul.
Scream after scream.
This is the kind of nightmare that buries itself deep. It has claws and teeth and the kind of sentience that never dies.
We share matching scars in our hearts now, the kind that no one else understands.
“I don’t want to let you go,” I whisper to Lex.
She’s short, so her hug squeezes my waist. “I’m going to see you both on the other side, aren’t I?
” she whispers. But none of us know the answer to that, and after what we’ve witnessed, none of us can lie either.
We squeeze her again instead and watch as she makes her way onto the stage and through the door.
Her Severance Rite is short; the next name called much faster than the rest have been. I pray it means she survived and not the alternative.
Half an hour later, Bastien is called.
“If I don’t make?—”
I shove my hand over his mouth. “You will. You have to.”
We hold each other’s gaze. One last beat of before held in a single breath, melded with the hope that we get an after. He nods and then he’s striding towards the stairs to the stage.
His rite takes longer than Lex’s.
Three more candidates pass through the rite, then one dies. Another makes it through their rite only to collapse dead after—so the whispers that follow her limp body in the arms of three professors say.
Professor Malifax clears his throat and straightens his shirt, and I just know . I feel it in my bones as if the tower itself is whispering you’re next.
There’s something odd about Malifax. Cold and unfeeling. I shove it away, the excitement and anxiety of today being too much to handle as it is.
I close my eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Nine years I’ve yearned for this moment. Prayed to the angels that left us, begged the gods who smite us. Pleaded with my parents on the other side to give me this chance.
And now, finally, here it is…
“Mercedes Midnight,” he calls.
I stand, acutely aware that there’s no one left to hug me. No one to wish me luck or tell me it’s going to be okay.
But it will be.
Because I have a score to settle, and a soul to steal back.
The central aisle has to be the longest walkway in history. Every eye left in the room follows me as I make my way towards the stage.
There are whispers. Slurs. “Reaper.” “Gravetether.” “Ashkisser.”
I absorb it all. They think it weakens me, that they can rid the world of another reaper.
But their hate only strengthens me. Makes me burn hotter, fuels the pools of fury that simmer in my gut.
I will complete this rite for no other reason than to spite them. Philosophers say spite is a negative, that we should use positivity to motivate us. Well, fuck that. I’ve never seen a more motivated being than a woman scorned and filled with spite.
I climb the steps, not to my death, but to my future.
Professor Malifax leads me through the door into a dark room with bare walls save for the splats of blood and what looks like chunks of vomit.
The room stinks of charred leather, stale sweat and ammonia that clings thick to the air. The upside is the vomit is covered. The downside is that the stench rubs in my nose like a cold sore.
Professor Malifax passes me a scythe. “This scythe is imbued with Finis Tower’s magic. You are to cut through your sternum to the heart of your soul and slice off a sliver.”
Cut a piece of my soul? No wonder students didn’t make it out. The blade is heavier than mine. Though I can’t work out if it’s the obsidian stone or the metaphysical weight it bears having killed so many candidates and bled so many souls. It’s warm to the touch; I thought it would be cool.
Malifax continues. “Should you complete this successfully, the blade will transform into a needle and Finis Tower will open for you, bearing its heart so that you can, in turn, stitch your soul with its.”
This sounds… difficult . I swallow the lump forming in my throat.
“Should you complete the stitching, there is one trial left. You must share a truth with the Tower. Think wisely because the Tower must accept your truth for you to gain entry into Finis.”
Malifax closes his hands and lowers his head, mumbling words that sound like nonsense but I’m certain would have Lex squealing with delight.
I sling the blade in my pocket for the stitching and pull out my own. Fuck using a blade every other candidate has.
The ground rumbles, peels of dark ribbons split from the wall. Long, necrotic fingers made of the shadows of gods tiptoe towards me. They undulate in rhythmic patterns, the ribbon-arms must stretch twenty feet from the wall. I want to touch them, bend them around my hands and wield them.
I see the allure now. The awe and wonder that Lex cradled in her gaze.
I close my eyes, bringing my scythe to my sternum. I have torn so many souls from their owners that this should be second nature.
But it’s different when it’s your own. I guess that’s why murder is so much easier than suicide.
Survival instinct wails deep inside me. A protective reflex, making my limbs heavy and my muscles twitch.
I bring the point to my skin. So many times I’ve done this to others and never felt the sharp sting myself. A light press and the blade slides into my chest.
Hot lacerations surge through me. My veins bulge and pop as my consciousness tries to resist.
The agony is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Every nerve sets itself on fire. Heat blisters its way through my chest and buries itself in my limbs, my bones, my veins. It eats its way through every fleshy fibre.
There’s a disembodied scream. It’s hollow, piercing, shattering. It rattles in my skull, my teeth chattering against the pressure.
It’s me. I’m howling so loud I swear the cells in my throat split and tear and leak blood into my gut.
As I slice through my soul, every memory, every moment I’ve lived surges through me, a tidal wave of visions.
I buckle under the weight of choices.
Of possibilities.
All of them swirling and dancing before me.
I can’t do it.
My muscles seize.
My vision spots.
I lean forward and hurl. Blood splatters the floor, making the same pattern so many before me have.
My nose ruptures, hot liquid rushing down and spilling onto my chin.
Ignatius flutters into my mind.
Then Aurelia.
Hatred, thick and oozing, seeps into my mind. It’s the fuel I need. Most people are driven by joy and positivity.
Fuck that.
Rage.
Hate.
Obsession.
I will break my contract, no matter what it takes. I grit my teeth and push up off my knees until I’m standing. I will face my judgement on my feet.
I grab hold of the blade buried in my chest and despite the searing pain, despite my jaw clenching so hard I crack a molar, I tear it from my chest.
A dark smile curls the corner of my mouth as I stare upon the thing Ignatius wants to take from me.
“You can’t have this piece, motherfucker,” I whisper.
It’s a beautiful thin strip. Both regal and divine, it shimmers and floats in the air.
Deep inside me, I am bleeding in a place where I cannot reach. I cannot stem the blood loss, and I cannot heal what I have harvested.
This must be what they meant when they said we wouldn’t leave here whole. Such a thin sliver for how gargantuan the chasm is inside me. It gapes like an angry, endless maw I’ll never be able to fill.
I’m about to slide my scythe back in my pocket when it shivers in my hand. It trembles harder, quicker, the hilt cracks and the blade extends until it’s no longer a scythe but a needle.
Whoa.