Chapter 23 Cassian’s Past
In the silence that follows, I see her.
Sabine.
My beautiful sister, the one who never wanted anyone to get hurt.
Her head is tilted to the side, lips parted as if she’s about to speak. Her eyes don’t blink. Blood runs in thin streams down her arms from those awful cuffs. Her dress—a soft silver-blue—looks like something meant for a gala. But it’s stained with deep crimson, the blood pooling around the cuts.
I can’t look away. There’s something haunting about the way she’s gone still. I’ve seen this kind of stillness before, but this is different.
It hurts more.
No—it hurts more than I ever thought was possible.
There’s no tremble in her fingers. No breath near her collarbone. No flutter in her lashes. Just that wide-eyed, parted-lip look, like she almost said my name... but never made it.
My legs buckle, though I don’t think I’m standing. Maybe it’s just my soul dropping out of my body. I try to scream. To cry. To reach her. I try to crawl.
But it’s too late.
The air grows cold. Heavier.
Something shifts in the space that used to be a room.
And then I see it.
A figure standing behind her.
It doesn’t make a sound as it steps forward.
It doesn’t look like it belongs here. Or maybe it belongs more than I do.
It looks like a man in his mid-forties—tall, lean, dressed entirely in black, with a raven perched on his shoulder.
But even though it has the face and eyes of a person, it doesn’t feel human.
His eyes shine like wet obsidian. When it looks at Sabine, there is nothing in its gaze.
No flicker of pain. No hesitation. No recognition that what it's seeing is a person—was a person. There’s no grief.
No disgust. No horror. Just a hollow stare that passes right through her like she’s already gone.
It doesn’t even feel cruel. Cruelty would mean feeling something.
There is nothing in it.
Like it’s been carved out and left hollow. Like it was never meant to understand pain or love or loss. Like the dark folds of whatever heart it might have were stitched together with absence.
If it even has a heart.
How?
How can anything stand in front of Sabine—my sister—like this, her body torn and bound, still echoing with the pain she felt, and not react? Not even blink?
Not feel the injustice of it burning in its chest?
Rage tears through me. Sudden. Vicious. Even here, wherever this is. My vision stutters. I think my hands are fists, but I can’t feel them. I can’t feel anything except the crack in me, widening fast and sharp, like I’m coming apart from the inside.
Sabine deserves justice.
Not this... indifference.
“Stop,” I try to say. But the word doesn’t come out. There’s no voice to speak with. Just the intention.
Just a scream trapped somewhere in my soul, echoing without air.
The figure doesn’t pause. Doesn’t blink.
He steps forward and tilts his head toward her body like he’s listening for something beneath the silence.
Then something shifts.
From Sabine’s chest—right from her heart—something lifts.
It glows, like a tiny lightbulb in the dark.
It doesn’t have a body, not really. It doesn’t seem to have a shape at all. It’s just light. And yet… it looks like her.
Like her softness. Her sorrow. The way she used to smile at me when it was just the two of us and life still felt kind.
She floats upward.
The figure summons a scythe from thin air.
The raven on his shoulder shifts, watching me like it knows who I am. Like it’s judging.
“No,” I think. No—beg. “Not her. Take me. Please. Take me instead.”
But he doesn’t hear.
Doesn’t even notice my pleading.
This… thing raises the scythe. The blade hums with something. I don’t hear it so much as feel it. It’s like a vibration of sorts. Something that I feel in the core of my being, like it’s older than me. It slices through the space between them, and Sabine’s light—her soul—shudders.
The raven lets out a low, guttural croak.
I lurch forward—or try to. My body stays still, but my will surges ahead. Every part of me reaches for her light. For whatever is left of her that’s still here.
It’s still her. I know it is.
Please, I think, and this time, the word seems to ripple through the dark.
The being hesitates.
Just for a moment.
It turns its head and looks straight at me.
It sees me.
And what’s left of my breath catches.
Because those eyes aren’t just empty. They’re infinite. I could fall into them and never stop. This isn’t a man.
But it’s not a god either.
No god would be this cold. This detached.
The god my mother believes in, the one I wanted to believe in, even after everything I’ve seen, is warm. Compassionate.
This thing isn’t.
It looks at me without recognition. Like it doesn’t understand, or care, what just happened.
I want to scream at it. To claw its face, shake it, demand that it do something. That it help Sabine. I’ll handle whatever’s coming for me, but not her. She doesn’t deserve this.
Whatever it’s planning to do to her, it needs to stop. Right now.
But the Reaper just tilts its head.
My thoughts don’t reach it.
Then, in one clean, silent arc, it swings the scythe.
And I’m helpless to stop it.
Her light vanishes.
Gone.
Snuffed out like a candle between two fingers.
And my world splits apart.
I scream. I thrash. I sob without lungs.
But it’s all meaningless. Just noise in the dark.
Until the Reaper turns away.
So does the raven.
And I’m alone.
And still.
Until something inside me jerks.
Like a thread pulled tight.
Like I was tethered this whole time and only now someone noticed.
It yanks.
Hard.
My vision warps.
Pain explodes behind my eyes.
My chest caves in, then swells like it’s trying to remember how to be alive.
My blood screams through my veins.
The dark peels back.
The Reaper fades.
The raven’s gone.
And then—
I wake.
A scream sits in my throat like a knife.
My breath comes sharp and wrong.
I blink.
Only one eye opens.
The other—
Black. Nothing. Blinded. Burned.
My body flails.
I’m alive.
I’m alive.
But Sabine isn’t.
Sabine is gone.
And I came back just in time to make her killer pay.