Chapter 26 The Present
Before I even get the chance to stand up, walk over to Cassian and his mom, and tell them everything’s going to be okay, I get yanked back into the dark.
The familiar kind.
The kind that never means anything good lately.
Not unless you are Death himself and you want to scare some mortal, extinguishable soul into obedience.
My body vanishes before I even touch the floor again. The hallway, the scent of old perfume and blood and spiritual combustion, Nathaniel’s arms around me. It all of it rips away like a page torn from a book.
And just like that, I’m back in the void.
Pitch black. As always.
No body. No shape. Just… me.
And it takes me less than a second to figure out who pulled me here. Again.
“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—nothing else 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.
"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.
“He is a part of you. What was left behind.”
“My raven,” I whisper.
And everything slots into place.
Why he knew so much. Why he kept trying to protect me. Even that cocky attitude.
Pain.
That kid is Pain.
“When your body changed, your soul fractured,” Death says. “You gained skin and bone—but left behind your instincts, your tether, your power. Your raven became its own being. It fled. It ran from the wraith. And did what it could to protect you.”
The realization hits like lightning.
“You’re saying I split from it? That’s why everything’s felt wrong? Why I’ve been glitching out and flickering like a dying lightbulb?”
“Yes. The bond between a Grim Reaper and their raven is essential. It grounds you. Without it, you’ve been unraveling.”
I’m spinning.
“He was running from her.”
“And leading her away from you.”
“Until I tried summoning her myself.”
“That’s when he came back.”
“And he wasn’t exactly thrilled,” Death adds. “You didn’t even recognize him.”
I want to laugh and cry at the same time. It’s one thing to know my raven has been out there, trying to save me. It’s another to realize I didn’t even see it—see him—for what he was. For what I was.
I try to breathe. Then remember I don’t have lungs here.
“Is he… okay?”
“Whether he is—or ever will be—is up to you.”
…Yeah, I don’t like the sound of that.
But the void changes. I feel it shift. Grow heavier. Like consequences are circling.
So I brace myself.
“Our deal stands,” Death says. “End the wraiths, or you and your mortal companions will face extinguishment.”
The words cut through everything like a blade.
And there it is again—that part of him that doesn’t need a cloak or a scythe. He is the scythe. The end. The edge of everything.
The silence after the last breath. The cold after the final heartbeat.
And I don’t have a choice.
So I nod.
Or maybe I am the nod—a flicker of obedience in the dark.
I try not to shake, whatever that means when I’m just… thought. But I still feel it. The fear. The weight. The awareness that I’ve been handed something much bigger than I know how to carry.
A mission I didn’t ask for.
A power I barely understand.
Three men pulling me in different directions.
And now… a broken part of myself I need to recover.
I gather what little of me remains and whisper:
“Is that all?”
The silence stretches so long I think maybe he’s gone.
Then—
“For now.”
The words drop like stones. Quiet. But absolute.
And just like that, Death disappears—fading into whatever lies beyond even the void.
Leaving me alone again.
Waiting for the pull that’ll drop me back into a world that didn’t stop spinning just because I broke.
A world where pain isn’t done with me.
Or with my men.
It seems like our work has barely even begun.