Midnight
A fist grabs the scuff of my collar and a sting erupts over my cheek.
I’m frozen.
Somewhere in the last thirty seconds the world has rearranged itself.
None of it makes any sense. Lucy is gone.
She dissolved in my arms and now there’s a version of this campus with a battle raging between fallen angels, our tower has collapsed and Ignatius’s hand is on my collar trying to save me.
“You need to run,” he says again.
I turn and focus on the dean of Finis Academy. The demon who has owned my soul intending to reap it for a decade, is urging me to run, to save myself. I think that’s what finally makes this all real.
It takes a second for me to process the scene. I’m distracted by the flood of wraiths and ashspawn flowing into campus and the sight of Finis Tower. It’s nothing but a gaping maw and crumbling ruins.
The cracked remnants loom above us like chipped teeth. The symbol of our education and the heart of our city stands broken and grotesque—a stark contrast to the tiny beacon of realisation blooming in my mind.
Time is up and I’m still breathing.
I’m alive.
A beautiful thought filled with hope bursts like the crashing of a tsunami as a second far more devastating realisation creeps in next to it.
Lucy is dead.
It should be me.
Ignatius should have reaped me. And instead, Lucy is gone and I am left with… what? Her magic? Am I a demon now?
Finis Tower drags me out of my thoughts.
Stood in the middle of the destruction is the angel responsible for punching through the heart of our campus.
She stands tall and regal amongst the rubble.
The enormous void leers behind her. Serrated seams of the Veil hang loose, floating in the wind.
Strips of obliterated fabric drift in the air like dandelion seeds.
If it weren’t horrifying, it would be stunning.
The edges and all the severed pieces dance like a murmuration of shadows.
The carnage beneath the shimmering fabric snaps into focus, and nothing is beautiful anymore.
The few Societas members that survived the explosion crawl out from the rubble and bricks.
Limbs barely attached.
Blood streaking cheeks and necks.
Clothes torn.
The agonising shrieks that make my body crawl. A metallic tang fills the air along with the scent of soured milk and stale cigarettes.
But what climbs down my throat and makes me want to throw up is the knowledge that Lucy is gone.
My heart clenches. I bend over and heave as images of my hands clinging to the scythe and tearing through Lucy pour into my mind.
Puke spills onto the cobbles as I empty the contents of my stomach. I’m vaguely aware that my legs don’t seem to be working and yet I find myself standing. Ignatius grips my jacket, holding me upright.
“Interitus…” Architecti says, her gaze zeroing on Thalia.
“Thalia is Interitus?” I whisper, letting my mind wander back to the vision Architecti gave me inside her prison.
The black-tipped wings.
Thalia’s black-tipped hair.
The mismatched eyes.
The push.
The fall.
I glance back at the two angels, everything solidifying.
Thalia is Interitus.
“Midnight, for fucksake,” Ignatius shakes me, but I’m utterly mesmerised by the sight in front of me.
The handful of Societas members that haven’t been injured work with Interitus to clear the way for wraiths to charge after students and professors. Bodies scatter and scramble.
The hole in the Veil throbs as if it has its own heartbeat. A beat that instead of pumping blood, floods our mortal city with death and monsters.
We are so fucked.
Especially because you can’t repair the fabric where none exists. I recall Alistair teaching that early in one of our classes.
Ignatius stills beside me, his gaze on Finis Tower, mouth ajar. Architecti hovers there, her wings fluttering, streams of magic flowing from her feathers and fingers.
Bricks lift off cobbles and slot back into place. She unleashes a deluge of Architect moths into campus. They plume and blossom everywhere her magic shines. More and more burst into existence with every drop of possibility and influence she exerts.
“She’s repairing the tower?” I breathe.
“Yes,” Ignatius says, equally awed.
Piece by piece.
Brick by brick.
She repairs damage while Interitus creates more, and I have to wonder which one of them is the real villain.
Societas members battle against professors. “End fate!” one of them bellows as he charges with a set of blades.
More students join in, doing what they can to pull magic from the campus and wielding it like swords.
Ignatius jerks into action, swinging fists and ribbons of demonic magic at wraiths and ashspawn.
His magic has a redder tone to it compared to the thick black ribbons I use from Finis.
It’s more potent too. The impact on his victims, cleaner, sharper and more final.
I stand there motionless. Realisation slamming through me over and over again: Lucy is dead, I’m alive, and I’m the one that killed her.
She made me reap her.
More bricks lift from the ground and float back into place. The campus repairs itself faster and faster, the Veil, however, does not. For all Architecti’s benevolence in repairing the tower, she blew a fucking hole twenty feet wide in the Veil and obliterated the fabric.
Heat boils and bubbles in my gut as my fists ball. Architecti can fix the tower, but I can’t bring Lucy back. She’s gone but what I can’t fathom is that that’s what she wanted. My palms tingle with the sensation of Lucy’s warm essence nestled against the cold blade that stole her soul.
I inhale again. Sharp air kisses my throat with a caress that burns.
I thought receiving demon magic would hurt, that it would make my body curl and contort.
Instead, a weight settles against my bones, heavy like the richness of red wine.
It rumbles like it wants to get out, like it wants me to use it.
But I can’t, because I'm still breathing, and she isn’t.
If I use her magic that means she’s really gone.
Ignatius stumbles past me, a wraith dropping at his feet and disintegrating. He slaps my cheek wrenching me back to reality. He raises his hand to strike me again, but I grab his wrist stopping him.
“We’re not leaving. We have to fight,” I bark and shove him out of the way of a stumbling ashspawn.
We might be in the middle of a fight, but I don’t trust him not to take my soul at the first opportunity.
It’s a debt owed. A debt that has to be paid. But for now, I’m still here. And if I’m still here, I can still fight.
I have time.
Time? I want to laugh. The very fucking thing I’ve craved for so long. Chased and hunted as if it were prey, when really I was the victim waiting for my predator.
But it hasn’t come.
Did I change my fate? I didn’t think that was possible. What happens to a deal when it’s not fulfilled on time? I haven’t learnt that in contracts class yet and Lucy isn’t here to ask.
A knot hardens in my gut, a seed of belief forming. For far too long I’ve played the victim. Resigned myself to Ignatius’ control. To the deal that was my fate.
Time is up and I am still. Fucking. Here.
Between my clenched fingers, magic hums. Thicker, stronger. Demonic.
How could she force me to reap her knowing I’d have to live with myself after doing that? Fuck Lucy.
I’ve beaten my fate once, if Ignatius comes for me again, I’ll find a way to beat it again.
A solitary spark ignites somewhere deep in my gut. It flares and fires and brims with the energy of newborn star, or maybe it’s a newborn demon.
This isn’t over.
I’m knocked sideways by Ignatius grappling a wraith. I clutch a fistful of his jacket and heave us out of the way.
“GO,” I shout and shove him forwards as the wraith rounds on us. He startles as if surprised I finally came to.
“Move…” I push again and point towards the garden of death knowing we can take temporary shelter in there. But two steps in, we’re halted. A Societas member stalks across the campus towards us, “THE END OF FATE IS HERE,” she screams.
Next to her is a wraith, behind them an ashspawn and beyond that creatures that haunt nightmares. The underworld creatures aren’t attacking her. My money is on Interitus controlling them.
“I told you to move. We waited too long,” Ignatius snarls.
I draw my scythe, the only weapon I have on me and stalk forward.
The courtyard teems with sinuous coiling skeletons and more than a dozen Societas members, all wearing angelic robes made of a shadowy fabric, shorn off at the elbow displaying their Societas tattoo emblems.
All enemies.
A handful of friendly faces peel into the area—Alistair Ironheart and Riven amongst other professors—and a couple of clearly suicidal students walk beside them.
I spot familiar red hair and double take. Aurelia? She’s the last person I expected to actually risk her life and take a stand.
In the distance, I spot Lex and Bastien fighting side by side. At their feet, Mortem is about three times as fluffy as normal, his hackles all bristling as he hisses and spits at everything that moves.
Everyone else has run.
Above us, Architecti launches herself at Interitus. They careen together in an explosion of feathers and wings and tower bricks showering down on us.
A wraith lumbers its way over the rubble. Ignatius grips my elbow as he yanks me out of the way.
“Can you access campus magic?” Ignatius barks.
I respond by pulling a dozen ribbons of magic from the walls in rapid succession. Ignatius shuffles back a step. I’ll be honest, I’m surprised at the ease too. It must be the demon magic lingering in my veins from Lucy that’s making me more powerful overall.
But they’re unwieldy and I lose control of several strands.
Ignatius shakes his head and then lurches, barrelling into me.
We’re a clusterfuck of limbs and torsos. A wraith’s claws swipe at my throat, making the wind kiss my skin. It misses and slices through his hip instead. He howls and swings a rope of blood red magic at the creature which promptly garrottes it.