Page 23

Eneas and the other Ghoul Reapers grew restless as we entered the second day on Biriane. Tristan was still awake, pensive as he sat beside the black marble lectern. I’d been reading the tome from its very first pages. Hours had passed in heavy silence, broken only by the occasional commentary from Filicore or Deas. The more I read, however, the angrier I became.

Of course, part of this anger came from the World Crusher’s presence. Similar to my Black Fever, her rage was infecting me. I was able to hold it back for the most part, though it had turned my mood foul. At least it would take ages for it to break my soul down like it had done to the Ghoul Reapers. I could put up with a crappy state of mind as long as I made it to the end of the book. I needed to understand more.

“How much longer will you be?” Eneas asked.

His siblings were absently wiping down various surfaces with fabric cloths—tables and stools made of white marble with black and gold enamel inlays, the murals depicting the World Crusher in different scenes of her existence, the magnificent altar where thousands of candles had once burned. I tried to imagine this place as it had once been. Brilliantly illuminated and crowded with templars and priests and worshippers. People who’d adhered to their beliefs, who’d come here in the hope of making their lives better.

They had died. Every last one of them. Perished. Their souls poisoned by the World Crusher’s anger.

“Reading her tome is pretty intense,” I replied. “Surely, you remember how it feels?”

The Ghoul Reapers exchanged glances. “We do,” Filicore muttered.

“Then you remember how mentally exhausting it is, also,” I said. “Give me some time. It’s not easy. If I’m to help you, it has to happen on my terms.”

Eneas sighed, lowering his black gaze. “We’re no good at being patient. Rotting here, it messes with your concept of time.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. None of you deserved this,” I said. “What Death did was unacceptable. She could’ve at least granted you passage—”

“Or put us out of our misery, right?” Eneas replied with a sickened grin. “I hoped for that, actually. There was a time when I used to despise the Reapers who chose to eat souls and degrade themselves into ghouls… until I started turning into one. Sure, I never hungered for a soul, but I still got the bad side of that deal, where my physical form is concerned. My perspective began to shift.” He paused, looking at his own hands, once graceful and now too slim, the fingers too long, black claws growing where delicate nails had been before. His own appearance filled him with bitterness. “It’s kind of different when you’re boiling in the same pot. The end just can’t come soon enough for some of us.”

I understood his misery. I didn’t wish to be his savior—either by freeing him or by destroying him—but something needed to be done. Death had left everyone here to rot.

“Do you know what happened to the souls of the Biriane people?” Malin asked, eyeing me intently as I got up and resumed my spot on the lectern. I opened the tome to where I’d left off, with just a few pages remaining.

I looked at him, shaking my head.

“Then read on. You’ll find it riveting,” he said.

It made me feel uneasy, but I had to keep reading anyway. I noticed, peripherally, their faint smiles as I turned a page. The Ghoul Reapers were dying for me to finish this book, and I tried to imagine what it must’ve been like for them, alone and stuck here, for so long. My five million years on Visio were beginning to look like a drab holiday in comparison. No one should suffer like this.

Tristan watched me from below. I stole a glance at him and resumed my education of the World Crusher’s life, my lips moving slowly with the words. “The book I was put in… How can I describe it? It’s lonely. It’s empty. I fill it with my thoughts and my memories, and for a moment, they come back to me. The existence I used to have. I don’t even remember when the seal happened. I only remember Death breaking my scythe, along with the agonizing pain that followed, and me waking up in here,” she wrote. “It’s dark. I’m weightless. It’s a lot like the nothingness, only I’m conscious, and that makes it so much worse…”

“Her only memory of the nothingness was the literal blip of a second before her creation,” Eneas reminded me. “Even the description of it makes me shiver. I can only imagine what that must feel like for her.” He pointed at the tome.

I continued reading, visualizing the World Crusher’s loneliness as the years went by. She’d been left here, hidden from the rest of the universe, smack in the middle of a thriving civilization that had no idea what would happen to them. “Death didn’t know either,” the Reaper wrote. “She shoved me in this book and left me here to think about what I’d done. For a long time, I couldn’t even think straight because of the anger. I hated her. I hated myself. I hated the entire world. Death should’ve ended me, but she was selfish.” That rang a painfully familiar bell. “She couldn’t bring herself to destroy and return me to the nothingness from whence I’d come, so she chose to let me simmer here, stewing in my undead juices.”

“It took the Biriane people a while to figure out what was happening. Much like a slow-burning fire, my anger was hottest here, in the epicenter. The closer they were, the sicker they got. Time went by, and they started dying.”

“I saw them, and it was the worst death I could imagine. They just dropped like logs, pale and lifeless and soulless. The only symptom they had was an utter exhaustion that took months to settle. One by one, the people of Biriane died. Their corpses were given funerals and buried by their loved ones, but there were no souls for Death to reap. It shocked her to learn that she wasn’t the only one with the power to destroy a spirit. It shamed and frightened her, though she would never admit it. Too proud, dear Death. Alas, she’d kept Biriane a secret from everyone for a long time, but by this point, the Reaper society was growing. I was still the first, but no longer the only Reaper.”

Death walked over, appearing out of nowhere. I was in this very temple, in the middle of a white sandstorm, many moons ago. I could see her, as if my consciousness had been imbued into the building itself, into its walls and crevices, its stones and pillars and windows. I could see Death taking each step toward me, saddened by what she was seeing. My anger was growing more toxic, more powerful… thousands were dying. Dropping. Lifeless. Soulless.

“She added seals to the walls inside. Additional charms. Any spell she thought might stifle me,” the World Crusher wrote. “The closer she got, though, the worse it felt for everyone else. The entire city died that day, and I had no way of stopping it. Death had locked me in here to stop me from killing people in my attempts to reach Purgatory. This was clearly worse. I wondered if she ever regretted doing it. Her obsession with being obeyed would eventually be Death’s undoing… or so I dared hope.”

“Once she realized how destructive my anger was in her presence, even with the spells she’d put on me—on the World Crusher, that is—Death left. Months later, the six Reapers came to Biriane. The former fae who’d been chosen to work directly for my maker. Eneas, Fileas, Malin, Deas, Hadras, and Filicore. They were handsome, stars shining in their wide eyes. They’d come here to make Death proud, to help and serve her.”

I saw them, and I couldn’t stop myself from admiring them. They’d been tall and bright and dashing, despite being Reapers. It tore me apart, realizing what they’d be forced to turn into. How that must’ve felt. The horror in their dying souls.

“They got to work fast,” the World Crusher wrote. “The city was already dead, and other people would soon come to investigate, to bury those they had lost, to settle in their place, perhaps, or to burn the whole thing to the ground in hopes of salvation. I didn’t know, and neither did the Reapers. But the magic they put on… it only helped for a while.”

I witnessed the death of Biriane in real time, and it made me cry. The pain, the loneliness that the last of their kind must have felt as they saw the inevitable demise, it tore me apart. And it only happened because of Death and her inability to manage her own mistakes.

And the World Crusher had been a mistake.

“I thought so, too,” the Reaper wrote, and I once again had the sharp sensation that she’d latched onto my thoughts. That she was talking to me through the book. I blinked several times and re-read that sentence. “I thought it would,” the text actually said, the visuals of the story surrounding me once more. “No one could stop it. Not even I. The anger just spread and sickened and killed until nothing lived. Not the people. Not the animals. Not the trees or the grass. All those souls were lost too, because the anger destroyed them. What it did to the Reapers, it did to the people of Biriane too. No one was spared.”

The desolation that followed crippled my senses. The pain I’d grappled with began to numb me as I watched Death’s biggest mistake unraveling before me. All the wasted lives. It was too much to endure, but I kept reading. The World Crusher should never have been made. There was too much power inside her. She lacked the soul, the actual soul that made this entire universe special and full of life. She was just an empty form with enough discernment to put one foot in front of the other and feel things, but without fully understanding what being entailed. My siblings and I had been modeled after real spirits. We had the spark of existence. The World Crusher did not, and therein lay the difference, because she lacked the emotional and spiritual equipment to understand certain complexities of life, death, and everything in between.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, opening them slowly. Eneas and the Ghoul Reapers were watching me. Their lack of souls made me shiver, but I could not fault them for it. They deserved better. Looking down at the page again, the last two paragraphs stood out.

“They call themselves the Ghoul Reapers now. Remnants of what they used to be. Death bound them to my book. They cannot leave unless I leave,” the World Crusher wrote. “Their failure to keep my anger contained upset her, even though she’d failed, too. Her ego was and always will be monumental and perhaps bigger than this very universe we all inhabit.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. Eneas’s gaze found mine, and he knew. He knew I would not be able to set them free. “You’re bound to the tome, and I can’t… I can’t let her loose. She’s nothing but destructive anger. She has no sense of right or wrong or consequences. She… I cannot. I’m sorry.”

This was where it ended, I realized. My dream to have a family of my own body and soul. This was where I drew the line. Unlike Death and her selfish ass, I had a limit. This was it. Setting the World Crusher free would cause too much damage, and I doubted I’d be able to control this Reaper. From what I had read and from what I had seen, she was infinitely more powerful than I was. She was on Death’s level. The mere thought of her roaming around with a colossal chip on her shoulder… no. It just couldn’t happen.

“We stop here, then,” Tristan murmured, noticing the sadness in my voice.

Eneas scoffed. “I figured you might say this…”

“I’m truly sorry. If there was any other way, I would, but Death—”

“Death is a stone-cold bitch!” Eneas cut me off, fury flashing in the blackness of his eyes. “I know! I was just… We were all dumb enough to think you might want to stick it to her after everything she did. Biriane is dead because of her. Those souls never made it into the Afterlife. The World Crusher’s rage is the worst thing to exist in this universe… I thought you’d understand.”

“I do, but at least it’s contained here,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He exhaled sharply, bitterly accepting my resolve. “Just read what’s left of that tome. You owe her and us that much.”

I did. Shifting my focus to the last paragraph, I read it aloud while Tristan and the Ghoul Reapers listened. “This is my story,” the World Crusher wrote. “It is not my ending, however. I’m hoping you’ll let me craft my own finale. An eternity inside this seal is not something I would wish upon anyone, not even Death, my worst and only enemy. She threw me aside like a useless doll. She brought me out of the nothingness and made me feel like I was the center of the universe, then when I stopped playing by her rules, she threw me in here. Do you think it’s fair?”

No. I would’ve liked to say no, but as I finished reading, a peculiar rumble filled the room, immediately accompanied by the raucous laughter of the Ghoul Reapers. They sprang to their feet, grins slitting their faces, and it was clear something that wasn’t supposed to happen was about to happen.

The color fled from Tristan’s face as he gawked at the black marble lectern where I was still standing. “Babe… you might want to come down from there,” he managed, motioning for me to get off.

I stepped onto the floor and whirled around just in time to see the lectern crack in two, splitting down the middle in precise halves, light beaming from within. The main crack then splintered into spidering crackles across the black marble, the light swelling and spreading and virtually spilling out. “Oh, no…” The rumble got louder, and the temple began to shake.

Grabbing Tristan’s wrist, I teleported us out of the Temple of Roses. It looked even weirder from the outside. The light expanded and broke the entire building down. The sculptural friezes, the columns and the stone walls, the white marble plaques and the expansive roof… It all crumbled and broke into little bits and pieces. It collapsed before us, spewing clouds of dust and dirt in every direction until the morning sky was obscured.

“No… no, no, no!” I shouted as it became clear to me what was happening.

“Is she… is she?” Tristan croaked, equally terrified.

I had been the key all along. Eneas and his Ghoul Reaper brothers appeared beside us, still grinning and deeply satisfied. “The second shall free the first,” he said. “The second shall free the first, and the words of the first on the lips of the second shall be the key.”

“That was the curse’s undoing,” I replied, my soul riddled with shame and raw fury. They’d played me. They’d played me like a fiddle, and I’d danced to their secret tune without even knowing it. “I had to read the book she was locked in…”

“Exactly!” Filicore exclaimed, throwing his head back as he laughed.

The Temple of Roses was gone. A massive pile of white powdery dust and rubble remained, with the occasional glimmer of black or gold enamel that had decorated the World Crusher’s interior friezes. She emerged from the middle of that pile, clad in a dress made of flowing, white-diamond dust that was somehow held together in the form of fabric. It flowed off her like a dream. Her hair was liquid gold, her eyes held the stars, and she was free.

The World Crusher was free, and I’d been the fool to do it.