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Ihad lost track of time.

The claustrophobia was eating away at me, a stark reminder of my imprisonment on Visio. Granted, this was just a cell made of stone and iron. It was warded against all kinds of magic, yes, but it could still be torn down. A rune or a sigil could be broken. There was a solution to it. This was my way of avoiding despair. My own self-healing reasoning to stop me from going mad.

My darling Tristan was helpless. Hrista had taken the silver cube with all my memories. We didn’t even have access to that. It wouldn’t have helped, anyway. If I died, I died. If I shed this body, I would forsake everything. I would never be Unending again. I would shuffle right into Purgatory, my powers lost forever.

Hrista had done an impeccable job of destroying me.

“There hasn’t been much movement outside,” Tristan said after a long, heavy silence. He’d spent the past couple of hours observing the clones through the small window of our cell, expertly fitted with steel bars and more magic to keep us from escaping. “I assume we only have the two guards outside, by the door. I haven’t picked up any other scents, either. No additional heartbeats.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, knees under my chin as I tried to see a path forward through this awfulness. It was hard to shake the feeling that I had been incredibly stupid. What a ridiculous emotion to have, and the body just made it worse. Neither Tristan nor I could have anticipated this. We’d gone over the chain of events. The decision. Nowhere had Anunit given any hint that she wasn’t who we’d thought she was. There was no room for me to blame myself. Well, actually… there was. I could have processed my anger better. I could’ve told Death about Biriane. She would’ve had enough sense to stop us, and the World Crusher would not have been released.

“But how was I supposed to know?” I murmured, hearing the tremor in my voice.

“What?”

Shaking my head, I got up. “Nothing.”

“Unending…” Tristan replied, beckoning me to look at him. I could barely do it. There was hope in his beautiful eyes. And I could practically hear his pulse rushing, the enthusiasm thundering through his ribcage. He was itching to take out the guards and walk us out of here, but we both knew that wasn’t an option. Hrista had planned well for this. She had spent a considerable amount of time building Anunit’s rogue profile and grooming us. The real one had been locked up somewhere. We didn’t know when exactly, but it made sense that she’d had nothing to do with Reapers being brought back to life. That was clearly part of Anunit’s palette of awful deeds.

“I can’t even shed this body,” I told him, sounding utterly defeated. “I’m useless, Tristan. Even if I had my scythe, none of the death magic I can still wield would in any way be useful to our circumstances. If I die, I die for good, and we’ll never see each other again. She upended everything, and I welcomed it with arms wide open.” So much for not blaming myself.

“It’s not over,” he said, undeterred. I loved him with everything I had. I would’ve given my own flesh to believe his words to be true, but the facts were against us. “We’re trapped here. Surrounded by clones. You saw the Berserkers through that stupid window, didn’t you?”

His enthusiasm faded. Uneasiness settled in his gaze. “Yeah… I have no idea how to handle one of them if we ever cross paths.”

“Let alone the dozen or so that are here. She may have even brought more of them over, in the meantime.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” Tristan asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

I shrugged in reply, wishing I could be as strong or as resilient as he was. My own nature had been taken away from me. I had no Reaperhood to return to. My body was a hindrance, no longer a joy. In the blink of an eye, the dream I had been struggling to attain for so long had soured beyond repair. What good was a family if the world was destroyed?

“I… I don’t know.”

Hrista appeared out of nowhere beyond the steel bars. “Finally. A clueless Reaper. I thought I’d never see the day. Your kind is famous for being obnoxious know-it-alls… Oh, the delight!”

Tension filled our cell room in an instant. Her mere presence destroyed the last of my hopes—though I could no longer maintain any sort of optimism. I didn’t like this state of mind, and I did not know how to get myself out of it. I had never had such issues as a Reaper before. But as a living being, I was at the mercy of my feelings.

“You have not defeated us!” Tristan snapped. “We’ll find our way. We always do.”

“Aw… that’s so romantic,” Hrista replied, mocking him. “I am totally rooting for you, Tristan. Believe it or not, I want you and the universe to prove me wrong. I want the power of love to defeat me. But I reckon the three of us already know that that’s not going to happen. Had love been worth anything, it would have kept Spirit and me together forever. Instead, here we are!” Her humor faded. “I have The Shade. I will have the entire world of the living on its knees by the time I’m done. The realm of the Reapers will fall apart. Death and life will break… the balance will be gone, and the universe will shudder in my grip.”

“And then what?” I asked, my tone flat. I figured the approach might work, since Tristan had effectively used it on me. “What will you do then?”

Hrista let out a full sigh, as if she’d just woken from a wonderful dream, and I’d nearly spoiled the ending for her. “I have no idea, and that’s the whole beauty of this exercise.”

“So, good ol’ chaos. That’s so boring and overdone,” Tristan chimed in, picking up on my jabs. We didn’t need telepathy to be on the same wavelength, it seemed. I’d almost forgotten. I’d been so caught up in my own misery, that I had neglected the very man who had set me free from my five-million-year curse.

I nodded. “It’s actually quite the cliché. GASP has dealt with much worse.”

“They have never faced me,” Hrista shot back with a hiss. We’d insulted her immense pride, and I’d finally found a soft spot that I could poke until it bled. Pride had brought greater entities down. I’d figure out a way to do the same to her. “I’m a Valkyrie with flawless control over both light and darkness. I have been given the superior knowledge of Death’s ancient magic, as well. I have made life, and I now claim the Earthly realm as my own.”

Tristan clicked his teeth. “Is this supposed to be the official announcement? I thought you’d at least notify the ones outside The Shade. You know there will be hell to pay for what you’ve done.”

He didn’t need to know what she was capable of. He didn’t require the historical details of Valkyries and Berserkers—Tristan only had what I’d given him from my readings of the World Crusher’s book. Everything she had accomplished until now was proof that Hrista was a worthy adversary. I feared she was worse than the Spirit Bender. He’d never hurled Purgatory magic at us. He’d stuck to what he had known. Or maybe death magic had been all he could use. Hrista was clearly superior.

“I’d laugh in your face, but you’re in a cell, your fate sealed, done and dusted,” Hrista replied, regaining a sense of calm I hadn’t seen in her since she’d played the part of Anunit, the rogue Reaper who traipsed across the universe helping Reapers become real little boys. “It would be cruel of me to rub it in your face. However, I see that you are doubtful. It’s perfectly understandable. Life as you know it is over, and I’m trampling it without a single shred of mercy. I suppose denial is part of the process.”

She was going somewhere with this. Hrista had not come here just to tease us. As if reading my mind—or at least the faint changes in my expression—Tristan inched closer and took my hand in his. He squeezed tightly, pouring all his love into this simple yet meaningful gesture. I had worked so hard to give us a family… and Hrista had toyed with us. I would never forgive her. Even in a living body, I would pay her back for what she had done.

That’s it. The anger. Feed on it. You need it more than you need despair.

“Why are you here? Gloating is the mark of a weak and pitiful spirit,” I said, raising my chin in defiance. There was something about Tristan’s quiet encouragement that had given me an extra surge of strength. “Surely, you, the brilliant Hrista, the uber-talented Valkyrie whom everyone somehow underestimated, has a better reason to be here than to… gloat.”

She almost smiled as she looked at me. There was hatred in those blue eyes. It burned cold, but it was unmistakable. “Your husband here has been around for what, some forty years? But you’re ancient. Pretty much timeless, right?”

“Old enough to know that tampering with the universe will only come back to bite you in your Valkyrie ass,” I retorted.

“That remains to be seen. But you’re right about one thing, oh, mortal one,” she said, once again in a dazzlingly good humor. The white silk poured down her back, the armor clanging whenever she moved. For a rebel of Purgatory, she seemed attached to her original uniform. It told me plenty about Hrista. “I didn’t come here to mock you. There’s no fun in that. I came here to let you out. There’s something I want you to see.”

As if summoned telepathically, Esme and Kalon’s clones entered and unlocked our cell. Esme’s double put a pair of charmed cuffs on me, just to be on the safe side, and Kalon’s slapped a pair of solid steel ones on Tristan that he wouldn’t be able to break out of. I didn’t need any explanation, but it did give me a bit of comfort—there was paranoia involved, and they were willing to take even the most useless of precautions against me, just to be on the safe side. I was still a threat, in a sense, at least in their minds… I would’ve been a fool to tell them otherwise, wishing we could find a way to prove them right, instead. Hrista led our odd pack outside. As soon as my feet touched the grass, dew tickling my toes, I could tell something was different.

“Look up,” the Valkyrie said.

We did. From inside the cell, our view of the sky had been obscured. But out here, we could see it clearly, and it caused my stomach to shrink into something small and painful. “No… What is that?” I managed, my throat suddenly dry.

“The first sign of change,” she replied. “You see, Unending, Tristan… I don’t give a crap about what you or your people will want to do to me. I have started something here. You cannot stop it. It’s something otherworldly and of my own making. It’s irrefutable and undeniable. It’s absolute and infinitely better than whatever the universe threw together.”

Red and green rippled across the night sky, swallowing the half-moon and the night sky. Flashes of white burst here and there, like ghostly thunder beyond a sheet of multicolored clouds. It wasn’t normal.

The Shade’s sky had always been a spell of night, courtesy of the witches. But something else had taken over. Something had changed it. Something awful.

“What the hell did you do?” Tristan mumbled, his lower lip trembling. There was horror in his eyes. He didn’t need to know what that celestial phenomenon was in order to realize it wasn’t supposed to happen.

“I am a creator, Tristan,” Hrista said, beaming with pride. “I have created, and now… all the realms will bow before me. But not before I topple their leaders, of course. Consider this,” she motioned around us, “the hors d’oeuvre, I think you call them. The appetizer. The first stage of a cute little dinner party I’m throwing. The theme of the night is—”

“Chaos.” I finished her sentence for her.

It was clear now. The sky. The Shade takeover. The clones. The release of the World Crusher. I had a full picture of what Hrista was doing, and “terrified” did not even begin to cover how I felt. Tristan squeezed my hand again. This time, there was fear in his eyes. Confusion. Grief.

I understood that my time to mope had come to an end. My husband was a strong man and a fearless vampire. But I was the Unending. Hrista may have taken my body, but the spirit is still mine, bottled in this sack of meat and bones or not. I owed it to him to stay strong. There were weak spots. Regardless of how the rest of her plan unfolded, I could still find the right buttons to push.

And I would push. I would push until I heard Hrista scream.