Page 40 of Death’s Gentle Hand

“Exactly,” Lennar said, his voice heavy with grim certainty. “With you as her anchor, she could wield cosmic power without cosmic restraint. Death without mercy, ending without purpose beyond her own hunger for control.”

Cael overheard the conversation from the clinic's back room, and his anguished voice carried clearly through the thin walls: “If I stay near you, I doom you to become her tool. But if I leave, you're defenseless against forces you can't fight alone.”

Damian grabbed his hand with fierce determination, their fingers interlocking despite the supernatural cold that still clung to Cael's transformed flesh. “If you leave, I'm already doomed. We face this together or not at all.”

“You don't understand,” Cael said, his voice breaking with the weight of cosmic knowledge. “The Elder Wardens gave me seventeen days to sever our bond voluntarily or face mutual erasure. That was yesterday. Seventeen days left, and now Senra's moving faster than anyone anticipated.”

The revelation hit Damian like a sledgehammer to the chest. Sixteen days until cosmic erasure, less than one day until Senra's ritual—they were caught between impossible deadlines with no safe options remaining.

As Lennar gathered his materials to spread word through the underground resistance, he left them with a final warning that seemed to echo with prophetic weight: “The ritual begins at moonrise tomorrow. Whatever you're going to do, decide quickly. Cosmic law won't give you time to deliberate.”

The door closed behind him, leaving Damian and Cael alone with impossible choices and the crushing weight of limited time. The clinic that had been their sanctuary now felt like a tomb, filled with the ghosts of conversations they'd never have and futures that seemed increasingly unlikely.

Needing space to think and giving Cael time to process the cosmic upheaval in his essence, Damian made his way to the Memory Orchard as evening approached.

The sacred grove was dangerous for someone in his emotional state—the trees that grew from unspent soul energy had a tendency to show visitors exactly what they most needed to see and least wanted to confront.

The orchard existed in the spaces between districts, accessible only through forgotten passages that predated the Time Exchange's systematic mapping of Varos.

Ancient trees grew in impossible spirals, their fruit glowing with ethereal light that contained visions of what could have been if different choices had been made.

Among the memory trees, Damian found a memorial stone marked with his mother's name.

The carving was simple, elegant, surrounded by symbols that belonged to the Ashen Accord and spoke of love that transcended death itself.

His fingers traced the familiar letters while his heart hammered against his ribs.

When he touched the stone's surface, the world dissolved around him, replaced by visions that felt more real than his current existence.

He was transported into his mother's final memory—binding his soul with desperate love while seven-year-old Damian slept nearby, unaware that his world was about to change forever.

Her whispered words echoed across twenty years: “He will need you one day, my brave boy. When Death comes calling, be his mercy, his anchor, his choice to stay human. Love will not be enough—you must be strong enough to fight for it.”

The vision showed her weaving soulbinding magic with hands that shook from exhaustion and approaching death, pouring her life force into protective spells that would activate decades later when her son needed them most. She'd seen this moment, had prepared for cosmic forces that wouldn't manifest until Damian was old enough to understand their weight.

“I don't want to be someone's mercy,” Damian told the memory-shade of his mother, his voice thick with tears he'd been holding back for hours. “I don't want to be a cosmic necessity or a strategic anchor. I want to be someone's choice, someone's joy, someone's freely given love.”

The shade smiled with devastating gentleness. “Love and duty are not opposites, my heart. Sometimes the greatest love is choosing to be what someone needs even when it's not what either of you wants.”

The vision broke Damian's carefully maintained composure, and he wept among the memory trees for everything he'd lost and everything he was afraid to lose.

Twenty years of accumulated grief poured out of him in waves—for his mother, for his lost childhood, for Oris and all the other casualties of Senra's ambition, for the impossible future he'd glimpsed with Cael.

“She knew,” he whispered to the indifferent stars beginning to appear overhead. “She knew this would happen. She prepared me for it.”

As twilight settled over the grove, Damian realized he'd been holding onto the naive hope that love alone would be enough to overcome cosmic law.

But love without power, without allies, without a plan—love was just another form of helplessness.

The revelation was devastating and liberating in equal measure.

His mother hadn't just bound his soul to Death out of desperation. She'd given him the tools to fight cosmic forces on their own terms, to become more than passive anchor or willing sacrifice. The soulbinding magic in his blood was as much weapon as protection, as much choice as destiny.

He returned to the clinic as full darkness fell, expecting to find Cael waiting anxiously for his return.

Cael was gone, and the sudden absence tore through their soulbond like a physical wound. The connection that had become as necessary as breathing now carried only emptiness, silence where there should have been the comforting presence of someone who understood his heart.

Damian collapsed onto the narrow bed, clutching the pendant to his chest as if it might still carry Cael's warmth. The wood was cold, lifeless, just carved matter rather than the living symbol of connection it had been while their bond remained strong.

The magnitude of abandonment—after everything they'd shared, after every promise and moment of intimacy—left him gasping with pain that felt both emotional and absolutely devastating.

This wasn't the clean agony of death or loss, but the messy torture of being chosen and then abandoned by someone who claimed to love you above all cosmic consequence.

“Coward,” he whispered to the empty room, his voice breaking on the word. “You said you'd stay. You said forward was the only direction. You said you'd choose me over everything you were before.”

The clinic's candles extinguished themselves one by one, as if responding to his despair, and time itself seemed to slow around his grief.

The air grew thick and hard to breathe, charged with emotional energy that had nowhere to go, no cosmic entity present to absorb it through their severed connection.

As the initial shock faded, anger began to kindle in Damian's chest—not at Cael specifically, but at the cosmic forces that made love a liability, at the systems that turned connection into weakness, at the assumption that mortals should quietly accept whatever fate the universe assigned them.

“Fuck that,” he said aloud, his voice growing stronger with each word. “Fuck cosmic law and universal order and the assumption that love makes people weak. If they want to use me as ammunition, they'll discover I'm a weapon that chooses its own targets.”

He stood from the bed with movements that felt foreign to his newly furious body, purpose flooding through him like molten steel. Senra wanted to use his connection to Cael as a cosmic tool? She'd discover that Damian Vale had never been anyone's passive instrument.

Opening his journal to what might be his final entry, Damian wrote with steady hands that showed no trace of the grief still burning in his chest:

I loved him. Even when he ran. Even when he chose cosmic law over cosmic rebellion.

Even when he decided I was too precious to risk and too dangerous to keep.

I choose love anyway. I choose fight. If the universe wants to use me as ammunition, it will discover I am a weapon that chooses its own targets.

Mother, if your spirit can hear this—I understand now what you prepared me for. Not just to anchor Death to humanity, but to fight for the right to love what I choose. The soulbinding magic you gave me isn't just protection. It's revolution.

Cael, wherever cosmic fear has driven you—I hope you find the courage you've lost. I hope you remember that some things are worth fighting for even when fighting seems hopeless. I hope you discover that love without courage is just another form of cowardice.

To whoever finds this journal after tomorrow night—we tried to love against impossible odds. Maybe we failed, but the trying mattered. The choosing mattered. The hope that cosmic law could be rewritten by mortal hearts mattered.

Some wars are worth fighting even when you know you'll lose them.

Damian methodically prepared for war. He gathered his medical supplies—not for healing this time, but for the blood magic that soulbinding required.

The ritual components Lennar had left behind, materials that pulsed with temporal energy and smelled of power older than civilization.

Every piece of information about soulcraft he'd accumulated over years of underground practice.

His mother's binding had given him potential. Now it was time to transform potential into weapon.

The final action before leaving the clinic was to light a single white candle in the window—not as signal or invitation, but as memorial to what they'd built together. Whatever happened at the Obsidian Basin, their love deserved to be remembered as more than just cosmic accident or tragic mistake.

The flame burned steady and bright against the growing dawn, a small defiance against the darkness that threatened to consume everything worth preserving.

It would burn until the wax was exhausted, marking time for a love that had dared to challenge universal law and had changed two impossible beings in the process.

Damian shouldered his pack and walked out into the grey morning, leaving behind the sanctuary where he'd learned what it meant to be chosen by someone who'd never chosen anything before. Ahead lay the Obsidian Basin, Senra's ritual, and cosmic forces that saw mortals as tools rather than people.

Behind him, the white candle burned like a prayer made visible, like hope refusing to die even when hope seemed foolish.

Whatever happened next, he would face it as himself—Damian Vale, healer, lover of impossible beings, someone who'd learned that revolution sometimes began with a single person choosing to fight rather than surrender.

The war between love and law had found its battlefield. Now it was time to discover whether one mortal's stubborn refusal to accept cosmic inevitability could rewrite the fundamental rules governing existence itself.

Some things were worth fighting for even when fighting seemed hopeless.

Some things were worth dying for, even when dying meant losing everything you'd ever wanted.

Some things were worth living for, even when living meant accepting pain too large for any single heart to carry.

Love, it seemed, was all three at once.