Page 27 of Forgotten (The Soulbound #1)

I fall into the darkness willingly this time.

No force pulls me under. No wraith dragging me into oblivion. No cold hands clamping around my throat, suffocating me into nothingness.

This time, I let go. I surrender.

Because... well. Because I just let a human serial killer finger fuck me after I shattered the ultimate rule of a Grim Reaper and saved his friend. A friend who shoved his tongue down my throat at the same time.

So, yeah. Maybe I should have seen this coming.

I might be dead, but damn. Nothing could have prepared me for this kind of debauchery, for the way my existence keeps twisting into something even more unrecognizable. Yet here I am—wrecked, unraveling, and in deep fucking trouble.

Because whatever just happened? That wasn’t normal.

I drift in the nothingness, weightless, untethered. If I could, I’d bury my head in my hands and scream into the void. But I guess that will have to wait until I claw my way back to the living realm and find some quiet place to destroy my already-raw vocal cords.

A cold laugh slithers through the void.

Not mine.

Not theirs.

Something else.

I go still. My stomach turns to ice. I know that sound.

It comes again—low, deep, amused. And then—

“There are far worse things a Grim Reaper like yourself can do than pretend to procreate, Miss Skye.”

The voice wraps around me, silk and steel, a noose made of velvet. No. No, no, no.

Death.

Not death, the concept. Not just another Reaper.

The Death. The one who governs the afterlife. The whisper in every bone of every Grim Reaper. The entity that does not speak unless absolutely necessary.

In my entire career as a Grim Reaper, I’ve heard him exactly once—right at the beginning, when he oh-so-graciously gave me the choice .

Something tells me this visit is going to be... different.

“It's interesting you thought it was your own decision to appear in the void,” he muses, all silky and omniscient. “I assumed a Grim with abilities as unique as yours would feel my direct call instead.”

Uh. What?

I did not, in fact, feel any such thing. I thought I was just having a totally normal, existential crisis. The void seemed like a good place for that. A nice, cozy, endless abyss to scream into.

But now that I think about it… yeah, I did almost get trapped here forever. Which seems... not ideal.

So why did I come here?

Was it really because of him?

“Don't be so surprised,” he purrs. It's clear he can read my thoughts. “I am not the kind of presence one can ignore.”

Oh, I bet. He’s everything. The universe, the cosmos, the omnipresent, all-powerful CEO of Death. And me? I’m just a tiny, defective cog in his celestial machine.

A dark chuckle slithers through the void, curling at the edges of my mind like a hand reaching out of a grave.

“Shall we discuss why I summoned you here, Miss Skye?” he asks. “There are quite a few crimes of yours to go over.”

Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.

I try to swallow. Or, I would if I had a physical throat. Feels like my imaginary one just bobbed anyway. I attempt to move. Speak. Run screaming into the darkness. But nope! Absolutely not happening. I’m locked in place, frozen beneath the sheer weight of his judgment. And he knows it. He knows I’ve got nothing—no excuses, no clever escape routes, no hail mary plea bargains. He knows everything.

Because I’m guilty.

His presence presses down on me, vast, infinite, a gravity well of divine disapproval.

“Your first failure,” he croons, almost amused. “A soul, lost.”

The void flickers, and I see it. A memory. That first soul I couldn’t reap. The one that slipped through my fingers. The one I reached for, scythe ready—only for the men to stop me.

I stare. My brain scrambles for some kind of justification, something to say in my defense. But what is there?

I got tricked back then. Trapped. Bound. Played like a goddamn fool.

But that was only the beginning.

Death hums.

“That should have been your first warning, should it not? A mistake a Grim Reaper should not make. But instead of caution, what did you do, Skye?”

The memory shifts. Twists. My stomach—which I no longer have, yet somehow still manages to plummet—knows what’s coming before he even says it.

“Your second failure,” he continues. “A soul, saved—when it was meant to die.”

Right. That one. The pool lady.

The scene unravels before me like a bad flashback montage. That night. The girl in the water. A life that was supposed to end. I hadn’t stopped it, not directly, but I sure as hell hadn’t done my job either. I just… stood there. Like a very decorative, very useless grim specter while Cassian, Nathaniel, and Talon pulled her out. I had known—I had known—I was screwing up the cosmic order in real time. And yet.

And yet.

The darkness tightens around me.

There’s nowhere I could hide from it.

“And then,” Death muses, “you made a different kind of choice.”

The next memory slams into me like a brick to the face. A different soul. Not mine to keep. Not mine to reap! But did that stop me? No. I participated. Hell, I was a key player.

The Candy Maker.

Silence stretches long enough for my mistakes to sink, deep and gnawing, into whatever remains of my soul.

“You stole what was not yours to take,” he says, and this time, the amusement is gone. “You broke the balance. Again.”

And somehow—somehow—we are still not done.

“And what of the one you condemned?”

Another scene unfurls, dragging my stomach down into the abyss with it. The flickering form of the Grim Reaper who had stood next to me. The one who had waited. Suffered. Obeyed the rules. The woman who had been forced to remain a Grim Reaper, shackled to the system, waiting for her one chance at revenge.

The justice she was owed.

And we never let her have it.

I watch it unfold all over again, and it’s somehow worse the second time. She had waited so long for this, for the one thing that would finally let her move on. And what did we do? We threw her back into eternal suffering. No justice. No peace. Nothing.

Death does not ask if I regret it. He knows I do.

And still, he continues.

“Then,” he murmurs, “there was the wraith.”

Oh. Oh, fuck.

The memory slams into me like a freight train with no brakes. The freshest wound. The rawest mistake. The creation of a monster. Because of me, a soul had not been reaped. It had lingered. Rotted. Twisted itself into something that should never—never—exist. A wraith. A force of hunger, of ruin. Something that could consume. Something that could spread.

I see her eyes again. The jagged, unstable edges of her form. The way vengeance bled out of her like a disease.

And finally—there it is. Finally.

The last memory crashes into place like a death knell ringing through the abyss. The moment I broke the final rule.

Cassian.

His body, lifeless. His blood, dark and pooling beneath him. His soul, small and flickering, caught in the space between death and life.

And me.

Grabbing it.

Forcing it back.

Undoing what was supposed to be permanent.

Not just failing to reap. Not just delaying the inevitable. No, no—I reversed it.

Death is silent for a moment. Then he exhales something that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

“I don't know whether to applaud you or obliterate you on the spot, my child,” he muses, the tone both indulgent and deeply unsettling. “That’s truly an extensive list of crimes.”

I should say something. Anything. Beg. Justify. Bargain.

But what the hell do I even say?

Sorry, my bad?

I saved Cassian because I couldn’t let him go. Because the thought of watching his soul flicker out felt wrong in a way I couldn’t accept. I did everything else because I couldn’t stop the three of them. It’s not an excuse.

But it is a reason.

Still, I get it now. Why I’m here.

I stole from Death. And Death does not tolerate thieves.

His voice lowers, slipping into something quieter, more dangerous. A whisper that vibrates through the fabric of me.

“You are not the first to break the rules, Skye,” he murmurs. “You are not the first to steal from me. But you, my child, are the first to do it so many times.”

I flinch as his voice hardens.

“The wraith will feed,” he says. “It will grow stronger. And when it has taken enough—when it has feasted on enough of my Reapers—the system, however flawed you think it, will collapse. And when it does… so will all mortals.”

My stomach drops.

The wraith… will feed on Grim Reapers?

“Oh, yes,” Death purrs. “And she won't be content with just a few. Oh, no. She'll never be satisfied.”

A shiver rips down my nonexistent spine. Because I know exactly what he means.

She didn’t just attack me. She didn’t just hurt me.

She tried to take me.

Like she could swallow me whole, absorb me into herself, make me part of her.

And if she could do that to me?

She could do it to any Reaper.

“So, tell me, Miss Skye…” A pause, as if savoring the question. “What shall I do with you?”

I can’t answer. Not because I don’t want to. Not because I don’t have answers. But because I know, deep in the marrow of my being, that nothing I say will matter.

Death does not bargain.

Death does not negotiate.

Death does not forgive.

And yet… I’m still here.

Still floating in this infinite void. Still waiting for my sentence.

Which means there’s a chance.

A small, miserable, terrifying chance.

Death hums, like he’s enjoying watching me twist.

“There is only one solution,” he finally says, drawing out the moment just long enough to make me feel it in my bones.

I brace myself.

Then—

“You will undo what you have done.”

What?

“You will hunt what you have created. You will fix the balance you have shattered. You will erase your mistakes from the fabric of existence.” His voice sharpens, turns razor-cold. “Or I will erase you.”

A weight crushes my chest, suffocating, all-consuming.

I know what he means before he even says it.

He doesn’t mean just me. He means them , too.

The three men.

If I fail—if I refuse—he won’t just take me.

He’ll take them.

“You tied their fates to yours the moment you let them meddle in the affairs of the dead,” Death says smoothly. “The moment you let them stop what was meant to happen. The moment you let them revive what was meant to be lost.”

Shit.

“If you fail,” Death continues, “you will not merely cease to exist. You will become nothing. Not a soul, not a Reaper, not even a whisper. You will be unmade , Skye.”

Unmade.

Not death. Worse than death. The kind of punishment that doesn’t just end you—it erases you. From time, from memory, from existence itself. Like you never were. Like you never could be.

My breath shudders. My very soul shudders. I know what I have to say. What I have to do. There is no other option.

“How do I stop her?” I ask, somehow.

Death chuckles.

And oh. Oh, I do not like that chuckle.

“That, my child,” he purrs, “is what you will have to figure out.”

His presence swells, pressing in from all sides, vast and dark and endless. “You have already broken the rules.” His voice coils around me, a promise, a curse. “Now you will learn the cost of fixing them.”

Then—agony.

I feel it before I recognize it. The pull. The weight. The impossible, unbearable force of being ripped apart, of being shoved back into my body with the kind of violent cosmic whiplash that makes my soul scream.

The last thing I hear is Death’s whisper—soft, cruel, inescapable.

“The only thing I'll give you… is this.”

And then—

I am falling.

Falling—

Plunging—

Until I wake.

And this time, my body is real.

I'm a fucking human again.

To Be Continued…