Page 4 of Reaper’s Ruin (Reaper’s Ruin Trilogy #1)

I couldn’t move.

Out of nowhere, he’d appeared. Those eyes—storm-gray and ancient—stared directly at me from behind the misty veil surrounding him.

He stood motionless in the shadow of a market stall, tall and imposing in black leather that hugged a body built for war.

His face was partially hidden beneath a hood, but I could make out a sharp jawline, full lips pressed into a hard line, and those eyes—god, those eyes locked onto mine with predatory focus.

He took a step forward, reaching toward the wispy grey barrier between us.

Panic surged through me. I stumbled backward, desperate to escape, though I had nowhere to run. No one else could see me. No one could help.

My chest tightened, vision tunneling.

It was happening again.

And then—

The world vanished.

Colors smeared together, sound muffled to nothing, and my stomach lurched as if I’d been dropped from a great height. When the world snapped back into focus, everything had changed.

The marketplace was gone. The beautiful, terrifying man with the swirling grey eyes was gone.

Instead, I stood on a frozen mountain ledge, gusts of wind whipping my blood-crusted pajamas against my skin.

All around me, jagged peaks of blue-white ice stretched toward a sky where snowflakes danced but never seemed to land.

Far below, a city of icy spires glittered like diamonds in pale sunlight.

“What is happening to me?” I whispered, wrapping my arms around myself.

I should have been freezing, but I felt nothing—not the cold, not the wind, not even the ground beneath my bare feet. It was as if my body existed but couldn’t connect with the world around it.

Movement caught my eye, and my breath caught thinking one of those shadowy figures would appear again.

But instead, I saw people moving through gardens of ice sculptures on terraces nearby, laughing and talking, unaware of me standing there watching them.

They appeared almost human at first glance, but something was.

.. different. Their skin was flawless, luminous even in the pale light.

Creamy and pure like they’d never once sat on a beach soaking up the rays while sipping a margarita.

They moved with an unnatural grace, and though they looked like they could be human, there was an otherworldly quality to them—the way their eyes caught the light, the subtle elegance of their features.

They wore elaborate silver and white clothing that rippled in the wind, styles unlike anything I’d seen before.

Not quite human. Similar, but different in ways I couldn’t fully articulate. Nothing about anything or anyone I’d seen with each strange jump had seemed normal. Like I’d been cast into some fantasy world like the books I devoured every night or the movies my mother and I loved watching so much.

“I’m dreaming,” I told myself for the hundredth time. “This is a dream. Just a really, really vivid dream.”

But the weight of reality pressed against that flimsy explanation. Dreams didn’t last this long. Dreams didn’t feel this... coherent, even in their strangeness .

One minute I’d been on my couch, scrolling through Netflix after my shift at the hospital, a bowl of kettle corn balanced on my lap.

The next minute...

Fragments. Disjointed flashes.

Blood spreading across my favorite pajamas.

A strange dagger with symbols etched into its blade.

My mother screaming my name.

Pain—sharp and sudden, then nothing.

I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to piece together what had happened, but like they did every time I tried to put them together, the memories slipped away like water through my fingers.

“Hello?” I called out, my voice carried away by the wind. “Can anyone hear me? Please?”

No one looked up. No one heard me. I shouldn’t have been surprised since no one had seen me in every attempt I’d made, but still, my need for connection, for answers, caused me to try over and over again. Someone, at some point, would have to see me. Help me. Answer my questions.

Wouldn’t they?

Movement caught my eye—a flicker of darkness against the pristine white landscape. I turned slowly, dread pooling in my stomach.

He stood at the edge of the terrace below, his black cloak stark against the snow, those silver eyes still fixed on me with unwavering intensity.

He’d found me. Somehow, he’d found me again.

The man I’d just seen in the market. Equal parts terrifying and beautiful. The one person who seemed to be able to see me, and the one person I was too terrified to talk to. Every instinct in my body screamed he was dangerous. Deadly .

“Stay away from me!” I shouted across the snow and ice separating us.

He began to move, graceful and lethal as a panther, making his way up toward my ledge, that wispy shadowy veil muting his form as he moved closer.

“No, no, no,” I muttered, backing away until I hit an ice wall.

Fear tore through me like jagged ice ripping me apart inside. I squeezed my eyes shut, desperately wishing to be anywhere else.

The sensation of falling washed over me again, and when I opened my eyes, the ice mountains had vanished.

I stood in a forest of impossibly tall trees, their trunks wider than cars, their canopy so dense that sunlight barely filtered through. Flowers that seemed to pulse with their own inner light carpeted the forest floor.

Relief flooded through me. He was gone. I was safe.

For now.

I sank down onto a fallen log. Nothing made sense. Not these strange places, not the fact that no one could see or hear me, not these bizarre... jumps I kept making from one place to another.

“Think, Ray,” I muttered to myself, using the nickname Mom had always called me. “What’s the last thing you remember clearly?”

Mom .

I closed my eyes, concentrating.

We’d been at home. Ordinary evening. Mom had made her famous spaghetti, and we’d eaten at the kitchen counter, laughing about something that happened at her work. Then...

Nothing clear. Just those fragmented flashes. Netflix. Popcorn. Blood. Pain. A face I didn’t recognize.

I looked down at my pajamas again, at the dark stains around several ragged tears in the fabric. With trembling fingers, I lifted my shirt, expecting to find wounds beneath .

Nothing. Just smooth, unmarked skin.

“What is happening to me?” I whispered again.

A twig snapped nearby.

My head jerked up, every nerve suddenly on high alert. Through the trees, I caught a glimpse of black leather.

Him.

My breath caught in my throat. How? How had he found me again?

He moved through the forest with silent grace while his eyes—those intense, stormy, otherworldly eyes—remained locked on me.

I scrambled to my feet, body tensing like a coil ready to spring me to safety.

“Who are you?” I called, surprised by the steadiness in my voice. “What do you want from me?”

He paused, head tilting slightly as if my questions had surprised him. For a moment—just a fleeting second—something that might have been confusion crossed his face.

Then he was moving again, closing the distance between us with long, purposeful strides.

I didn’t wait to see what would happen next. I wasn’t controlling it before, the jumps were just things that happened against my will, but now, as he closed in on me again, I tried to make myself go. To get away... from him.

I squeezed my eyes shut, concentrating on that falling sensation, willing myself away from this predator who somehow kept finding me.

The world shifted, then I opened them and spun around taking in the impossible sight around me.

I stood on black, cracked earth where rivers of molten lava cut glowing paths through the landscape. The air shimmered with heat that should have scorched my lungs but didn’t. In the distance, a massive volcano belched smoke and ash into a crimson sky.

People moved along the lava flows, seeming to scoop it up like you’d take water from a stream.

They wore no protection against heat that would incinerate a human yet were completely unharmed.

They looked nearly human, but their skin had a warm, golden glow to it, and their hair shimmered with auburn and copper highlights that caught the light like burnished metal.

I staggered away from the nearest lava river, disoriented by the sudden shift from forest to inferno.

“This can’t be real,” I murmured. “None of this can be real.”

But with each passing moment, with each new impossible place I found myself in, that explanation grew thinner. If this wasn’t real, what was it? Was I in a coma? Was I hallucinating? Had someone slipped me drugs?

Or was I...

The thought had been circling the edges of my mind, too terrible to acknowledge.

But standing here, watching people walk through lava unharmed while I remained unseen and untouchable the truth crashed into me with cruel clarity.

But before I had time to process the horror of that thought, as if summoned by my thoughts, a flicker of movement caught my eye.

He stood atop a ridge of black rock, silhouetted against the red sky, his cloak billowing around him. Even at this distance, I could feel the weight of his gaze.

“Leave me alone!” I shouted, my voice breaking. “What do you want from me?”

He began to descend the ridge, moving with that same lethal grace, never taking his eyes off me. Something about the way he moved reminded me of documentaries I’d watched about predators stalking their prey.

Focused. Relentless. Inevitable .

He wasn’t the first shadowy figure I’d seen since this nightmare began.

There had been others—dark silhouettes glimpsed behind that misty veil, but the others hadn’t gotten this close.

They’d appeared once and when I’d blinked away, they’d never reappeared.

This one—this hunter with storm-gray eyes—kept finding me no matter where I went, and I started to doubt he would ever give up.