Page 74 of Of Sins and Sacrifice

The clock is ticking.

A messenger will not wait forever. If it’s clear the soul has no intention of leaving the mortal plane, or if the soul proves to be too difficult, messengers simply depart.

The task of apprehending those unruly souls then falls down on the collectors—vicious creatures that I always avoid at all costs. They’re like rabid dogs when they go after rebel souls. Especially since the more time a soul spends outside its body, the more powerful it becomes as it channels onto its emotions—which are usually hatred and regret.

Vengeful souls are the worst, and to deal with them, the collectors have to be equally bad.

I shudder just thinking about those nasty beings.

Unlike messengers, who are not sentient, collectors are deities who’ve been caught on the wrong side of the law—the ones whose sins were not enough to warrant an execution. They go through rigorous training to become collectors, and unlike in the military, in the collection game, there arenorules.

Those bastards play dirty. And theyhateAperite warriors, which puts us at odds.

But then there’s the other alternative. If the soul doesn’t leave with a messenger, it might become food for demons. And if there is a demon nearby…

I don’t even know what’s worse at the moment—have the soul linger until a collector comes or until a demon senses that juicy energy and wants a bite.

“Nurse Anyan!” the doctor yells at me.

Lost in my thoughts as I was, I didn’t even realize when people around me started moving, so I try to keep up.

Yet there, in the distance, the messenger has disappeared.

The soul? It’s still around.

I draw in a long sigh.

“Pay attention, Nurse Anyan.” One of the girls snickers at me.

A few airmen are carrying out one male who has a nasty wound to the head. Upon closer inspection, I realize that brain matter is dripping out from a hole in the back of his skull. He’s still alive, but barely.

The airmen load him into the ambulance and the doctor starts examining him. But soon, another stretcher is brought forward, this time with a male that has an amputated arm. Blood flows out of his limb, and he wails in pain.

I look worriedly around, trying to see if any of the planes is the Virtuous. Most of them have their nicknames etched onto the body of the plane, so I run around, trying to find Mine’s plane.

“Have you seen Major Vitry’s plane?” I ask one of the pilots as he climbs down from the plane.

His lips are drawn in a tight line.

“He was behind us, but three of his engines were struck. I’m not sure if?—”

I tune him out as I gaze up into the sky. There, in the distance, I make out a dark spot against the blue sky.

I bypass one of the planes to get a better view.

There’s something there. Something that emits a lot of smoke.

My heart beats fast in my chest as I watch the dark spot grow larger until I can tell it’s a plane.

“My God!” someone exclaims. “He’s going to crash!”

“Evacuate the runway!” someone else screams.

A commotion ensues as everyone tries to get out of the way, but I stand still, watching the plane wobble in the air.

It goes up and then drops a little, its balance skewed. It leaves a trail of smoke in its wake, and as it gets closer, I see the busted engines on both wings.

“Get out of the way!” a soldier calls out. “Run!”

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