Page 12 of Reaper's Ruin
This girl’s eyes had none of that. They were pure, unmagical blue—beautiful in their simplicity.
Human. She’s truly human.
Eight hundred years since I’d seen another of my kind. Eight hundred years since the fae had butchered the last of us.
And yet here she was—delicate features, those unmistakable blue eyes, human eyes, wide with fear.
But how? How was she here? How could she see me? And how had her soul been transporting itself all over Faelora, and for a short time, even vanished completely?
I’d been tracking her for hours, following that strange beacon that pulsed in my body. The frequency had behaved like nothing I’d encountered before, appearing and disappearing across Faelora, only to vanish completely at one point. I’d waited, patient and stillas stone in the Shadowveil, until suddenly her signal had flared back to life, drawing me to this marketplace.
She’d been alone, kneeling in the dirt, weeping as if her heart had shattered. I’d watched her from the shadows, a strange reluctance staying my hand when I should have pulled her into the Shadowveil instantly, severing her unnatural existence.
She wasn’t running now. The hunt was over. And yet...
I felt glad she wasn’t in the shadows. Wasn’t within my reach. I just wanted to observe this anomaly... this human. Even tear-stained and disheveled in bloodied nightclothes, she was lovely in a way that tugged at memories long buried. Her soft auburn hair fell in waves around her face, framing high cheekbones and a small straight nose. Her lips, full and pink, trembled with her cries. Her ivory skin, perfect and smooth, was marred only by crimson spatters that made her seem like a broken porcelain doll. There was a fragility to her that awakened something protective in me, something I thought had died centuries ago along with my humanity.
“Who are you? Why are you hunting me? What’s happening to me?” she whispered, her voice shaking as she looked up at me.
I didn’t answer immediately, still struggling to form words while I processed the sudden shock in my reality at hearing a human speak again. Even a dead one.
And then I did something I hadn’t done in eight hundred years. I didn’t just yank a soul into the Shadowveil with me, severing its leftover, unnatural existence with my scythe.
I talked to one.
A human soul at that.
“How are you here?” I questioned back, the power of my words harsher than I intended.
“I... don’t know,” she answered, looking straight at me with those soft, sad eyes. “I don’t know where I am or how any of this is happening to me.”
“There have been no humans in Faelora for eight centuries. Tell me. Where did you come from?”
“Faelora?” she said the word slowly like it was foreign to her tongue. “I don’t know what that is. I... I came from home.”
“Home? What court did you call home? Are there more of you?”
“Court?” she scrunched her face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just know I’m here, and I’m scared, and why are you chasing me?”
“Because you keep running,” I answered simply.
“Well, I’m running because you’re scary and you’re chasing me.”
The simple logic of her answer almost made me smile. Almost.
“How? How are you doing that? Souls aren’t supposed to be able to disappear like you do. And how are you seeing me? No soul nor living should be able to see into the Shadowveil.”
Her eyes welled with more unshed tears. “So, it’s true then? If I’m a soul, then I’m... dead? I’m really dead? This isn’t some weird acid trip? Like, maybe some asshole laced the kettle corn at the factory with something and I’m just sitting on my couch right now, tripping balls? Or a psychotic break? I remember taking a psych course where they talked about dissociation and schizophrenia. Could that explain this? No... I don’t think so.”
I furrowed my brow. “What? I don’t even know what any of that means.”
“You know. Or maybe a carbon monoxide leak? That can cause vivid visual and auditory hallucinations, right?” She paused, then shook her head. “No. No, wait—we learned about that in nursing school. Carbon monoxide doesn’t make you hallucinate like this.It just kills you. Silently. Quickly.” Her big blue eyes found mine again, searching. “So... am I? Am I really dead?”
Of course she was dead. Why was this coming as a surprise to her?
I gave a sharp nod. “Yes. You’re dead. And your soul does not belong here,” I said, still struggling to grasp why she didn’t know this as fact. “You’re disrupting the natural order.”
“But... I’m breathing! How can I be dead if I’m still breathing?”
