POV: August D
The air on Earth always felt heavy to August—thick with the scent of rain, exhaust, and the frantic, pulsing heat of lives nearing their end. In the Realm of Darkness, everything was silent, a cold vacuum where purpose was the only heartbeat. Here, in this cramped hospital hallway, the noise was deafening.
He adjusted the collar of his coat, the fabric feeling alien against skin that had once been woven from Light Aether. He wasn't supposed to feel the chill of the air conditioning or the prickle of guilt in his chest. He was a reaper, a shadow cast by Thalor's iron will.
Just a soul that has outlived its hour, he reminded himself, his fingers tightening around the invisible tether that led toward Room 412.
He stepped through the door, the physical world blurring as he shifted into the veil between breaths. There she lay. Esmeralda.
The file in his mind said she was an anomaly—a mistake in the Great Weaver's design. But as he leaned over her, the "Death Aetherial" in him faltered. He didn't see a target. He saw the way her eyelashes fluttered in a restless sleep, and he felt a sudden, agonizing jolt of recognition.
It wasn't a memory—Thalor had been thorough in his erasures—but a resonance. His hands, stained with the gray soot of a thousand claimed lives, trembled. For the first time since his Fall, August felt a phantom ache where his wings used to be.
"I know you," he whispered, the words scratching his throat. "Why do I feel like I've killed you a thousand times before?"
Behind him, the shadows of the room deepened. He didn't have to look to know that the Divine Realm was watching, waiting for the harvest. Thalor did not tolerate hesitation. But as Esme shifted, her hand brushing near his cold, invisible fingers, August didn't reach for her soul. He reached for her pulse.
The air on Earth always felt heavy to August—thick with the scent of rain, exhaust, and the frantic, pulsing heat of lives nearing their end. In the Realm of Darkness, everything was silent, a cold vacuum where purpose was the only heartbeat. Here, in this cramped hospital hallway, the noise was deafening.
He adjusted the collar of his coat, the fabric feeling alien against skin that had once been woven from Light Aether. He wasn't supposed to feel the chill of the air conditioning or the prickle of guilt in his chest. He was a reaper, a shadow cast by Thalor's iron will.
Just a soul that has outlived its hour, he reminded himself, his fingers tightening around the invisible tether that led toward Room 412.
He stepped through the door, the physical world blurring as he shifted into the veil between breaths. There she lay. Esmeralda.
The file in his mind said she was an anomaly—a mistake in the Great Weaver's design. But as he leaned over her, the "Death Aetherial" in him faltered. He didn't see a target. He saw the way her eyelashes fluttered in a restless sleep, and he felt a sudden, agonizing jolt of recognition.
It wasn't a memory—Thalor had been thorough in his erasures—but a resonance. His hands, stained with the gray soot of a thousand claimed lives, trembled. For the first time since his Fall, August felt a phantom ache where his wings used to be.
+3
"I know you," he whispered, the words scratching his throat. "Why do I feel like I've killed you a thousand times before?"
+2
Behind him, the shadows of the room deepened. He didn't have to look to know that the Divine Realm was watching, waiting for the harvest. Thalor did not tolerate hesitation. But as Esme shifted, her hand brushing near his cold, invisible fingers, August didn't reach for her soul. He reached for her pulse.
I shouldn't have stayed this long. A reaper is a shadow, a fleeting transition, not a lingering witness. But her soul wasn't just "overdue"—it was singing. It was a low, humming frequency that vibrated in my teeth, a song I realized I'd heard in the echoes of a war I wasn't allowed to remember.
Her eyes snapped open.
They weren't the clouded, fading eyes of a woman at the end of her thread. They were bright, searching, and—impossibly—focused directly on me.
"You're back," she whispered. Her voice was thin, but the words hit me with the force of a physical blow.
I froze. I was a Death Aetherial; to the living, I was supposed to be a chill in the air or a trick of the light. Yet, she looked at me with a terrifyingly lucid gaze.
"I don't... I am not 'back', Esmeralda," I said, my voice sounding like grinding stone even to my own ears. "You shouldn't be able to see me."
She reached out a hand, her fingers trembling as they moved through the space where my Light Aether used to be. "The man in the garden. With the wings that looked like sunlight. You've been in my dreams every time I close my eyes".
A surge of visceral pain flared in my chest. It was a memory of the Realm of Light—of a life where I blessed marriages and celebrated love instead of tethering souls for the harvest. Thalor told me I was cast down for a transgression, but looking at her, I began to fear my sin wasn't what I did, but who I loved.
"You have to go," I rasped, even as my feet stayed rooted to the floor. "The Creator is watching. If I don't take you, he will send someone who won't hesitate".
"Then let them come," she said, a spark of the ancient Elarin fire flickering in her pupils. "I'm tired of dying, August. I want to remember why I keep coming back".
She knew my name. Not my title, not my rank in the hierarchy of shadows, but the name I had before the Fall. In that moment, the iron will of Thalor felt a million miles away, replaced by the terrifying, human-like warmth of her hand brushing against my sleeve.
"You shouldn't know that name," I whispered, my voice breaking. I felt a sudden, sharp panic, not for my own soul, but for the flickering light of hers. "The Creator... he wipes the slate clean. Every time you fall, every time you're reborn, he ensures the threads are cut."
"He missed a piece," Esme said softly. She reached out, her fingers hovering just inches from my chest, where a Light Aetherial's heart would have pulsed with warmth. "Or maybe you did."
The monitors in the room began to flatline—not because her heart was stopping, but because my presence was beginning to overwrite the physical reality of the room. If the Divine Realm saw a reaper lingering over a living soul without taking it, Thalor's wrath would descend like a falling star.
"We have to hide you," I said, the words feeling heavy and dangerous. To defy the Creator was the ultimate transgression, the very thing that had cost me my wings once before. "If I can't claim you, he will send Kael. And Kael doesn't remember what it's like to feel."
I closed my eyes, reaching deep into the hollow space where my Light blessings used to live. I couldn't heal her—that was the gift of her own Elarin blood—but I could shroud her. I pulled the darkness of my current form outward, weaving it not into a shroud of death, but into a veil of invisibility.
It felt like tearing my own skin. The "Death Aether" resisted, screaming to fulfill its mandate to reap. My breath came in ragged gasps as I forced the shadows to wrap around her bed, masking her vibrant, "fate-altering essence" from the celestial eyes above.
"Why are you helping me?" she asked, her eyes searching mine with a terrifyingly human vulnerability. "In my dreams, you were the one who let me go. Every time. Why now?"
I looked at her—really looked at her—and felt the "haunting sense of familiarity" settle into a dull, aching grief. I remembered a garden, a war, and a choice I had made long ago to protect the Light, even if it meant losing her.
"Because I've spent a thousand lifetimes watching you die, Esmeralda," I rasped, my hand finally overlapping hers, the cold of death meeting the heat of her defiance. "And I think I'm finally tired of being the one who holds the blade."
Outside the room, the air suddenly grew unnaturally cold. The shadows in the hallway didn't just flicker; they sharpened. Thalor's "loyal executioner" was already on the scent.