One of them moved away from it, then made its way between the few rows of trees that separated it from us. We were about to get a Hermessi meet-and-greet.

  “I think we’ll get answers pretty soon,” Inalia mumbled.

  Something had changed in her. She didn’t sound like the fiery Cerixian girl Taeral and the others had described. The other Hermessi must’ve drilled into her, reduced her to this timid, burning wisp…

  “There’s something that Brendel said that’s bugging me,” Ramin said. “I’m wondering if maybe Leb or Sebbi or even Acquis might’ve told you more.”

  Inalia looked at us. “More about what?”

  “The Hermessi children repopulating GASP’s home dimension.”

  “Oh, that…” Her voice trailed off as the local Fire Hermessi got closer. Every step he took left a black soot print on the mossy ground. I felt sorry for the moss.

  “Do you know more?” Ramin asked. I knew he was trying to get her to tell us what she knew—if she knew anything—before the other Hermessi came into the picture.

  “Leb let slip that Earth’s dimension is quite… naked. After the ritual is completed, they want to bring more life. To create more worlds. To populate planets that have insufficient or no Hermessi at all,” Inalia said. “They want the children to step up and do that, so they can amass the equivalent of a whole new dimension that would be loyal to Brendel and the other old ones.”

  “Wow… The ritual isn’t even done, and they’re already thinking about how they’ll enjoy its aftermath,” Ramin muttered.

  “You were right, though,” Inalia whispered. The other Fire Hermessi was now just a few yards away. “They’re scared of Taeral.”

  What comfort could I get from that, knowing that they planned to not only level our worlds, but repopulate the dead ones with more loyalists? That meant they were just going to hit the reset button with another ritual in ten or twenty or thirty million years, again. It meant that this ritual wasn’t going to be the last. That, even if we perished, and others grew in our wake, they too would suffer our fate.

  The cruelty, the sheer disregard for life coming from entities that presented themselves as purveyors of life, was simply infuriating. And they were going to use these innocent Hermessi children to fit their agenda. Much like they’d done with Inalia.

  In that moment, I became entirely and unshakably determined to do everything in my power to never let the Hermessi attain such power, ever again. Deep down, I felt that Ramin agreed, as well.

  This really needs to stop.

  Taeral

  It took us a few minutes to make sense of this strange new reality. We’d accidentally captured ourselves a Reaper on Hellym, Persea’s moon.

  I’d only heard of death and reapers in folklore and fairy tales—every civilization had its stories about what happened after life was over. Some cultures even talked about life after death, different dimensions, other worlds where our souls went. A few mentioned reincarnation, a soul’s journey never-ending as it flowed through the universe like pure energy, always searching for a physical vessel.

  I knew about the Novaks’ past brushes with death, as well—Ben and Lucas’s return under still somewhat unclear circumstances. They’d mentioned ghosts and ghouls, the latter different from what Hazel and her friends had learned of in Nevertide. But there had never been a single reference to Reapers in any of their accounts.

  Granted, we never considered Death an entity of its own until three days ago. The Hermessi couldn’t be trusted, that much I knew. Not even the rebel ones like Brann or Ramin. They all kept secrets of their own. They all lied about one thing or another, even among themselves. Inalia had become aware of information passed down from her father, like Death’s involvement in the first ritual, even though her father had initially told her he didn’t know who’d stopped it four million years ago. Brann had lied to her.

  We’d all noticed the inconsistencies in the Hermessi’s accounts, and we’d all agreed, upon our return from Cerix, to take everything we were told with a grain of salt. Just in case the information was skewed or incomplete.

  Raphael held Yamani’s arms tight behind his back. If he tried to move, it would be painful, so the Reaper seemed compliant—for now. He looked uncomfortable as hell, though, and even scared. Not to mention frustrated. His teeth were constantly gritting.

  “What are Reapers?” Lumi asked, the first point in a long line of questioning.

  I would’ve loved to go back and ask Ben or Lucas about their experiences, wondering if there were details they’d previously missed, but they were both under the Hermessi’s influence, as was Kailyn and, by now, well over 2.5 million other fae.

  “You’re better off answering,” Eira advised Yamani. “I know these people well enough to understand that they won’t let you go until you do.”

  I couldn’t let go of the scythe. It felt cold in my hands. It filled me with a peculiar sense of loneliness, too. The kind that elevated me above those around me, in a way. It was as if time had caught a new meaning in my mind—it wasn’t a linear and stiff thread anymore. It felt more like an endless sea, stretching left and right, back and forth, forever fluid.

  “Will you give me my scythe back if I do?” Yamani replied.

  I nodded. “If you answer all our questions? Yes.”

  He pressed his lips into a thin line, contemplating his options. “Then be quick, because the longer I’m not in contact with my scythe, the higher the chances that I’ll get in serious trouble. My superiors will sense the separation, and it won’t bode well for you or me.”

  “Okay. Then start answering. I believe Lumi just asked you the first question,” I said.

  “What are Reapers…” Yamani muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching, aching for a bitter smile. “It’s a complex answer, if you ask me. We’re agents of Death—that would be the simple version. We exist between the world of the living and that of the dead. We reap souls when their time in the former is done, helping them transition into the latter.”

  “Where do Reapers come from?” Lumi continued, her gaze fixed on Yamani.

  It was eerily quiet around us. The winds had died down. And white dust had once again settled over the city we’d uncovered here, on Hellym—the once-inhabited moon of Persea. I welcomed the silence. For the first time in a long time, I felt as though the Hermessi weren’t going to get in the way of our progress. That, of course, was a childish thought. I knew it. Those evil entities were looking for us.

  “We come from everywhere,” Yamani replied. “We’re selected after we die, based on certain criteria I’ve yet to understand myself. But, geographically speaking, we’re assigned to the worlds which we once inhabited. I’m of Earth, which is why my attire might’ve struck your blonde friend here as familiar,” he added, narrowing his eyes at Amelia.

  “So that’s your Reaper uniform?” Amelia asked. “The black Earthly suit?”

  “For us Reapers of Earth, yes,” Yamani said. “For others, the garments differ. My division used to have different uniforms, too, until the early 1900s, when the order was given to switch to suits. The colors, however, are the same everywhere. Black and white. Black for death, white for life, as we tread the world between them. But I doubt you’re eager to understand our… fashion. Go on, ask the big questions, the ones you’ve been dying to ask from the moment you forced me to tell you who I am.”

  He sneered at me, this time. There was a flicker of hate in his eyes. I couldn’t exactly blame him. I had his scythe. I lifted it for him to see better. His expression lit up with anticipation, the yearning to hold it again. “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s a scythe.”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious. What does it do?” I retorted.

  Yamani took a deep breath. “It’s my tool, my weapon, my insignia. A Reaper isn’t a Reaper without it.”

  “I take it it’s used to reap souls,” I concluded. He nodded. “What happens if I take it away and refuse to give it back?”

  He grinned in a way that chilled me to the bone. “Others like me will come down and take it from you, along with your soul. And there is nothing to protect you from them. Not even those flimsy sprigs of Devil’s Weed you’re all using to conceal your presence from the Hermessi.”

  “You seem to know a lot about us,” Lumi replied, raising an eyebrow.

  “It’s my job,” Yamani said.

  “How come we’ve never come across a Reaper before?” Amelia asked. “Since you’re all probably as old as time.”

  “Death is older than time. Our ages vary, as there are billions of us, plucked from different eras and different dimensions,” Yamani explained. “You’ve never come across one of us because we’re not allowed to reveal ourselves. What you’re holding now isn’t my true form, but rather my physical manifestation. I can vanish if I want.”

  “Why don’t you, then?” Raphael chuckled, eyeing the scythe in my hand. “Or maybe you can’t, not without that tool of yours?”

  Yamani didn’t answer that one, but I was inclined to agree with Raphael’s assumption. It made sense, since we’d been quite hostile to him.

  “Why did I see you?” Raphael continued.

  “I didn’t think you could. I was in my subtle form. Not my fault your eyes are so irritatingly sharp!” Yamani spat.

  I frowned. “Subtle form? I’ve heard that term before.”

  Ghouls. I was thinking of ghouls. They, too, manifested in two different forms—one subtle, the other physical. My brain clicked into motion. Connections were made, and more questions formed in my head. Yamani rolled his eyes at me.

  “Oh, dear. I take it my colleagues won’t be the only ones bombarded with ghoul-related questions. Fine, if it’ll get you all off my back, I’ll tell you what you really want to know. I was out here keeping a few ghouls away from you. Your winged friend here stopped me, and now I’m useless without my scythe. I need it back so I can fight them off.”

  Alarms rang through me as I looked around. I wasn’t the only one. Lumi, Amelia, Raphael, and even Eira seemed shaken by Yamani’s revelation.

  “Can you see them now? What are ghouls doing here?” I asked. “They haven’t been spotted for decades!”

  “There’s a lot of death going on these days,” Yamani said. “Ghouls feed on souls. They’re the bane of our Reaper existence, I tell ya.”

  “You’re not telling us something,” Lumi muttered, and Raphael tightened his hold on him, forcing him to blurt out an even more troubling truth.

  “Ghouls were once Reapers!” he yelped. “Reapers who eat a soul instead of carting it off into the world of the dead are almost immediately… relieved of duty and discarded. Souls are tempting, delicious morsels of incredible energy.”

  He went on to tell us about a period of great shame for Earthly Reapers, explaining why Ben, Lucas, and others had managed to slip through the cracks, “un-reaped.” We now understood that the Reaper selection process for Earth had failed at some point, with more new Reapers turning into ghouls than in previous millennia. A mistake that the new generation of Reapers was trying to fix.

  We also understood how the original ghouls were made, and how they devolved into the mindless, flesh-eating, depraved monsters that the Novaks had previously dealt with.

  “If an original ghoul doesn’t feed on another soul for a certain period of time—which, by the way, varies… it descends into primal madness. It becomes hungry for flesh, in the absence of a soul. Eating a soul is still the height of its malignant existence, but it doesn’t fix the damage already done to it. The ghouls I was trying to take down were such monstrosities,” Yamani continued.

  “I think the Nevertide ghouls were… originals,” Amelia murmured. “It explains a few things.”

  Yamani nodded. “The point is, I really need my scythe. You know damn well how hard it is for you people to kill a ghoul, regardless of its form.”

  I thought about it for a moment. My instinct told me not to give the scythe back, but Yamani had a point, as well. If there were ghouls prowling around, they were literally the last thing we needed, given our already complicated problems.

  “If I give it back, will you stick around and answer a few more questions?” I asked. “We actually don’t mean you any harm, and you must understand how strange and shocking all this is to us.”

  Yamani sighed. “I have no reason to lie, even though you’re holding my scythe. It’s not in my nature. And yes, I do understand your turmoil. I’m not allowed to interfere, but if there is something I can answer without disturbing the natural order of things… okay. I’ll answer.”

  Lumi and I exchanged glances. She seemed equally wary of the prospect of returning the scythe, but she gave me a nod of approval. Raphael let Yamani go. I gave him the scythe, stunned to notice the instant change in his demeanor.

  As soon as his fingers wrapped around the ivory handle, Yamani seemed to light up from the inside. The paleness and dark circles around his eyes vanished. His skin became smooth and porcelain-like, with a faint glimmer in the distant sunlight. He smiled at us. “Thank you.”

  “Just don’t vanish,” Raphael said. “I’m really not in the mood to hunt a Reaper again.”

  “I’m not leaving. You see, I wasn’t entirely honest with you. I’m not here just to keep ghouls away. They circle certain people for a reason. They can sense when death is looming, and their hunger gets the better of them,” Yamani said.

  It was my turn to frown. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m here on orders from high above. I’m afraid one of you is going to die, and it is my duty to reap you,” Yamani replied, looking quite sad and apologetic. He was such a mousy little thing, even with his scythe—quite the opposite of what I would’ve imagined a Reaper to be. The suit didn’t help, making him look like he belonged in a human office somewhere, not out here, in the In-Between, tracking us.

  The revelation hit me in the gut, though. “One of us is going to die?” I managed, my voice barely audible. We all looked at each other, probably wondering the same thing—which of us would he reap?

  Yamani nodded. “Before you ask, no, I don’t know who until it’s time.”

  “Wait, I’m confused. You’re a Reaper of Earth,” Lumi cut in, pursing her lips. “Wouldn’t that mean you reap those of Earth?”

  “I reap those on Earth, regardless of their origin,” Yamani said.

  “So, you’re not here to take me, specifically, since I’m the only one originally from Earth,” Amelia breathed, her eyes wide.

  Yamani shook his head.

  “But we’re not on Earth anymore. Why did you come after us? Shouldn’t a… Hellym-assigned Reaper take care of this?” Lumi replied.

  “There have been no Reapers on Hellym since the moon died four million years ago,” Yamani said. “Those of Hellym were reassigned to nearby planets in Eritopia. I received a special order to follow your group wherever you went. Honestly, I cannot tell you more. I’ve said too much already.”

  “How’d you follow us here?” I asked.

  He smirked. “I told you, a Reaper will find you anywhere, and you wouldn’t even know it until it’s your time to go.”

  Lumi still wasn’t convinced. “I don’t understand how you got yourself caught. Raphael may be good at hunting, but not good enough to spot a Reaper in his subtle form. Come on… He’d have noticed plenty before you, if that were the case.”

  Yamani glanced at his black shoes, his shoulders dropping in disappointment. “It’s my fault, and not something I can easily admit. I’m still pretty new at this, and sometimes, I get confused between my subtle and physical forms while walking in the world of the living. Normally, I’m supposed to stay between dimensions, but ghouls pierce through to your living plane, and I have no choice but to follow in order to stop them.”

  “So, you’re going with incompetence as an excuse?” Raphael chuckled.

  Yamani shrugged. “Hey, man, I don’t know what criteria are used to select us, and I certainly don’t get what they saw in me to consider me suitable for the Reaper position. I just try to do my job. I don’t have any other choice. If Death wants me, that’s it.”

  “Reapers don’t get a choice…” I muttered, trying to understand the entire process.

  “No. Some of us try to fight back, but there isn’t anything we can do. Eventually, we all go along with it and do our jobs. Most of us enjoy this prolonged and often endless existence. We don’t belong to any plane of existence, but we can walk through all of them. There are perks to being a Reaper,” Yamani explained.

  Eira cleared her throat, demanding his attention. “What do you know about the ritual and the Hermessi?”

  “What you all know. I’m not privy to such delicate information. I’m aware that my supreme boss stopped the first ritual attempt four million years ago, but that’s about it. I don’t know how to stop them, and I certainly can’t tell you where you can find Death, because she doesn’t want to be found,” Yamani said. “I’m sorry.”

  It was beginning to feel like another dead end, despite the incredible discovery of Reapers. Then again, I’d already understood that not even Death was perfect—after all, she’d allowed the existence of ghouls, despite them basically being rejected souls that had committed an abominable act of eating the very spirits they were supposed to lead into the next world. She hadn’t shown herself to anyone for four million years, though. That, to me, was a tad suspicious, but I doubted Yamani knew or could tell us anything more.

  “But I can tell you that there was a Druid-fae hybrid population living here on Hellym, until four million years ago,” Yamani added, wearing a hopeful half-smile. “Druids and fae built quite a civilization here, in fact.”

  “Yeah, that much we could tell ourselves,” Amelia grumbled, motioning around at the white dust-covered city. “I take it they lost their Water Hermessi during that first ritual attempt? That’s what we’ve ascertained from a mural and soil samples.”

 

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