“How much longer will you be?” Eneas asked.
His siblings were absently wiping down various surfaces with fabric cloths—tables and stools made of white marble with black and gold enamel inlays, the murals depicting the World Crusher in different scenes of her existence, the magnificent altar where thousands of candles had once burned. I tried to imagine this place as it had once been. Brilliantly illuminated and crowded with templars and priests and worshippers. People who’d adhered to their beliefs, who’d come here in the hope of making their lives better.
They had died. Every last one of them. Perished. Their souls poisoned by the World Crusher’s anger.
“Reading her tome is pretty intense,” I replied. “Surely, you remember how it feels?”
The Ghoul Reapers exchanged glances. “We do,” Filicore muttered.
“Then you remember how mentally exhausting it is, also,” I said. “Give me some time. It’s not easy. If I’m to help you, it has to happen on my terms.”
Eneas sighed, lowering his black gaze. “We’re no good at being patient. Rotting here, it messes with your concept of time.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. None of you deserved this,” I said. “What Death did was unacceptable. She could’ve at least granted you passage—”
“Or put us out of our misery, right?” Eneas replied with a sickened grin. “I hoped for that, actually. There was a time when I used to despise the Reapers who chose to eat souls and degrade themselves into ghouls… until I started turning into one. Sure, I never hungered for a soul, but I still got the bad side of that deal, where my physical form is concerned. My perspective began to shift.” He paused, looking at his own hands, once graceful and now too slim, the fingers too long, black claws growing where delicate nails had been before. His own appearance filled him with bitterness. “It’s kind of different when you’re boiling in the same pot. The end just can’t come soon enough for some of us.”
I understood his misery. I didn’t wish to be his savior—either by freeing him or by destroying him—but something needed to be done. Death had left everyone here to rot.
“Do you know what happened to the souls of the Biriane people?” Malin asked, eyeing me intently as I got up and resumed my spot on the lectern. I opened the tome to where I’d left off, with just a few pages remaining.
I looked at him, shaking my head.
“Then read on. You’ll find it riveting,” he said.
It made me feel uneasy, but I had to keep reading anyway. I noticed, peripherally, their faint smiles as I turned a page. The Ghoul Reapers were dying for me to finish this book, and I tried to imagine what it must’ve been like for them, alone and stuck here, for so long. My five million years on Visio were beginning to look like a drab holiday in comparison. No one should suffer like this.
Tristan watched me from below. I stole a glance at him and resumed my education of the World Crusher’s life, my lips moving slowly with the words. “The book I was put in… How can I describe it? It’s lonely. It’s empty. I fill it with my thoughts and my memories, and for a moment, they come back to me. The existence I used to have. I don’t even remember when the seal happened. I only remember Death breaking my scythe, along with the agonizing pain that followed, and me waking up in here,” she wrote. “It’s dark. I’m weightless. It’s a lot like the nothingness, only I’m conscious, and that makes it so much worse…”
“Her only memory of the nothingness was the literal blip of a second before her creation,” Eneas reminded me. “Even the description of it makes me shiver. I can only imagine what that must feel like for her.” He pointed at the tome.
I continued reading, visualizing the World Crusher’s loneliness as the years went by. She’d been left here, hidden from the rest of the universe, smack in the middle of a thriving civilization that had no idea what would happen to them. “Death didn’t know either,” the Reaper wrote. “She shoved me in this book and left me here to think about what I’d done. For a long time, I couldn’t even think straight because of the anger. I hated her. I hated myself. I hated the entire world. Death should’ve ended me, but she was selfish.” That rang a painfully familiar bell. “She couldn’t bring herself to destroy and return me to the nothingness from whence I’d come, so she chose to let me simmer here, stewing in my undead juices.”
“It took the Biriane people a while to figure out what was happening. Much like a slow-burning fire, my anger was hottest here, in the epicenter. The closer they were, the sicker they got. Time went by, and they started dying.”
“I saw them, and it was the worst death I could imagine. They just dropped like logs, pale and lifeless and soulless. The only symptom they had was an utter exhaustion that took months to settle. One by one, the people of Biriane died. Their corpses were given funerals and buried by their loved ones, but there were no souls for Death to reap. It shocked her to learn that she wasn’t the only one with the power to destroy a spirit. It shamed and frightened her, though she would never admit it. Too proud, dear Death. Alas, she’d kept Biriane a secret from everyone for a long time, but by this point, the Reaper society was growing. I was still the first, but no longer the only Reaper.”
Death walked over, appearing out of nowhere. I was in this very temple, in the middle of a white sandstorm, many moons ago. I could see her, as if my consciousness had
