“There’s a reason no Reaper chooses Cursed Death!”
“Maybe the reason is because you’re all cowards. If guys like the Bailiff or traitors like Sanya or those sickos at the Every Comfort Palace had something to be afraid of, then maybe they’d think twice about what they were doing.”
“You insolent, idiot child!” she shrilled. “You allow devil corruption to think for you, while you speak of things you can’t begin to understand!”
I turned back to face the dark, snarled path that was Cursed Death. “I understand justice, and I understand what has to happen here.”
Sanya, the Emperor, Wrathblade’s voices, even Hungry Ghost, all of them had been trying to tell me the same thing. This was what I had been made for, to punish evil, to tear it out by the roots before it had a chance to spread. Only I could do it, and now I knew why—because nobody else would.
“If none of you are going to do the dirty work, then I will.” I broke into a jog.
“Grady Hake, don’t you dare walk away from me.” Her voice climbed in pitch. “I’m trying to save you! They will hunt you to the ends of the universe! You don’t stand a—”
With a running jump, I crashed into Cursed Death.
Cursed Death
IT WAS PAIN AND SUFFERING without end. Hellfire and gnashing of teeth. I couldn’t become Cursed Death without experiencing it myself first, and in that time without time, I suffered millions of unthinkable deaths. I wasted away, eaten up from the inside out by parasites and diseases I was powerless to fight. I burned for interminable hours tied to stakes, in giant clay ovens, and on twisted heaps of wreckage. I drowned clawing for surfaces that were within my reach, but unable to escape the terrible weights holding me down. I panicked in absolute darkness, wedged in cave tunnels and pinched in underground pipes, forgotten, lost, alone. I wandered in wildernesses and rotted in dungeons, hungry, thirsty, while my body broke itself down to prolong my death one more day, one more hour. Mudslides and avalanches buried me; tsunamis battered the life from me; vicious predators tore my body apart. Deadly chemicals ate through my lungs and brain and vital organs. Radiation cooked my cells and unwound my DNA. Voices and visions tormented me until I finally ended it. Serial killers and torturers murdered me over and over again, delighting in every scream.
Plagues, pestilence, famine, war crimes, insanity, evil left to roam unchecked by those who could’ve stopped it—I experienced every extreme Cursed Death had to offer. And after each one, I saw an eternity of misery stretching out into infinity that made the deaths I’d just gone through look like nothing, barely a scratch on the surface.
This was what I’d chosen. This was what I would be inflicting on the lives I took from then on. Retribution. Consequence. An endless hell deserved by only the worst offenders.
Then I saw the innocent lives I’d taken from Sarca. Technol camp followers and their families just trying to make a living, jungle tribes who couldn’t care less about the Big Five or city dwellers, people who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time when a Death cultivator wanted revenge.
I had murdered them. Stolen their lives so I could destroy my enemy in the worst way possible. Every Cursed Death I had just suffered through, I deserved.
A covenant is required to seal Ten, Death cultivator, a deep bass voice rumbled from everywhere at once.
“Never,” I choked out. “I will never bring Death on an innocent again. Only the irredeemable. Only the ones who deserve to die screaming in the pits of hell. I swear I’ll hunt them down and bring them to justice.”
Every word was a chain link sinking into my soul, binding my Spirit. As they locked together, power surged, a strength reinforced by my oath. My Spirit sea changed, shifting shape from the oceanic blob at my center to become a harder, brighter core of turquoise stone. The network of rivers that flowed through my body shuffled around and restructured themselves, spreading like wings stretching to their full span. Ugly black veins surged through my Death Spirit, marking it forever as Cursed.
The covenant is struck, the deep voice rumbled. You are Cursed Death, the reckoning for all evildoers who cross your path. To aid in fulfilling your vow, Judgment Beyond the Veil. The crimes of the unrepentant are now visible to you.
Brilliant prismatic light seared my retinas, blanking out my vision. Rods and cones transformed, and optic nerves and gray matter reformatted themselves to fit the new ability.
Finally, the blinding glare tapered off. I blinked blurry, watering eyes.
Slowly, the angel of death’s flawless marble face faded in, her white hair whipping around her in an unfelt wind. My vision was sharper than it had ever been before. I could see every strand of hair with perfect clarity, every line and pore in her flawless features. Her face almost glowed under the purple-orange light of what I now realized was the night sun on Van Diemann. Superimposed on her mirror-silver eyes, I could see every wrong she’d ever committed.
Judgment Beyond the Veil.
Surprisingly, the angel’s offenses were rarely intentional. Screwing up and killing me instead of that methhead had been an accident, the kind of mistake that was bound to happen once every millennium or two of reaping souls. Trying to sweep me under the rug to hide her mistake had compounded her wrong, but compared to the crimes of the people who really deserved Cursed Death, it was barely a blip on the radar. The angel deserved to die for screwing me over the same way everybody deserved to die for the bad things they’d done, but she didn’t deserve
