Page 35 of Reaper’s Curse

I slipped back into the agony of nothingness.

Time was swallowed by fleeting images of Aoes dabbing a wet cloth against my face and neck. He propped a makeshift pillow beneath my pounding head, making me as comfortable as possible on the cell floor. And when Aoes last retreated, he promised to come back with help and had left the cell door open.

Had that been the last time I’d seen Aoes? Or had he returned? Brought help?

I couldn’t recall. I hadn’t the slightest handle on how much time I’d lost.

The cell door clanged shut.

I turned my head toward the sound. The Killian stood on the other side of the bars, his pointed glare reminding me of his earlier words: to help ensure your safety while you detox.

Mental darkness and physical convulsing took hold.

I slept and slept and tossed and turned. Found myself heavily bundled in a state of nothingness. Somehow, I ended up on my feet, thrashing inside the cell uncontrollably, slamming my body into the walls, the bars, the floor.

Would my body bruise? My bones crack or break?

Death would have been less cruel. Why had the Killian not claimed me?

At some point, during one of my more placid moments, someone tried to force food down my throat. I held a vague recollection that my flailing arms had knocked both the bowl of porridge and my attempted helper across the room.

I’d waste away, die a hollowed skin if I couldn’t manage to drag myself free of my wretched state. Find peace between the two sides of myself that were at war.

But in my current state of mind, I wasn’t sure if I cared one way or the other—live or die. Both states offered relief and misery in their own ways.

And so, I gave no struggle for either outcome. I would let the god of death decide my fate. Should the god deem my fate one worthy of a decision and not leave me in a limbo state like Earl.

I would not end up zombified like Earl. I had witnessed Aldine’s death, and despite being inside the cursed walls of Veritas, Aldine had indeed died. His essence had somehow moved on. Which meant, as noncitizens…as servants of Thanatos…we might be outside of the curse, able to die a true death.

Will I soon be wishing for my own?

If so, may the powers that be quicken the process.

I choked on a breath.

But death isn’t what awaits me.

The Killian’s words weaved through every aching thought: Reward is on the other side.

What reward, exactly, was I moving toward?

To uncover that answer, I needed to ride the ebbs and waves to what waited on the other end of my soul-shredding agony.

The days… The time of day… All of it was a blur of the same. Unheard prayers for death. For peace.

Someone—a child, I thought—helped me sit upright and expel the contents of my stomach into an awaiting bowl. Another small person…or maybe it was the same small person…carried away the bowl while she also wiped the sweat from my brow with a cold compress. Both activities transpired at the same time…or maybe my experience of time was overlapping.

A roar built in my head, became all I could hear, and blocked out whatever soft whispers the girl said at my ear. I fell back against the ground, tiny hands catching my head and easing it to the cell floor. Closing my eyes, I allowed the vision surrounding me, truth or illusion, to become swallowed by another.

Fever dream, memory, wild hallucination… I didn’t know. Didn’t rightly care.

I lay on the ground of a cage, and I was dying. Or rather, my shell was dying. I could no longer deny the truth that my physical body would soon expire, and my essence would be left adrift, unless…

I was also a young boy standing on the opposite side of the bars, watching the other version of myself suffer. I was both young and old, outside of the bars and inside the cage, all at once. And both versions of me were dying. In different manners, but definitely so. Death beckoned each of us.

One, the young boy, rather permanently. And the other, older me… My death could become forever lasting if I didn’t soon find a new shell to host my consciousness.

At that time and place of the recollection, we were not one yet, but I saw through both sets of eyes as if we were.