The Reaper's Quarter was silent.
Not the kind of silence the living knew- soft and peaceful. This was silence like pressure. A vacuum. The kind that made bones hum and thoughts too loud in the skull.
Samael stood before the Pool of Remembrance, staring down at its still black surface. The water didn't ripple, even as the wind howled around the colonnades above. In it, he could see himself clearly- too clearly. Pale. Unchanging. Eyes like evergreen trees, they were much more vibrant here.
The mark on his wrist still ached. He hadn't reported the breach. He hadn't told the others. If he did, they'd take him off assignment. Worse- they'd erase the thread. The connection. The girl.
Morrigan.
And he didn't want that, even if it meant he was faltering, even if it meant death.
He lowered himself to one knee at the edge of the pool and pressed his marked hand to the surface. It burned -cold as a void- but the water accepted the offering. Accepted him.
The image swirled. Shifted.
A vision shimmered in the depths: Morrigan, alone in her apartment, writing in her notebook. Her brow furrowed, a cup of untouched tea cooling by her elbow. Her golden hair was tied up, and her fringe was slightly oily from nervous sweats after almost being hit earlier. Her tanned skin glowed in the lamp light, and her eyes- a bold and metallic blue- shimmered with concentration. Still, Samael thought she was the most beautiful human he had set eyes on. She didn't look afraid. She looked... curious.
A Reaper's greatest enemy.
Curiosity always led to doors that should stay shut.
Samael turned his eyes away.
"She saw the mark," a voice said behind him. Smooth. Wise. Female.
He didn't turn. He didn't need to.
"She didn't understand it," he said, too calm.
The woman stepped forward from the shadows- Lady Nyra, a senior of the Veiled Circle and member of The Pale Tribunal. Her robes moved like wind. Her eyes were sewn shut, but she saw far more than any human ever could.
"She felt something. That's worse," Nyra murmured. "They're not meant to feel us. Not unless their thread is ready to be cut."
Samael stayed silent.
Nyra circled him slowly, almost sadly.
"She isn't on your list, Samael. She isn't meant to die yet."
"I know."
"You touched her."
"I saved her."
"You wanted to."
He didn't answer.
The wind howled through the arches again.
Nyra paused behind him. "The Mark glowed. It never does unless it senses kinship... or danger."
A beat of silence.
Then, softer, with a note of real concern: "You're fraying."
He clenched his jaw.
"She knows something's wrong with you," Nyra continued. "And she will keep digging. And if she finds out what you are, Samael... you know what must happen."
"Yes."
"Can you do it?"
He didn't respond.
Not because he didn't know the answer. But because he did.
Nyra gave a long, quiet breath and let it drift into the dark.
"She's not your first, you know," she said. "You've guided hundreds. You've watched lovers grieve. Mothers scream. Brothers break. And you did it all without faltering. But her... something about her..."
Samael finally stood, eyes like glass, unreadable.
"She sees me," he said simply.
Nyra's blind gaze turned toward him, unreadable.
"And that terrifies you?" she asked.
"No," Samael murmured, voice low. "It tempts me."
A pulse shivered through the air between them. The pool of water went still again, dark and heavy.
Nyra didn't argue.
She turned and melted back into the pillars like a fading dream, her parting words barely a whisper-
"Don't forget who you are, Samael. And don't let her make you wish you were different."
Nyra was gone, but her words clung to the air like mist on the skin.
Don't let her make you wish you were different.
He stood alone in the Hall of Passage, beneath a ceiling carved with the names of those long since erased- Reapers who had fallen, who had frayed, who had broken the first and final law.
Do not connect.
That was Rule One. Unbreakable. Unbending. Carved into every gate and echoed in every whisper of the Veil.
The Reaper Laws were simple, in theory.
One: Do not interfere with the living.31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO34NBOnKtW
Two: Do not alter the Thread.31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡElXTo5FAjn
Three: Do not feel.
The Veil existed outside of time as the mortal world knew it. It was neither afterlife nor limbo, but a plane of function. Purpose. Reapers were not born, they were claimed- souls who had died but could not pass cleanly. Given a task. A chance to serve instead of suffer.
Some, like Samael, had no memory of their mortal life. Only flashes. A woman's voice. Rain on a windowsill. The scent of ink and iron.
The rest faded. Became silence.
And maybe that was the mercy of it.
The Veil itself was a city built from breath and bone. Towers that scraped against the edge of the stars. Streets lit by lanterns that held no flame. Buildings that shifted with need. Every Reaper had a place- quarters, halls, stations. All cold. All still.
Samael's own quarters were high in the Northern Spire- solitary, as he preferred. There was no warmth there, no bed, only stone and stillness. A mirror that reflected nothing. A desk scattered with ancient glyphs and half-deciphered memories. His scythe stood in the corner, tall and silent, sheathed in black glass.
He returned there after the encounter with Nyra, his steps soundless on the obsidian floor. The room knew not to light itself.
He liked the dark.
He understood it.
He stood by the window, a thin cut of glass that looked out over the Veil's endless horizon. A horizon that didn't end in sky, but in threads. Thousands of them, maybe millions, stretching from the living world into the Veil like golden veins. Threads of fate. Life. Death.
And among them, hers.
Morrigan's.
Bright. Tense. Not yet frayed.
But trembling.
He ran a finger along the inside of his wrist, where the Mark still burned. A pale sigil, shaped like a spiral drawn through a blade. It glowed briefly under his skin, pulsing with memory.
The moment he touched her.
Human warmth against something not.
He should've reported it.
He should've erased the moment.
But he didn't. And now, it was growing inside him. Not love. Not yet. Something older. Stranger.
Recognition.
In the old texts, buried deep beneath the Hall of Silence, there were whispers of something else. Of Reapers who remembered too much. Who felt too deeply. Who fell not from pride, but from longing.
He'd read them once, long ago, before the council forbade such records.
They called it the Severing.
When a Reaper's humanity surged so strongly, so recklessly, that it ripped their connection to the Veil entirely.
It made them mortal again.
But twisted. Wrong. Cursed.
None survived it.
And yet...
Samael could still feel the echo of her hand in his. Not the heat of her palm, but the tremble of life. The thunder of her heartbeat beneath her skin. The way her eyes looked into him like she saw something she couldn't name.
He exhaled, slow. Fog formed on the window.
He traced her name in it with a fingertip before wiping it away.
He couldn't sever. He wouldn't.
And yet, he feared something far worse.
That the thread would snap not by his choice, but by hers.
Because Morrigan was digging. Wondering. Watching.
And the closer she got, the louder the silence became.
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