A Shade of Vampire 77 A Fate of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,3

alive, too, a long time ago," Varga retorted.

"I sometimes forget," Seeley replied. "It was more than a thousand years ago."

"There's the throne room," I said, pointing ahead.

It didn't feel like it had before. The weight of her presence was gone. The silence was understandably creepy, but I didn't experience the curious dread I'd first faced upon walking down this hallway.

"Not too shabby, if you ask me," Soul said. "Then again, she had plenty of time to spruce this place up after she lost Thieron."

"She didn't lose it. It was stolen from her," Phantom corrected him.

"Speaking of, I still can't wrap my head around how that happened, in the first place," Eva said, cautiously looking around as we reached the throne room doors.

"I only know what she told me," I replied. "After she stopped the previous ritual, she was weakened, tired. Brendel stayed close enough so as not to get burned by the pulse, then swooped in and snatched Thieron. Death didn't have the strength to go after her."

Soul chuckled. "Brendel was never an idiot. A fanatic, maybe, sure. But she always had the smarts it took to eventually pull off this insane ritual. Believe in something for long enough, and you'll make anything happen."

He glanced at me as he spoke, and I caught the hidden meaning of his words. He'd felt me losing faith in this endeavor, and he was ready to stop me from making a full descent into madness and despair. For that, I would be forever thankful. I gave him a faint nod, just for him to notice.

The throne room doors were open, we realized, as Soul, Widow, and Phantom pulled them to the side.

"Oh, dear," Raphael muttered.

We froze in the doorframe, gawking at the silent horror lying before our very eyes. The throne room's painted paper walls were torn down, and darkness reigned beyond. The wind howled through, fluttering across the dead Reapers that had been left behind.

"Holy crap!" Amelia croaked, pointing at three familiar figures. "Theoth, Wrik, and Baethal! The snarky triplets!"

They were all dead, just desiccated corpses whose more familiar features we could all still recognize. Their scythes were on the ground, shimmering in the faint light coming down from above. Looking up, I could see the flames dwindling in the chandeliers. Soon, this entire place would be swallowed in the same kind of darkness that surrounded the torn walls.

"Their throats were slit," Seeley said as he did a brief survey of the room.

There were dozens of Reapers here, with black-and-white uniforms of different styles, but Baethal, Wrik, and Theoth were still easy to identify. They were closest to the throne, on their backs. Their eye sockets were empty, as if the galaxies that had twinkled in them had vanished upon their assassination.

"Only Death or one of the First Ten can kill Reapers like this," Phantom said. There was genuine concern in her voice, and that worried me the most. This scene worried her as much as it did us. "It's called True Death."

Indeed, this was eerily different from the last Reaper death I'd seen. When Seeley had killed Yamani, he'd turned to ashes in an instant. "How does this happen?"

"It's a cruel way to kill a Reaper," Phantom replied. "The soul is bound to the Reaper's form, forever stuck, unable to move on, unable to do anything. The form itself withers, as you can very well see. It's like staring into eternity as it flows past you, and you… you can't escape."

"The irony being that it's called True Death, when, in fact, it's infinitely worse than a usual Reaper death," Seeley mumbled, his brows furrowed as he stood next to the throne.

"Why would anyone do this?" I asked, my blood running cold. "How evil would you have to be to do this to these Reapers?"

"Whoever is responsible, they wanted them to suffer," Widow said. "This is the one fate I hope I never encounter."

"You said only Death or one of the First Ten can do this," Amelia replied. "Do you think she's responsible? That she killed them all and fled?"

Soul gasped. "Why would she do that, when Thieron was so close to coming back to her?! No, it doesn't make sense!"

"Then one of you did it," Raphael said. "Well, not one of you three, here. One of the other seven First Tenners?"

Soul, Widow, and Phantom stared at each other for a while. They probably had a hard time even imagining the culprit as one of their own. But Seeley didn't seem all that