get out.
People screamed. Some were running, desperate to get as far away from the broken stream as possible. Others didn’t make it, collapsing on the ground in puddles of their own blood. The carnage was horrifying, and it wasn’t over… it was only just beginning.
I managed to get out, wondering if my sister or my father had made it. The pain in my soul throbbed as I thought of my mother, so I pushed myself to remember that I was Kelara, a visiting Reaper, not the young wood nymph whose body I was borrowing.
The black smoke spread outward, and from it appeared two figures—each dark and as fast as a shadow. They darted after one another across the village ruins. They weren’t bothered by the fires or the wood nymphs they kept bumping into. They were too busy fighting each other.
One of them vanished and reappeared closer to me, and I held my breath. He looked at me and mouthed “I’m sorry!” before he disappeared again. The second one bolted after him with no regard for me whatsoever. I watched them fight. They wore black suits, and they had scythes. Reapers.
“Holy crap!” I heard myself say.
I recognized the Spirit Bender first. He was the aggressor, the one who didn’t care about me or the many wood nymphs he’d already hurt by coming here. He was too busy trying to take down the other Reaper.
“The Night Bringer,” I managed.
The one who’d said he was sorry. He hit the ground hard, and Spirit’s boot came down on his neck. I stared at Night, and Night stared at me. He reached out, as Spirit laughed and shouted his death spell. This was it! This was the five-Beta seal he was putting together, literally rubbing it in Night’s face. The satisfied expression on Spirit’s face made me recoil, and I took a few steps back.
Spirit looked around and spotted me, but his attention moved to my right, where a pillar stood. He whispered something, and the stone pillar glowed an incandescent white. I tried to touch it, but it was too hot. I knew, then. I knew it was the second Beta element. I didn’t need to see more. Spirit’s presence, the details of his movements and reactions, told me everything I needed to know.
Looking back at Night, I understood his plight. He knew what was happening, and he could no longer stop it. The grief in his galaxy eyes was gut-wrenching, but there was also quiet resolve. He hadn’t given up. The fact that he’d found a way to mark all the Beta elements was proof the Night Bringer had not gone down without a fight. He had not succumbed to the poisonous darkness so easily.
Before I could figure out what to do next, I found the Spirit Bender standing right in front of me. I wanted to do something, but his hand shot through my stomach. I landed on my back, slowly dying as I watched him draw something on the incandescent pillar. He’d just killed me, but he’d also shown me a Beta element without even realizing it.
Back in my own form, I bolted upright. Forgetting how weak I was, I scrambled around the village until I felt it. Soul stayed close, watching as I searched for the Beta element. It was here, and it had been made using the blood of a young wood nymph. My heart broke at the thought and the vivid memory of it all, but it also drove me to keep looking, knowing such a violent death must have left an imprint on this place.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” Soul said.
“Mm-hm,” I replied, then settled on a stretch of hard dirt. Using my scythe, I started digging. He joined me with his own blade. The deeper we got, the more pain I felt, as though Spirit’s hand were stabbing me again.
I reached through the softer underlayer until my fingertips touched the stone. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I knew. I’d found it. Soul flashed me a bright smile, then jammed his scythe deep into the ground and pulled the entire pillar up.
Morning gasped somewhere behind us, but I couldn’t look away from the slim piece of stone. The blood had faded, but it wasn’t completely gone. Soul held the pillar upright and gave me a nod. “Again, you know what you have to do,” he said.
I did. I’d broken the first Beta element, and I had to break this one, too. “It’s going to