A Shade of Vampire 90: A Ruler of Clones - Bella Forrest Page 0,52

do about it. I could only read the World Crusher’s story and maybe find a way to set the Ghoul Reapers free. I owed them that much on behalf of my cold-hearted maker.

“It will hurt,” Eneas said, his black eyes fixed on the first page. “Everything she felt, you will feel it, too. I’m only warning you so you know what’s coming.”

“Thank you,” I replied, my focus shifting to the text.

It was the World Crusher’s handwriting. I hadn’t seen it before, but I knew it was hers because of how the elegant swirls were fractured, growing crooked toward the end of each line. Every sentence started with willingness and patience then became broken in the end. As I began to read aloud, my spirit grew cold, as if a window had been left open somewhere, the draft stabbing my back.

“I never asked to be made. I never asked to be brought into existence,” the World Crusher wrote. “I remember the darkened silence from which she plucked me—mercilessly, some might say. But I welcomed the light and the feeling of an entire world against my skin. I had not known anything else before. Death shoved her hands into the nothingness and pulled me out, giving me a shape and a sense and a purpose.”

I paused, giving Tristan, then the Ghoul Reapers, an alarmed look.

Eneas knew exactly what had startled me. “She didn’t use a soul for the World Crusher.”

“Goodness,” I murmured.

“I didn’t think that was even possible,” Tristan replied, one arm settled around my waist. I’d opened myself up to him telepathically. He felt what I felt. He saw what I saw. And I witnessed the spread of outrage across his features as we both understood what these words meant. “I get Anunit being able to make a body from scratch and then populate it with a Reaper’s soul, though that’s nothing compared to this.”

“She’s been lying to us. This whole time,” I said. “It obviously is possible. She did it with the World Crusher. Though I dread to imagine what a Reaper without a soul must be like.”

Filicore scoffed, choosing to sit down and cross his legs. “You should keep reading.”

I did, and the words gradually came to life before my eyes, images bursting and spreading across my field of vision until Tristan and the Ghoul Reapers and the tome disappeared into the memory of the World Crusher. I only heard my voice as I read.

“Those were early days of the universe. Realms were young and developing, with emerald fields and sapphire waters. I walked them all by Death’s side. She was all I knew and everything I needed. Nothing more and nothing less than an eternity in her company awaited, and I looked forward to every second.”

Before me, our world unraveled. Hills rolled beneath my bare feet, and I looked down to see my toes wiggle—not mine but hers. The World Crusher’s. This was the first time she’d felt the blades of grass against her skin, moist with morning’s first dew. The wind whispered in my ears and danced through my amber hair. The sun kissed both my cheeks and spread warmth through my physical form. I’d never felt anything like it.

I, much like my brothers and sisters, had been made as copies of preexisting souls. We’d come into this world with a faint memory of every sensation that had made life extraordinary. We understood it. For the World Crusher, however, it was new and unknown. Distant in every way, yet beautiful and impossible to look away from.

I kept reading. “I walked all these worlds with her. Death, my mother. There were beings living here and there. Tall creatures with long limbs and sharp claws.” I saw them walking past us, giants with three fingers, each ending in a dark claw, sharp enough to split open a redwood. “Short creatures covered in fur, their beady eyes the color of amethysts.” I saw them too, scuttling across the plains, chirping and barking at one another. These were extraordinary times I was witnessing. Forms of life that were undiscovered. Histories that no one had known to write of, except for the World Crusher. It was an incredible sight to behold, and it filled me with a heavy sense of wonder.

“Death loved me like a mother loves her daughter. She had explained what it meant and how it was supposed to feel. I was always certain I’d understood that emotion. That I had experienced it for myself. I loved Death like a