A Shade of Vampire 90: A Ruler of Clones - Bella Forrest Page 0,55

time, Death asked me what my name was.”

I saw her standing before me with her ink-black hair and cherry lips, smiling with motherly love. I wanted to feel the warmth that the first Reaper felt, but I was furious.

“The name came to me almost like a dream. It was what my scythe looked like. A weapon that would bring entire worlds to their knees,” she added. “Of course, such horrors were never my intention. But the name… it felt mine. The World Crusher. The harbinger of doom and eternal sleep. I would help souls cross to the other side, but I never saw myself as a celestial and serene creature.”

Death left her to do what she had been made to do. In this world, a species of fae appeared before me. It didn’t take long for me to recognize their silky white hair and lilac or mint green eyes. Their strange white pupils. The World Crusher had been assigned one of the realms of the soul fae.

“She thought I should start small,” the Reaper wrote in her pages, and I almost heard the nib scrawling across the paper, leaving trails of swirling and sometimes crooked black ink behind. “These creatures had wondrous powers. They could bend the spirits of others—the wills of their bodies and souls alike. A strong soul fae could convince another that a sickness had taken over, even though the flesh was healthy. The sickness would form, and it would spread. That was the full power of a soul fae. Personally, I was fascinated by their kind. Other species thrived in the meantime, in conjunction with the elemental Hermessi of each realm. Fire. Water. Earth. Air. Eventually, the first of the witches learned to open portals.”

The soul fae’s society certainly thrived. The doorways into neighboring worlds brought visitors from beyond, and the World Crusher observed how this place grew into a metropolis of the Supernatural Dimension, as Tristan’s people had called it. She felt right at home, even though she never talked to any of these people. Death would visit once in a while, and the World Crusher would be happy to see her.

She’d go about each day in peace, with no real concept of time passing. Gradually, the Reaper latched on to the rhythm of the living. She understood the years and the months and the days that went by. She watched the soul fae as they were born, reddish bundles crying in their mother’s arms. She watched them as they grew up, gliding through childhood with nothing but laughter and joy and scraped knees and funny tooth gaps. Then they grew old, and the World Crusher came to them when they died, cutting their souls with the sacred scythe, its veins glittering black as they were sent into the great beyond.

“Eventually, the world around me began to lack sense. It was the same thing, over and over. Birth, life, death. Blossoms sprouting, flowers blooming then withering. I grew tired of the cycle. I became curious as to what else there might be,” she continued. “Death allowed me to visit other worlds, hoping that might keep me entertained. I did my fair share of reaping along the way. There was honor in this duty. What I did was important, I understood that. It just wasn’t the only thing I wanted for myself. And the realm of the living wasn’t the only place I wanted to see, either.”

Her bare feet treaded through the empty blackness between the In-Between’s peculiar planets. She followed the pink and orange stardust streams, the celestial rivers that the Hermessi had learned to use as a form of navigation from one planet to another. I’d heard stories from Tristan and Esme about it, dating back to the Hermessi’s rebellion. Ironic, as traces of the Spirit Bender popped up wherever I turned—even in this Reaper’s memories.

It hit me then that the World Crusher lived through everything at an accelerated speed. She never truly stopped to take a moment, to bask in a second, a minute or a day. She was always on the go, and as a result, the world around her shifted, the cycle of life and death becoming drab, meaningless and insufficient.

“I wanted more. It didn’t make sense for me to be bound to a single plane of existence. I wasn’t allowed to interfere with the living, and I wasn’t allowed to leave Death’s dimension. It just wasn’t right. One day, I began to wonder… what if? What if I peeked behind