Page 28 of Blood and Reign

A shadow rises up, swirling to form a large circular frame of black smoke. The center of it glitches like the display of an old TV just before a video of a woman stumbling out of a car appears. She watches the car burn with a man out cold inside. The car suddenly explodes, leaving her screaming over and over.

The complete anguish and torment from her cries break something inside me. I go to move forward when a hand reaches out and stops me. Glancing up at Soren, I find him wearing a somber expression, his eyes on the heart-breaking scene as well.

Axel steps closer, glaring at Soren. He rips his hand off me, pushing him back. “Keep your fucking hands to yourself.”

Soren raises his hands, a small smirk on his face. He ignores Axel’s pissed off glare while continuing. “We can’t intervene.”

I ignore the alpha male pissing contest and look back at the woman. She’s still calling out, kneeling on the ground. Everything inside the strange shadows slows down as if moving in slow motion before shifting.

“What’s happening?” The scene in front of us glitches again and moves backward as if rewinding before starting again, the heart- wrenching scream shuttering through my chest once more.

“She’s living her worst nightmare over and over.” Soren’s eyes glow as he looks at the scene. He frowns before shaking his head. “She’ll be here a while before she can move on.”

“What? Why?” She doesn’t deserve this. Not to watch someone she cares about die over and over. No one deserves that.

“She doesn’t look… evil,” Jax tells him.

“No one does. But you’d be right; she’s not a bad soul,” Soren tells him.

“You can tell?” I ask him. He nods, not saying anything more on the subject.

“Many souls come here to deal with their guilt before moving on. But guilt is a powerful thing, and sometimes the hardest thing to do is forgive yourself.”

Her screams echo around us as the glitch repeats once more.

“Can we help her?” I plead. If she was a good soul, surely, she didn’t deserve this.

“It would make no difference. She needs to be the one to realize it wasn’t her fault or if it was, to take responsibility for it and know that it was a mistake and move on. If we try to interfere with her progress, we could end up making it worse and stop them from moving on completely.”

Them?

I glance back at the scene. The man from the car glitches and moves behind her, holding her tight.

My head whips to Soren. He smiles. “Don’t worry, she’s in good company. Even humans have soulmates. He’ll be by her side until they can move on together.”

“The Underworld is not what I expected,” I mumble, taking one last look at the couple before following him, the guys close beside me.

Soren smirks. “Let me guess… You were picturing ash falling from a dark sky with pits of flames?”

“Something like that.” We move past the scene quickly. Jax and Luka keep their eyes on me, as if waiting for me to try something. I glare back at them.

Even if wanted to help ease her suffering, I wasn’t stupid enough to risk her passing on. Either of them. Knowing she has someone there with her eases the knot in my stomach. Hopefully, they both can pass on soon.

We quickly move further into the barren land until there’s nothing but a complete desert around us. We spot a couple more shadowy frames of smoke but they’re more grayed out than the first one, the glitches too erratic to see what’s going on inside them.

“There are a lot fewer souls here than there usually are.” Soren frowns, stopping as a wisp of shadow quickly passes us before disappearing into nothing.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Maybe they all moved on. At least that’s what I hope.

“No. The energy here… it’s all wrong.” Soren bends down, touching the cracked ground.

Kai glances down at him, frowning. “How?”

“It’s off. As if it’s been stolen or… absorbed.” Soren shakes his head, getting up to look around.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Not in this realm.”

Stealing energy…

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