Page 35 of Vexed
Vex
As I step out of Crimson Domain, I see Adimus walking towards me with a shit eating grin on his face.
Kill me now.
“Someone has been a good boy these past few days.” He says, coming to a halt in front of me.
I scoff, “Yeah, well, I don’t really have a choice now, do I?”
These last couple of days have been absolute hell. I haven’t gone back to see Lily and it’s been eating me alive. Ophiel still has some reapers keeping an eye on me.
I’ve been tapping on my hourglass all day, wishing it was playing a prank on me. But unfortunately, it’s no game when it comes to death. Lily’s hourglass has been running out faster than I thought. I’m fucking losing my mind.
I’ve tried sneaking through to the Human Realm, but there’s more reapers guarding it so there’s no point.
Just as Adimus goes to speak, a vision of a dying soul flashes across my vision. I hold up a finger to him, causing his mouth to clamp shut.
“Duty calls,” I say with a sigh before making my way to the realm door.
The biting wind whipped around me as I materialized on the grimy street corner, a familiar chill settling in my bones. Typical Saturday night gig. Just the rustling of unseen creatures in the alleyways and the distant howl of a dog to break the silence. The usual soundtrack of death.
But then I saw her.
Lying there. In the dark. Bathed in the sickly yellow light of a flickering streetlamp.
Lily.
MyLily.
My scythe clattered to the ground, the metallic clang echoing in the silence. My chest constricted, an impossible ache blooming in my nonexistent heart. Blood. So much of it. Staining the pavement, soaking into her clothes. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Rage, a searing, blinding inferno, threatened to consume me. I knelt, hands trembling, and checked for a pulse. Faint. Too faint. Her breath hitched, shallow and ragged.
“No, no, no,” I rasped.
My fingers scrabbled for the hourglass. The sands were running out, a furious, desperate trickle. I couldn’t let it happen.
I hurled the glass against the brick wall of a nearby building. It shattered, the delicate sand scattering through the air like confetti.
I’ve never felt so hopeless in my entire existence.
Please.
Don’t fucking leave me.
I knew her end was sooner than anyone would expect a human to live, but this wasn’t the way she deserves to die.
I cradled her head in my hands, my touch as gentle as I could manage. I had broken so many rules already, what was one more? I closed my eyes, focusing, and slipped into her mind.
It was a jumbled mess of pain and terror. And then I saw them. Four figures, looming over her, faces twisted with malice. They were shouting, shoving, their words lost in the cacophony of violence, but their intent was clear.
I watched, helplessly as they struck her, leaving her crumpled on the ground before pinning her down and ripping her clothes open. The rage intensified, a volcanic eruption threatening to tear me apart. I yanked the memory from her mind, severing the threads that bound it to her consciousness. Gone. As if it never happened.
I kissed her forehead, brushing the back of my hand across her blood streaked cheek. “I got you, darling.”
Standing, I dusted off my robe and grabbed my scythe from the ground. The street felt colder, the air thicker. The familiar emptiness of my being filled with a purpose darker and more primal than anything I had ever known.
I suddenly heard some chattering in the distance and I could see a couple coming down the street. They would help Lily so I can melt some fucking faces.
