Page 8 of Ravaged By the Reaper
Back in the cockpit, I stare out at the stars.
Somewhere out there, she’s screaming. Not with rage or defiance, butpain. That kind of pain that shreds the soul before it hits flesh. I know that scream. I’velivedit.
But she won’t have to scream much longer.
I don’t know her name.
Don’t know her voice outside those choked cries.
But I know her soul like it’s sewn into mine.
She’s mine.
The stars are a river of knives—sharp and endless—slashing past the shuttle as we surge through superluminal space. They whisper in a voice older than breath, older than gods. I listen.
The pull in my chest hasn’t faded. If anything, it’s getting stronger. A thread of fire drawn taut, dragging me across parsecs toward a woman I’ve never touched. Never kissed. Never claimed.
But she’s mine.
The universe has carved it into me with blood and bone.
Still… I clench my fists, bone spurs grinding against the reinforced grips of the pilot chair. It’s notfearclawing atmy insides. Reapers don’t fear. Not even death. But there's something—anitch, a crawl under my skin I can’t shake.
Could fate really be this cruel?
My jalshagar—ahuman?
Fragile. Slow. Breakable.
I’ve crushed warriors beneath my boot with more resilience. I’vebledbeside monsters who’d chew through battleships just for the challenge. And now I’m supposed to belong to some delicate creature spun from silk and diplomacy?
“Why?” I growl at the void outside the cockpit. “Why her?”
The stars don’t answer.
But her scream does.
It lingers in my mind, fresh and ragged. Like a nerve torn raw. Like someone carving their way through my head with a vibroblade.
She's suffering. Somewhere in the dark, in some twisted Coalition oubliette, they'rebreakingher. The memory extractor, that writhing bastard-thing glued to her face—it’s not just tech. It’s violation incarnate.
I’ve seen those devices before. During raids. Used by the Ataxians to gut dissidents from the inside out without ever spilling a drop. It’s slow, surgical,efficient.
And ithurts.
She didn’t scream like a soldier. No defiance. No venom.
She screamed like someone drowning, and knowing the surface is a myth.
I breathe out hard. My breath fogs against the inner canopy. The heat of fury starts behind my eyes and spreads like a plasma burn.
She’s not weak. Not if she’s survived this long. Not if she’s still in my head.
But that question keeps slithering back.
Why bind me to her?
The gods don’t speak plain. Their answers come wrapped in riddles and stained in ash. They don’t care if the match makes sense. They care if itburns.
