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CHAPTER 2
-part 1 -
Lyla Firn

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I had dared to think I might survive this. I had dared to think that mysterious figure would somehow defeat a soul-ripper.

I had rolled Rylan Stone's limp form off of me, trying to drag him back with me once more.

My hope was crushed as the creature slammed the person into a tree with the back of its hand. I thought it had forgotten me for a moment, but then it swung its head in my direction, now on all fours.

Its crystalline claws, almost the size of me, swung forward, stabbing instantly into my legs above the knees. I cried out in pain and fear. It began dragging me toward it as I clawed desperately in the snow, trying to slow myself down.

It loomed angrily over my lying form. It snarled at me, its saliva freezing cold against my bloodied skin.

I screamed, loud and blood curdling, before a a second form lept into my vision. Somehow, my fear didn't decrease -- it done quite the opposite.

This new figure held a scythe that swung forward to slice the creature, but it deflected it with a claw. The figure used the momentum to launch himself upward, landing on the soul-rippers back.

It attempted to pierce him with a claw, but before it reached him, the point of the scythe slammed into its skull. It hissed for a moment -- like the sound of an icy wind. Black blood sprayed from its wound, then its long arms went limp, followed by its corpse.

Relief washed over me, but my body seemed to be too shocked by the experience to acknowledge it was over. How could it be?

The first figure approached me as I pressed my wounds with shaky hands. She was so angelic I questioned if I had died, and she was coming to take my soul.

If she wasn't, I wondered if she was from a foreign dimension. Her hair was white like a Laestrithan, but the way it curled with thick locks over her shoulders was a rarity in our world. Her eyes were blue like one of us, but her skin was tan.

She wore a white coat that seemed to swallow her and make her hardly visible against the snow -- the large cowl mixing with her voluminous hair.

When she approached me, I felt a huge sense of peace, like she could make everything okay. She knelt beside me, placing a gentle hand over mine.

"You're safe now. We will take you to a hospital," she said, her voice as angelic and soft as her features.

"Who-- who are you?" I stuttered.

She smiled warmly. "I am Thyra Thorne Vaelor, that is Zenryth Hail. We are Reapers."

I flinched, fear creeping into my bones. Final Reapers -- I should have known. No one else could kill a soul-ripper.

"It's okay," Thyra Thorne said soothingly. "You're safe in our hands."

I swallowed dryly. Somehow, despite her being a Final Reaper, her angelic nature lessened my fear, and somehow, I trusted her. But her partner -- Zenryth Hail she called him -- he was a different story.

Even as he approached Rylan Stone, paying me no mind, I could feel something dark coming off him -- like the polar opposite of Thyra Thorne.

He reached Rylan Stone and crouched down in front of him. Without hesitation, he slapped him on the cheek. Then again, saying, in a gravelly voice, "wake up."

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CHAPTER 2
- part 2 -
Rylan Stone

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The world came back to me one sensation at a time. First, I felt the cold, then the wind, then my own heart racing, then, a hand slapping me.

My eyes snapped open, and I found myself lying on my back in the snow, a man crouching beside me. Fear enveloped me as I saw him, but I wasn't sure what scared me first.

Was it the realisation that me being alive meant this man was a Final Reaper? Was it his appearance? His hair was long, half tied up in a messy bun, coloured white -- normal at first glance. But the dark streaks of black were abnormal -- no Laestrithan had dark hair. I could say the same for his eyes, almost pitch black against his pale skin.

But no, more than either of these things was the indescribable feeling that I was looking at Death himself.

As I had the thought, the oxygen was suddenly sucked from my lungs like I was inhaling smoke. I clutched my throat and choked silently, as if the very air had been sealed away in a box made to suffocate sere. The man continued to watch me coldly, unfazed. But only a moment after it started, it stopped, and I could breathe again.

When he spoke, his voice was cold, and, just like his expression, void of emotion. "Get up. Unless you want to become something else's dinner, I suggest you stop napping and start walking."

I scrambled backwards away from him, my body shaking as much as it had in the presence of the soul-ripper.

I glanced over, remembering Lyla Firn. She was sitting on the ground nearby, a woman wrapping her leg. I became concerned, wondering if she was okay. But that thought didn't get far as the man grabbed the shoulder of my jacket in his fist, hoisting me onto my feet.

I quickly stumbled toward Lyla Firn, eager to get away from him. The woman was crouching down, back turned to Lyla Firn, allowing her to wrap her hands around her shoulders. The woman carried her, seemingly without struggle, crossing her hands under her for support.

Lyla Firn seemed to be losing conciousness as her head bobbed up and down absently on the woman's shoulder as they began walking. I quickly followed after them, and to my relief, the man stayed behind.

As we made our way away from our campfire and into the woods, I looked back. The man seemed to douse the soul-rippers corpse in something before pushing its limp arm into the fire.

It quickly caught, and ripples of dark smoke rose from its body, followed by the horrific stench of burning flesh.

Before I knew it, the man had strode forward and caught up with us, leaving the body to burn alone.

I startled away from him, the overwhelming, suffocating sense of something dark wafting off him until it made my legs weak.

"Walk faster, you're slowing us down," he stated coldly, his black eyes boring into mine. That only made it worse, and my legs faltered, making me stumble. The woman was becoming further away, and my legs were beginning to fail me.

The man grunted in annoyance, then grabbed me like a sack of tapper-roots, and threw me over his shoulder. Instead of trying to escape, I simply froze, paralysed in his grasp until we reached the nearest hospital.