Reapers - Master of Souls (Reapers Chronicles Book III)

Epilogue

Lonely finds me

One day you will come

But I'll wait for love's sake

One day to me, love

I will stay forever here to wait for your love  

Epilogue

I had always thought of Oblivion as a dark place. That was what everybody had told me.

On the contrary, it was very bright.

I couldn't see. I had no eyes. Or a body. I just felt it this inexplicable luminance enveloping me. Like when you're sleeping and someone turns on the light and even if you keep your eyes closed, the light is so bright that it passes through your eyelids.

I was also told I wouldn't feel or hear anything.

Strangely, though, I could still hear Belial's voice muttering an incantation. It was very quiet, muddled as if trying to overhear someone from a closed room. Or maybe it was just a memory, replaying itself in my thoughts.

For a while, I stayed like that: floating in that ocean of light.

With nothing better to do, I mulled over the most trivial things, like was Eldest a boy or a girl? Or what was the real deal between Hector and Luci? Who made Crackheads and why?

Lots of questions, all of which I answered with a lot of maybe's.

Then, I got to thinking: how did the Helcium pendant end up with me when its original owner was Vincent's mom? And that... that I remembered how.

After Adrianna's death, Alessandra--I mean, I, in the height of my emotions, went to the Sinclairs. I wanted to kill Vincent, but the Madame came to stop me. Said she knew a way so that I could get back my sister's soul. She was the one who told me that Sileas and Amarah were plotting to overthrow Pilgrim and that if I manage to thwart their coup, I would be rewarded with anything I would ever want.

In exchange for her son's life, she gave me the Helcium pendant. She said it would protect me someday, and protect me, it did.

I dwelled on Nysmic. On Memory Tomes. On draughting boots and who made them. I dwelled on anything but the people I had left behind, because that was the painful one.

A while passed and nothing had changed. Except that someone was humming a tune. This gentle, tiny voice made me want to fall asleep, but it didn't feel like it was allowed here. This was Oblivion after all.

To my surprise, a touch of color swirled in the endless white before me.

At first, all I could make out was someone dragging a chair. It was hard to see with the blaring light. But as that person came closer, the light dimmed a little, allowing me to see a little child in white dress robes, with porcelain skin and white blond hair--Eldest.

To make it even weirder, Eldest was carrying me--a small glowing orb of gray and violet--on the palm of his hand. Momentarily, he stopped humming to set down the chair.

"Have a seat, Aramis Rayne," said he with a smile as he sort of let me float over the padded seat.

I wanted to ask him a few questions--a few meaning seven hundred--but I didn't have a mouth, or a face to put the mouth in. All I could do was watch him walk to the other end of the room--if it was even a room to begin with--to take a box that was sitting on the table.

That very same box that had swallowed Adrianna's soul.

Humming that tune again, Eldest picked up a fishing rod from the nonexistent floor. He reached into his pocket and drew a glowing blue orb--Carter's soul. Nonchalantly, he attached the soul at the tip of the fishing line like a bait. Then, he opened the box containing Adrianna's soul.