Lavender’s knees hit the black stone like her body made the decision without consulting her.

  For a moment she could only stare at Reibella. The way her smile stayed gentle while the air around her felt like a cliff edge. At the galaxies burning behind her pupils, and the way it was wrong something so immense chose to wear a face that could look amused.

  Death. Not a title, or a metaphor. Nor the kind of story old men told to keep children quiet.

  Death, sitting in a gothic hall with floating candles and a cracked teapot mended with gold.

  “I expected more screaming,” Reibella said mildly. “Your kind usually screams.”

  Lavender choked. Her throat felt too small for breath, for sound, for anything. “I… I’m trying to be polite.”

  Reibella’s smile widened, delighted. “Oh, good. Polite terror is my favorite flavor.”

  Brute pressed against Lavender’s side to keep her from dissolving completely. His fur brushed her arm as if to say: Stay. Breathe. Don’t make sudden stupid moves around the cosmic entity.

  Zemmal’s presence behind her was a wall of barely contained energy. Lavender didn’t need to look to know his wings were drawn tight, his head lowered. Not in submission, but in a kind of careful readiness. Like a blade held still.

  Lavender forced air into her lungs. “You’re Death.”

  “I am.” Reibella crouched, bringing herself level with Lavender’s collapsed posture as If they were equals sharing a secret rather than predator and prey meeting in a temple. Up close, her face was almost human. Almost. The edges of her seemed to blur as if reality couldn’t quite decide where her features should fall. “Do you want the long version or the version that won’t make you vomit?”

  Lavender blinked. “There’s a vomit version?”

  Reibella’s expression turned thoughtful. “There’s always a vomit version. Humans are very biologically honest when frightened.”

  Lavender opened her mouth, then closed it. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to laugh or cry or self-destruct. “Why do you sound…so normal?”

  Reibella’s gaze softened in a way that made Lavender’s scars warm. “Because I am. I am the most natural and normal of things, dear.”

  The hall seemed to lean in. Candles drifted a fraction closer, their light steady. The stained-glass windows behind Reibella held their quiet but grew brighter.

  Lavender’s hands curled on the stone. “Why? Why have them bring me here?”

  Reibella’s answer was unexpected. “Because I want to save them.”

  Her stomach clenched. Confusion began to cloud Lavender’s thoughts. “Who?”

  “All of them.” Reibella’s voice grew quieter, intimate. “Humans. Your kind, with your endless wars and your ridiculous art and your stubborn little songs. This planet, with its forests and bones and oceans and storms. I want it intact. I want you intact.”

  Lavender’s voice cracked. “But you’re Death.”

  “Yes,” Reibella agreed, as if Lavender had pointed out a minor detail. “And I am unreasonably fond of you.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  Reibella’s smile turned almost sheepish. “It doesn’t. That’s why it’s unreasonable.”

  Zemmal’s voice intruded on Lavender’s mind, edged like stone. Stop playing with her.

  Reibella’s eyes snapped toward him; fondness there, but also a warning, quick as a knife unsheathed.

  “I’m not playing,” she said aloud, and for a heartbeat the air thickened, heavy with quiet.

  Then it vanished.

  Slowly, Reibella blinked once, and then the warmth returned as if the aggression had never existed.

  “Sorry. I’m working on my manners.”

  Lavender stared. “You just…”

  “I know,” Reibella said brightly. “I did the thing. My temper is… inconvenient.” She made a face. “It flares when I talk about humans being ground up by other humans.”

  Brute huffed low. It sounded suspiciously like agreement.

  Forcing herself, Lavender sat up. Her knees still hurt. Her brain felt like it was trying to crawl out of her skull. But she managed to lift her chin. “If you want to save us, why not stop Authority?”

  Reibella’s smile thinned. “Because I could.”

  Lavender’s heart hammered. “Please don’t speak in riddles. I’ve had my fill with these two. Then why don’t you?”

  Reibella’s eyes held depths of sorrow that felt infinite. “In doing so, I would become the very thing they fear. A tyrant. A destroyer. The moment I act directly, I am no longer Death. I become murder. War. Plus, you know, balance in the universe and all that.”

  Lavender shook her head in disbelief. “You’re telling me you have rules?”

  “I have boundaries,” Reibella corrected. “Rules are for institutions. Boundaries are for forces that want to stay what they are.”

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  Zemmal’s voice came low and bitter. She refuses to become their justification.

  Reibella sighed in almost maternal exasperation. “Yes, thank you, my beloved child. That is exactly what I refuse.”

  Lavender’s throat began to tighten again. “So, you just… watch.”

  Reibella laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Oh, I watch. I watch everything. Everywhere. It’s dreadful. But I can also choose.”

  “A choice,” Lavender whispered, hearing the weight in it.

  Reibella nodded. “I can find rare souls who can carry a whisper of me without being hollowed out by it. I can offer them proximity. Perspective. A sliver of my awareness stitched into their human limits.”

  “You want me to… what? Become Death?” Lavender’s stomach roiled.

  “No.” Reibella’s laugh this time was softer, like leaves falling. “You would remain yourself. Lavender, the girl who survived the Barrens. Who saved a dragon against all odds. Who carries magic in her soul and sarcasm in her mouth.”

  Lavender’s eyes narrowed. “I do not carry sarcasm.”

  Brute sneezed pointedly.

  Reibella smiled, delighted. “You absolutely do.”

  Tightening her jaw, Lavender asked, “What does it mean, then? Being your… what, conduit?”

  She leaned back on her heels, considering. “It means you’ll feel me at the edge of thought. Not constantly whispering, because that would be exhausting for both of us, but… present. A hand near your shoulder when you stand at a cliff. A pressure behind your ribs when someone is about to die. More like a widening of sight and power.”

  Lavender’s scars warmed, and she hated that her body responded like she already understood.

  “And,” Reibella continued, tone lightening, “it means you get access to a portion of my protection and guidance. Which is very useful when Authority is trying to turn the world into a machine.”

  Lavender shook her head. “Authority wants magic.”

  “Authority wants power,” Reibella’s eyes gleamed. She stood, gliding toward the stained glass. The candles shifted with her movement, as if orbiting a planet. She raised her hand, and one of the windows illuminated. It showed a city; white walls, rigid lines, a massive sigil painted across a central tower.

  “Authority fears death more than it fears anything,” Reibella said softly. “So they build systems that promise continuity. Control. Predictability. They cage magic because it’s wild, but they crave it because it breaks the rules they can’t bear.”

  Lavender’s stomach clenched. “They want to control it.”

  “They want to extract it,” Reibella corrected. “Control implies relationship. They don’t do relationships. They do ownership.” Her smile turned thin. “They want power without consequence. Immortality without humility. Safety without uncertainty.”

  Lavender’s voice came out tight. “They want to end death.”

  Reibella’s gaze sharpened. “They want to end their death. They have no interest in ending anyone else’s”

  The air in the hall seemed cool. Lavender felt Zemmal behind her shift, subtle but dangerous.

  “Their experiments,” Reibella continued, “are already destabilizing places you haven’t seen. The valley you crossed was not the only seam in the world. There are pockets where reality is thin, where magic is older than your wars. Authority is trying to drill into those seams like miners hunting for ore.”

  “And it’s hurting the land,” Lavender inferred.

  “It is. And it is hurting you. Magic is not a resource separate from life. It is braided through it. When they strip it, things unravel.”

  Lavender remembered the way the forest had listened. The way the ground hummed beneath her when she tried to lie to herself. The way it softened when she steadied her breath. How it punished panic with thorns. “What happens if they succeed?”

  Reibella’s eyes went distant. For a heartbeat the hall felt far too large. Too quiet.

  “If nothing changes,” she said, voice low and layered, “within a generation your kind will be ash and memory. The dragons will follow. And I will be left heartbroken for it.”

  The words landed like a weight on Lavender’s chest. Her voice broke. “Then stop them.”

  “We went over this. I could. With a thought.” Reibella turned back, and her smile was sad.

  “Boundaries.”

  Lavender’s eyes stung. “So you want me to do it.”

  “I want you to change the trajectory,” Reibella corrected gently. “Stopping is dramatic and rarely permanent. Changing is quieter. Harder.”

  Brute shifted against Lavender’s side, anchoring her again.

  She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, furious at her own tears. “Why me?”

  Reibella’s gaze softened. “Because you have something most of your kind loses when the world becomes cruel.”

  Lavender swallowed, the word being spoken before she thought it, “hope.”

  Giving a pleased smile, Reibella replied, “Yes. Hope. The capacity to believe that things can be better. The refusal to accept despair as truth.” She tilted her head. “Also, you’re annoyingly brave, which helps.”

  Her laugh came out sharp. “I’m not brave. I’m concerned.”

  A soft chuckle escaped Reibella. “That’s most bravery.”

  Zemmal’s voice reverberated, What do you want from her. Precisely.

  Reibella sighed dramatically. “Everyone always asks for precision like it’s a kindness.”

  Her hand flicked, and the air above the table shimmered. A map formed; hazy at first, then sharpening. Lavender recognized the rough shapes of the Barrens, the forest, and the valley basin. Beyond that, blank space where the map refused to commit.

  “This,” Reibella said, “is where the world gets thin. Thresholds. Places where older things press close.” Her finger drifted toward the Authority’s compound in RC3. “And this is where they’re building machines to measure what shouldn’t be measured.”

  Lavender’s jaw clenched. “Machines that can enslave magic users.”

  “Yes,” Reibella confirmed. “And machines that can wound dragons. You’ve seen pieces of it. You’ve felt the edges.”

  Lavender’s hands trembled, remembering the patrols’ sensor rig sputtering in the forest, the lanterns moving through the mist.

  “They’re hunting us,” she concluded.

  Reibella’s expression turned fond again. “They are. And you’ve inconvenienced them.” She leaned closer, eyes bright. “I’m proud.”

  “Proud.”

  “Of course,” Reibella said. “You broke their assumption. That’s the first crack in any empire.”

  Zemmal’s tail lashed once, displeased. This is not a game.

  Reibella’s eyes bore into him, and for a heartbeat something sharp moved behind her expression. Foreboding, hungry. The candles trembled.

  Then Reibella blinked, and the warmth returned like a curtain drawn back. “No,” she agreed lightly. “It’s not. I forget sometimes that you can’t laugh at apocalypse the way I can.”

  Lavender noted the instability. The way her kindness could pivot into something that made the air taste metallic. “You’re …not stable,” she observed carefully.

  Sucking her teeth, Reibella’s smile turned crooked. “That’s one way to say it.”

  “Then why should I trust you,” retorted Lavender without missing a beat.

  Reibella tilted her head back, studying Lavender like she was a puzzle piece that had finally been found. “Because I don’t lie well,” she said simply. “I don’t have practice. Humans do it constantly. It’s practically a sport. I don’t need to. If I want something, well, I have it, don’t I?”

  “And you want me to help you save humanity from themselves,” Lavender said, voice flat.

  “Yes,” Reibella replied, unapologetic. “Thus preserving your species and this planet. Because I am, as I said, unreasonably fond of you.”

  Lavender’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you fond of humans.”

  Reibella gave Lavender a tender expression. “Because you are brief.”

  Lavender frowned.

  Reibella stepped closer, voice quiet. “Dragons are long and serve a different purpose. Stars are… tedious and many.” She tapped Lavender’s chest lightly with one cold finger, and Lavender’s scars warmed in response. “But you burn. You blaze for a handful of decades and then you are gone. Every love is urgent. Every grief is sharp. Every kindness matters because it ends.”

  Lavender’s chest ached. She thought of her father’s hands, worn and warm, and how quickly they’d gone still.

  Reibella’s gaze held hers. “I have held every life that has ever ended,” she said softly. “I have wept for them. Mourned them. Cherished every brief, brilliant moment of their existence. Come, let us get more comfortable.”

  Lavender looked weary. “You mean we aren’t done.”

  “No, my dear, we are not. See? This is why I prefer the vomit version. So much shorter.”

  Thank you for reading my story. I spent a long time working on it and am glad I get to share it with others. Not your speed though? Check out another cool author below to give a try!