“No……”
The word scraped out of me, so hoarse it didn't sound like my own voice.
A memory tore through my mind: Sylvester, still half a boy, finding me next to a dumpster on the outskirts of the city, barely alive. He'd gathered me into his arms, eyes red, begging me over and over to hold on, to please keep living.
My tears fell onto the tattered soul.
Just days ago, I'd been at his wedding to Nellie Morton. A grand affair.
My brother in a tailored suit, holding Nellie's hand, smiling as he told me to stay in Ashford City a few more days and enjoy myself.
The whole city had been singing his praises. The Morton family's brilliant son-in-law, his future bright, his marriage to the heiress a picture of devotion and prosperity. A life made.
But this half-shattered soul before me……
How could it be my brother?
I drew a long breath, crouched down, and formed a seal with my fingertips.
The White Reaper's Spirit Communion Rite could draw out a dead soul's deepest attachment from life.
The soul fragment had no tongue, couldn't speak, but the images came anyway, flooding into my mind like shards of a broken mirror, piece after piece.
I saw my brother.
He'd been an ordinary boy from the suburbs, scraping by with odd jobs and street fights. He pulled Nellie Morton from the hands of human traffickers, battered and barely conscious, and broke his own leg doing it.
The day Nellie was brought home to the Morton estate, Sylvester was afraid I'd be lonely. He drove through the night to get back to me.
He sat on the edge of my bed, clumsy fingers fumbling through my hair as he tried to braid it：
“Rose, I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here with you.”
It was Nellie's letters, one after another, year after year of waiting, that finally moved his heart.
I knew the ambition he kept buried. I couldn't bear to watch him waste it on odd jobs.
And I was even more afraid he'd spend his life alone, so I told him again and again to go, to build something, to stop worrying about me.
Those years, everything had seemed to fall into place. With the Morton family's resources behind him, he'd risen fast, built a real career.
He called me often, sent me gifts. Every word carried the easy warmth of a man who was settled and happy.
I wandered the mortal world and kept up with my duties in the Netherworld.
Knowing he was doing well was enough for me.
But now……
I stared at the half-destroyed soul in front of me, and the pain in my chest was a blade turning.
I thought of when we were small. How he cooked for me, taught me to defend myself, stayed by my side until I fell asleep.
Someone that good…… how could he end up like this?
The soul fragment's throat bones were shattered. The sound that came from what was left of his throat was a wet, rattling rasp, like a broken bellows trying to weep.
My hands shook as I reached out, threading dark energy through my fingertips, mending the throat bones fragment by fragment.
Bone needles passed through splintered cartilage. I fitted each broken piece back into place, one by one. When I reached the last piece, my whole body went rigid.
Dead center of the throat, a hole punched clean through.
That spot. That shape……
A roar of white noise filled my skull, and everything else went silent.
That winter, Sylvester and I had been out delivering food when a half-starved stray dog came at us.
He shoved me behind him. When the dog lunged, he took it for me. Its claws tore straight through his throat, and the blood hit my face.
He collapsed in my arms, a gaping hole in his neck, blood pouring between my fingers no matter how hard I pressed.
I knelt on the ground, sobbing so hard I couldn't breathe, and in the end I traded fifty years of my own lifespan to bring him back.
“It's him……” My voice was shaking. All of me was shaking. “It's really him……”
I pulled the tattered soul against me and held on with everything I had.
But he was so broken, not even limbs left, and I didn't know where to put my hands.
“How can this be you…… how did this happen to you……”
My tears came heavy and fast, striking the ruined surface of what remained of his body.
Wasn't he supposed to be the Morton family's golden son-in-law? Wasn't he supposed to be living in wealth and glory?
