"Well," The Child remarked, watching beside the Woman the events of the evening unfold. They were safe on another rooftop. He was shaking his head. Accepting what had taken place while it was not completely unexpected. The Youth had been too cocky for his own good while Silas and Sky had shown them a glimpse of what they were capable of. "they killed him."

"Mmm, that's a shame," The Woman mused in a half hum, agreeing but thinking to herself that the Youth himself was a deserving idiot if he was killed so easily. 

"They're leaving now,"

"Yes, that's fine, let them go," She said, looking down casually at her nails. They were nicely kept and she was satisfied with that. The Child seemed a little more than confused by her indifference. When The Woman looked up at him, she smiled. It was a deceivingly warm smile that hid her truths. She was insane, and she was let loose with almost limitless possibilities in a freedom granted by Faust.

"So...?" The Child prodded. What was she thinking? 

"We're going to play a game," She said. "You will follow them. I have some shopping to do. I won't be long."

She became a crow once more, taking off in flight to leave The Child to his own devices in tailing the Soul Collectors back to their sanctuary.

Crows filled the sky. Flying in murders of thousands strong towards the rising sun, towards the bridge they could cross towards Heaven and Hell. Souls on their journey. 

Respite was needed. Time to think. To focus and clear their thoughts. They were up against something far more sinister than he had originally assessed. It was not uncommon for a collection to evoke black magic. They after all were in the world of the Others. More often than not, it was a joke. The Damned to think they were in some way gifted against him, a Soul Collector chosen by Lucifer.

With loops of chains carried over his shoulders and Sky pulled along floating by her arm hooked around his, they returned home as shadows. 

His head pounded, his chin and lips still stained with black. 

Each step heavy. Lifting continuous, up the steep steps of nine floors. 

The cold morning sun poured down on their hidden world of the Temple Court. Climbing the empty flights of stairs to the top loft, every stair creaked under his weight while they themselves remained silent.

Sky, pulled along by no will of her own as her keeper guided her home. Her sight hidden from view as she not once looked at him. She couldn't. All the way back to the loft's atrium beneath the skylight, her thoughts were distracted.

When they at last reached their home, Sky released herself from the Collector in the black suit, as he released the chains from his shoulders. Leaning against the doorway which led to his lone chair before the window in his otherwise empty room, Silas' body sank to his knees and he closed his eyes. 

Just a moment's rest. 

"Why did you do it?" Sky's voice pried his eyes open once more. His black gaze looking at the floor.

"Your Silas had no other choice."

"No," her meek voice protested. "There is always another choice. You have other abilities, Silas. I know. I've seen them. I've heard them. All those words Lucifer gave you. You didn't have to..."

"There was no choice!" Silas roared shooting her a warning glance. His curse. His choice and Sky's words instantly died against his force.  

His icy voice echoed through their haunted tower. Dry heaving . His body trying to vomit whatever trace of the ink that was left inside his stomach while his body leaned back against the wall for support. Wiping away what he could of the black stain at his chin with his sleeve. Catching his breath, Silas regained his cold composure. Sky's head bobbed on her shoulder, nodding in understanding and careful not to overstep her place against her keeper. What else could she say? Without another word, she swam into the atrium and up to the inner arches of the skylight's windows. The chains that were lying scattered on the floor beside Silas reeled gently away with her, following as two metal lines floating behind her form caught in the morning light.

Silas' black eyes were left watching her from behind. Regaining himself with each low and drawn breath.

Reality had been left twisted. Sky's soul left raw and the sadness within her resonated back through the chains that were now stretching across the ocean between her and the Collector. Floating nearer to the glass, suspended in the air as time had frozen, the beautiful and tragic creature that was Sky mourned the cold daylight as though it was bound to be the end. 

For a long time, Silas read her with a distanced gaze in silence. 

To lose his Sky was inconceivable. To lose her meant it would have all been for nothing. The Youth had attempted to take her through his illusion by trying to trick Silas' mind into letting go of the chains, not knowing it to be an impossible task. The Devil's contract was binding. Silas would never let go.

From across the divide, he moved. Pushing himself to his feet, he stood before his tall body followed en suite of the slow footsteps he began to take. Around the landing of the loft, the Collector followed the line of the wooden banister that framed the descent below the atrium, the ethereal chains left on the floor trailing him. Slithering ripples and slow waves of chain lifted into the air. The hurt in his Sky was impossible to ignore, even for someone like Silas. Something had been exposed in her. A revelation of how close she was to losing what part of being human she had left inside. Faust had planted a thought, a worry that she could not shake.

Her shattered thoughts, the questions and the doubt distracted her. Their unbreakable bond was a delicate flower and Silas walked a fine line to keep it. The soulless man that held the chains, collecting until their humanity was gone, all in order to touch was it was to be human again. Filled with an ocean of emptiness, surrounded by chains connected to Sky, he was well aware when something in her thoughts distracted her from him. As he circled the landing, she continually kept her back to his gaze.

"He can hear her." Silas' frozen voice breathed, tapping the side of his temple as he could see into that deep rooted connection between them. "He can hear her tortured thoughts across the void. The mistrust planted in my Sky against her Silas."

The Collector stopped opposite to where he began, overlooking the descent in the tower's inner ward, his black eyes were on her. Looking over her shoulder to the pupils like full moons in his eyes, she was searching the features that only she could see in the permanent darkness that surrounded him. More and more the Silas that had been was being replaced with something else. Something dark. And at that rate, no matter if it was the final Collection or not, nothing of the original Silas would be left in the end. Something she was certain the Devil had planned from the beginning. Thirty four years had transformed Silas into the perfect collecting machine and there was no going back for either of them now. Too much had changed.

She continued to keep her distance. It was impossible to describe what it had been like. She had been drowned a thousand times, then commanded to kill under her Collector's control. A control in the form of a spell that rotted her keeper from within. A spell with irreversible consequences. That which Silas killed within, he could never get back. 

"I'm losing you to the darkness," She strained to speak her free thoughts. "the shadows that consume you. Commanding you to command me."

There, watching her, Silas stepped up onto the banister, a black tree lifting upwards to tower above a fall that would surely have meant death. Suspended in the air in time, Silas' sight line could not take itself off his Sky's captivating figure. With perfect balance, the Collector lifted his marked hand to her. Illuminated by the dusty rays of the morning sun, his shadowed sight called for her. 

"This one implores," Silas addressed her, his voice breaking through the wall of frozen ice between them, jarring Sky from her tortured thoughts. Shrouded in shadows with his hand extended to her, he waited. Over her shoulder, her gaze looked to him and all that she had to give were her tears. Motionless on the railing, Silas watched his Sky with impeccable balance. With their matched stares, a long silence stretched in time. "come to him."

The chains began to rise by the Collector's will, and with his power he was gentle to draw the ends attached to Sky's wrists back to him. Unable to resist the curse that bound her to follow, his voice called as it had in the dream. Calling to her. Not every word the Collector spoke was meant as a command but the chains made it impossible for anything he said to be ignored.

Hesitant, she was pulled forth through the air towards the Collector, the links vibrating with her every shudder as it inched her closer. His head craned to the side, no waiver to his balance, reading his Sky's rigid movements. The palm of his marked hand open to her. Waiting for her to accept him, he did not move. Her round eyes looked through him, her thoughts still recovering from the poison of the spell Silas had cast in that dark dream but the chains brought her to within his reach.

"Of Heaven and stars. My Sky." He said in a declaration of his devotion. 

Sky's hand, apprehensive, motioned towards him. Reaching to him and the darkness that reached back. The black that hungered. Their fingertips touched and her hand slid into his. Flawless in his balance, Silas' fingers enclosed over her pale transparency. Keeping steady, he pulled her close until suddenly their faces were only inches apart.

It caught Sky off guard but she did not resist. In the ebbing tide of the Collector's force, her clothing and hair drifted. Her body, a white sheet in the quiet air. Hollow eyes with pupils of white were centered into her. The world stopped and she stared wide eyed at the Soul Collector in the black suit. Her Soul Collector.

Silas breathed in the emotions that poured forth from the ghost. As an animated corpse without feeling of its own, he welcomed her. Only her and no one else. It was the only comforting thing in the emptiness of his sad reality. Drinking from the well of Sky's being, the Collector's thirst unending. No matter what Sky gave, it could never fill the bottomless abyss that was his being. A black hole of nothing. While he could not feel on his own, he could at least experience it through Sky. Emotion. To feel. Taken for granted by every person on Earth, it slipped through his fingers like sand. 

"They are trying to separate us." Sky said in a whisper only for her Collector's ears. 

 "Neither Faust, his followers or the Devil himself can break the bond between my Sky and her Silas." answered Silas, his voice a breath of cold air. He would never let go of the unbreakable chains that anchored Sky to him as long as he lived. And it just so happened that soulless men with a Devil's contract could live a long time. "There is only one path out of Hell and that is forward. When the end comes, this nightmare will be over."

"When the end comes, we will be destroyed." She spoke her fears to Silas, knowing he understood her.

"No." Silas said, shaking his head. "My Sky and her Silas will survive and be free to love each other away from all of this."

That answer. There were times when his humanity was there, buried just beneath the surface of the shadow. To see that side of Silas stung at Sky's guilt for her keeper's fate. She had her soul but no body while Silas had his body but no soul to fill it. All that was left were the memories.

Cloaked in a shadow that continued to grow as the years progressed, Silas craved the day his soul would be returned to him. Gentle, Sky brought her free palm to his cheek, the touch tingling against his cold skin. With sad eyes, she looked into the cold that froze the Collector to his core. 

"Oh, Silas, you didn't deserve this fate." whispered the ghost woman. He was what he was and it was the choice he had made. He considered the weight he was forced to carry in his cursed contract with the Devil was incomparable to what he had been given in return.

"This one will endure," He said, solemnly eyeing the ghost. It was the only reply Silas could give. Everything weighed on the Contract. The worry that the contract would never be finished remained, despite how loyal Silas had been to its completion. "When it is complete, only your Silas and my Sky will remain." 

She remained floating before him, trying her best to believe that they would survive.

"You truly believe the Devil will just let us go?" Sky asked, bringing her lips closer to Silas' ear.

"The Contract is binding."

The ghost woman shook her head. She couldn't believe those words so easily. Not then. Even if the Contract itself was binding and Lucifer was telling the truth, the Youth had only been a taste. A perverted taste of what the others involved in Faust's little scheme were capable of. The Devil wasn't banking on them succeeding. Silas was certainly some sort of last resort against an evil that had grown out of control.

"How long must you keep sacrificing to the darkness everything that is you?"

"As long as this one remains keeper of his memories, the darkness cannot completely take hold." The Collector answered, the chains in his grip as the links themselves remained suspended in the air. Gentle, Silas opened his hand to allow Sky her freedom to swim back into the open air of the atrium. Instead she remained, bringing the ethereal touch of both her hands to his face. 

In that quiet moment that stretched as a Universe of time, Sky leapt across the remaining chasm between their stares, bringing her lips to those of her Keeper. The Silas that only she knew. The true Silas that was braving Hell for their freedom. Near revealing himself in those private moments when he spoke only to her. When they were alone and no one could see.

A kiss. Cold and deep.

And for one small moment in time, they were free in each other. That moment where the Devil, Faust and his followers were gone and all that remained was Silas and his Sky. Chained together in a cruel twist of fate. 

The Collector's marked hand found her side, snaking around the curve of her back to pull her forward against him. His Sky and no one else's. Another kiss, deeper than the last. Entwined in each other's being. His hand sliding beneath the folds of her torn summer dress. 

Then, in an instant, the moment was shattered by the sound of a familiar voice interrupting.  

"I hardly think this is the time."

Sky pushed away from Silas, swimming back out of reach the moment she heard Yona's voice break the silence of their sanctuary. The Devil's secretary was early from her usual arrival time.