Author's Note

Hi! Thanks so much for reading.

I’m currently focusing on Nommie Zombies, but I’ll try to upload what I have here. I’ve finished the first quarter of it, and hopefully, once Nommie Zombies is uploaded, I can return to writing this one—because it’s really special to me.

Originally, I wanted to tell this story as a comic series, but with my current health situation, that would’ve taken too long. Writing it as a novel gives me the chance to still share this world and these characters with you.

I'll also be adding illustrations along the way to help bring key moments and characters to life—so keep an eye out for those as the story develops!

I apologize for any mistakes you might spot along the way—I’m doing my best to catch and fix them as I go.
Most of all, I hope you enjoy the journey.

Thanks again, and have fun reading! :)

The sky was broken.

Torn like paper and stitched together by fire, the heavens bled ash as the world screamed beneath them.

Mountains cracked. Rivers ran black. And from the soil, the souls of the dead rose like steam—wailing, weightless, lost. Their voices tangled in the air, a symphony of sorrow that refused to fade.

The veil between life and death had come undone.

In the heart of it all stood a girl.

A reaper clothed not in darkness, but in white.

Her robes rippled in the heat, streaked with ash and blood, but somehow still soft. Feathered wings drooped at her sides, stained gold at the tips. Her hands trembled around a scythe far too large for someone so small. It pulsed with ethereal light—gentle, pinkish—its curved blade glowing like the last breath of dusk.

Around her, souls followed like fireflies, drawn not by command, but by comfort. They hovered in orbs, luminous and delicate.

Children.

Elders.

Lovers.

Lost things.

She wasn't calling them.

They simply trusted her.

Cinder Grimm walked.

And as she did, she looked around at what remained of her home.

Or what had once been her home.

There were no words for it anymore.

Temples she had known since before mortal kingdoms had names had collapsed into burning pits. Towers that had stood through ages of war were split open, their foundations hanging over wounds in the earth. Roads curled upward into the sky before vanishing entirely, severed where space itself had folded incorrectly.

In the distance, a mountain flickered.

Whole.

Broken.

Whole again.

Then gone.

Cinder stared at it.

This was not how this was supposed to go.

None of it was.

Her home.

Fate.

Time.

Everything had been twisted into something beyond description.

Everything she had ever known was crumbling into dust.

For most creatures, time was a road.

A beginning.

A middle.

An end.

Cinder had never understood it that way.

Not truly.

She had walked beside the dying before their grandparents were born. She had watched kingdoms rise, vanish, and become stories told incorrectly by people who never knew they had existed. Centuries passed around beings like her differently. Time curled. Folded. Repeated itself in echoes.

Mortals experienced moments one after another.

Cinder had always experienced them more like threads.

But now—

even she could not ignore time.

Because time was screaming.

Past and future bled together around her.

Memories appeared where buildings should have been. People who had died centuries ago wandered through burning streets beside those who had not yet been born. Somewhere beyond the shattered horizon, tomorrow was collapsing into yesterday.

Life.

Death.

Creation.

All of it had been thrown into chaos.

And one traitor had done it.

One betrayal.

One act had pulled at the weave until everything began to unravel.

Cinder tightened her grip around her scythe.

And the one person who might have been able to stop it—

was standing ahead of her.

Beyond saving.

That was what everyone said.

The souls surrounding her whispered it.

Some pleaded.

Some cried.

Some begged her to turn around.

Don't go.

Please.

He's gone.

You can't reach him.

You'll die.

Cinder's steps slowed.

Her wings trembled.

She was afraid.

Of course she was afraid.

She could feel their fear too, pouring through the space around her until it became difficult to tell which terror belonged to whom.

Theirs.

Hers.

Perhaps there was no difference anymore.

Ahead, violet light pulsed through the ruins.

Cinder swallowed.

Everyone thought he was beyond help.

Everyone.

Except her.

Because Cinder knew him.

Not what he had become.

Not whatever corruption now wore his shape and carried his scythe.

Him.

The one beneath it.

Somewhere under all that darkness, all that rage, all that pain—

he had to still exist.

Even if only as a fragment.

Even if only as one tiny piece hidden beneath everything that had consumed him.

She could reach that.

She had to.

Cinder had always been trying to reach him.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Always trying.

Always believing there was something worth reaching for.

After everything they had endured together—after every battle, every loss, every impossible thing fate had placed between them—she could not abandon him now.

Not at the end of everything.

Especially not now.

Another soul drifted in front of her.

A little girl.

Barely more than light.

She shook her head desperately.

Cinder stopped.

For a heartbeat, she wanted to listen.

She wanted to turn around.

She wanted someone else to fix this.

Someone stronger.

Someone wiser.

Someone who wasn't standing here with shaking hands and tears already burning behind her eyes.

But there was no one else.

Cinder slowly lowered herself and reached toward the child's soul.

Her fingers passed softly through the glowing light.

"It's okay," she whispered.

The soul trembled.

Cinder smiled.

It was a frightened little smile.

Because she didn't believe her own words.

Not completely.

She didn't expect to survive this.

Perhaps that was the strangest part.

There was no secret plan hidden beneath her fear. No weapon she believed could defeat him. No final spell tucked away for precisely this moment.

She knew what waited ahead.

She knew what he could do.

She knew what he had become.

And she walked toward him anyway.

Because if there was anything—anything at all—left of the one she had known beneath that corruption, she had to try.

Once more.

One final time.

The little soul drifted reluctantly aside.

Others followed.

None stopped begging her to reconsider.

Cinder kept walking.

Her hands shook harder around the scythe.

Her breath came unevenly.

Her wings remained low.

There was nothing heroic about the way she approached the end of the world.

She was terrified.

She was vulnerable.

She had never felt so exposed.

And still—

she walked.

Ahead, the battlefield heaved. Fire burst from the earth in jagged pulses. Buildings—temples, towers, palaces—crumbled into shadows.

At the very center of this ruin stood another reaper, one cloaked in black and violet, his shoulders rising and falling with unnatural stillness.

He wore a white skull mask etched with arcane runes, and through its sockets, eyes glowed violet—cold, unreadable, distant.

His scythe was nothing like hers.

It was monstrous.

Jagged.

Coiled with soul-thread and dripping void.

Where he stood, the ground decayed.

Grass blackened.

Stone became dust.

Souls recoiled from him.

Cinder stopped.

Everything inside her screamed to run.

Instead, she took one more step.

Then another.

Then another.

Until finally, her voice cracked through the dying world.

"I'm here…"

The figure did not move.

Cinder's throat tightened.

She stepped closer.

"Let my light guide you back to me."

Nothing.

"Please…"

Her voice trembled now—shaking beneath the weight of a thousand unspoken memories.

"I know you feel me. I know you're still in there."

The souls behind her stirred nervously.

Cinder barely noticed.

"Come back… please come back."

Tears shimmered in her eyes.

Not just from grief—

but from certainty.

She knew this wasn't a battle to win.

It was a bond to reclaim.

The very thread of fate still curled between them, flickering faintly through the broken air.

Almost invisible.

Almost severed.

But there.

Still there.

Cinder could feel it.

"I never let you go…"

The violet glow behind his mask flickered.

Cinder's breath caught.

"Even in the beginning, I knew."

She took another step.

The earth beneath her feet cracked.

"I knew fate wove us this way."

The figure twitched.

Cinder froze.

For just a moment, the aura around him pulsed.

Not outward.

Inward.

As though something beneath the darkness had heard her.

The air warped.

Time wavered.

A ruined palace behind him suddenly stood pristine beneath a blue sky.

Then burned.

Then became rubble again.

The scythe in his hand—so full of silence—began to tilt toward her.

The souls panicked.

Run.

Cinder!

Please!

He's going to kill you!

She heard every one of them.

Cinder didn't move.

Her heart hammered painfully in her chest.

Tears finally slipped down her cheeks.

The fabric of fate rippled between them.

And the glowing souls around Cinder leaned closer, sensing the change.

Something was happening.

Something impossibly small.

Something impossibly fragile.

Behind the skull mask, violet light flickered again.

Cinder's lips trembled.

There.

She knew it.

There was something left.

Maybe only a fragment.

Maybe only enough to hear her.

But it was him.

"Please," she whispered.

Her scythe lowered.

An offering rather than a weapon.

"Please, come back to me."

Then, without warning—

a pulse of energy erupted outward.

A shockwave of raw magic.

Violet and white.

Life and death.

Creation and destruction.

Cinder's wings snapped open as the force struck her.

The souls screamed.

The shattered earth vanished beneath light.

And the wave swallowed them both whole.

The world stilled.

No mountains cracked.

No dead cried out.

No wind carried ash across the ruins.

For one impossible moment, time itself seemed to stop.

And in the hush that followed—

even the souls dared not breathe.