The Stars That Fall

Who could have done this? 

The entire field was littered with bodies, blood soaking the snow-covered ground as Yugi navigated piles of bones and flesh, and an odor so vile, even the stench of death had a sweeter aroma. His stomach churned with every breath he took as he stepped over limbs and heads and shards of bones, burnt black. 

Perhaps being a Reaper was not meant for him. He couldn’t get it out of his head, especially now that he stood in a sea of endless white, an arena of bodies that lay helplessly in the void. 

They had their reason for sending him here. Whatever their reason was had nothing to do with their inability to scour the region themselves—they knew how to Reap a soul. They knew how to wield their Nyoki and draw a soul into the small glass pearl, how to bring it to the Collectors. They knew all that. 

But what Yugi couldn’t understand was why they decided that he was a good fit now. He hadn’t been a good fit before because if he had, the High Reapers would’ve sent him the invitation to join the Akh’aji, and he’d be sitting on their bench as a High Reaper himself. He wouldn’t have to be here—in a field filled with … blood. 

​

“It’s nothing … important,” the Collector had said. “Sanyas die all the time.”

Sanyas died all the time … but not like this.

Sanyas didn’t just die. They lived for centuries, hidden in the deeper forests of the Kalér and Kekere-Daun Kingdoms. To see them here … dead….

They should not die this young. 

Yugi shoveled snow away from a body with his foot, still intact. Her skin was as white as the snow that covered her. Her dress was ripped to shreds, leaving her exposed to the cold, and Yugi pressed his fingers into her neck to see if there was a pulse. 

She was warm, still vibrating with energy, though her chest didn’t move. Despite her seemingly lifeless nature, he sensed a thread of life within her, a soul ready to depart its host, ripe for harvest. 

His heart slammed against his chest as he reached into the depths of his core, strings of Nyoki whirling with ease as he summoned his power to the tips of his fingers. Nyoki burned, turning his skin red as black embers sputtered from his fingers, a thread of ink-like smoke making its way to the young girl who was not quite dead. 

He hated this; he hated everything about this moment. 

Death was a pain no creature made by the Asayli should endure, yet there were Reapers, and there was this thing that always haunted him—a reality he wished never existed. 

Death felt like the end of time, and with each passing day, with each moment that he harvested a soul, he was reminded of how cruel his nature was—how unforgiving his sẹda became. 

With calculated movement, Yugi willed his Nyoki toward her, but there was nothing for his sẹda to bond to, and it reeled back toward him, a slicing pain cutting through the palm of his hand. 

Confused, he let the tendrils of his power race toward her again, hoping to latch onto the soul that should’ve still been there, but once again, Nyoki reeled back with nothing attached to it, and his stomach slumped in a heaping pile of disarray as he watched the young girl lay still in her trance. 

She was … dead. 

For a moment that seemed like an eternity, Yugi stood in bitter silence, staring at the young girl beside his foot. Not a single breath had escaped her pallid lips, but there was a faint fluttering of embers that surrounded her. 

And all these bodies—he realized—were also vibrating with some sẹda that he could not depict. Never in his life had he encountered anything as unusual as this. He pulled his fingers through the loose curls of his raven-black hair, then sighed. 

He’d been up all night, worried all day about this Reaping. The Collector, who had sent him here, claimed that none of the Reapers sent to this area had returned, and believing that the Reapers were dead, he wanted Yugi to investigate the region. But Yugi, to them—to the Akh’aji—was nothing more than an anomaly. A threatening reminder of the past that haunted the realm. 

And if he were honest, perhaps he’d consider himself an omen as well. Except—he didn’t see himself that way. He was better off not thinking about his past, to be truthful.

Still, in a moment like this, as he stood amid bodies, his past haunted him like a stain forever etched into his soul: unmovable and permanent. 

Yugi scooped the little girl up in his arms. She couldn’t be older than twenty years. She shouldn’t be dead. The wounds buried deep in her skin shouldn’t have killed her because she—her kind—healed fast. 

Something was wrong.

Many eons ago, when the war had threatened to tear this realm apart, a young Yugi, a fresh Reaper, had been forced to the fields to harvest his first soul. It was a daunting task, maybe made much worse than this one, but who could tell since, in those days, he was young, and he hadn’t awakened yet. His first harvest was that of a young anghi, a girl who’d recently developed her wings, but the wars had been her ruin as Titans plagued the Kingdoms, taking with them anyone they could. 

She was their victim—their prize—his nightmare. She’d screamed, writhed in pain with each breath she took. She fought for her life, fought desperately, too, as Yugi held her. But … when she died, he couldn’t Reap her soul. All he could do was cry. He watched himself break, mountains of power moved, and like the ground giving way to a sinkhole, sorrow broke free from its constraints—both sorrow and power—a pain that threatened to rip him apart from the inside out. 

He’d awakened.

This girl in his arms reminded him of that night. 

Yugi unfurled his wings, but a trickle of red caught his attention, and he turned toward it. 

The red liquid glowed underneath the moonlight, a flicker of gold sparking from the translucent viscosity of the liquid, and he realized that it was Iyùn Honey. He’d known about the underground mines, the run-offs that cluttered the caverns beneath the region. He’d seen it for himself many moons ago, during the war.

The Asayli had done everything They could to prevent the gods from mining the Honey and using it for their deplorable rituals. These days, the rivers were dry as the Tabernacles remained shut, but the run-offs were still there. A small trickle of the substance could be found deep within the caves, and he’d be lying if he didn’t think that Kalkydra hadn’t known about the run-offs. 

But this was no run-off.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, heat passing beneath his skin as he reached into his pocket to pull out a vial. Iyùn Honey should not run above ground like this. Certainly not so freely. 

Yugi brushed a strand of curls away from his face, cradling the little girl in one arm as he stooped toward the Honey and shoved the snow away from it. Beneath, a round metal cover was bolted into the ground, a single lock keeping it shut. 

The Honey ran thick, swirls of gold forming a beautiful pattern within the snow as he scooped up some of it in the vial he held. He reached deep within the cauldron of power locked up inside him, strings of Nyoki dancing once more to his fingertips, magnetized by the metal cover. Yugi pushed a tendril of his sẹda through the lock, hoping to allow his sẹda to break it free, but he noticed the rune. 

This was not ordinary. 

The cover popped open, thick smoke erupting from the hole it covered. The smoke grew thicker, drenched by an odor that reminded him of rot and blood. He clutched the girl tighter, launching himself into the air as quickly as his finicky heart could manage. 

Yugi took a sharp turn, his red wings beating against the air as he zipped past the Octeract’s cities.

The ground below began to collapse into itself, the well breaking apart, but he didn’t stop to take it in. He had the vial of Honey and the girl in his arms. His only aim was to reach Daun safely and have the girl examined by a Healer. 

Then … he’d worry about the well later.