The train wound like a silver serpent through the snow-covered countryside, cutting across frozen fields and frost-drenched woodlands. The windows fogged with breath and winter chill, blurring the world into shades of soft white and gray. Samael sat alone near the back, pressed against the glass, watching the frostbite of morning melt slowly under the rising sun.
He was no longer in the city. No longer tethered to the weight of every glance, every whisper, every shadow that might have been The Pale Tribunal.
He had escaped- for now.
The cabin waited for him beyond the edge of the world, deep in the pinewoods of a forgotten town, where no soul would think to look for a reaper with a glowing seal. The Tribunal wouldn't waste energy on tracking him through snow and silence. Not immediately. Not until the threads tangled too tightly.
But he hadn't left alone.
Morrigan was still with him. In every breath, every thought, every unbearable second of this journey.
He had felt hollow for decades. Empty by design. Reapers were not made to feel. They were sculpted from silence and shadow, carved into purpose.
But now?
He felt everything.
On the seat across from him, a child sat pressed against her mother's side. Curled beneath a thick wool coat, her tiny fingers clung to the woman's sleeve like she was the only real thing in the world. Her mother ran soft circles against her daughter's back with practiced calm. Across the aisle, a gray-haired man whispered something to his wife that made her laugh behind her gloved hand, a soft and private joy.
Samael had watched people for lifetimes. On doorsteps. In hospitals. Under collapsed ceilings and in car wrecks. He'd seen their faces in their last moments. He had walked behind them, silent and patient, waiting for the light to dim.
But now- he understood them.
The closeness. The instinct to hold. The fear of losing someone and the ache of having found them in the first place.
Love had once been a word to him. A tether, a risk, a violation.
Now it had a name.
Morrigan.
He closed his eyes, heart thudding too loudly in his chest. Her name had weight. Her voice lived in the marrow of him. And it scared him more than the Tribunal ever had.
What if they went after her?
He thought he could protect her by leaving, by removing the danger. But she knew too much. She had seen the mark. The glow. The truth etched into the space between life and death. The Tribunal didn't believe in loose ends.
Or in mercy.
And there were laws.
He could still see the stone tablets in his mind, cold and towering at the gate to the Veil, chiselled with eternal decree:
SECTION ONE: CONDUCT OF THE REAPER37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUXX3DJ1H6E
Do not speak to the living.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJL5iJaITc6
A reaper is a shadow, not a shepherd.
Do not touch what is still alive.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDvpIz5x2zk
Life does not belong to the dead.
Do not delay the soul.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoejviFflkf
Every heartbeat borrowed is stolen time.
Do not mourn.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4vJ7lGArJC
You were chosen because you no longer feel.
Do not remember your life.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyyEbYWL9vO
Memory anchors you to the mortal world, and anchors rot.
He had broken every one.
SECTION TWO: JUDGEMENT AND TRANSGRESSION37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAuImhBuw50
All reapers serve 20 years in the cycle of dusk.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEiffvVv9aB
At the 20th bell, you shall stand before the Pale Tribunal.
A reaper who breaks code shall be marked.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJW6PBkysSI
Your soul will bear the glowing seal until judgment.
If a mortal's death is interfered with, their soul may corrupt.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqEnKEJjOcU
And their tether may pull both into oblivion.
Love is the deepest violation.37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlNPO0NQwv8
To love is to unmake The Veil.
That last one was etched deepest. As if the Veil itself had bled the words into its bones.
And he had broken it.
For her.
SECTION THREE: FORBIDDEN ACTS37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2SJlABiZPh
Gravebinding - extending mortal life through reaper interference - is an act of defiance punishable by damnation or eternal servitude.
Possession of mortal vessels, communication through dreams, or causing death outside your assigned soul-thread is strictly prohibited.
Rebirth - attempting to reincarnate yourself or another - is an act of cosmic treason.
He had not crossed into rebirth.
But he had dreamed of it.
He'd dreamed of holding her hand on a beach somewhere. Of sunlight in her hair. Of living as something real. Something human.
He'd dreamed of having a heartbeat that didn't feel borrowed.
Of being hers.
The train hissed as it slowed to a stop. Snow swirled in lazy spirals outside, and the forest beyond looked untouched, save for the whisper of deer trails and wind.
Samael rose slowly, his limbs stiff from stillness and the weight of choices that could not be undone.
The cabin wasn't far now.
He walked through the tiny station, past a woman tugging two children into their coats, past a teenage couple arguing in frantic whispers, past a man clutching a bouquet of dying roses as if they might still fix what had broken.
So many lives.
So much feeling.
He wasn't supposed to see any of it this way. He wasn't supposed to ache.
But love had unraveled something sacred in him. Something fragile. Something forbidden and beautiful.
Snow crunched beneath his boots as he crossed through the edge of the pine forest. The air bit at his face. He didn't feel the cold- he had spent what felt like eternity in it already.
The cabin appeared just as the sun began to dip- small, wooden, half-buried in frost, with trees surrounding. It was silent, save for the creak of trees and the distant call of crows.
He stepped inside and locked the door behind him.
There were no mirrors. No clocks. Just a hearth, a bed, and a journal.
He sat by the fire and stared into the flames until they blurred.
What would they do to her?
If Nyra discovered the full truth -if Moksha with her sealed mouth, or Baraquiel with no ears sensed what Samael had felt-
Would they cut her thread?
Erase her like a corrupted page?
Or worse- would they twist her into something else? Use her knowledge as justification to rewrite the rules?
He should've never let her in. Never spoken. Never felt.
But the kiss had rewritten his soul.
She was the beat between the silence. The breath before the end.
And even now, a world away, she was in him still.
If the Tribunal came for her-
He would burn the Veil to the ground.
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