Death is My Frenemy Rewritten (Book 3 of the Rewritten Death Chronicles)

Chapter 20: Cradle the Soul

*CUPCAKE EMOJI EXPLOSION WITH HAPPINESS*

MOMMA'S GOT  A SHORT BUT SWEET ONE FOR YOU TODAY!1

Don't forget to vote, leave a jillion (it's a number in my head) comments, and share this story EVERYWHERE to show me how much you love Death. 

(If you don't do these things, I'll just assume you don't love Death and I'll have to tell him????)

****

Through the dark, I heard a woman singing, like a siren's call.

Except, the melody was not cynical. It was a soft, beautiful, lullaby. I let it carry me away and it amplified, the sound peaceful and familiar.

I opened my eyes to an endless black space. There were no walls, no people, no sound. Something was suspending me in place, my arms gracefully outstretched on either side of me, as if I was floating vertically in water, but I was not afraid. I titled my head down, observing how my feet were pointing down and there was nothing but black space beneath me.

My toes touched a nonexistent floor, then the ball of my foot, then the heel, and I was standing. The skirt emerald gown still flowed lively around me, my long black hair flowing slightly around my shoulders like it was still moving through water.

My head felt heavy, thoughts sluggish, movements dreamlike and lithe as I turned slowly around, looking around the endless space of nothing. That's when I saw them.

The Three Crawlers.

They'd appeared to me when I'd first entered the Unknown in that strange forest. I'd thought they were after me to kill me. But they'd helped me before, by telling me a bridge was drawn in the in-between when I slept, and that would bring me closer to Death.

The Three for Forsaken were just like the rest of the souls Charon had trapped in the Unknown.

Charon. The death deity that was cast to the Unknown by Hades. He'd tricked me into making a deal with him and Ace had said he would buy me some time. Was my time over?

"Charon is not here," said the First. "He would not dare cross this break in time."

"Break in time," whispered the Second in a decaying voice.

The Third howled, its claw-like hands stretching across the invisible black floor. I remembered those claws ripping into my bicep in the forest.

The Three Crawlers stood side by side, their mirror-like skin eerily clear even though there was no visible light. I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here, but when I looked down at my hand, I realized there was a slight silvery glow all over my skin, like a sleeve of twinkling starlight.

"What's happened to me?"

The question seemed to echo in my head, and suddenly the Three were closer like a jump cut. I could see the last thing I remembered in their frightening mirror skin. How Death's corpse had stood behind Victorian Death like the puppet master...and I remembered.

I flinched as I saw my body strike the unforgiving marble of the library floor. I could see myself bleeding out on the floor in the torso of the First and the edge of Death's cloak as he appeared to loom over me.

"Am I dead?" I asked the Three.

Neither of them answered. A single tear leaked down my cheek with the fear that I was trapped here forever. I felt deeply pained, vulnerable in a deep place in my soul that no longer felt safe, as the image cleared.