Death's Echo

Epilogue: The Silence that Comes After the Echo

234 Years Later

The world had truly gone to shit. Global warming. Plagues. Food shortages. Greed. War. It all came together like Thanos's little infinity stones, and with a snap of the universe's cruel fingers, chaos reigned. Rio had never been so busy. And she'd been around during the Black Plague—unjustly blamed on her, of course.

There was so much death now.

More than Rio could handle at times, though she'd never admit it. The air was thick with it, the stench of rot and decay almost suffocating. It clung to her, followed her through every town, every city, as she quietly took the souls who still had somewhere to go.

There were fewer of those lately. She used to be able to walk among humans with a sense of detachment, knowing she was there to serve a purpose. Death wasn't something to mourn; it was a passage, a release. But now? Now the ones who died weren't going to the beyond.

No, they weren't deserving of it anymore. Not after the cruelty they had unleashed.

It was a strange thing—how the balance had shifted.

In the past, death was a tragedy, something that cut lives short, something that wasn't supposed to come so soon. But now? Now Rio saw death as a mercy. It was the rare souls—the ones still clinging to hope, to love—that she found herself walking alongside. The ones who deserved rest. The ones who still carried light in a world that had gone dark.

Rio knelt beside a dying man, her expression cold, unmoved by the grotesque gurgling sound that came from his throat as he choked on his own blood. His body twitched, fingers clawing at the dirt in desperate attempts to hold onto life. His little gang had made the fatal mistake of stealing an ancient tome of death magic, using it with a sadistic glee that even made Rio's stomach turn. The way they'd torn through towns, leaving nothing but ruin and screams in their wake, had drawn her here. And now, as the life drained from him, she watched without a flicker of emotion.

She had seen it all before. Death was her world. But some deaths—like his—were earned.

His eyes glazed over, and as his soul began to slip from his body, he finally saw her. His face contorted in horror, his final breath catching in his throat.

"Please... take me," he gasped, his voice hoarse and broken, the weight of fear palpable in every word.

It always amazed her, how the worst of the worst always begged in the end. They'd tormented, slaughtered, and destroyed without a second thought, showing no mercy. And yet, when they saw her, they pleaded. They fell to their knees, terrified of the fate they knew awaited them. The irony wasn't lost on Rio—their victims had begged too. Their screams had echoed in the same way, only to be met with cold indifference.

So, she returned the favor.

Rio didn't flinch. She simply stood, silent, and turned her back on him.

Behind her, his screams turned from the agonized wail of a dying man to something far darker—a sound that echoed around the room, the scream of a soul trapped, torn from this world but never allowed to leave.

She had no mercy for monsters.

His soul would rot here, forever bound to the misery he had created.

The air in the room was thick with the stench of death, bodies strewn across the floor in dark, crumpled cloaks. These men—no, these monsters—had brought this on themselves. Rio had only come to deliver the consequences.

From across the room, purple magic crackled and hissed, cutting through the air with a savage intensity. The beam hit one of the last remaining men, and his scream reverberated through the hollowed-out room, bouncing off the stone walls and filling the air with its haunting sound. It was the kind of scream that stuck with you, that crawled under your skin and stayed with you long after it stopped.