The fire had devoured all the stalls on the main road. It seared through all the paper lanterns and the strings that held them above the street, covering the road in a canopy of flames. Smoke churned high into the night air, blacking out the last of the sunset and painting the sky in choking darkness.
The humans shoved past us as we descended the hill, some of them carrying buckets of water from the nearby shore, but many falling over coughing and rubbing their eyes from the stinging haze of smoke.
At the end of the street, the towering pile of firewood for the departing bonfires had spilled into nearby stalls. They shuddered with flames, the wooden skeletons of their frames cracking inward as they turned to ashes.
“There should be people standing guard to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Tsukuyomi said, holding his sleeve up to shield his face from the smoke.
“Well, it’s happened,” Neven said. “Are we going to stand here and watch the whole city burn down?”
Tsukuyomi has a point, I thought, though I wouldn’t say it in front of Neven. The humans had been holding this festival for centuries. Surely they knew better, or at the very least, would have had a few buckets of water on hand to stop the fire before it reached such proportions.
The dirt beneath my feet squished and pooled as I stepped across it, like it had recently rained. The air was damp with an impending storm. Fire should not have spread so quickly on such a wet day.
For a moment, the winds shifted and the smoke parted, revealing one gasping breath of clear sky overhead. Without the smoke that stung my eyes and coated my throat, I sensed Death above us, splitting the sky with a thousand hairline cracks, ready to fracture and bury us all in star shards.
Neven yanked my sleeve and I tore my gaze away from the sky.
“Stop gawking. We have to help them,” he said, dragging me closer to the chaos.
“Right,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the Yōkai pulling Tsukuyomi after us.
“How, exactly, are we going to help?” Tsukuyomi said, snatching his sleeve away from the Yōkai. We stopped in the middle of the street, smoke swirling around us, humans fleeing in every direction. “Last I checked, none of us controlled water.”
“Can’t you control fire?” Neven said, fingers twisting in my sleeve, as if Tsukuyomi’s protests were my fault.
“We control light,” said Tsukuyomi, squinting, or possibly glaring. It might have been from the smoke stinging his eyes, or maybe he was just tired of Neven’s questions. “It’s not the same thing. Fire is just a vehicle for light. We could make the fire very dim, but the flames themselves don’t answer to us.”
Neven sighed. “We have two gods with us and neither of them can put out a fire?”
Hiro could, I thought, glancing out to the sea. Hiro could have made a giant wave from the nearby ocean fall over the town like a soft blanket, soothing all the flames instantly. I remembered for the thousandth time that somehow felt like the first, that Hiro was gone.
“Let’s just stop it from spreading farther,” I said.
I reached for my clock but hesitated as ashes spun down from the sky. I would probably need two hands to put out any fires. Hiro’s ring swung back and forth on its chain around my neck, reflecting the shifting light of the flames. Before I could overthink it, I pulled the chain over my head and slipped the ring onto my finger. With its pure silver and gold, it worked just as well as a clock.
A time freeze inhaled the street. The crackling of fire and collapsing wood fell silent, the flames twisted but motionless, like watercolor strokes of light painted onto the black sky. The ring was heavier than I remembered, the metal warm as it drank up the heat from the fires. This is just for convenience, I thought. It doesn’t mean anything.
I grabbed Tsukuyomi and Neven, who touched the Yōkai, jolting her to sudden awareness.
Neven didn’t waste a moment once he took in the time freeze, already accustomed to being ripped on and off the timeline. “We need to get water,” he said.
Tsukuyomi looked a bit dazed from the time change. I took his arm and led him a few stumbling steps down the path until he was steady on his feet. We carefully slipped through the crowd, contorting ourselves to dodge the humans’ hands and feet. Neven and I wove easily down the street, but Tsukuyomi and the Yōkai started to fall behind, carefully angling themselves around all the bodies.
Some of the humans had already found large buckets and were starting to haul the ocean water up from the shore. I grabbed one that two men had been carrying together, carefully prying it from their hands without touching their skin, and sloshed it over the closest flame. The fire didn’t hiss or smoke as it was extinguished, but merely blinked out of existence. The other physical effects would come when time restarted.
I looked down the street at the frozen walls of fire on either side. Even with our inhuman strength, this was going to take a long time, especially if we had to contort ourselves to get through crowds of humans. I didn’t want Kagoshima to burn, but how much of my lifespan was I willing to sacrifice for humans? One hour? Two?
As Death herself, I’d ended lives every day for a decade. Many of my people had died by fire, and many more would die the same way. To me, these natural deaths were tragic but necessary, just as I myself was necessary to keep the world in balance. But with Neven so determined to quench any human suffering in his path, what kind of monster would I be to refuse? He wanted so badly to save these humans, but he had no idea just how many humans had already died for him in the years he’d been missing.
The other three had already emptied the buckets of water from nearby humans and were heading toward the sea. I turned to follow them, but as the crowd thinned, something silver gleamed at the end of the street. A brief twinkle of light, like a fallen star that had whispered my name.
“Neven,” I said.
He ground to a stop half a block away.
“What?” he called, eyes narrowed with impatience, sweat dripping down his face.
I pointed to the silver sparkle in the distance. His gaze followed the path of my finger, squinting as he pushed his glasses up his nose. When he saw it, he dropped his buckets. We both moved toward it, ducking around the humans.
“What is it?” the Yōkai called. But Neven and I ignored her as we slipped through the crowd, racing closer.
Neven reached the human moments before I did, bending down to get a closer look. He reached into the pocket of the man’s coat and pulled out a silver and gold clock, tethered by a glistening silver chain.
I yanked back his hood, revealing white blond hair and violet eyes. I pulled down his companion’s hood for good measure and found the same. Both young Reapers, hardly even Neven’s age. Their expressions were blank and lost, not callous as I’d expected. They wore kimonos like the humans but hadn’t thought to conceal the chains to their clocks.
Neven’s gaze flickered up to mine, his expression tense. “I know them,” he said. “They were in my class.”
“So they’re Low Reapers?”
Neven nodded. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re here at the same time as us.”
Tsukuyomi and Tamamo No Mae finally caught up, pausing several feet from the Reapers.
“What are they doing here?” the Yōkai asked, taking a step back.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I think we’ve found our fire starters.” After all, fires didn’t spring up within moments without a sound. Not after recent rain. But the limits of time meant nothing to Reapers. They could dry out wood and let fire simmer for hours before anyone in the streets realized.
“What do you plan on doing with them?” Tsukuyomi said.
Neven and I shared a look. Without a word, we grabbed them under the arms and began to drag them off the street, their limbs frozen stiff.
“Where are you taking them?” Tsukuyomi said, watching with wide eyes. The Yōkai shifted into her fox form and scampered after us.
“Away,” Neven and I said at the same time.
“They’re too dangerous to keep near humans,” Neven said. “Now, if something goes wrong, the humans won’t get caught in the cross fire.”
“And if nothing goes wrong, the humans don’t need to see what I’ll do with them,” I said.
Neven grimaced at my words but didn’t protest as we dragged the Reapers farther away from the crowd. The coat on Neven’s Reaper snagged on something, making Neven stumble. He gave a hard tug to dislodge it, but Tsukuyomi leaned forward to help him.
I reached out a hand to stop him. “No, don’t—”
But as Tsukuyomi leaned forward, his bare hand brushed the Reaper’s forearm where the sleeve was rolled back.
The Reaper jolted, twisting out of Neven’s grasp and slamming into the ground. He looked around wildly, his eyes spinning purple as he took in the four of us blinking down at him and the frozen crowd of humans around us. I dropped the other Reaper to free my hands to subdue him, but he was already reaching for his clock.
A time turn slammed down on us like all the weight of the sky had collapsed.
When someone else turned time on me, I was never conscious of the stopped time itself, only the disorienting aftermath. This time, I was no longer standing by the shore but tossed at the edge of the water, a Reaper’s hands around my throat.
My eyes rolled to the right, where Neven was splashing in the water, face held down by the other Reaper. Where had Tsukuyomi and Tamamo No Mae gone? Above me there was only smoky darkness.
I curled my hand into a fist and punched the Reaper in the face.
As my hand crashed into his cheekbone, I cranked time to a stop once again. But the more one layered time turns, the more fragile time became. The world had tilted off-balance, stars sliding across the sky as if the blackness had turned to wet paint.
I hadn’t been thinking clearly, because the touch of my skin when I’d shattered the Reaper’s face had carried him into the time freeze with me, leaving us once more on even ground. We fell onto the wet sand and I stumbled away, my throat still feeling like it had been pinched shut. I reached for another time turn and—
I was underwater, crushed from the weight of yet another time freeze. Someone was pulling my right arm and someone else was grabbing my throat and my bones were vibrating with timesickness, my skin screaming as if trying to flay itself.
I gasped in a breath of cold air and Tsukuyomi was pulling me out of the water and looking down at me with eyes full of stars, a flash of light that must have been Neven’s clock in the background, then someone yanked my hair back and the world turned upside down, a Reaper’s fierce green eyes staring down at me, his trembling hand yanking at my scalp.
My ring burned on my left hand, but I didn’t think another time turn would help. The whole world felt like it was about to shatter to pieces, or maybe just my body, blood screaming through my veins, bones jolting as if trying to break free from the cage of my skin, the sky rumbling as if ready to be cracked in half by thunder.
This was why Reapers weren’t meant to fight with time—too many changes burned holes in the fabric of the universe, made paradoxes that could snap the timeline in two. Time grew thinner and more brittle the more it was manipulated.
But with my hazy vision, I saw that the other Reaper had Neven by the throat, thumbs digging into his flesh. My body burned as if I’d swallowed hot coals.
So what if the whole universe ends? I thought. Without Neven, there was no world worth saving.
I clenched my hand into a fist and dragged yet another time freeze over us.
Like a glass filled with boiling water, the whole world cracked in half.
With a great shattering sound overhead, the pressure in my skull released, like my head had been cleaved open and brain matter spilled across the dirt. I was on my knees, panting. In the distance, the fires of Kagoshima blazed on, all of the time turns released. My ring burned against my finger and my clock smoked, warning me not to try turning time again.
In the wet dirt before me, Neven was rising to his feet, a hand massaging his throat.
“The Reapers,” I said, stumbling to my feet, “where—”
“I’ve got them, Ren.”
I turned around.
Tsukuyomi stood with his arms crossed, the two Reapers frozen on the ground in front of him. They knelt perfectly still in a bright circle of moonlight cast down from the crescent moon that had finally risen over the volcano in the distance. Though they breathed shallowly and their panicked gazes darted around, they didn’t move at all.
“Tsukuyomi?” I whispered.
“They won’t escape my moonlight,” he said, smiling and brushing dirt from his collar. “Don’t worry, Ren.”
Tamamo No Mae leaped forward in her fox form, grabbing one of their clocks in her mouth and tugging until the chain ripped free from their clothing. She spit the clock at Neven’s feet, then went back for the other one.
“What should we do with them?” Neven said.
As if that was even a question.
I stepped forward and my shadows unfolded like dark wings, reaching out to tie pretty bows around the Reaper’s throats, tighter and tighter.
“Why are you here?” I said. “Why did you set fire to Kagoshima?”
I relaxed the shadows just enough to let one of them gasp out a few words.
“Ankou said to smoke you out like a bug,” one of them said, “and if we killed any humans while doing it, that was even better.”
“Shut up, Xander!” the other Reaper said. I squeezed his throat tighter to stop him from discouraging the other.
“How did she even know that I was here?” I asked.
“Reapers have eyes everywhere.”
I grimaced. Ever since I was a child, that same saying had haunted me. Our teachers reminded us in classes that no sin would go unpunished, not even the secrets we kept in our hearts. I’d always suspected it had less to do with eyes and more to do with our sensitive hearing and echoing catacombs, where even whispers could be heard if you pressed your ear to the stone walls. It was the reason I’d never had friends—anyone who met with me, even in secret, was instantly mocked by our classmates, as if they’d somehow seen it with their own eyes. Reapers were like spiders and all the world was their web. A vibration on a single strand could catch their attention.
“Whose eyes?” I demanded. I knew enough of the High Reapers that I would probably know their name. That would at least tell me their weaknesses, how to avoid them, or at the very least, whose face I should be looking for.
The gagged Reaper cried out against my shadows, shaking his head, eyes pleading. The other Reaper looked away.
“Tell me who saw us!” I said in Death, loud enough that the humans might have heard, but I didn’t care.
When they didn’t answer, I sighed and took out my knife.
“As much as I would love to do this for hours, I’m on a bit of a tight schedule here.”
“Ren?” Neven said, stepping forward. “What are you doing? They’re unarmed now.”
“Did you hear what they said? There’s a network of Reapers in Japan reporting on where we’re going. We can’t leave any loose ends.”
“What are they going to do without clocks?” Neven said. “They’re basically humans now.”
I turned to Neven, wishing I were kinder, more patient. “Neven. I cannot afford to underestimate the Reapers,” I said slowly. Your life depends on it, I thought. But I didn’t say it, because I was fairly sure that Neven still hated me and wouldn’t appreciate me trying to protect him now.
“They’re my classmates, Ren,” Neven said. “You know they don’t have any choice but to follow Ankou’s orders.”
“There is always a choice!” I said, stepping forward so suddenly that Neven flinched back as my shadows began to twist around us, caging us in. They could have chosen not to come after me. They could have chosen to do their jobs in England instead of becoming soldiers for their xenophobic god, but they were too scared. I was the only one who didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t simply choose to not be a Shinigami so they wouldn’t hate me.
Neven crossed his arms. “You can’t kill every Reaper you come across.”
“Can’t?” I said. “I didn’t realize I needed your permission.”
“They’re our people. You know there aren’t enough Reapers as it is.”
“I have no people!” I said. “The closest thing I have is Japan, and they want to take that from me!”
“You’re just as bad as Ivy if you slaughter every Reaper you come across!”
I hesitated. “I don’t want to be as bad as Ivy,” I said.
Then I turned around and slit the Reapers’ throats.
Blood gushed down their necks and soaked their clothes, watering the soil. They coughed and gagged, eyes wide with fear.
“I want to be worse,” I said. The sudden thrum of agreement from Izanami wrenched through me like a forest fire tearing across a tree line. Her voice rose in my ears, and when I opened my mouth to speak, her sharp words rushed out in Death:
“I have to be worse if I want to beat her. Why don’t you understand that?” But of course Neven would never understand. He hadn’t seen the dying faces of all the humans I’d slaughtered just to bring him home. He didn’t know that I would eat thousands of hearts from living, screaming humans all over again if it meant that he would be safe. I would never get what I wanted by doing things that were easy. And if the cost of it was my soul—every part of me that Neven had loved—then so be it. Being a good person meant nothing if my brother was dead.
Besides, what kindness did I owe the Reapers? When I was a child, they’d painted bastard on my door in pig’s blood and cut off my braids in class. When I was old enough to fight back, they’d gutted me on wrought-iron fences and crammed me into sewer drains and threatened to do even worse to Neven. This was a natural consequence for their cruelty.
They deserve to suffer, Izanami said, her words burning at my lips as if begging me to voice them, but I clenched my jaw tight.
“You haven’t changed at all,” Neven said, his words a bitter whisper.
I turned around, the knife suddenly a thousand pounds in my hand.
“Neven—”
“No,” he said, backing up. He grabbed the Yōkai’s hand and headed toward the village. She cast me a sad look over her shoulder but let him tug her away.
Tsukuyomi watched me, standing half in the moonlight and half in the shadows. Izanami’s rage cooled down to whispering embers, her voice suddenly far away.
“Don’t say anything,” I said.
He frowned. “What is it that you think I’m going to say?”
I shook my head. “I just want him to be safe,” I whispered. I hadn’t intended to say it out loud, but it felt like everyone in the world despised me except for Tsukuyomi. He looked at me for a moment like I was a math equation he couldn’t solve, then he took a breath and the frown smoothed off his face.
“He will be, one day,” Tsukuyomi said.
“I don’t like lies, even if they’re well-intentioned.”
“I have never once lied to you,” Tsukuyomi said. “I believe that Neven will be fine, because he has the protection of a goddess. That is my sincere belief.”
I said nothing, staring at the burning town. Tsukuyomi’s faith in me was naive. He hadn’t seen me fail the way Neven and the Yōkai had. Soon, he would.
“Keep watch for anyone following us,” I said. “They’ll be close by.”
“They will?” Tsukuyomi said.
I nodded. “Reapers don’t see very well from a distance. Whoever it is won’t be far behind us.”
I flinched as the sky cracked once more. Had we not escaped the time turns?
But then a hot rain fell down over Kagoshima, turning the fires to smoke. With all the lanterns now nothing but wet cinders, a quiet darkness fell over the city. The only light came from far away on the horizon, where a ghostly ship of funayūrei bobbed in the distance, watching the charred remains of their city crumble to ashes.