Chapter 955 - 955: The Reaper Takes One Future Call

Five white rings tightened around the empty bed in Ty's right hand.

Each carried a black nail dent. When the Reaper pulled its scythe, the white marks moved toward its blade while the dents held them against Erebos's prison roads.

Ty's four present fingers spread under the strain. His jaw chain kept the handle across his ribs, though the cracked bone beneath it had begun turning toward the coffin road.

Jade's white self held the shaft beside him. Nessa's cage dragged at the copy's shoulder from behind the gate, and Todd's staff answered with a wooden crack.

The Reaper drew both of them closer.

Jade put her living hand against the white self's back. The skull piece seated in its brow pressed cold through her palm. Her open deathward saw two claims crossing the same weapon: the clean white pull toward Ty and Erebos's black nails refusing to let the road belong to either fighter.

"You wanted Ty, and Erebos filled your road with bodies that never agreed to fight."

The Reaper pushed harder. Its blade shaved a white ring from Ty's hand and carried the black dent with it.

"Cut his prison out of this collection. You may call Ty once when your road is clean, with my soul and every substitute left outside it."

Ty looked at her over the scythe shaft. One eye socket held Jade. The other tracked the five roads closing around his wrist.

"One detail before death receives a future appointment."

"The call takes your body once. It takes nobody through you, and it ends when that fight ends."

Jade felt the old bargain tighten beneath her damaged eye. The pressure ran from the skull piece into her chest and hooked under her breastbone. The Reaper could still pull her soul through that line if Ty lost the fight already underway.

She drove her thumb against the groove in the white skull.

"End the fight Erebos spoiled. Show us one death already on your road, and we decide whether to reach it."

The scythe stopped against Ty's chain.

Across Corven's open body, the receiving operator dragged Rillhold's stolen stake toward a narrow side rail. His right boot remained fixed above the last nail ring. Three dead blank helms hung from the stake by their wrists.

The fourth helm moved.

A hand came up beneath its chin guard and pulled at the strap. The person attached to it kicked once against a low carrier board before the operator drove his remaining boot farther into the rail.

Reth lifted his head from Talli's cloth brace.

"That carrier is breathing through the side vents, and the left strap is cutting every time they kick."

Nessa aimed her overwritten field finger through the gate. It pointed along the side rail rather than toward West Four.

"The rail enters a migration roadback below us. He is trading the old stake for enough fixed ground to board it."

Jade pushed the white self forward. The copy planted its heel badly, corrected after Jade's knee struck its calf, and forced the Reaper's wrist toward the black dents around Ty's hand.

"Ty, hold the clean rings where its blade can reach them."

"My useful hand has become a crowded workplace, but I can keep it open."

He wrapped his thumb around the jaw chain and pulled. The middle finger stayed straight. Ring and smallest finger shook beside it while the absent index bed faced the Reaper.

The five black nail points pushed inward.

The Reaper turned the scythe through Jade's white self. Its edge entered the first dent and removed the nail from the white ring without touching Ty's hand.

Earth's laundry pipe released a black point. West Four's bad weld shed another. The Cross Link stair split around the third, while the coffin cloth threw the fourth nail onto its runner.

The receiving operator's boot held the fifth.

With his bare palm, he struck the nail ring until the fixed sole pulled Rillhold's oldest stake halfway into the side rail and dragged the living blank helm after it.

Jade's deathward followed the final black line from Ty's hand to that boot.

"The last nail holds the stake and the living carrier. Cut below the heel."

Ty changed his grip on the chain. His cracked rib slipped free and struck the scythe handle beneath the Reaper's wrist, knocking the edge down the final line.

Jade's white self followed. Nessa cried out behind the gate as the copied shoulder turned farther than her cage could carry, but Todd drove the split staff against the hatch and kept the elbow from leaving its joint.

The dark edge passed beneath the operator's heel.

His nail ring broke into five pieces. The oldest stake tore from the side rail and came through Corven point first.

Cava caught its shaft with the damaged recovery jaw. Two teeth snapped from the tool and struck the yard while Ruvan threw a red belt around the lower end.

The operator released the stake. His fixed boot came off with it, leaving a ring of nail holes through the sole and blood across the bottom of his foot.

He grabbed the living carrier board with both hands and pushed into the side rail. One dead helm fell from the wrist straps. The other two jammed behind him long enough for the board and breathing prisoner to enter the migration roadback.

The rail closed on the operator's injured heel.

Ty threw his jaw chain toward it. The last link struck solid metal after the carrier vanished, leaving the hook caught outside the sealed road.

The Reaper pulled the scythe free.

All five black dents had left Ty's hand. The white rings remained.

Jade felt the old hook beneath her breastbone tighten. Her white self turned toward her with the Reaper's empty eye hollow aligned to the skull piece in its brow.

The scythe touched the white thread between them.

Jade held still while the edge cut beneath her palm. Pressure left her chest fast enough to make her knees fold against the dirt. Ty caught her coat with two ribs and kept her upright without releasing the Reaper's chain.

The soul line withdrew from her body and wound around the white self's wrist. Her deathward stayed open. It hurt with every blink, and the road through it remained.

Jade checked the difference with her living hand against her sternum.

"My soul is outside the call. The eye and its road stayed with me."

The Reaper reached into the white self's brow and removed the skull piece. The copy lost its face first. Shoulder and arm loosened around the scythe while Nessa's cage settled onto Todd's staff.

White material passed into the Reaper through the piece. Jade's own right arm remained against her side, cold and slow, with the two smallest fingers closing after the others.

One white ring left Ty's empty index bed. It closed around a single link of his jaw chain and fused without spreading to the ribs or Jade's coat.

Ty tested the marked link against the dirt.

"One pull on one chain link, which means I get no convenient excuse to lose it."

Jade caught the link in her living hand.

"When it calls, I am coming as far as the road lets me. You can complain after we survive it."

The Reaper placed the scythe tip against Jade's damaged eye.

Her deathward opened through the pain and found a kitchen built across the ceiling of a migration roadback. Pots hung from hooks above workers using the opposite surface as a floor. A cook with two burned fingers lifted a child onto a grain counter while a direction bell shook beside the door.

A rack of knives strained against one leather catch.

The living blank helm passed outside a round kitchen window, strapped to the operator's board. The injured operator crawled after it using both hands and one bare foot.

The Reaper withdrew its blade. White fire left its skull, crossed the marked chain link, and pulled the collector into a cut too narrow for anyone beside it.

Ty's chain dropped across Jade's wrist.

His loose rib remained warm beneath her living left hand. She closed her fingers around it, the same way she had when he first came through the white road on Earth.

"You arrived late without one hand and brought another impossible trip with you."

"I kept the half with better timing because you always liked that one."

Nessa stepped through the gate with Todd's staff across her shoulders. The recovered field finger pointed toward the sealed side rail and then down through Rillhold.

"My city remains behind a longer road. I stay until that prison cannot follow either route."

Todd lifted the Cross Link section from his belt. Its copper edge pulled toward the same roadback, though the wooden half angled elsewhere.

"I travel with you until these two pieces finish disagreeing about who needs me."

Ruvan and Cava dragged the recovered oldest stake away from Corven's body. Behind them, Talli tightened Reth's cloth sling while Meya counted every survivor under the red clinic line.

Jade looked through her deathward again. The direction bell in the future kitchen struck its frame. Pots lifted from their hooks as workers reached for the nearest rail.

Ty wound the marked chain around his right wrist and kept Jade's hand on the loose rib.

"We board that roadback before its kitchen changes down."

Inside the deathward, the first knife slipped free of its leather catch.