Chapter 2: Reaper Orientation 101

Chapter 2: Reaper Orientation 101

The moment Morrigan’s name scrawled itself across the vellum in flickering, silver light, the contract dissolved into a puff of grey dust. A sour taste, like ozone and regret, filled her mouth. She had just signed her afterlife away to a cosmic CEO with a morbid sense of humor.

"Excellent," Thanatos said, his tone brisk and business-like, as if they’d just finalized a merger. "Now, to the essentials. You can’t very well reap souls with witty sarcasm alone, though you do seem to have a surplus."

He held out a hand, palm up. Shadows in the corners of the office seemed to deepen, pulling and stretching until they flowed into his grasp, solidifying into a weapon. It was a scythe, but not the crude, agricultural tool of myth. This was a piece of lethal art. The shaft was polished obsidian, impossibly black, and the blade was a razor-thin crescent of what looked like solidified night. It hummed with a low, silent power that made the hairs on her arms stand up.

"Standard issue," Thanatos said, offering it to her hilt-first. "It responds to intent."

Morrigan took it hesitantly. The weight was substantial, real. It felt cold to the touch, yet a strange energy pulsed from it, a familiar echo of the demonic magic that had ended her life. The connection sent an unwelcome shiver down her spine. "And what if my intent is to stick this somewhere uncomfortable?" she muttered, testing its balance.

"It would be a short-lived rebellion," he replied without missing a beat. "The scythe is an extension of your new reality, a tool to focus your will. It doesn’t have to remain a scythe. Think of something else. Something familiar."

Familiar. The first image that flashed in her mind was a charcoal pencil, her tool for creation. She focused on the memory—the feel of the wood, the sharp scent of graphite. The obsidian weapon in her hands wavered, shimmered, and then shrank, the deadly blade folding in on itself until she was holding a sleek, black artist’s pencil. She gasped, nearly dropping it.

"Impressive," Thanatos noted with a raised eyebrow. "Most new recruits manage a clumsy butter knife on their first try. Now, your assignment list."

He flicked his wrist. A pane of shimmering, translucent blue light materialized in front of Morrigan, hovering in the air. Columns of arcane text scrolled rapidly before a single entry locked into place, glowing with urgency.

TARGET: Eleanor Vance AGE: 87 STATUS: Terminal (Congestive Heart Failure) TIME REMAINING: 12:43… 12:42…

"That’s the Soul Ledger," Thanatos explained. "Your spectral PDA. It will guide you to your appointments. Punctuality is key. We are not assassins, Morrigan, we are transitions. We don't cause the end; we merely officiate it."

Twelve minutes. The countdown was a cold, digital heartbeat marking the end of a life. Her stomach churned. "Wait, now? We’re going now? Don't I get a handbook? A training montage?"

"The training is on the job," Thanatos said, the corners of his mouth twitching. "Consider this a live demonstration. Hold on."

Before she could protest, he placed a hand on her shoulder. The solid, corporate office dissolved around her. The mahogany desk, the cosmic window, the smell of coffee—it all stretched and thinned like smoke. For a dizzying moment, she was back in that grey, silent expanse of Limbo, a void that threatened to swallow her whole. Panic seized her. Then, just as quickly, reality reasserted itself, but it was a new, terrifyingly altered version.

They were standing on a busy city street, but not. Cars passed through them like phantom projections. Buildings were transparent skeletons of steel and glass. And the people… the people were the worst. Each mortal was a shimmering, ghostly form, a walking pillar of light. And from the chest of every single one, a delicate, silvery thread stretched upwards, disappearing into the unseen sky. Their life-threads.

The visual assault was stunning, but the sound was crippling. It wasn't sound, not really. It was a chaotic tidal wave of raw, unfiltered emotion. The anxiety of a man late for a meeting, the giddy joy of a woman in love, the deep-seated grief of a recent widower, the simmering road rage of a taxi driver—it all crashed into Morrigan at once. It was a thousand voices screaming in her head without making a sound.

She staggered, pressing her hands to her temples. "What is that? Make it stop!"

"The psychic noise of humanity," Thanatos stated, his voice a calm anchor in the storm. "You're attuned to it now. You must learn to filter it. Focus. Push it away. Listen for the signal, not the static. Find your target."

Morrigan gritted her teeth, the pencil in her hand morphing back into the full-sized scythe as her distress mounted. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to isolate the information from the Ledger. Eleanor Vance. Hospital. The chaotic symphony receded slightly as she focused, becoming a dull, manageable roar.

When she opened her eyes, a massive, semi-transparent hospital loomed before them. The Ledger pulsed, indicating the target was inside.

"Right," she said, her voice tight. "So, we take the elevator?"

Thanatos gave her a look that was one part pity, two parts impatience. "We are Reapers, Morrigan, not visitors. The laws of physics are now… suggestions. Walk." He gestured towards the solid brick wall of the emergency room entrance.

She stared at the wall, then back at him. "You’re joking. That’s a wall. It has atoms. Very solid, very wall-like atoms."

"And you have a non-corporeal form. You are an entity of the Ethereal Plane now. Your belief dictates your reality. If you believe the wall is an obstacle, it will be. If you know it is merely a suggestion of form, you will pass through." He stood beside her, his expression unyielding. "You wanted to survive. This is how."

His words hit home. Limbo. The silent, grey nothingness. That was the alternative. Taking a deep, shaky breath that did nothing to calm her non-existent lungs, she stared at the brick and mortar. She thought of her death, that moment of transition when she was neither alive nor truly gone. She focused on that feeling of being in-between.

Closing her eyes, she took a step.

The sensation was indescribable. It was a plunge into ice-cold static, a full-body vibration that buzzed in her very essence. The smell of brick dust and antiseptic filled her senses. For a horrifying second, she felt trapped, her being stretched thin between two states of existence. Then, with a final, disorienting lurch, she stumbled forward onto a linoleum floor.

She was inside.

The emotional noise here was a thick, oppressive blanket of suffering, fear, and desperate hope. She leaned against her scythe, catching her breath. Thanatos appeared beside her, looking as unruffled as if he’d just stepped through a beaded curtain.

"Well done," he said, the closest he’d come to a compliment. "Now, find your client."

The Ledger in her spectral vision pulsed, a glowing arrow pointing down the hall and to the left. She followed it, moving like a ghost through preoccupied nurses and worried families. She found the room—307—and paused outside the door, steeling herself.

Phasing through a second time was easier, less jarring. She solidified inside the quiet, private room.

An elderly woman lay peacefully in the bed, her chest rising and falling in a shallow, rhythmic pattern. Machines beeped softly, their green lines a stark contrast to the ethereal sight only Morrigan could see. A single, shimmering silver thread rose from the woman's chest. It was frayed, worn thin as a spider's web, and its light was guttering like a dying candle flame. This was Eleanor Vance.

Her scythe materialized in her hand, the obsidian blade seeming to drink the dim light from the room. It felt impossibly heavy. On her Ledger, the timer ticked below one minute.

Thanatos’s voice was a whisper in her mind, calm and inexorable. "Her time is up. Her journey is over. It is your duty to unmoor her. Sever the thread, apprentice."

Morrigan looked at the old woman's serene face, the faint smile on her lips, and then at the deadly weapon in her trembling hand. She, who had been ripped from life in a storm of violence and terror, was now charged with officiating this quiet, gentle end. The profound, terrible weight of the task settled upon her.