Chapter 6: Competitive Soul-Searching

Chapter 6: Competitive Soul-Searching

The Hollow’s psychic shriek ripped through the asylum, a sound of pure agony that vibrated in Morrigan’s teeth. The golden dagger embedded in the floor pulsed with a clean, searing light, and the shadowy tendril wrapped around her leg smoked and sizzled, dissolving like black salt poured into a flame. The pressure vanished, and she scrambled backward, kicking free, the soul-deep chill of the creature’s touch lingering like a phantom frostbite.

From the shadows of the main hallway, a figure emerged, walking with a lithe, predatory saunter that was utterly at odds with the surrounding decay. He was young, maybe early twenties, with a shock of fiery red hair that seemed to burn in the gloom. He wore modern, practical clothes—dark cargo pants and a fitted black shirt—but moved with an ancient, dangerous grace. As he stepped into a stray moonbeam lancing through a grimy window, his eyes caught the light and gleamed like molten gold.

He clicked his tongue, a sound of mild disapproval. "Tsk, tsk. Playing with things you don't understand, Reaper?" His voice was smooth, laced with a cocky, charming arrogance. "You're making a mess."

The Hollow, ignoring Morrigan now, turned its full attention on the newcomer. Its gaping facial void seemed to focus, and it let out another wave of despair. The psychic assault that had nearly crippled Morrigan washed over the red-haired man, and he didn't even flinch. He just grinned, a flash of white teeth in the darkness.

"Oh, I'm not the one you want to try that with," he said, almost conversationally. With a flick of his wrist, a second dagger, identical to the first, appeared in his hand. It wasn't summoned from shadow like her scythe; it simply was, as if it had been waiting in the air for his call. "I've had far worse whispers in my head before breakfast."

He didn't charge. He flowed. He moved with a speed that made her own reaper-enhanced abilities look clumsy. He ducked under a wild, flailing swing from the Hollow, his golden eyes tracking its movements with casual disdain. While its attention was on his feint, he darted in, his glowing blade tracing a complex, fiery pattern in the air. He wasn't trying to cut the creature. He was branding it.

Everywhere his dagger touched, a sigil of golden fire burned itself into the Hollow's shadowy essence. The creature shrieked, its form destabilizing, the despair it radiated turning to panicked confusion. It was like watching a master artist paint with fire, each stroke precise, devastating, and undeniably flashy. This wasn't the grim, functional combat she had been forced into. This was a performance.

"You see," he continued, his voice never losing its conversational tone as he effortlessly sidestepped another attack, "your problem is that you think of everything as something to be cut. Bureaucrats. Always looking for a form to sign, a line to sever." He spun, driving his dagger deep into the creature's back. "Hollows are voids. You can't cut a hole. You have to fill it with something it can't digest."

The sigils he’d carved into the creature suddenly flared, connecting into a brilliant, golden web. The Hollow froze, trapped. The light intensified, turning from gold to a blinding, pure white. The creature began to convulse, its form disintegrating from the inside out, consumed by a power it could not absorb. With a final, silent implosion, it dissolved into a cloud of foul-smelling dust, leaving nothing behind but the oppressive silence of the asylum.

The young man stood in the settling dust, twirling his dagger before making it vanish. He walked over and casually plucked the other one from the floor, wiping its blade clean on his pants.

Morrigan finally found her voice, pushing herself up on shaky arms. The obsidian scythe felt like a useless lead weight in her hand. "Who… what are you?"

He turned, leaning against a crumbling pillar and giving her a full, appraising look. His golden eyes swept over her, taking in her disheveled state, the lingering terror, and something else. His nose wrinkled slightly. "I'm the guy who just saved your ass. You can call me Kael." He paused, his gaze sharpening. "You're new. And you stink of a nasty ghost. Mob enforcer, by the smell of it. Left a real stain on you."

She flinched. He could sense the residue from Marco’s soul, the dirty power she’d been trying to ignore. "I had it handled," she lied, her voice raw.

Kael laughed, a genuine, mocking sound that echoed in the hall. "Right. You had it handled. Is that what they call it when a soul-leech is about to wear you like a cheap suit? Look, I get it. Thanatos finally replaces the last guy and throws his new intern into the deep end without a floatie. Classic management."

The name hit her like a physical blow. "You know Thanatos?"

"Know him?" Kael scoffed, pushing off the pillar and beginning to circle her slowly, like a wolf inspecting a strange new creature in its territory. "Everyone in our line of work knows the big boss. The Grim CEO. The guy who thinks the universe should be run like a tax agency." He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could feel a faint warmth radiating from him, a stark contrast to the deathly chill of her own being. "He's the competition."

Morrigan stared, her mind racing. Competition? The way Thanatos had presented it, he was the sole, ultimate authority. The beginning and the end of the line. "There are others?"

"Of course, there are others," Kael said, as if explaining something to a particularly slow child. "You didn't think one guy in a suit managed every single soul in existence, did you? Some of us work for… other powers. More chaotic ones. Some of us, like me, are freelancers. We see souls for what they are: a commodity. The most valuable currency in all the realms."

The concept was so foreign, so crass compared to Thanatos's grand pronouncements of cosmic balance and officiating transitions, that Morrigan could only stare. This man didn't see Eleanor Vance's beautiful, complete life story. He saw a product to be acquired.

"So you steal souls?" she asked, a note of accusation in her voice.

"I collect them," he corrected smoothly. "Souls that slip through the cracks. Souls whose contracts are… negotiable. And I clean up messes like this." He gestured to the spot where the Hollow had been. "Things that linger interfere with the market. You reapers are glorified, bureaucratic paper-pushers. You wait until the fruit is rotten and falling off the tree. We prefer to pick it when it's ripe."

An instant, burning dislike flared in Morrigan’s chest, overriding her fear. It was the same defiance that had made her spit in the cult leader's face. "And I suppose you were just passing through this hellhole?"

"I was tracking that Hollow," he admitted, his golden eyes glinting with something she couldn't quite decipher. "But then I sensed something else. A fresh reaper, drowning in a despair pit and crackling with some very… unusual energy." His gaze flicked down to her scythe, then back to her face. "There's something else on you, isn't there? Underneath the gangster's grime. Something old and dark. He really picked a strange one this time."

He was sensing the demonic resonance, the very thing Thanatos had found so 'interesting'. The thought that this cocky freelancer could see the deepest, most broken parts of her so easily was deeply unnerving.

A rivalry was born in that moment, in the dust of a vanquished monster. It was a clash of philosophies and personalities, sharp and immediate. He was everything she wasn't: confident, knowledgeable, and utterly cynical. And yet, he had saved her. He understood this world in a way she desperately needed to.

Kael took a step back, his show of nonchalance returning. "Well, this has been fun. My good deed for the decade is done." He started to walk away, his footsteps silent on the rubble.

"Wait!" Morrigan called out, the word escaping before she could stop it.

He paused, looking back over his shoulder, a smirk playing on his lips. "What? Want an autograph? An invoice for services rendered?"

She swallowed her pride. "Why did you help me?"

The smirk faded, replaced by that same, unreadable intensity. "Let's just say a monopoly is bad for business," he said. "And besides," his golden eyes seemed to pierce right through her, "you're far more interesting than the last dreary reaper who had this route. Try not to get eaten before our next meeting."

With a final, infuriating wink, he turned and dissolved into a swirl of fiery, golden embers, vanishing as suddenly as he had appeared.

Morrigan was left alone in the crushing silence of Blackwood Asylum. Her assignment was a failure. Her boss was a liar. And now, she had a rival—a charming, dangerous competitor who saw her very existence as part of a game she had just learned was being played.