Page 1 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

One o' Clock

Out of all the worlds Silene had visited, she hated this one the most. Tall, towering buildings surrounded her all over, noise of all kinds blared around her, none made from nature itself. Cars, mobile phones, planes, and construction sites. A wild nightmare. Even the air was unnatural, tainted with smoke and dust, tainted with gloom and rushing footsteps.

Grey—if there was a colour to describe Asador, it was that. Even Asphodel, the Death God’s realm, was more colourful. But then Silene had always found more colour in dying than living. She might be too partial to compare.

Her presence slipped unnoticed as she weaved between the throng of people rushing towards something that Silene couldn’t comprehend to be so important that they were tripping over one another, shouting at one another, shoving at one another in order to reach it. Even though humans couldn’t see her, they all shivered as she made her way between them towards what looked like an anomaly amongst the rest, a small stone temple or chapel hidden between two tall buildings made entirely of glass. Silene never kept track of what gods or deities humans prayed to or what shrines they built to adore them. It didn’t matter in the end. They all ended up in Death’s hands. Though Azriel was a kind God, she didn’t think there were enough chapels or temples humans could build to have him spare a prayer for them. Death spared nothing. Everything had an expiration date as long as he exited. And Silene was there to collect. But for some reason, she couldn’t make herself step past the entrance towards where a young couple stood holding hands before a priest. A bride and a groom. A wedding.

The hair at the back of her neck rose when a strange chill swept inside the chapel, gooseflesh spreading down her arms—arms that were no longer capable of any feeling at all. Silene was merely a presence. An augur. Half a soul made up entirely of death, the very essence of dying. One made a Reaper, a servant of Death, when she’d died a few hundred years ago in a realm almost as miserable as this one. Her touch was perhaps the most lethal out of all to one's soul. She was the most lethal thing to walk amongst the living. But there was just one thing that was lethal to her. Just one. One that had been lethal to her long before she’d died.

There had only been a few instances when her un-feeling body had reacted to anything or entirely at all. And all those moments had one thing in common.

A presence. Somewhat man. Somewhat God.

He looked like all three.

It was how he deceived, hiding behind that tall human figure, taller than most, taller than his brother even, dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt that let you see all of the artwork in his upper body. He always attempted to blend amongst humans, yet not entirely—no one possessing that face would ever be able to blend amongst humans entirely. Nothing about him looked human to Silene.

He leaned on the other side of the chapel arched doorway, not even five feet from her, and that was somehow the closest he’d ever gotten to Silene. She could now finally see behind the shade of his soft, blonde curls that fell over his brow, shielding his piercing gaze with shadows. From afar, she’d always thought his eyes to be dark, just like his brother’s, but they were such a strange shade of blue. Like an ocean being touched by thunder, bright speckles of lightning scattered here and there between the torpid foamy waves.

Silene had seen him many times before, always across the gates of Asphodel, the realm that was now her home and her prison until her five-hundred-year servitude to Death would soon end. She’d seen him many times from afar. Spoken to him, too, when she’d been unable to escape the opportunity.

But not once, not ever had he made himself seen whilst she was working. Or so near her.

There was something akin to resentment between them. She knew her reasons for her resentment, but she could not even begin to fathom his.

Even though they knew so little about one another, some silent history had always existed between them. A history both refused to acknowledge. One she was hoping to never acknowledge.

“What’s with all the lace? Are you a tablecloth?” he asked, not even looking at her, his voice much harsher and raspier than from this close. There was not an ounce of gentility in his vowels. It made Silene wonder if the distant space between them had hid this truth to protect her or to deceive her.

Still a little taken aback, her gaze darted down to her black, ankle length dress grazing her boots. “It’s really pretty. Do you think we all wear a black cloak and carry a scythe around everywhere we go?” Death was just as lonely as life had been for her, but at least she now had the means to give herself nice things, to make and wear pretty things, to smile at herself in the mirrors she passed. She’d always wanted to learn how to crochet, and it was the first thing she’d done when she’d died. She’d crocheted so many things from clothes to table centre pieces to curtains and clothes, she’d even knitted Azriel a few shirts he’d reluctantly worn when he came over to drink tea with her some lonely afternoons neither of the two knew how to spend with another but had tried to.

He turned to her, those hardened eyes meeting hers, softening as he beheld her, and Silene wondered if this was another trick the space between them was starting to play on her. “Who are you looking pretty for? No one can see you.”

For a second, she’d also forgotten what an absolute prick he was. “You can see me.” And she could see herself, too. That was more than she’d ever begged for when she’d been alive—to not be seen and leered and beheld by the gaze of others. In a sense, death agreed well with her. It had made her invisible. Untouchable. It had made her everything that she had wished to ever be. Somehow though, to her deepest chagrin, she was still not invisible to life. To him. To the one she’d most wanted to be invisible from.

His mouth slowly curved into the most sinful smirk Silene had ever been flashed. “So you got all dolled up for me?”

It wasn’t the words that so much stunned her, it was the fact that she felt warm at his teasing which made her either angry or flustered—she could not really tell. Something like her had never felt warm, even when she’d been alive. She’d feared this. That the closer the distance between the two, the closer she’d be to the scarp that plunged her back to humanity.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, straightening her shoulders and looking away from him, finally remembering why she had avoided him like the plague for the past five hundred years. “What are you even doing here?” One thing she knew about him for certain was the fact that he did not meddle or interfere, not even witness whatever happened to humans or the worlds they lived in. He was merely a creator who got bored with his creations and let them rampage and stomp all over his own work, all over itself.

“This is the realm I’ve been staying in.”

Her head whipped to him, mouth curling into a cringe. “This one? Out of all the ones there are?”

“Not fond of it?”

“You can say so.” She took another glance at him. “Why are you even talking to me?”

“I always talk to you.”

Always was a bit far-fetched. “Not this much.” A passing greeting, some snide remarks about her clothing or her hair, shameless flirts he passed around to everyone and anyone, sometimes he even threw a dig in relation to her servitude to his brother, Death.

“You keep talking back to me, Silene.”

Her first mistake. “Ah, you even remember my name. What a day of miracles,” she mused, voice dripping full of sarcasm.

“How can I ever forget my brother’s favourite loyal servant?”