Snow covered the ground in a thick white shroud, muffling the world in a burial silence. The wind howled through the bare trees like the wailing of the damned, carrying the bitter promise of a storm that would never end.
Two soldiers trudged through the drifts, their breath forming jagged clouds in the freezing air. Between them, they hauled the weight of a boy.
He couldn't have been older than seventeen. His face was frozen in a mask of youthful peace, eyes closed to a world that had betrayed him. His chest was a ruin of torn leather and splintered arrow shafts, the crimson blood now dark and brittle against his skin.
The shorter soldier, a nervous man named Toli, shivered violently. He refused to look down at their cargo.
"The ground is too hard to dig," Toli hissed, his teeth chattering. "Why are we doing this? Let the wolves have the whelp. What does it matter now?"
The taller soldier, Gero, didn't answer.
"Gero? Did you hear me?"
Gero stopped. He dropped the boy's arms the body thudded softly into the snow and seized Toli by the throat. His grip was iron.
"Shut up," Gero whispered, "or you'll be the next one I carry."
He held the grip until Toli's face turned a bruised purple, then shoved him away. Toli stumbled back, gasping and rubbing his neck.
"Fine," Toli rasped. "But that cave is cursed, Gero. You can smell it from here."
"Lord Malach wants the bodies delivered. He finds out we failed, he'll show us what 'cursed' really means." Gero hoisted the boy's arms again. "Lift. Walk."
They moved on.
The cave mouth yawned before them like the jaws of a starving beast. The rock at the entrance was stained a permanent, oily black. Icicles hung from the ceiling like rows of jagged teeth, glinting in the pale moonlight.
Then, the stench hit them.
It was the smell of old death sweet, rotten, and thick enough to taste. It clawed at their throats and made their eyes water.
"On three," Gero grunted.
They swung the boy between them.
"One. Two. Three."
The body flew through the air, spinning once, and vanished into the black. There was a soft, wet thud as he landed on the pile. A pile of others just like him.
The soldiers didn't wait. They turned and fled into the night, their footsteps hurried by a fear that had nothing to do with the cold.
The Choice
The boy lay atop the dead.
For a long time, there was only the wind. Then, his mind flickered to life.
It wasn't his body that returned that was broken beyond repair. It was his consciousness, surfacing like a drowning man gasping for air. With the darkness came the fragments of the life he had just lost.
A mother's hand, warm against his brow.
A father's laugh Titus booming like summer thunder.
Green eyes watching him from a doorway.
The smell of home. The sound of a village that was now nothing but ash and screams.
He tried to move, but his fingers were lead. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were filled with the metallic taste of his own blood. He was a dead boy in a cave of dead boys, and the world was already moving on without him.
Get up, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. Get up.
He moved a finger. Half an inch. The arrows shifted in his chest, and a wave of white-hot agony snuffed out the spark.
I cannot, he thought. It's over.
, light appeared.
It started as a pinprick of gold in the infinite black. It swelled, bathing the carnage of the cave in a soft, holy radiance.
A figure stood in the center of the glow. A young woman in white robes that flowed like water. Her wings were not made of feathers, but of shifting, ethereal light.
Ryan looked down and saw his own broken corpse beneath him. He was floating, translucent and shimmering a soul peeling away from useless flesh.
"I am Ariel," the woman said. Her voice was clear and calm. "I am here to take you, Ryan, son of Titus. Your time has come."
She reached out a hand. . A door held open.
Ryan looked at her hand.
Just as his ghostly fingers drifted toward hers, a small white flower appeared in the angel's palm. Then, it turned pitch black and shriveled into ash.
A sound tore through the cave a sound older than stars, like the grinding of tectonic plates.
From the shadows at the back of the cavern, a man emerged.
"Ryan."
The voice was heavy. The man wore tattered dark robes, his face hidden beneath a deep hood. Only a beard was visible half white, half black, split perfectly down the middle. His hands were scarred and rough.
"Are you so weak?" the old man asked. "So ready to rot while the men who murdered your family still draw breath?"
Ryan's spirit-voice was a thin rasp. "Who are you?"
The old man stepped forward. Ariel tensed, her golden light flickering in the presence of the stranger's shadow.
"I offer you power," the man said. "Vengeance. The strength to make them pray for the death they gave you. Or he gestured to the angel,you can go with her. Leave the monsters to laugh and live while you become a memory."
Ariel's calm mask broke. For the first time, Ryan saw a terrifying emotion on an angel's face: Fear.
"How are you still alive?" she demanded. "You should have been dust a thousand years ago!"
The old man ignored her, his hidden gaze fixed on Ryan. He extended a scarred, calloused hand. "Take my hand, boy. This world is a rot. Join me, and we will burn the infection away."
Ariel lunged toward Ryan, but an invisible barrier slammed into her, pinning her to the edge of the darkness.
"Ryan!" she cried, her voice urgent. "Vengeance will consume you! If you go with him, you will be truly lost. Next time, it won't be me who comes for your soul. It will be Azrael. And he does not offer choices."
Ryan looked at the angel's light. Then he looked at the old man's shadow. He thought of his village in flames. He thought of his father's blood on the snow.
"The dead," Ryan said quietly, his voice hardening into steel, "can have me when they earn me."
He reached out and gripped the old man's hand.
Ariel's light flared once, a dying star of grief, and then vanished. The cave plunged into absolute darkness.
When Ryan opened his eyes again, the cold was gone. The pain was gone.