The darkness didn't feel empty anymore.
It felt… occupied. It had a weight to it now, a thick, velvet pressure that pressed against my skin until it itched. I became aware of myself slowly—first the blissful absence of the rope's burn, then the strange, weightless sensation of existing without a floor beneath my feet.
Then, I sensed him.
"You're awake faster than most."
The voice didn't come from a specific direction. It was everywhere, vibrating through the void like a low chord on a cello.
I turned—or rather, my consciousness shifted.
He stood a few paces away, his hands tucked casually into the pockets of a long, charcoal-colored coat. He looked like a man who had simply stepped out for a stroll on a quiet street and found himself in the afterlife by sheer boredom. He was tall, composed, and unnervingly unhurried.
At first glance, he looked human. At second glance, everything about him was a lie.
His shadow didn't follow the logic of light; it bent and coiled in directions that shouldn't exist. His eyes were the worst part—too calm, too ancient, as if the concept of panic was a language he had never learned to speak.
"You're not an angel," I said, my voice sounding hollow in the vast nothingness.
"No."
"Not a god, either."
A faint, sharp smile curved his lips. "That depends entirely on who is asking, Elara."
Anger stirred in my chest, sharp and familiar. It was the only thing I had left to hold onto. "You said you heard me."
"I did."
"Then you saw what they did to me. You saw the trial. You saw the platform."
"I watched it," he corrected gently, as if he were correcting a child's grammar. "Yes."
The word watched made something ugly and poisonous coil in my gut. While I was gasping for air, while my family was trading my life for their reputation, this creature had been a spectator.
"And you did nothing," I spat.
He tilted his head, studying me with the clinical detachment of a scientist examining a new species of insect. "You misunderstand your position, Elara Valen."
I stiffened. I hadn't told him my name.
His smile deepened. It wasn't warm, and it wasn't intentionally cruel. It was simply… amused. "I know everything that is written about you. And I know the parts they left out."
The darkness shifted around us. That rhythmic, mechanical ticking returned, but it wasn't coming from the void anymore. It was coming from inside me.
Click.
I clenched my fists, my spectral nails digging into my palms. "What is this place?"
"A margin," he replied, pacing a slow circle around me. "The thin, white space between a definitive ending and a desperate correction."
"Correction?" I echoed.
"Yes." He stepped closer, the void folding away to grant him passage. "Your death fit very neatly into the world's design. The traitor dies, the family survives, the kingdom sleeps soundly. It was a perfect ending."
My jaw tightened until it ached. "Then why am I here? Why pull me out of the silence?"
"Because you didn't break quietly."
Something in his tone shifted. It wasn't sympathy—creatures like him didn't possess such human frailties—but it was interest.
"Most souls whimper," he continued, his gaze locking onto mine. "Most beg for mercy or offer prayers to gods who aren't listening. But you? You raged. Even as your lungs collapsed, your spirit was trying to set the world on fire. That matters."
"Enough to bring me back?" I demanded.
He laughed softly, a dry, papery sound. "No. Not nearly enough."
The rejection hit harder than I expected. I felt a flicker of the old despair. "Then why?"
"Because you are useful."
There it was. The truth, bare and unadorned.
In life, I had been useful to my father's ambitions. I had been useful to my sister's climb to power. Now, in death, I was useful to a shadow in a coat.
I should have felt disgusted. I should have recoiled at being used yet again. Instead, I felt a terrifying sense of clarity. If being a tool was the only way to get my hands around their throats, then I would be the sharpest blade in existence.
"Say it plainly," I said, my voice steady.
"What do you want from me?"
He raised a hand, and the cracked pocket watch appeared, suspended in the air between us. The ticking was relentless now, a hammer against my consciousness.
"Revenge," he said. "Chaos disguised as justice. I want to see what happens when a life that should not exist walks freely through a past already written. I want to see you break the 'perfect' ending."
My gaze locked onto the shattered glass of the watch.
"And the cost?" I asked.
"You already know," he replied. "You will forget. To change the future, you must sacrifice the past."
"Forget what?"
He didn't answer immediately. When he did, his voice was a whisper that felt like ice against my ear. "That depends on what you cling to most."
Click.
A sudden, sharp pressure bloomed behind my eyes. For a split second, there was a gap—a void within the void. Something brushed past my thoughts, a memory I couldn't quite catch, leaving behind a hollow, aching certainty that something precious had just been… erased.
My breath hitched. My heart—or the memory of it—stuttered. "That was—what was that?"
"Nothing important," he said lightly.
I looked at him sharply, my eyes narrowing. "You're lying."
"Yes," he agreed easily. The honesty was more startling than the lie.
He stepped back, and the darkness around us began to ripple like water. The edges of his form started to blur.
"You don't have much time," he said, his voice echoing as the void began to tear.
"And you have even less patience than you think."
The world cracked. A blinding, searing light poured in like a physical blade, slicing through the blackness.
"One last thing," he added, his voice sounding as if it were coming from miles away. "Who do you plan to destroy first?"
I didn't have to think. I didn't have to deliberate. The faces of my mother, my father, and my sister flashed before me—and behind them, the man in black who had stood by and watched me hang.
I smiled. It was a cold, jagged thing.
"All of them," I whispered.
The darkness collapsed.
I fell, screaming into the light.