*CUPCAKE EMOJI EXPLOSION WITH HAPPINESS*

MOMMA'S GOT  A SHORT BUT SWEET ONE FOR YOU TODAY!1

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Through the dark, I heard a woman singing, like a siren's call.

Except, the melody was not cynical. It was a soft, beautiful, lullaby. I let it carry me away and it amplified, the sound peaceful and familiar.

I opened my eyes to an endless black space. There were no walls, no people, no sound. Something was suspending me in place, my arms gracefully outstretched on either side of me, as if I was floating vertically in water, but I was not afraid. I titled my head down, observing how my feet were pointing down and there was nothing but black space beneath me.

My toes touched a nonexistent floor, then the ball of my foot, then the heel, and I was standing. The skirt emerald gown still flowed lively around me, my long black hair flowing slightly around my shoulders like it was still moving through water.

My head felt heavy, thoughts sluggish, movements dreamlike and lithe as I turned slowly around, looking around the endless space of nothing. That's when I saw them.

The Three Crawlers.

They'd appeared to me when I'd first entered the Unknown in that strange forest. I'd thought they were after me to kill me. But they'd helped me before, by telling me a bridge was drawn in the in-between when I slept, and that would bring me closer to Death.

The Three for Forsaken were just like the rest of the souls Charon had trapped in the Unknown.

Charon. The death deity that was cast to the Unknown by Hades. He'd tricked me into making a deal with him and Ace had said he would buy me some time. Was my time over?

"Charon is not here," said the First. "He would not dare cross this break in time."

"Break in time," whispered the Second in a decaying voice.

The Third howled, its claw-like hands stretching across the invisible black floor. I remembered those claws ripping into my bicep in the forest.

The Three Crawlers stood side by side, their mirror-like skin eerily clear even though there was no visible light. I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here, but when I looked down at my hand, I realized there was a slight silvery glow all over my skin, like a sleeve of twinkling starlight.

"What's happened to me?"

The question seemed to echo in my head, and suddenly the Three were closer like a jump cut. I could see the last thing I remembered in their frightening mirror skin. How Death's corpse had stood behind Victorian Death like the puppet master...and I remembered.

I flinched as I saw my body strike the unforgiving marble of the library floor. I could see myself bleeding out on the floor in the torso of the First and the edge of Death's cloak as he appeared to loom over me.

"Am I dead?" I asked the Three.

Neither of them answered. A single tear leaked down my cheek with the fear that I was trapped here forever. I felt deeply pained, vulnerable in a deep place in my soul that no longer felt safe, as the image cleared.

The Three turned from me in unison, ahead of them a large mirror that was not there before. They slinked around the sides of it, and when they came around, three amorphous figures stood, cloaked entirely in royal blue fabric.

The hair at the back of my neck stood.

"We have hidden in the ripples of time," said the First. "Waiting. For you."

My eyebrows furrowed, I slowly gazed at each of the Three.

"Your great destiny is unsatisfied," continued the First. "The balance between good and evil sways. Only one Death god shall cross back into the mortal realm, and it must be yours."

My chin lifted at her final word, and I felt my fists clench at my sides. "Alright, well, where do I get Old Man Charon a boarding pass?"

The Three said nothing. Clearly, they didn't find it funny.

"I'm just wondering," I said, my voice thick with anger , "did all Three of you miss that little rewind of my head cracking open on marble? Well, let me clarify, "my" Death, as you put it, just tried to murder me. And not in his normal twisted 'you're the prey and I'm the predator hee-hee' twisted flirty way. So yeah, he's not "my" anything."

"Destiny does not choose based on feeling," the First said, her croaking voice almost disappointed in me. "Anything less would be a great unfairness."

"Yeah, well, I'm not destiny." I clenched my teeth. "Death can rot in a hole with his freaky eyes face down in a pile of shit for all I care."

The Three cast glances amongst each other, and the Third spoke up. "Faith Williams, you must bring Death back and prevent Charon from entering the mortal realm."

"Is there anything else you'd like for me to do for you? Any grocery lists? Need someone to polish your toenails?"

The Third did not reply.

"I'm tired," I told them. "I'm tired of feeling like I'm the only solution for everything. Whatever destiny you have for me, please, just give it to someone else. I'm done. I'm done. It's time for me to save myself." I heard the wobble in my own voice and tried to steady it. "I just want to go home."

"She is very afraid," noted the Second, her head turning in an inhuman way, her face hidden beneath her cloak. "I told you she was too young, Lechesis..."

"No, she is the one," said the First, who I now assumed was Lechesis. "She is strong."

"What do you mean I am the one?" I demanded, sick of these empty riddles.

Lechesis turned toward me. "The answers you seek will arrive sooner than you think, but not if you are afraid. Not if you turn away from who you are and what you must do. What you are meant to do."

My entire body was trembling now, my vision blurring again, and I knew what I had to listen to them. "I'm not stronger than Death. Not when he's working against me. How can I bring him back if his corpse just tried to kill me?"

"Nothing is as it seems in a dream," Lechesis said. "The answer found in a truth concealed. A darkness you both must fight. There is no shadow without light."

The Three lifted their cloaked heads, their eyes glowing beneath their hoods.

A thread uncut, she shall not die

Her soul we send through broken time

Back to the body to cradle the soul

Return, and she shall live once more

I could only see the bottom half of Lechesis' face as she lifted her head, how her skin wrinkled and wobbled as her mouth whispered over the final words again. "Return, and you shall live once more."

The Three women raised their hands toward me with their wrinkled hands. One held a scroll, one held a staff, and the other held a scale. Their eyes glowed so bright it stared out, concealing their faces as the world went white. I looked up as the ceiling above me swirled like the cosmic sky of Death's library.

Then light dissipated and a world unfurled around me.

Through a fog reared the great willow tree. It reminded me of the one from Death's memories, but that couldn't possible. Its long willowing arms were bare, like massive spider arms draping away from the daunting black sky above. In the backdrop of the willow reared a massive, menacing castle of black and dark grey stone.

Death's castle of Hell.

Endless crackles of red lightening illuminated the snow along the ground like a blood fest nightmare. Shadows waved between grey clouds, their massive wings outstretched and monstrous cries unlike anything I'd ever heard.

I looked away from the overwhelming chaos and saw myself laying in snow. I stilled. I was on my back, my skin washed of any color. I wore the emerald gown I wore now, and Ace was kneeling over me. My Ace, from the modern era. He was doing compressions onto my chest, his hands saturated in my blood.

Ace.

His head snapped up, his violet eyes burning white with power. His expression fell away as he saw me, and he quickly lifted his hand. "Return."

Pain flooded me so unbearable it I consumed my every thought, every inch of my body, and I screamed. I saw my body mending together, a bent arm snapping back into place, ribs lifting upward and sections of spine snapping into place. Suddenly I was looking up at the howling nightmarish sky and reality slammed into me that I was back in my body. My eyes frantically looked over at Ace, who had reeled back on the snow in disbelief.

My eyes widened, a twisting feeling in my chest that I didn't understand. Ace snapped out of it and crawled onto the snow, gathering me in his arms. I frantically grabbed at his shirt.

"Breathe, ma chère. Just breathe!"

I inhaled with a long, horrific wheeze of air, my breath coming in and out in fast intakes of air.

Ace's sagged back on the ground with his arms wrapped around me. "Oh, thank Gods. Thank the Gods, I thought I lost you..."

"Cold, so cold," I gulped out.

"My magic will keep you warm," he assured me, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. "You're safe now. Well, safe-ish..."

I looked past his face at the terrifying creatures in the sky. One of them came spiraling down, crashing into an invisible wall that crackled with red electricity. A ward was keeping those monsters out, but I knew the worst monster was caged inside.

"Charon," I said, feeling myself gain some energy to speak. "What happened to Charon? How did you get away?"

"I lost him through the waves of the Unknown. I've been trying to find you again." Ace pushed a strand of my hair from my face. "I had this terrible feeling that something was wrong. I pulled me to this memory, and then I found you on the floor of that library––"

"Did you see him?" I asked, clutching Ace's arm, my mouth dry and tasting like copper. "Did you see Death?"

"No, Death was nowhere to be seen, ma chère. I've been dealing with Charon's Forsaken. Nasty little fucks." He stroked my hair with his hand. "When I found you, I could barely feel you breathing. I panicked, tried to warp us back to our world, but something stopped me, and we were just thwarted outside the castle. And then creatures came down..." He glanced up at the sky and the howling flying monsters above.

My eyes widened as I noticed dark red pooling on Ace's shirt. "You're hurt."

"I'll be fine. Once I get some food in me, my mood will perk up and I'll heal myself faster. I set up a ward as quickly as I could, but by then your heart had stopped..." He gazed down at me like he wanted to ask me so many questions but shook himself. "You have to tell me how this happened."

I couldn't defend Death because I still felt so betrayed, and I didn't understand any of it. But if I told Ace the truth, I had a feeling he'd tried to stop me from doing what the Three had told me I had to do.

"I don't have time to explain what happened, but I know I need to stay and see this through." I could feel myself gaining energy enough to sit up, and with his help, I climbed up to my feet. "Can you warp me back into the castle?"

"You think I want to bring you back there after finding you the way that I did?" Ace's lips flattened, his violet eyes darkening. "Tell me he didn't do this to you, Faith."

My throat felt thick with emotion. "This past self of Death is dangerous. More than I thought he was. I've learned my lesson."

Ace shook his head with a mirthless laugh. "Learned your lesson? Faith, you weren't breathing. For a moment there, you were­­­­­­­­­­–"

"Clearly not, because I'm alive now." I lifted my chin, willing myself be strong and lie until I believed it. "You're going to have to trust me. I'm right where I'm supposed to be. He needs to be brought back to our world. It's my fate."

Ace looked away from me at the word "fate," like he couldn't bear to agree with exactly what he would tell me. "You're right," he conceded. "Such was given to you by the Parcae."

"The who?"

"The Fates, or the Moirai in Greek," Ace explained, appearing distracted by the decayed willow tree before us. "Three powerful and dreaded beings said to weave all our destinies from birth to death. I have always believed them to be the ones who guide my visions."

My heart raced in my chest as I reeled this information over. Oh.

"I will take you back to the castle," Ace said at last. "But this time, I'm coming with you."

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