KAIDA POV
The arrow whistled past my ear so close I felt the heat of its magic.
I didn't scream. Screaming wastes air, and when you're dangling upside-down seventy feet above a floor covered in soul-eating fire, every breath counts.
"Bad idea, bad idea, terrible idea," I muttered, twisting my body just as three more arrows shot from the walls. They missed—barely. One sliced through my rope, and I dropped six feet before the magical grappling hook caught again.
My stomach lurched. Below me, blue flames danced across black stone, hungry for something living to burn. They weren't normal flames. These were the kind that ate your soul first and your body second.
Welcome to Death's temple. The most dangerous place in the Shattered Realms. And I, Kaida Thornwick, was robbing it.
Why? Because I'm either the bravest thief alive or the stupidest. Probably both.
I swung my body, building momentum, then flipped myself upright onto a narrow beam. My heart hammered against my ribs. Five years of practice kept my hands steady as I pulled out my lockpick set. The vault door glowed ahead—solid black metal covered in glowing purple symbols that shifted and changed like living things.
Just one more job, I reminded myself. One more, and Mira goes free.
My little sister. Seventeen years old, with a smile that could light up rooms and a laugh that sounded like music. The Crimson Cartel had owned her for five years—ever since they killed our parents and claimed Mira as "payment" for our family's debt.
The debt was a lie. I knew it in my bones. But the Cartel's blood magic was real, and if I didn't pay them back, Mira would die screaming.
So I stole. I lied. I broke into places that made other thieves run away crying.
And now I was here, in Death's own temple, stealing a crown from a god.
The vault door's symbols pulsed brighter. I had maybe three minutes before the next trap activated—something involving spiders made of shadows that ate memories. I'd seen it in my research, and I really didn't want to find out if my information was accurate.
My picks clicked against the divine lock. Normal lockpicking is about feeling the pins fall into place. Divine lockpicking is about feeling which pins want to murder you and which ones are just cranky.
"Come on, come on," I whispered. Sweat dripped into my eyes. My arms ached from holding this position.
The mysterious client who hired me had been very specific: steal the Bone Crown from Death's vault, deliver it by dawn, and Mira's debt disappears forever. No more torture. No more slavery. Freedom.
It sounded too good to be true. It probably was. But when you're desperate, you make deals with shadows and hope they don't eat you alive.
The lock clicked.
The vault door swung open silently, revealing a room that made my breath catch. It wasn't big—maybe ten feet across—but the walls were made of something that looked like frozen starlight. In the center sat a simple black pedestal.
And on that pedestal rested the Bone Crown.
It was beautiful and terrible. The crown looked delicate, like it was carved from dragon bone and woven with threads of pure shadow. It pulsed with a heartbeat that matched my own.
Every instinct I had screamed danger.
I ignored them. I always did.
I stepped into the vault, careful to avoid the pressure plates I could see shimmering on the floor. Three steps. Five. Seven. My hand reached out, fingers trembling just slightly.
For Mira, I thought. Everything for Mira.
My fingers touched the crown.
The world exploded.
Pain—white-hot and absolute—shot through my skull like lightning. The crown didn't lift off the pedestal. It melted, flowing like liquid shadow up my arm, wrapping around my head, digging into my skin like a thousand tiny knives.
I screamed. Couldn't help it. The sound echoed through the temple as the crown fused with my bones, becoming part of me in a way that felt fundamentally wrong.
Images flashed through my mind—faces I'd never seen, deaths I'd never witnessed, centuries of memory that weren't mine crashing into my brain like a tidal wave. I saw wars. Plagues. Babies taking their first breath and old men taking their last. Every death in history tried to fit inside my head at once.
I fell to my knees, gasping. The pain faded to a dull throb, but something new replaced it—a coldness spreading from my skull down through my body, like ice water in my veins.
I touched my head. The crown was gone. Or rather, it wasn't gone—I could feel it under my skin, fused with my skull, part of me now.
"What the hell just happened?" I whispered.
"An excellent question."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Deep. Male. Absolutely terrifying.
I spun around.
A man stood in the vault doorway. Except man wasn't quite right. He was tall—almost seven feet—with perfect features that looked carved from marble. His eyes were the worst part: black voids filled with stars that seemed to see straight through me into every secret I'd ever kept.
He wore simple black clothes, but they moved wrong, like they were made of shadows instead of fabric. When he stepped forward, the air itself seemed to bend around him.
"Hello, thief," he said softly. His voice made my bones vibrate. "I am Azrael. You just stole from Death."
My blood turned to ice. "That's... that's not possible. Death isn't real. He's just a story."
"Do I look like a story?" Azrael tilted his head, studying me like I was an interesting insect. "You broke into my temple, bypassed my traps, and stole my crown. Impressive. Also incredibly stupid."
I tried to run. My legs wouldn't move. Some invisible force held me frozen.
"The crown has bonded with you," Azrael continued, walking closer. Each step echoed like a funeral drum. "In thirty days, you will become the new Death. Immortal. Eternal. Alone." He smiled, but it wasn't kind. "And I will become mortal and die. Congratulations, little thief. You've killed a god and doomed yourself to replace him."
"No." The word came out as a whisper. "No, that's not—I didn't—"
"Take it off?" He laughed, and the sound was like ice cracking. "It's fused with your skull. Part of your bones now. The only way to remove it is to break the bond." He leaned down until his star-filled eyes were level with mine. "And breaking the bond requires stealing three pieces of my true name from the most dangerous beings in the Realms."
My heart stopped. "What?"
"You wanted to be a thief?" Azrael's smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Then we're going to pull off the three biggest heists in history. Together."
The world tilted. I felt something shift inside me—something that wasn't quite pain but wasn't quite anything else. When I looked at Azrael, I could suddenly feel him. His emotions crashed into mine like waves: exhaustion, loneliness, and underneath it all, something that felt like desperate hope.
"What's happening to me?" I gasped.
"The bond," he said simply. "We're connected now. Your thoughts. Your feelings. Your life force." He straightened up, towering over me. "In thirty days, if we fail, you become me. And I finally get to die."
He said it like dying was a gift.
"Choose quickly, Kaida Thornwick." His voice dropped to a whisper that somehow filled the entire vault. "Help me break this curse, or spend eternity alone, feeling every death in the world, carrying the weight of souls for the rest of time." His eyes glittered with something ancient and hungry. "Your sister's debt will seem like a blessing compared to what you'll become."
The invisible force released me. I collapsed, gasping.
When I looked up, Azrael was gone.
But I could still feel him—a cold presence at the edge of my mind, watching, waiting.
And when I touched my head again, I felt something else: a countdown, burned into my very bones.
Twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours, forty-seven minutes.
Twenty-nine days until I stopped being human.
Unless I helped Death himself pull off the impossible.