Grim Reaper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The dust settled in the ruined courtroom. Grim Reaper stood in the wrestling ring, half a devil's soul humming inside the scythe. The throne above the wreckage sat empty. But the tunnels around the hall were filling with sound. Boots. Dragging feet. The court had heard the fight, and now the court was coming to see who dared sit above them. They came through every archway at once. Dead courtiers in rotted finery, jaws slack, eyes empty. A shambling horde in the tatters of old robes. They packed the broken floor and stared up at the ring. One of them, a bent thing in a purple coat, spoke for them all. "The bench is broken. The scales are gone. You are not our master." The horde pressed closer to the ropes. Grim Reaper understood the danger. The Devil was dead, but no one obeyed a stranger. Without proof of power, the dead would swarm the ring and tear them apart. Grim Reaper could not fight them all. So they reached for the only proof they had. They raised the scythe over their head. The captured half of the Devil's soul flared inside the blade. Light spilled down the shaft. The horde flinched back as one. "This is your master's soul," Grim Reaper said. "I harvested it. I hold it now." They swung the scythe down and drove the blade into the cracked stone of the platform. The whole hall shook. The Devil's light poured out of the blade and into the floor. It ran through the dead like a current. The horde stopped shambling. Their empty eyes turned toward the ring. One by one, the rotted courtiers bent their knees. The bent thing in the purple coat knelt last. "The soul commands," it whispered. "We serve the soul." Grim Reaper had their court. The dead bowed. But as the light drained from the blade into the kneeling horde, the scythe went cold and quiet in their hands. The captured half of the Devil's soul was gone. Grim Reaper had spent it to buy the room. Then the floor answered. Deep below the ring, something struck the stone from underneath. Once. Twice. The kneeling courtiers turned their heads toward the sound. The other half of the Devil's soul was down there, and it had felt its twin poured out above. Grim Reaper gripped the empty scythe. They ruled Hell now. And the thing beneath Hell had just learned exactly where they stood.