The one time we’d fought a Reaper, we would’ve gotten ourselves killed, had it not been for that second Reaper’s intervention. And Yamani was infinitely younger than the Widow Maker standing before us. The guy’s name was a clear enough message on its own. It wasn’t even a proper name. It was a nickname. How would we ever fight him and win?

None of our abilities or the magic at our disposal were any match for him. No matter what angle I looked at this from, it wouldn’t go well for us. Normally, we’d have gone ahead and fought him. We’d have given it our best shot. But we stood to lose our one and only shot at Eirexis—the first of three things that could save our worlds from the Hermessi’s ritual.

As much as I hated even thinking about it, I knew that, deep down, we were all considering option B. One of us would have to willingly die as a sacrifice to Eirexis. It was our one chance to get it and continue our quest to complete Thieron. The glances we exchanged told me everything I needed to know, and it broke my heart, bit by bit, in slow motion, until tears made their way up to my eyes.

The Widow Maker stood on the edge of the pond, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“I’m giving you a reasonable choice,” he said. “Those before you were naïve enough to think they could actually beat me, unwilling to let any of their companions go.”

“They all came to you in groups?” Amelia asked, her voice weak.

“A quest like this requires teamwork, Blondie.”

“But Eirexis keeps itself hidden from people,” she said. “In our case, we had a scythe to guide us. How did the others before us see Eirexis, then?”

“Once the challenge to retrieve the pieces of Thieron is accepted, it becomes an invisible mark, of sorts. Eirexis, Zetos and Phyla reveal themselves once the challengers are close enough to touch them. Twisted, I know…Knights from all corners of the world have tried to get here. Many died on the way, unable to elude the Hermessi,” the Widow Maker replied. “The few who did… and there were…” He paused, counting with his fingers. He made it up to three. “Three. They came in pairs and squads. First, two high-ranked soldiers from Philloria.”

“Philloria?” I repeated, trying to remember whether it was known to GASP.

The Widow Maker shrugged. “It doesn’t matter where it is. They managed to touch Eirexis and summoned me. I gave them the same choice I’m giving you. Whether it was pride or the strong bond between them, I’m not sure. But it got them both killed, when it could’ve been just one.”

Lumi sighed. “And since they didn’t live to tell the tale, none of those who followed knew or understood what this entailed.”

“Not until they met me. The second time, a group of five came in. They cheered and danced around the pool, first. I could hear them. They were so thrilled that they’d somehow gotten the drop on Brendel.” He chuckled.

“Right, because Brendel was the only Hermessi fully awake after Death stopped the previous ritual,” I said slowly. Brendel had been too close to Death to be affected by the deep sleep. It had allowed the Fire Hermessi to snatch Thieron, in the first place, leaving Death without enough power to go out and get it back herself.

The Widow Maker looked at me. “They all died. Equally brave and determined to do the right thing. By the time the third crew came in, I’ll be honest… I was bored. I tried to reason with them. I tried to explain the rules of the spell that has bound me to Eirexis. I warned them. In fact, I even refused to fight them, at first, though that wouldn’t have panned out, anyway, unless they backed down, which they didn’t. So, I killed them, too. One by one.”

“Are those the terms of a proper defeat?” Varga asked. “All of us will die if we fight you?”

“Yes. Once you engage me in combat, either one of you defeats me, or I kill you all.”

My throat closed up. I knew Eira, Lumi, and I wouldn’t die, but everyone else on our crew were the Widow Maker’s certain victims, unless we opted for a single, individual sacrifice. That couldn’t be me, Eira, or Lumi. Suddenly, it dawned on me. “Wait. Death has waived the ability to die for three of us,” I said. “We could fight you until we defeat you.”

The Widow Maker jumped off the stone border and walked over to me. My blood chilled as he reached me. “Interesting. But you still won’t be able to beat me. We can fight, if you wish. But I’ll kill those of you who can die, first, should you go with option A. And then, I’ll keep fighting the three of you until the end of time. And time, I imagine, is the one thing you don’t have. Or am I wrong?”

Eva frowned. “How do you know what time we’ve got left?”

“Because I felt the Blackout, silly goose. I knew that Brendel would try to complete the ritual again. Make no mistake, I might be tied to Eirexis, but that doesn’t mean I can’t sense the movements and happenings of cosmos,” the Widow Maker replied. “Now that I’m out again, I can hear my brothers and sisters. I’m old enough to sense them, to listen to their thoughts, even though they don’t know I’m listening. I am aware of exactly where you are on the timescale,” he added and shifted his focus to me once more. “And by the time the three of you unkillables run out of breath fighting me, the world as you know it will be over. The Hermessi will have won.”

“Death doesn’t want that to happen. Will you disappoint her, then?” I asked, trying one last angle. The inevitable continued to lurk in the back of my head, poking at my conscious thoughts and stabbing my soul.

He laughed again, the cold-hearted bastard. “She sent you here knowing that the spell she put on Eirexis and me cannot be broken, unless you fight me or give Eirexis a sacrifice. I’m pretty sure she warned you it would not be easy. You don’t strike me as reckless idiots.”

“I just can’t believe Death would put so many traps in place for the one thing she needs to stop the ritual,” I said, unwilling to let go just yet.

“You’re too fleeting to understand. You’re just a blip in the pool of time, Taeral, son of Sherus and Nuriya, Prince of the Fire Star,” the Widow Maker said. “Take it or leave it. If you take it, you get only two choices, which I’ve already explained. There is no easy way out of this one. No artifice or loophole to play on. I’m sure it’s how you’ve survived until now, slipping through the cracks and stumbling upon some fortuitous assistance. But that ends here. So, either you fight me, or you give Eirexis a sacrifice. I’m not going to entertain this debate much longer. Make up your minds.”

How could we, though? I couldn’t bring myself to look at any of my friends and partners as potential sacrifices. And I had already accepted that fighting him would only end in failure. Tears welled up in my eyes.

Death had put these protocols in place for a reason, before Thieron had been taken from her. I doubted she’d known that it would all happen like this—or maybe she had and hadn’t told us. Either way, there would be no singing or dancing for us once it was all over and done with. One of us dies, or all of us die.

“We may need a moment to discuss this,” Lumi said. She sounded uneasy, and that was a collective sentiment.

“I suppose I should be a tad more sympathetic and tell you to take your time, but let’s be honest here, Lumi. Time is the one thing you don’t have. I thought we’d made that clear.” The Widow Maker shook his head.

“You can’t just ask us to speed it along, if one of us is about to die!” I snapped.

The silence that followed resounded in all of us. It was a strange feeling to deal with—all of us knowing that we’d already decided on option B, without so much as a word. Then again, none of my friends here were virtuous imbeciles. They understood the situation. They knew what was at stake.

“One of us must come forth as the sacrifice, then,” Riza murmured.

I could see it in their eyes. The raw fear of death. The grief of reason. It broke me. It tore me down, and it kept kicking until I became numb. Until I could no longer think. Which one of them would go? Who would have the immeasurable courage to do such a thing?

Lumi

It wasn’t going to be me, or Eira or Taeral. I wanted it to be me, though. I wished I could just get this over with. Not that I wanted to die, but it would’ve been better if I’d still had that option. I would’ve put an end to this. I’d lived for long enough to walk into the next world peacefully.

With five apprentices, the Word would continue to exist at full strength, and it would be able to let go of me. More than ten thousand years of living was enough for me. I’d loved and laughed. I’d cried. I’d suffered. I’d also prevailed. Learned. Experienced. None of these younglings in my crew were even close to everything that I’d been through, and they deserved a chance to see tomorrow. It wasn’t fair that, out of all of us, I was the oldest but was unable to die.

It put my girls at risk. Nethissis and Acantha were like daughters to me. And so were Kailani, my first witch; Ilne and Rovah, my Druid apprentices; and Kafei, Acantha’s sister and my sixth student. I loved them all to the moon and back. The thought of losing any of them filled me with crippling dread.

“It isn’t fair,” I whispered.

Looking around, the pained looks on everyone’s faces just shoved the knife even deeper into my heart. Tears streamed down Eira’s cheeks, her lips quivering and her gaze lowered. Oh, the shame of a survivor. What an awful thing to feel.

Eyeing the Eirexis handle in the Widow Maker’s hand, I forced myself into a form of resignation. We were doing this for it. Eirexis was our first step to stopping the ritual and saving billions of innocent lives. One life, in exchange for a better chance of saving the many others still left. The moral conundrum didn’t escape me, but I understood that this had to be done. I just didn’t want it to be Acantha or Nethissis. Internally, I prayed to the Word to give them enough strength not to put themselves forward.

But that just made me feel all the more awful. Why should any of my girls survive, as opposed to Eva or Varga, Riza or Herakles, Amelia or Raphael? What made my apprentices better, in the greater scheme of things? It wasn’t right of me to think this way, yet I couldn’t help it. I loved them all, but I loved my apprentices the most. It was a selfish part of me that I’d have to live with for a long time.

“I’ll do it,” Riza said and instantly burst into tears.

The Widow Maker watched her quietly. Herakles took her in his arms and held her tight. “Don’t be foolish, Riza,” he whispered in her ear. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

“One of us has to,” she managed.

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Varga cut in, equally devastated. “I can do it. It’ll be okay. You’ll keep fighting the good fight, and Nevertide will still have an heir—”

“Varga!” Eva croaked, her eyes glassy with tears. “No…”

Amelia sobbed. “Any one of us could do it, and the result will be the same. There’s no other way, we… we just need to figure out which one of us it is.”

“Each of us is willing to do it,” Nethissis murmured. “The issue now is to decide on just one.”

“This is impossible,” Amelia said. “How can we decide?”

Acantha stilled by my side, her eyes wide and her head slightly tilted. She seemed to be listening to something. She exhaled sharply, tearing up. My insides stirred. I recognized that look, and I didn’t want to see it on her. I shook my head, unable to speak, though all I wanted was to tell her to keep quiet, to stop her from doing what I knew she was about to do.