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The waters crashed along the shores, washing over the cold, pale body of the grown Shattered. The fall had left Lillian to the mercy of the waves, and their frigid hands had delivered her lifelessly upon the Gaian shores.

Where once two heartbeats had pulsed within her chest, there was silence. Where two lives had lived in harmony, there was nothingness.

"Half of a soul cannot survive," Halexei had said, "You have to accept who you are, who you must become. To become whole, Lillian, you have to accept that some things cannot be changed. You will be whole.. and then you will die."

Fate was a cruel master, and cruelly the Harbinger had set her path towards darkness.

“Oh God, is she okay?”

Distantly, it could hear the voice. That fragmented soul. That shattered piece which neither Heaven nor Hell would allow passing. Trapped on earth, fated to damnation.

“She’s not breathing..”

And who was he? Who was he to damn her to such a fate?

“Find some help, I’ll stay here with her.”

There was a flicker in the darkness… a soul. Not her own. Never her own. But bright, whole, complete. There was anger, hatred.. who was this stranger to have what she could not. Who was she to be complete when Lillian had done everything right? She had done what had been asked of her. She had struggled to be good. To do as Halexei desired. Yet he had damned her still. If she should suffer, why not they?

She reached, and like a blanket she wrapped herself around that light….

As though electrocuted, Lillian’s body jolted upright. Cold soaked her through and through, and it was with a calm, stoic face that she pushed away the body of her would-be rescuer, the woman whose soul now fueled her own life.

Lillian rose, ignorant of the cold, of the numbness of her limbs. She rose, but did not breathe. She could feel, but her heart did not beat. And in the distance she saw not mountains, but the small, flickering lights of a thousand souls. A thousand souls for the taking.



“You will be given half of your payment now, the other when the shards are delivered.”

In the back of the dimly lit bar, the female voice was obscured by the sounds of raucous laughter and clinking beer mugs. Her features as shadowed as her words, hidden beneath the darkness cast by the cowl of her cloak. Nevertheless, the man seated across from her cast a sideways glance and allowed a small nod.

“Delivered where?” he inquired in a voice that chimed sweetly, soft as wind.

Rictus would have seemed out of place in any other world, with pale blue skin and shock white hair bound tightly at the nape of his neck. The man was a realm-walker, an ethereal being capable of traversing the boundaries between heaven and earth, hell, and nothingness. He was an assassin of morals, a killer of universal law, for sale to the highest bidder. Yet in Gaia, even the solid black eyes which rolled in the woman’s directions went largely without suspect. In Gaia, freakish was normal, and normal was boring.

He lit a cigarette, lifted it to his dark blue lips and took one long drag.

“This house,” the woman slipped a small piece of paper across the table, “It must look like an accident. The shards must not be suspect.”

“And you don’t think a Harbinger will notice my presence?”

Rictus shifted. What the broad was talking about was something akin to murder in the angelic hierarchy; the theft of an item directly linked to a human soul. Toying with such fabrications would get him banished if caught, and he’d be damned if he was going to take the fall if such an event occurred. Still, even the half salary he’d already been paid was well worth the risk.

“Cause you know if that old b*****d turns his eyes my way, I’ll spill my guts faster than a whore in confession. I’m not taking the abyss for you, darlin’.”

“You needn’t worry,” she murmured, and the sharp edge to her voice softened slightly, “He has something.. very precious.. to keep his attention from you.”

Rictus simply shrugged, pushing himself away from the table, “Consider it done.” He snatched his coat from the corner of his chair and swung it over one shoulder.

“Wait.”

“What?” Rictus said impatiently, glancing back.

“They say the angelic cannot feel pain. That they cannot feel sadness, anguish.. loneliness. Is this true?” The woman asked, and as she lifted her head Rictus was able to catch just the faintest flash of bright green eyes.

“Aye, darlin’. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” She lied. She waved a hand in dismissal, and watched Rictus phase into nothingness.

In the back of her mind, the voices of those who had been left behind chanted. The screams of those souls still trapped in their forsaken homeland. From the hollow, cold void where her heart should have been, their voices poured forth.

Rip him, rend him, kill him, end him.

Lillian’s dark lips curved into a wicked grin.

I’m coming for you, Harbinger. I will show you pain.

“What have you done…”

Lillian had felt him before she could see him, a beacon of light amidst that dark and soulless world. It was an instantaneous reaction, the welling of hatred in her stomach, the screaming of those thousand voices.

Kill him.

Rip him.

Rend him.

She could feel the souls writhing inside of her, and it took nearly all of her focus to suppress them from lashing out at the Harbinger as he appeared silently behind her. Theirs were the only lights now; there were no more forsaken glimmers to be found on Aliith.

“In time,” she murmured softly back to them, her dull voice almost a gentle, calming coo.

“Lillian,” Halexei repeated, his usually soft voice now stern. There was no more music in his tone, no more sing song enchantment. It was all business and ire, “What are you doing here?”

“Changing fate,” she responded simply, her dark lips curving into that familiar grin.

“You are not supposed to be here. You are not supposed to be-“

“Alive?” Lillian interrupted calmly. She could feel Halexei’s rising concern, and as she spun upon her heels to face him, she could see it etched upon his androgynous face. A face which slipped into vague surprised as his eyes fell upon hers. “Don’t worry, Lexi. I’m not.”

That moment of surprised passed as quickly as it came, and the Harbinger’s face fell once more to irritation. “What would Asrafel think if he-"

"Shutup.." she hissed. "Do not speak of him as though he is anything more than a puppet to you. All of them... you do nothing more than use them to you own ends."

Halexei fell silent for a moment, as though he saw some extent of truth in her words.

"I told you, child. Fate cannot be changed, and you are fated to die.”

“Oh?” She replied, laughing faintly. It was a hollow sound. “But you changed it, Harbinger. You changed all of our fates, did you not? This..” She gestured to the cold ash and dust that was Aliith, “This was our fate, don’t you remember? You changed us. Our benevolent guardian.. our creator. You damned us to the fates that you-“

“Enough.” Halexei said suddenly, his voice stronger, harder than before. He looked almost mortal, with his features twisted that way they were, his eyes narrowed. “You would never understand my reasons. Your fate must be met, Lillian. You will ruin everything.”

Halexei stretched out a hand to rest upon Lillian’s shoulder, and the Shattered felt a familiar pain jolt through her. “If you can not accept your fate, child, then you force my hand.” Lillian felt the souls of those whom Halexei had left to die here, the thousand of people whom had not been given their second chance. They reached out, and thin black tendrils wrapped around Halexei’s hand.

It was there, that brilliant, bright light. That angelic soul. It was beautiful, whole, untarnished. She needed it. She wanted it. She wanted to tear it to pieces and listen to him scream.

Rip him.

Rend him.

Tear him.

Lillian could feel them, hungrily extending towards Halexei’s soul, winding around it in serpentine fashion. She had no control, and would not have stopped them if she could.

The scream of the angelic was almost melodious. The way it harmonized with everything around it. Those few panes of glass in the dilapidated buildings which had remained intact shattered, as Halexei withdrew his hand and stepped quickly back. Wide eyed, he stared at her, at the tiny, bright light floating in her grasp.

“How does it feel?” she seethed, as the tiny piece of his soul flickered in the palm of her hand. “Can you feel pain now, Halexei?”

“You will never change your fate, Lillian.” He spat the words as though they were poison, his face a mask of contempt. The beauty of immortality unraveled in his compressed features. “You are damned. That much cannot be changed.”

He vanished as quickly as he’d come, leaving the Shattered standing alone amidst the streets of her dark homeland.

“And now,” Lillian murmured, smiling fondly at the glimmer, “So are you…”