Two Days Earlier

My life was a series of reoccurring disasters. 

From the first moment I had drawn breath in the scorched plains of the Pit, I'd been destined to write the ruin of every person I met. My survival had depended upon my ability to destroy the lives of others and the skill with which I created such devastation. Be they Dreaming Child or human, witch or mage, vampire or Valian, none had escaped my indiscriminate hunger for life—and I'd survived for a long, long time. 

Perhaps too long.

I watched the first drops of rain fall upon the windshield in translucent streaks. The sky above Verweald was an iron wall of gray clouds stretching far into the horizon, where the hills rose to form the valley and the dormant vegetation gave way to the sand and clay of the high desert. The city was behind us now, a backdrop of steel buildings and black spires against that wall of gray.

Amoroth drove, the scenery changed, and my eyes remained fixated on those streaks of water, for nothing outside the speeding car could hold my interest. Those first, scattered droplets dissipated in moments and left only the vaguest impressions of themselves upon the glass.

I likened them to the life of mortals; visible for an instant but soon forgotten and always disregarded. One droplet was the same as the next. One mortal was the same as the next.

I had been the sky: unreachable, unending, and eternal. I had been the horizon mortals aspired to reach but could never cross and the entirety of a coming storm with the power and rage to drown all those who trod in my shadow. 

Now, I was the raindrop. 

"Darius," Amoroth said, and I realized we had come to a stop. She'd parked the car alongside a curb before a familiar house. I looked across the untidy yard at the face of the vacant residence and felt my jaw tighten. 

"I do not want it," I spat for the fifth time between my teeth as the irritating woman drew the keys from the ignition and slid from the vehicle. She shut the door, and I was forced to clamor out after her so I could be heard. "I did not ask for it."

"That's all well and good, but you and Gaspard left far too much incriminating evidence from your revenge spree for the place to sit empty, so I acquired it." The Sin of Lust tugged the hem of her blazer into place as she paced the length of the vehicle to the wet curb. Her chestnut hair spilled from her head in a veil of unwound snakes and diamonds glittered at her throat and ears. She was several inches shorter than me, even in her designer heels, though any deficit in height was compensated with presence. 

All Sins had presence, whether they were human or Absolian in origin. We held a magnetism unique to our kind, an accumulation of aura and ether and sound gathered through the wending decades of our existence. We strode through this world and its inhabitants took note. 

Not we, I told myself. Not we. I am no longer a Sin.

"Besides, I can't have you in my apartment any longer. I've put up with your presence for a month and then some. That's more than generous." Her lavender eyes flicked in my direction and roved away without focusing, unable to settle upon me for more than a few seconds. For the duration of my time in the woman's home, she'd been unable to meet my gaze. I reminded her of what she'd lost.

My breath escaped me in a lingering exhalation as I crossed the parkway and the wet grass swayed underfoot. "I didn't want to stay with you, anyway," I told her. Unbidden, my thoughts continued, But I didn't want to come here. I never wanted to come here. 

"Then be grateful, wretch," she snapped, but her voice lacked conviction and her posture slumped. What fire had once animated the troublesome woman had waned, doused in the waters of despair and confusion. Sometimes I forgot Amoroth had only been alive a handful of centuries and was, by our reckoning, quite young. She was young, and now alone.

"I am grateful," I told her. "I am grateful for everything you've done for me. It hasn't been an easy...change." 

Amoroth scoffed and unfolded her arms. In doing so, she revealed a folder she had retrieved from the car's console and a ring of new keys. She all but threw both the folder and the keys at me and I caught them in one arm against my chest.

"I prefer you ungrateful," she complained with a harangued sigh. She went to the trunk of the car and retrieved my solitary bag of possessions, which she dropped upon the approach without care. "At least then I know where I stand."

"Then allow me to amend my statement; I am grateful for all that you've done. It's almost made up for the litany of mistakes and errors you've committed in the past." The keys bit into the underside of my palm when I squeezed my fist and took the bag. "Almost."

She smirked, and for an instant the grief receded and the image of her usual self rose to the surface. Even as it showed, her demeanor again faded and faltered until all that remained was the echo of what had been. She had lost much. Her mentor and lover, Cuxiel, was gone, and I had to wonder if she'd ever return to a wholesome state of mind. Immortals could be incredibly resilient, and yet—in the same breath—incredibly breakable.

Yes, Amoroth had lost much, and yet I couldn't decide if I cared, because I had lost much, too.

For an instant, I wasn't standing on the sidewalk below a dismal February sky before my late shadeborn's house. I was again stranded on a vacant mountain within the Cascade range, and my hands were buried in the crest of wet snow. I'd tried to wash my brother's blood from my skin, but it'd been impossible. 

Sethan was dead, dead by my own hand. I'd lost my brother, I'd lost Cuxiel, and I'd lost my reason for being when Sara Gaspard was killed by Balthier.

I hadn't been alive for that, but—by her grace—I'd been return to this...state. To this mockery of life. I, the Sin of Pride, was mortal. 

"I can get inside on my own." I went from the sidewalk to the weed riddled path. "Leave."

"Are you sure?" she asked, again fidgeting with the hem of her blazer. "You understand how bills and grocery shopping work—?"

"I am not a child, Amoroth," I snapped without turning her way again. "I am only mortal." Which wasn't much of a distinction. In my opinion, there was little separating children from mortals, but I wasn't a typical mortal and I refused to be coddled like one when the woman couldn't bear the sight of me. "Leave."

I heard her utter a soft oath to herself, then the light clack of her heels moved upon the asphalt. "Fine," was Amoroth's last sendoff. "Be an ass. I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Darius. You have my phone number, if you need me, though try not to call. I'll be busy cleaning Balthazar's mess from my streets."

She would be busy for years. Verweald may never recover from the late Sin of Envy's methodical dismantling, and the Sins may never recover from their self-inflicted purge. Only Amoroth and Danyel, the Sin of Greed, remained, and I knew the latter wouldn't be alive for much longer. He was a pompous, ignorant fool who wouldn't recognize danger if it introduced itself with a handshake. 

The well-tuned engine of her pricey sedan revved to life and the Sin of Lust drove from Evergreen Acres without further pause as I stared at the house that would inevitably be my mausoleum. Walking the length of the path leading to the door was harder than I would ever admit, but I took every reluctant step and pulled my mind from the distant city waiting beyond the hills.

It wasn't my problem any longer.

The door swung in and bumped the wall as I stepped across the threshold and entered the home that had once belonged to Sara Gaspard. The interior was much as I remembered it; drab, homey, cluttered with books and all the simple comforts mortals liked to surround themselves with. 

I came to a stop between the sofa and the breakfast counter, and my fingers trailed over the quilt tossed on the sofa's back.

The red color was less vibrant than I recalled. 

A film of dust lay upon everything, coating the furniture, the kitchen's surfaces, and the floor. It clung to the television screen in a veil of static grunge. There was a shattered frame resting at the hall's entrance, and I knelt to retrieve the bent photograph caught in the pile of glass.

I held the image of my final host and her deceased twin sister between two fingers and studied her smiling face. The photo had been taken years before I knew her, back when she and Tara had been identical, but I recognized Sara as the girl on the left by the cant of her chin and the reservation within her eyes. Snow clung to their matching attire and feathered their dark hair.

Sara hadn't been a woman accustomed to joy. I'd known it from the moment I'd met her, not that I'd cared. Where Tara's happiness was officious and expressed with clear, shining ease, Sara's smile held uncertainty and a grim, subconscious platitude. She smiled as if happiness were an irony she indulged in with grudging restraint.

How are you so calm? she whispered from the vast halls of my memory. I remembered the warmth of her skin beneath my fingertips and the wetness of her rage-fueled tears. Tell me how to be so calm.

Who said anything about being calm?

I willed the picture to disappear—to be destroyed in a burst of flame as to take her image from me, but the fire that had once responded to my will had been quelled and stolen from me. Only blood poured through my veins, and my hand trembled with suppressed rage as I laid that photo face-down upon the countertop.

How could she ever think I was calm? I don't know the meaning of the word. 

Leaving my bag and the folder in the living room, I went into the restroom and slammed the door before turning the sink on full blast. I splashed my face and neck and allowed the deluge to rush from the faucet undisturbed. I listened to the harsh rasp of water being forced through the faucet as I leaned my weight upon the sink's edge and permitted my gaze to wander to the mirror.

I looked as I ever did, and yet I couldn't recognize myself. Crimson eyes blazed from below a lowered brow and carmine hair so dark it was almost black lay upon my skull in an unkempt style. Beads of water dripped from the hard line of my tight jaw and from clumped eyelashes. The man in the mirror was the very image of the Sin of Pride but he wasn't. He wasn't. He was a mortal. A human. 

I yanked the t-shirt over my head and threw it to the floor without regard as I again beheld the dim reflection—but my gaze was drawn from my face to my chest. There, situated above my breastbone, was a jagged, puckered scar, and below that hung a mana ampoule on a silver chain.

How pathetic, Balthazar drawled within my thoughts as I recalled the agony of his claws plunging into my heart. Indescribable, that pain, when coupled with the knowledge of your imminent end. Your sentimentality disgusts me.

It disgusted me, too.

I studied the texture of the wound that had claimed my life with trepid fingers and tried not to think of Envy's sneering face. It'd been the last thing I'd seen before waking in Amoroth's penthouse apartment. Before waking to...this.

"Mortal," I muttered into the static roar of the water rushing through the drain. "Mortal."

Two months. I'd been mortal for nearly two months, and still I couldn't comprehend what had happened, what change had overcome me when my dark father had stolen of a fragment of my broken soul from my shadeborn to return me to life. Perhaps I never would understand. Perhaps I was cursed to a state of semi-confusion for what meager years I retained.

For untold millennia I'd been the Sin of Pride, the Betrayer, a demon of nightmare and legend and lore. I and my kin had walked this world without equal. I'd killed and devoured the energy of an innumerable mass of souls, and the humans had fallen at my feet in worship.

Now I was a mortal who owned the one bedroom house that had once belonged to the infuriating woman who'd unintentionally given my unending existence meaning. Now she was dead and I endured in the weak, ineffectual body of my prey.

Darius. The human.

"King's breath," I snarled into the mirror. "Who the fuck am I now?!"

This was it. This was all I had. There was no revenge for me to chase, no brother to save, no host for me to protect, and no soul for me to hunt. As Amoroth had outlined, my goal now was to find a job, buy groceries, and to live like a mortal. To exist. Live like a human. As if that were the easiest thing in the world to do.

"Is this really it?" I demanded of nothing as I shut off the water and let the silence fall upon the house in a mantle of unsettling tranquility. "Is this...it?"

Am I...alone?

The weak reflection of the Sin of Pride didn't respond. I swore and hung my head as I cursed myself for such melodramatics and waited for the confusion and the hate and the rage to subside, but they didn't. I doubted they ever would. I would carry them with me through the rest of my droll life.

You're mortal, Darius.

This isn't how it ends! This isn't how it was supposed to end!

But it was. It was how my story ended.

As I prepared myself to accept this mediocrity as reality, a knock sounded upon the front door.