They called her a witch.
Not with fear or awe, but with scorn—like spitting on a name. Jayden heard it every time she ventured near the village. "Demon-born." "Cursed girl." "The one even the dungeon couldn't hold."
She never asked for the whispers. Never asked for the bruises either.
The last stone hit her ribs harder than she expected. She didn't cry, not in front of them. That would only feed the laughter, the sneers.
"Go on then," one boy barked, a little older than her, drunk on cruelty. "Show us your demon face!"
She didn't answer. She couldn't. She didn't know how. Whatever lived inside her, it never came out on command.
When they finally got bored and left, Jayden lay in the dirt beside the cracked stones that formed the edge of her home. A half-rotted shed near the forest line—that was all she had. No family. No safety. Only the ache in her bones and the sharp sting of being hated for something she couldn't explain.
She cried that night.
Not quiet sobs. Not pretty, poetic grief. She screamed into her hands until her throat burned, until her breath came in shaking gasps. "I didn't choose this," she whispered, "I didn't ask to be this."
The moonlight danced across a small puddle near her feet. That's when she saw him.
A tall, cloaked figure standing behind her—silent, unmoving. His face was shadowed, and yet... she felt his eyes. Cold. Eternal.
She spun around.
No one was there.
Her breath caught. A hallucination? A trick of the moonlight?
No. Something ancient scraped across her soul, like ice over glass. She ran.
The forest swallowed her fast roots grabbing at her feet, branches slapping her cheeks. But she didn't stop. Not until she reached the bridge that marked the edge of the world she knew.
Then she froze.
He was already there.
The figure stood at the other side of the bridge, bathed in silver light, a massive black saithe resting at his side. Death itself.
"Please," she whispered, backing up, her heels scraping against the old wood planks, "don't."
Her legs gave way, and she dropped to her knees. "I don't want to die," she lied.
But Azrael knew the truth. He could feel it—her soul, fractured and exhausted, ready to slip free. And yet... it clung to something. A single thread. A light buried deep in the dark.
He lifted the saithe.
Jayden flinched and fell back. The wood beneath her feet cracked—and vanished. She plunged into the cold river below.
Azrael stood above, unmoving. Watching.
Behind him, a whisper slithered through the trees.
"She's interesting," said a voice like bones grinding on stone. Mammoth. The soul eater.
Azrael didn't look at him. "She's not for you."
"Yet," Mammoth chuckled, licking his lips. "I'll wait. She'll grow strong. Tainted. And when she does, I'll devour her whole. Maybe then I'll be stronger than you, Reaper."
Azrael scoffed.
Then he moved.
The water below glowed briefly as his power surged. He pulled her up—not gently, but carefully—and laid her body beside the riverbank, her skin pale but warm.
She stirred.
By the time her eyes fluttered open, the world was silent again.
No monster. No grim reaper. Just wind in the trees and the slow thrum of her heart still beating.
She stumbled home in a daze.
And far above, on the mountain's edge, Death watched.