The rain fell without end, a whispering, silver-gray curtain that drowned the world. It was the kind of weather made for funerals—every droplet a silent note in a symphony of sorrow. The small chapel on the edge of the coastal town was thick with the cloying, suffocating scent of lilies, their waxy petals gleaming in the flickering candlelight. Outside, the sky hung low and heavy, as if sharing in the grief of the people gathered inside.
She stood motionless beside the polished oak casket, a solitary figure amidst the crowded room. Her name was Kathy, and today, she was burying the last living relative she had—her grandmother.
Around her, people wept freely. An elderly woman sobbed into a handkerchief, her shoulders shaking with each ragged breath. A neighbor reached out, squeezing Kathy's arm in a gesture of sympathy, but she didn't react. She couldn't. It was as if she were trapped behind a pane of glass, observing the world through a blurred and distant lens.
She did not cry.
Her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides, nails digging half-moons into her palms. She focused on that physical pain—it was easier to bear than the hollow, aching void spreading through her chest. Grandma had been her anchor, her only family. And now, she was gone.
He watched her from the shadows.
His name was Raven, and he was not mortal. For three centuries, he had served as a Reaper—a guide ushering souls from life into the unknown beyond. He stood apart from the mourning crowd, unseen, unheard, his presence as faint as a breath of wind. His hair, the color of pale winter sunlight, was starkly out of place in the gloom. His black suit was impeccably tailored, sharp and severe, much like his usual demeanor.
It had been he, earlier that day, who had gently guided the soul of the old woman lying in that casket. It had been a peaceful passing, one of the easier assignments he'd had in decades. Hard lessons had taught him not to linger. Long ago, he had once allowed emotion to interfere with his duty. He had granted the dying extra moments with their loved ones—precious seconds that were not his to steal. He had been punished for it. His superiors had warned him: too many infractions, and even a Reaper could face True Death—the utter dissolution of their soul-essence. There was no forgiveness for those who disrupted the balance.
So, for years, Raven had built walls around himself. He did not look into the eyes of the living. He did not listen to their final words. He arrived, performed his task, and departed. Efficiency was his new creed.
But today was different.
Today, he lingered.
His gaze was fixed on the granddaughter. Kathy. He knew her name, just as he knew the names of all those intimately connected to the souls he collected. He watched how she stood, so still and contained while everyone else crumbled around her. A strange, unwelcome emotion stirred within him—something akin to irritation. Was she truly so cold? So unmoved by the passing of the woman who had raised her?
He looked at her more intently. And that's when he noticed the subtle signs everyone else missed: the faint tremor in her tightly clasped hands, the rigid line of her jaw, the hollow look in her eyes that spoke not of indifference, but of devastation. This wasn't a lack of grief. This was grief too deep for tears.
The discovery unsettled him. It had been decades since a human held his attention beyond the moment of their loved one's death. Yet he stayed, a silent observer, watching as the service ended, as the mourners slowly dispersed, offering their final condolences, until only Kathy remained.
He watched her thank the funeral director with polite, hollow words. He watched her run a hand over the surface of the casket, a gesture so tender it made something clench tight in his own chest. Then, he watched her carefully lift an ornate urn containing her grandmother's ashes and walk out into the rain.
She placed the urn gently on the passenger seat of a rugged Jeep, even going so far as to absurdly, heartbreakingly, buckling the seatbelt around it. Then she climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine, and drove away without looking back.
Raven should have returned to the realm between worlds. His work here was done. But for the first time in many years, curiosity overrode his duty. With a thought, he dissolved into the mist and shadows, following her.
Rain hammered against the Jeep's windshield. The wipers beat a steady rhythm, swiping aside sheets of water, but the road ahead remained a blur, much like Kathy's mind. The interior of the vehicle was unnervingly quiet, filled only by the low growl of the engine and the white noise of the storm. The urn on the passenger seat was a silent companion, a massive, weighty presence that emphasized the permanent vacancy beside her.
She drove through the familiar-yet-alien streets of the town. The neon sign of the candy store bled a blurry halo in the rain—the place where Grandma had bought her first lollipop. The library windows glowed with warm light—countless afternoons spent curled in a corner armchair with a book, waiting for Grandma to finish work. The old movie theater where they'd watched countless matinees, sharing a bucket of popcorn, Grandma always picking out the biggest, sweetest kernels for her.
Every corner, every streetlight, was a landmark of a memory, and they now rose up like a tide, threatening to drown her. Her grip on the steering wheel was white-knuckled. That hollow ache returned, deeper, sharper. She drew a sharp breath, trying to force down the sob rising in her throat, but only succeeded in inhaling the cold, damp air of the car, scented with leather and… a faint, almost imperceptible trace of Grandma's lavender perfume. A trick of the mind? Or simply because she longed so desperately to smell it again?
She didn't dare look at the urn. She was afraid that seeing it would make its contents, its meaning, more real. She was also afraid that not looking was disrespectful, as if she were eager to forget. The contradiction tore at her.
The Jeep finally left the town behind, climbing the coastal road. To the right were steep cliffs and the roaring, ink-black sea below; to the left, wet, dark-green mountainsides. The world had been reduced to shades of gray, black, and green, oppressively bleak. She cracked open the window. Instantly, a blast of icy, salt-laden wind mixed with rain whipped into the car, tossing her hair and filling the space with the storm's wild, primal scent. It strangely soothed her frayed nerves, if only a little. Grandma had loved the sea. She said it could swallow all sorrows and give endless strength.
Raven followed, his form not quite physical, more a concentrated thought moving through the seams between reality and shadow. He sensed the turbulent waves of emotion emanating from the young woman in the vehicle ahead. The intensity of her grief was a beacon in the darkness, attracting him, troubling him. He shouldn't be interested. After three centuries, human joy and sorrow should have long since ceased to affect him. In the beginning, he might have felt pity, even attempted to comfort in his limited way (though it was against the rules), but the long years and harsh punishments had eroded those soft weaknesses.
Why was he following her? He couldn't articulate a clear answer even to himself. Was it her unnatural stillness at the funeral? Was it the heartbreakingly sincere, almost childish gesture of buckling the urn in? Did it touch some long-forgotten corner deep within him? Or was it merely a meaningless surge of curiosity in his endless existence?
He remembered guiding her grandmother's soul. She had been a peaceful old woman, her soul warm and bright, with barely a flicker of fear towards death, only concern and reluctance. Her last coherent thought had drifted clearly towards her granddaughter, standing strong and stoic by the casket. 'My little Kathy… be well…' He had routinely received the thought, as he had countless other residual echoes from souls, sealing it away to be filed back in the realm. Now, that silent farewell echoed with unusual clarity in his consciousness.
He watched her car move steadily along the slick road, a show of composure that belied her age and state. But beneath that calm was a raging undercurrent. He could "hear" it—not with ears, but with his Reaper's senses—the silent scream in her heart, the fragments of memory, the heart-stopping enormity of her loss.
The feeling… he vaguely remembered it. Long, long ago, before he was a Reaper, when he still possessed a mortal body, he seemed to have felt a similar loss. But the memory was too distant, faded like an ancient painting, leaving only indistinct colors and outlines; the specific taste of the emotion long forgotten. All that remained was an instinctive, distant recognition of that kind of pain.
He shook off the useless nostalgia. The past was irrelevant. The future was almost immutable. His existence had a single purpose: perform his duty, maintain the balance. This human girl, Kathy, her sorrow, her loneliness, her fate—none of it concerned him. Once she lived out her destined lifespan, he might appear again as her guide, or he might not (assigned to another Reaper), but that was a potential event in a distant future, unrelated to the present.
Yet, his "steps" did not cease. He continued to follow the Jeep, like a shadow pulled by an invisible thread, defying his own rational judgment, moving towards the unknown. The rain continued its endless fall, washing over the world, seeming to want to cleanse some of the grief, only making everything more damp, cold, and heavy. The road wound along the coastline, seemingly without end. Raven knew this wasn't an aimless drive. She had a destination in mind, with the urn. He was curious where it would be. And deeper down, a thread of concern, so faint he barely registered it himself, began to stir—a premonition that this night might not end peacefully.