The first thing I learned as a reaper was how to silence my footsteps. The second was that no one would hear them anyway.
The world moved as if I weren't there, its inhabitants caught in the endless motion of survival. They busied themselves with tasks both grand and meaningless, their thoughts consumed by aspirations, fears, and the unrelenting weight of existence. Yet none of them noticed the quiet figure who walked unseen among them, clutching a scythe that never gleamed.
On my first day, the senior reaper told me, "You're not here to judge or to mourn. You're here to finish the script." His voice was like the crackle of dry leaves. "Whatever they've lived, it ends with you."
But standing there, shadowed by the dying light of a winter's sun, I couldn't help but wonder about the stories tucked beneath their skin. The regrets stitched into their hearts. The secrets they kept locked away until even they forgot the key.
Today, my first assignment was a woman named Helena Marek.
---
Helena's life was a symphony in ruin. She had once been a violinist, her fingers dancing across strings, her music conjuring entire worlds for anyone willing to listen. But talent alone could not stave off the wolves of war, nor could it rebuild the ashes of a family long consumed.
When I found her, she was seated at a worn piano in the corner of her cramped apartment, her fingers resting limply on the keys. The piano hadn't been tuned in years; its notes were ghosts of their former selves, soft and hollow, as if they too had forgotten how to live. She stared at the sheet music in front of her—a composition unfinished, its edges frayed from years of handling.
She didn't see me, of course. She couldn't. To Helena, I was nothing more than a draft in the cold air, the faint flicker of a shadow cast where no shadow should be.
"Helena Marek," I said, my voice soft but clear. It wasn't a name I spoke so much as a truth I summoned, one tied irrevocably to her very existence.
Her hands froze mid-motion, her breath hitching as if an invisible thread had been pulled taut inside her chest. She turned her head slightly, as though she might glimpse the source of the voice, but her gaze settled back on the empty page before her.
"I knew you'd come," she murmured, her voice rasping like the creak of an old door.
This was not uncommon. Many of the dying carried a sense of their own departure, though they dressed it up in different forms: intuition, premonition, a strange dream they couldn't shake. In Helena's case, it seemed more like resignation, the kind that only someone who had lost everything could wear so well.
"I'm not afraid," she added, though her trembling hands betrayed her.
I stepped closer, though she didn't react to my presence. Her eyes remained fixed on the sheet music. I tilted my head, curious.
"What is it you see?" I asked, though I wasn't expecting an answer. Most mortals couldn't hear us, let alone converse.
But to my surprise, she spoke.
"A song I'll never finish," she said, her fingers brushing the paper like a lover's cheek. "I thought I had time. But time doesn't wait for dreamers, does it?"
Her words lingered in the air, heavy as smoke.
---
Time. For mortals, it was both a gift and a curse. They lived their lives measured by its rhythm, yet they never truly understood it. It moved too quickly for some, too slowly for others, but for all of them, it was finite—a thread that must one day snap.
Helena's thread was fraying. I could see it, shimmering faintly in the dim light of the room, its strands unraveling like an old tapestry.
"You've spent so much of it chasing something," I said, more to myself than to her. "And now you wonder where it's all gone."
She laughed softly, the sound bitter and raw. "I don't have to wonder. I know."
Her gaze drifted to a photograph resting on the piano's lid. It was faded, the edges curling inward, but I could make out the figures: a man and a young girl, their faces lit by smiles that felt like a distant memory.
"My husband," she said. "And my daughter."
"They're gone?" I asked.
She nodded. "The war took him. The sickness took her. And now… now the silence is taking me."
Her voice cracked, and for a moment, the room felt unbearably small.
---
I should have taken her then, gently severed the thread and led her into the void. That was my task. That was my purpose.
But something held me back. A single question, unspoken yet insistent.
"Helena," I said, stepping closer, "if you had more time, what would you do?"
Her fingers tightened around the edges of the sheet music. "I would finish the song. Just once, I'd let the world hear it." She paused, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "Not because it would matter. But because it's all I have left."
I wanted to tell her that it wouldn't matter. That the world would move on, indifferent to her song, her struggle, her pain. But I couldn't. The words caught in my throat, tangled with something I hadn't expected to feel: pity.
Or perhaps it was something deeper.
---
I watched her for a moment longer, her frail figure hunched over the piano, her shadow stretching long and thin across the floor. Her breathing was shallow now, each inhale a struggle, each exhale a surrender.
"Helena," I said, my voice softer this time, "it's time."
She nodded, her lips trembling. But as I reached out to take her hand, she spoke again, her voice barely more than a whisper.
"Will anyone remember me?"
I hesitated. A part of me wanted to lie, to offer her the comfort of a false promise. But lies were not a luxury afforded to beings like me.
"No," I said. "But your song will remain, even if no one hears it. It will linger in the air, in the silence. And that, perhaps, is enough."
Her lips curved into a faint, bittersweet smile. She closed her eyes, her hands falling away from the piano keys.
And then, as the last threads of her life unraveled, I took her hand and led her into the quiet.
---
When I left the apartment, the air outside was sharp and cold, the kind that bit at your skin and seeped into your bones. The city hummed with its usual chaos—cars honking, voices rising and falling, lives colliding and continuing.
No one noticed the faint melody drifting from a small, dimly lit room above the street. A song unfinished, but still alive.