KAIDA POV
"We leave at dawn," Azrael said, turning toward the door. "Pack light. The Skybound Chains don't tolerate—"
A dagger flew past his head.
Finn stood there, arm still extended, face twisted with rage. "You don't get to give orders here. You cursed her. You trapped her. And now you think we'll just follow you to some floating prison?"
"Finn, wait—" I started.
"No!" He grabbed another knife. "This thing—this god—he's using you, Kai. Can't you see that? He doesn't care if you die. He just wants his freedom."
Through the bond, I felt Azrael's response: not anger, but tired acceptance. Like he'd heard this accusation a thousand times and knew it was partially true.
"You're right," Azrael said quietly.
Everyone froze.
"I am using her," he continued. "Just as she's using me. We're both desperate. Both trapped. Both running out of time." He looked at Finn with those star-filled eyes. "But here's what you need to understand: if I wanted her dead, she'd be dead. If I wanted to escape alone, I'd have abandoned her the moment Samael offered me a way out. I'm here because—"
He stopped, struggling with words.
Through the bond, I felt what he couldn't say: because for five hundred years I've been alone, and this connection—painful as it is—reminds me what it feels like to matter to someone.
"Because we're stuck with each other," I finished for him. "Like it or not, the bond won't let us separate. If he suffers, I suffer. If I die, he loses his only chance at freedom."
"Exactly." Azrael's expression softened slightly when he looked at me. "An unwilling partnership. But a partnership nonetheless."
Lyric stepped forward, her silver hair catching the light. "Say we believe you. Say we help with these heists. What guarantee do we have that you won't betray Kaida the moment you get what you want?"
"None." Azrael's honesty was brutal. "I'm Death. I've witnessed every betrayal in history. I know how to manipulate, deceive, and destroy. You'd be fools to trust me completely."
"Then why should we work with you?" Rook asked, his voice carefully neutral.
"Because you don't have a choice." Azrael's voice hardened. "In twenty-seven days, Kaida becomes me whether we break the curse or not. Your friend—this woman you clearly love like family—will become an immortal deity trapped in eternal isolation. And there's nothing you can do to stop it." He paused. "Unless you help me."
The truth of his words hung in the air like smoke.
Finn lowered his knife, but his jaw was tight. "If you hurt her—"
"You'll what?" Azrael's tone wasn't mocking, just curious. "I'm Death. You can't kill me. You can't threaten me. The only leverage you have is that I need her alive and functional for this to work."
"That's enough leverage," Finn said firmly.
Something like respect flickered in Azrael's expression. "Perhaps it is."
I looked at my crew—my family. Finn with his protective anger. Lyric with her fierce loyalty. Rook with his calculating mind always searching for angles.
Then I looked at Azrael. Through the bond, I felt his exhaustion like an ocean, deep and dark and endless. Five hundred years of carrying death had hollowed him out, left him a shell of whatever he'd been before.
And now I was becoming that shell.
"We do this together," I said firmly. "All of us. No secrets, no lies, no hidden plans. If we're pulling off three impossible heists against the most dangerous beings alive, we need to trust each other."
"Trust is a luxury," Azrael said.
"Trust is a necessity." I met his star-filled gaze. "You want to know why I've survived five years stealing from people who could kill me with a thought? Because my crew has my back. Always. We trust each other with our lives."
"And look where that got you," Azrael said softly. "Cursed and dying."
His words stung because they were true. My loyalty to Mira had driven me to this desperate heist. My need to save her had trapped me in a curse worse than death.
But through the bond, I felt something unexpected from Azrael: envy. He envied my connections. My family. My willingness to risk everything for people I loved.
"At least I have people worth dying for," I said quietly. "What do you have?"
The question hit him like a physical blow. Through the bond, I felt his answer: Nothing. I have nothing. I gave up everything for duty, and duty gave me nothing back.
The silence stretched painful and raw.
"The first heist," Rook said, breaking the tension. "Seraphine the Fallen Star. What exactly does she have that we need?"
Azrael seemed grateful for the change of subject. "A piece of my true name. Gods have three parts to their names: the spoken name everyone knows, the written name that holds power, and the true name that defines their existence. During the Divine Sundering, my true name was split into three pieces for safekeeping."
"Why split it?" Lyric asked.
"Because speaking a god's true name gives you power over them. Absolute power." Azrael's expression darkened. "If someone collected all three pieces and spoke my complete true name, they could unmake me. Erase me from existence. Or—as we're planning—break divine bonds and curses."
"So these pieces are basically god-killing weapons," Finn said slowly.
"Yes."
"And three different monsters have them."
"Correct."
"We're definitely going to die," Finn muttered.
"Probably," Azrael agreed. "But you'll die eventually anyway. At least this way, it's for something meaningful."
"You're terrible at pep talks," Lyric said.
"I'm Death. What did you expect?"
Despite everything, I almost laughed. There was something darkly funny about planning impossible heists with Death himself while my countdown to becoming him ticked away.
Then another death hit me.
This one was violent—a man stabbed in an alley, dying slowly, bleeding out while his killer walked away. The pain, the fear, the desperate hope that someone would find him before it was too late.
I gasped, clutching my chest. Through the bond, Azrael steadied me, his cold presence somehow comforting.
"Breathe," he murmured. "Let it flow through you. Don't hold onto it."
The death faded, but the memory remained. Twenty-eight deaths since midnight. Twenty-eight lives ending, and I'd felt every single one.
"This is what you want me to experience forever?" I whispered.
"This is what I'm trying to save you from," Azrael corrected gently.
I looked up at him, and through the bond, our emotions tangled together—his guilt, my fear, his determination, my desperate hope. We were enemies forced to be allies. Strangers sharing the most intimate connection possible.
"Teach me," I said suddenly. "If we're doing this, I need to be stronger. Teach me to control these powers. Teach me to survive."
Azrael studied me for a long moment. "Training will be painful. The bond will force us into closer connection. We'll share more memories, more emotions. You'll see things about me you won't want to see."
"And you'll see things about me," I countered. "Fair trade."
Something flickered in his expression—surprise, maybe even admiration. "Very well. We train during the day, plan the heist at night. We leave for the Skybound Chains in three days."
"Three days?" Finn protested. "That's not enough time—"
"It has to be." Azrael's voice was grim. "Every hour we delay, the bond strengthens. Every hour, Kaida becomes less human and more like me. If we wait too long, breaking the curse won't matter because there won't be enough of her left to save."
The words chilled me. I touched my chest, feeling the cold spreading through my veins. He was right. Already, I felt different. Distant. Like I was watching the world through thick glass instead of living in it.
"Then we don't waste time." I stood straighter. "Three days. We train, we plan, and we steal from a goddess."
Rook pulled out maps and documents. "The Skybound Chains shift with the sunrise. We'll need precise timing to—"
A knock at the door interrupted him.
Everyone froze.
We weren't expecting visitors. And after Samael's appearance, any unexpected guest was a threat.
Finn moved to the door, knife ready. He opened it a crack, then went pale. "Kai... you need to see this."
I pushed past him.
A girl stood in the doorway. Maybe sixteen, with wild red hair and eyes that glowed like embers. She wore chains around her wrists—magical chains that pulsed with dark energy.
"Kaida Thornwick?" Her voice was rough, like she'd been screaming. "I was sent to deliver a message."
"From who?"
"From the Architect." The girl's eyes glowed brighter. "The one who hired you to steal the crown. The one who set all of this in motion."
My blood turned to ice. "What message?"
The girl's mouth opened, but the voice that came out wasn't hers. It was ancient, male, amused: "Hello, little thief. Enjoying your curse? I do hope so. I worked very hard arranging it."
Azrael moved faster than I'd ever seen, shadows exploding around him. But the girl just laughed with that stolen voice.
"Don't bother, Death. I'm not really here. Just borrowing this vessel to say hello." The voice paused. "I want you to know: everything that's happening is exactly according to plan. Your bond. Your suffering. Your desperate heists. All of it leads exactly where I want it to go."
"Who are you?" I demanded.
"You'll find out soon enough. For now, just know this: you're not breaking any curse, Kaida Thornwick. You're building me a weapon. And when you finally gather all three pieces of Death's true name—" The voice dropped to a purr. "—I'll be waiting to take them from you."
The girl's eyes rolled back. She collapsed.
Finn caught her before she hit the ground. The chains around her wrists crumbled to dust.
"She's breathing," he said quickly. "Just unconscious."
But I wasn't looking at the girl. I was looking at Azrael, feeling his emotions through the bond—shock, rage, and underneath it all, terrible understanding.
"You know who that was," I said.
"I have suspicions." His voice was cold. "Suspicions I was hoping were wrong."
"Tell me."
Azrael's star-filled eyes met mine. "There's only one being powerful enough to orchestrate this. Only one who would want me destroyed this badly." He paused. "The Architect isn't just some mysterious client. He's the one who started the Divine Sundering. The one who fractured reality itself five hundred years ago."
"Why would he want you dead?"
"Because five hundred years ago, when the gods were forced to choose between the mortal realm and the divine planes—" Azrael's voice cracked slightly. "—I testified against him. I helped seal him away. And he swore that one day, he'd make me suffer for it."
The room went silent.
"So this whole thing," Lyric whispered, "the client hiring Kaida, the crown curse, everything—it's revenge?"
"Not just revenge." Azrael's face was grim. "It's a trap. We steal the name-pieces, we break the curse, and in doing so, we hand him the one weapon that can kill Death itself." He looked at me. "We've been played from the beginning."
Through the bond, I felt his fear—real fear—for the first time since we'd met.
"Then we change the game," I said firmly. "We steal the name-pieces, we break the curse, and we make sure the Architect never gets his hands on them."
"How?" Finn asked desperately. "If he planned everything—"
The unconscious girl suddenly gasped, her eyes flying open. But they weren't glowing anymore. They were normal—terrified and confused.
"Where—where am I?" She looked around wildly. "The last thing I remember, I was in the Cartel's dungeon, and then—"
"The Cartel?" I knelt beside her. "You were a prisoner?"
"Yes. Cell forty-seven. With—" She stopped, her face crumbling. "With your sister. With Mira."
My heart stopped. "You know Mira?"
"She's my cellmate. She told me about you. About her sister the thief who was going to save her." The girl's eyes filled with tears. "But that's not going to happen. Because Lord Vex—he's planning something terrible. Something about harvesting divine power during a blood moon." She grabbed my arm. "He's going to kill her, Kaida. In three days, when the blood moon rises, he's going to sacrifice Mira to steal Death's power for himself."
The world tilted.
Three days.
The same three days we needed to prepare for the heist.
I looked at Azrael, feeling his grim understanding through the bond.
"We can't do both," I whispered. "We can't prepare for the Skybound Chains heist and save Mira. There's not enough time."
"No," Azrael agreed quietly. "You have to choose. Save your sister now and lose our only chance to break the curse. Or start the heists and let Mira die."
Through the bond, I felt his sympathy—and his certainty that there was no third option.
I had three days to make an impossible choice:
Save my sister and doom myself to becoming Death forever.
Or save myself and let Mira die.