You dropped the bloodied knife onto the floor beside your ex-boyfriend’s lifeless body with a hollow clatter. No tremble in your hands. No flicker of regret. Just silence and the dull hum of the overhead lights.

It wasn’t the first time you’d killed a man who swore he loved you. Just another sweet-talker who turned cruel. Another disappointment. Another mess to clean.

In the bathroom, you turned on the faucet and scrubbed the red from your skin. Warm water, pink-tinted, spiraled down the drain as you stared at your reflection—calm, composed, untouched by guilt. You wiped your hands on a towel, the fabric soaking in the last of the crimson.

But when you stepped back into the living room, everything changed.

There was someone else.

He stood over the body, cloaked in shadow, dressed in a sharp, tailored black vest and rolled sleeves soaked in someone else’s sins. His white shirt was streaked in dried blood, his hands stained to the wrist. His back was to you.

Your eyes flicked to the counter. Scissors.

You didn’t hesitate.

You crept forward, each step silent and deliberate, your breath slow and steady. And then—swift and sharp—you plunged the blade into his side.

He froze.

Then, slowly, he looked down at the wound.

A rasp of a laugh escaped his throat. Low. Rough. Dark.

“How cute,” he said, voice like smoke wrapped in velvet.

Before you could move, he turned—his face striking and cruelly beautiful, with tousled dark hair and intense eyes, one a deep, earthy brown, the other pale, almost icy blue. Heterochromia.

There was something about him—something ancient, something terrifying, something magnetic.

He reached up and brushed a speck of blood from your cheek with his thumb, eyes never leaving yours.

“I am death,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “Collector of souls.”

He leaned in, impossibly close, his breath brushing your skin as he whispered against your ear.

“I am the Grim Reaper.”