Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
He had to keep moving. Before they caught up to him.
His brain hurt like fingernails scraped across the delicate tissues. Like something alive had dug into his skull and was making room for itself.
Pain. Agony. Life.
He wiped the blood from his nose, but the streaks only smeared across his skin. His vision tilted, edges blurring in and out, but he forced his legs to move. Tripping over roots, he scraped his palms against bark slick with rain.
No sounds echoed from behind him. No engines. No voices. But they’d been there. He’d seen the headlights—too close, too deliberate. Or had he? Was he imagining things again?
The trees closed in, branches clawing at his face, leaves slapping against his shoulders. The world around him pulsed in shades of black and gray, shadows deepening with each uneven step.
And then, through the rain, a shape.
He stumbled to a halt, chest heaving, the air a knife scraping against his throat.
The figure was there, between two pines. Cloaked in darkness, its head tilted as if studying him. For a moment, it had shape, lines, and angles that should’ve made sense. But the longer he stared, the less real it became.
He blinked, and it was gone.
Just rain and shadows and the whisper of the wind remained.
His hands trembled. His mind spun excuses, some of them almost convincing. Blood loss. Exhaustion. A trick of the dark.
He’d done worse than hallucinate before. He’d drowned himself in whiskey until the world blurred around him, broken the wrong man’s bones just to prove he could. Lived too long thinking rage was the same as strength.
He pressed forward, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs. The pain was a constant throb now, swelling through his skull until his teeth ached.
The ground sloped downward, slick with mud. He slid more than walked, his body twisting to catch his balance. Every jolt shot fresh agony through his ankle.
And still, the thought of stopping terrified him more than the pain.
Regret pooled beneath his thoughts, a dark, creeping thing he’d buried too deep for too long. No one would mourn him if he didn’t make it out of these woods. That was the truth. Not his fault, not really. Just the way he’d built his life. He’d burned every bridge until the smoke blackened the sky.
But there was something worse than dying alone. Something worse than dying in this godforsaken stretch of trees with his own blood soaking into the dirt.
His brain felt too big for his skull, swelling until the pressure forced more blood from his nose. It dripped down his chin, hot against the chill in the air. He tripped into a clearing, his knees buckling as he collapsed to the ground. The cold seeped through his shirt, his chest heaving with every shallow breath.
That’s when he saw it again.
Not twenty feet away, between the twisted trunks of the pines.
The Reaper. Just a suggestion of a figure, its outline shimmering with the kind of darkness that had weight. Solid enough to be real, but wrong in the way it moved. The way it waited.
He blinked, and it was gone.
His hands fisted in the mud, fingers clenching tight enough to make his knuckles ache. Another hallucination. Had to be. Maybe the crash had cracked something in his head. Maybe the blood dripping from his nose wasn’t the worst of it.
But that didn’t explain the certainty crawling along his skin, raising the hair on the back of his neck. He’d lived a bad life. Made decisions with the kind of casual cruelty that had come so easy, back when strength meant something different.
No apologies. No atonement. Just violence and vengeance.
And now, this.
He forced himself upright, his legs threatening to buckle. The pain was relentless, his vision a blur of shapes and shadows. But he kept moving. Because if he stopped, whatever lurked between the trees would catch him.
He was sure of that, even if he couldn’t explain why.
Another step. Then another. The ache in his chest sharpened with every breath.
The ground dipped, slick earth stealing his balance. He slid down a short slope, his shoulder smashing against something solid. Bark tore at his skin, and his fresh blood mingled with the rain.
The Reaper waited at the bottom of the hill. Watching.
Mark let out a shuddering breath, the sound raw and broken. “Get the hell away from me.” His voice was shredded, rasping through the rain. The apparition didn’t answer and just stood there, a shadow with eyes he couldn’t quite see.
He blinked again. Gone.
His head swam, pain twisting through his skull like hot wire. His body felt too heavy, his limbs leaden and cold.
But he kept moving. Because something was out there, stalking him with the kind of patience that suggested it had been waiting for a long, long time.
Regret boiled up again, bitter and sharp. Maybe it wasn’t just the Reaper. Maybe it was every damn thing he’d left undone, every grudge and grift he’d run from. Maybe he’d spent so long escaping that he’d finally run himself down.