How to Make a Sinner Sleep

121 | blazing; poor pitiful misery

In the Record Hall, the skies were always a pale blue, swiveled with twisting white clouds that streaked across like a painting. The flowers bloomed, petals curled happily as they basked under the tranquility of the space, suffused by calm.

That day, a man stood by the white marble stand, cushioned by pillows of various shapes. They'd been massacred, plumes of feathers dancing around his cold visage, a sword hanging from his curled fingers.

Around him, a fire blazed. The delicate flowers screamed, wilting and blackening as they fell into ashes.

Red had dyed the skies into a bloody hue, telling of the Record Hall's suffering and deep anguish. Before the man's feet, a woman lay on the ground, her pale hair billowed around her figure, an unraveled pink braid falling over her shoulder.

Holding her hand tightly, a woman with a matching face and a violent glare seethed at the man.

A slight of surprise had flickered over his face, so briefly and so easily disguised that it went unknown.

He turned his head to the burning lands, and she stared at the sharp line of his jaw, a steady gaze that reflected no emotion, framed by long but pale eyelashes.

"You shouldn't have refused my request." He sighed, turning back around. "And I would not have resorted to such methods."

"Don't pretend to be benevolent, human, when destruction follows your wake." The woman slowly reached out, cradling the limp body closely to her. She turned, lightly settling the other into the bed of pillows, strangely untouched by the fire. "Are you so certain that destruction will lead to success?"

"I've been taught that it does. Regardless, you will help me, Keeper of the Record Hall."

She snarled, flashing sharp white teeth. "I will do none of the sort—"

"And if you refuse, I will burn these lands over and over again. Every time the flowers bloom, I will return."

A normal human could do no such thing, but this man was different. The woman curled her fingers into the ground, the fires licking the fabrics of her flowing dress.

It was a mistake.

Allowing her dear sister to leave in and out of the human realm, even weakening herself for the sake of that sinner.

They exposed themselves to being caught—and for this man with eyes everywhere, finding an entrance to their land was not impossible.

Every time. It was a mistake to have anything to do with that human, destined for death.

She'd known.

And yet when those students wandered down, she indulged in her sister's whims, her desire to explore and provide help. She'd seen that man, pink-haired and covered in the repulsive stench of death, that this was a man already dead and yet living.

The abnormality should've been a warning.

She should've never let him enter their lands or allowed her sister to share her name. She shouldn't have helped his friends at that arranged festival that toyed with death.

Because a man who died once would likely draw death towards him again.

Then her sister, whose blessing reacted more sensitively than before. Reacting to the minor fluctuations, to the wailing flowers that burned.

Something had changed.

She had rushed to the records after the festival, unsettled, and opened the forbidden histories. A record keeper managed death and sought to help lost souls return to the afterlife, occasionally fulfilling regrets. But they were not to read the histories of the living.