The night I took up Serre-du-Vide, I did not sleep.

  Not truly.

  Sleep implies rest. What came instead was a falling — not of body, but of thought. Of tether.

  The world of waking gave way to a place neither warm nor cold, neither near nor far. A space shaped like silence. And in that silence, a figure stood — tall, robed in cloaks of wind-blown feathers, its face shrouded by a wide-brimmed hat that defied light.

  The Reaper.

  I froze.

  Every part of me remembered the dreams that had plagued my childhood. The figure that loomed at the edge of every vision, silent and unyielding. A watcher, a shadow, a promise of an end I was too young to understand.

  I wanted to run. To turn and flee back into whatever semblance of waking I could claw into being.

  But my feet would not move.

  The Reaper said nothing. Simply watched.

  Its stillness was worse than motion.

  "Why am I here?" I rasped.

  My voice felt small. Like a candle against the tide.

  "Because you touched the void," it finally said. Its voice wasn’t cruel, but it rang with an inevitability I couldn’t bear. "And the void remembers."

  The fear wrapped tighter around my chest.

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  "I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this."

  "You carried the names. Even when it hurt. Even when they burned. That was choice enough."

  It stepped aside, revealing a tree carved from bone and blackwood. Hanging from its limbs were hundreds of feathers, each pulsing softly with light. I knew them. I feared them.

  I reached for one — and as my fingers brushed it, I heard a name.

  My name.

  Not Grimmy. Not Moissonneuse.

  My birth name.

  Long since forgotten. Spoken once, years ago, by a mother whose face I never truly remembered.

  The Reaper did not stop me.

  "Names do not bind you," it said. "But you bind them."

  "I’m not ready," I whispered. "I don’t understand."

  "You do not need to understand," it replied. "You only need to remember."

  It gestured to the tree. I saw feathers darken. Some fluttered to the ground and disintegrated. Others grew brighter. I recognized one — Alenra Vey. Another — Dannith Rayne. Bound names. Broken names.

  "These are the echoes you carry. Every one a song unfinished. Every one a weight."

  "I am not strong enough to carry them all."

  "Then carry only one truth: that no one dies twice."

  The world rippled.

  I felt the tree root itself through my chest — not pain, but permanence. A bond. A burden.

  The Reaper stepped closer.

  Too close.

  "You are not a collector. You are a mourner. And in mourning, you will find your voice."

  I wanted to scream. To defy it. To curse the world that had placed such a task upon me.

  But the words never came.

  I awoke with sweat in my hair and the taste of ashes on my tongue.

  My cloak smelled of woodsmoke and winter wind.

  A crow sat at the edge of the stone, staring.

  It did not caw. It did not leave.

  It simply watched, as if to say:

  Yes. You saw him.

  And now, you will never walk alone.

  And part of me wished I still did.