Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I don’t care.
The only thing I can manage to still care about as insanity encroaches is Maven’s lifeless body, frosting over in Everett’s arms. The surreality of her being gone still hasn’t registered fully, but I know one thing. If nothing is done, she will decompose. Return to dust, as all living things do.
But no. I won’t allow it. The dust can’t have what’s left of my keeper. She said she was mine, and she will be mine no matter where her soul wanders without me.
Necromantic power pulses through my veins, heightened by the thick atmosphere of death surrounding us. The voices in my head shriek and shout over one another as I fight through the insanity to prepare a potent preservation spell?—
But the moment I take one more step closer to the only trace of my keeper left upon this earth, her body vanishes like a shadow in daylight.
Just…gone.
My ears are ringing, but I can still hear Everett’s shout of rage directed at the heavens as this mad world begins to freeze and burn at once.
Because she’s gone.
Yes! Gone! The bitch is gone! the voices in my head cheer, ripping my mind to bits.
My keeper has been utterly wiped from this earth thanks to her revenant purpose, taking my will to fight for sanity with her. As everything around me dissolves further into chaos, I let the madness have whatever is left of me that didn’t just die with my blood blossom.
cBG
PART I
THE BROKEN
cBY
MAVEN
My chest burns until the familiar ambience of stale death wakes me.
I bolt upright, more disoriented than I’ve ever been as I blink at the cathedral-like temple surrounding me. I’m sitting haphazardly on top of a cold, ornate onyx altar that’s cracked as if an impact struck it. In front of me are several rows of pews filled with withered, dismembered skeletal husks.
High above, a partially shattered stained glass dome lets in the cold light of a heavily clouded midday. Thick ice has encrusted much of this massive room, but I can still make out a mural of the reaper goddess on one wall, her face obscured by a hood. Graphic images of violent deaths, terrified mortals, and peaceful graveyards are painted around her.
This is one of Syntyche’s temples.
Or, it was. Something cataclysmic must have happened because it’s an abandoned tomb now.
I stare at the frosted mural for a moment, a strange feeling tickling the back of my brain.
Then I notice the skeletons of two purple-dressed priests on the floor near the altar. They lie entangled, looking as if they died strangling each other. Other dismembered, shriveled corpses pepper the room, dressed in black since they came to worship Syntyche by mourning the dead. They look partially preserved, as if this bone-deep cold has been around long enough to prevent them from decomposing properly.
What a disturbing scene to wake up to.
I wish I could appreciate it better, but I feel so fucking odd. My torso continues to burn as the rest of me feels weaker. When I press a hand over the scar on my chest, I’m still missing a heartbeat…and my quintet emblems. Not to mention, I’m dressed only in a ripped, sleeveless black slip, and?—
Is that stained glass embedded in my arm?
I pick a few pieces out, grimacing at the throbbing in my head. How did I get here? Memories of my not-life are a swirling cesspit of confusing information, but it all comes to a screeching halt around the moment I cursed the gods while dying in Everett’s arms.
Oh, fuck. My revenant purpose was fulfilled.
Which means that I died, died.
But this isn’t the Beyond. If it were, Sachar would be standing over me, judging the ragged remains of my soul and sentencing me to an afterlife of eternal misery for all the shit I did to survive in the Nether.
So what the hell is going on?
And more importantly, where are my guys?
Gods, this temple is freezing. Whenever the whistling wind outside slows, snow dusts down from the shattered ceiling, making me shiver. I slide off the altar, avoiding shattered glass all over the icy stone ground, but I pause when I notice a gleaming scythe on the ground nearby.
The rest of this eerie space is coated in layers of dust, frost, spiderwebs, and that faint, enthralling feeling I’ve always sensed around death, fresh or old. But this scythe is dust-free, so it was placed here recently. And the blade?—
It’s etherium.
I know because I’m drawn to the wickedly sharp, glass-like curve the same way I was drawn to Amadeus’s crown years ago.
Hissing at the overwhelming soreness throughout my weakened body, I lean to scoop up the scythe. But my fingers pause when I sense a ripple of magic emanating from the weapon. Deep green runes slowly appear running down the snath, glowing faintly. Just being this close to the weapon is hair-raising, as if I’m about to touch a live wire.
So, of course, I absolutely must touch it.
The moment my fingers wrap around the weapon, breathtaking power sears through my veins. A woman’s voice echoes in my head.
“When you learned that memories take years longer than souls to transcend certain planes of existence, you requested that I place your memories of Paradise within this weapon to be returned to you more quickly. Consider this a favor. May fate bless your scheming, or else may your second death be equally honorable.”
I recognize this solemn voice: Syntyche, the goddess of this temple.
My mother.
That abrupt recollection is jarring, but as I consider it, pieces of my past that I never lingered on start to make sense. Being so drawn to darkness and sensing death. Seeing ghosts as a kid. The fact that I could make a blood oath without a priest or priestess’s holy magic sealing it, despite Felix insisting it would be impossible…
I must have tapped into my dormant nature without knowing.
I should have known you would take after her.
That’s what Pia said to me after First Placement—only now, I vaguely remember that the so-called “prophetess” was in Paradise when I woke up there.
She wasn’t a mortal prophetess, but Galene the Knowing in disguise.
No wonder that bitch left so many annoyingly cryptic little remarks.
I startle when a strange current runs into my hand from the scythe just before a burst of images and words sweeps through me. Dancing constellations, liquid gold dripping from my fingertips, glossy black feathers and beady eyes, an endless sea of clouds—and then another woman’s powerful, angry voice.
“There is no use crying over spilled ambrosia. You are a goddess now, Maven. You belong in Paradise—you earned your place here. Your future is final, so stop fighting it and learn to be happy. You will thank me in a few millennia when you’ve forgotten your mortal life and everyone you knew therein.”
More flickers of vague memories, and then Pia—no, Galene’s gentle voice.
“If you had matured into your true nature, instead of being corrupted into a revenant, your inherited abilities would have manifested as you neared adulthood. However, if you pursue this path”
“You see the future. Tell me what will happen,”
my own voice echoes.
“I cannot, for the future is ever-changing until it comes to pass. If you are determined to attempt reversing apotheosis, I see many possibilities…but the foremost possibility is your final demise. Is not Paradise better than facing the Beyond, my fearless one?”
She sounds sad, almost pleading, but my voice remains firm.
“For shits and giggles, let’s say I do survive. Will I still be a revenant?”
“No. That dark magic corrupting you would never withstand Paradise, so it must be gone. If you survive this brutal pursuit, you will return as a half mortal, as you were born to be. The blood of a goddess will run through you, and with it, your true abilities and holy magic. But without a heart, you cannot end the suffering of…”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.