From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

Kieran caught Jade under both arms and nearly lost her when the cold reached them.

White blood had crossed Jade's knuckles and soaked into Kieran's sleeve. It carried no warmth. Kieran's gold fire bent away from the stain before gathering along her wrist again.

"Waddell, move everyone away from the gate and the cold-storage hall."

Jade's voice scraped on the last words. Her right eye stayed closed. More white ran from beneath the lid and followed the old track down her cheek.

Waddell pulled the cafeteria alarm twice. The pattern sent shelter staff to their assigned doors without telling the children that another impossible thing had entered the building.

"Tessa, take the family rooms through the kitchen and count them outside."

Tessa grabbed the radio Jade had given her earlier. She looked at the frost climbing the gate, then at Jade sagging against Kieran.

"I can move them, but the rear yard still needs two guards."

Waddell assigned both deputies and unlocked the kitchen route. Tessa ran for the family rooms and called room numbers into the radio so families knew which hall to use.

The cafeteria monitor died before Caelin's office could answer. Its black screen caught the room in reflection. Waddell appeared beside the tables. Kieran burned gold near Jade's shoulder. A third figure stood between them in a white robe.

Jade opened her left eye and saw an empty floor where the reflection placed it.

"Do not turn toward the monitor because it wants recognition."

Kieran kept her face on Jade. Her gold fire stretched behind her and struck the screen. The glass cracked. The white-robed figure remained in every piece.

Its scythe rested across shoulders too wide for the cafeteria. Bone fingers drummed against the handle while the covered bodies in the cold-storage hall struck their door once.

Waddell raised his rifle and aimed toward the storage hall.

"Those bodies stayed down through the last breach, and they stay down now."

Jade pushed one hand against the tile. The thread behind her ruined sight pulled toward the dead with the confidence of an old habit. She felt each covered shape beyond the wall. Eleven adults. Two soldiers. One body whose name had arrived after the sheet.

The Reaper offered all thirteen back to her at once.

They could brace the gate. They could carry children. They could drag Jade away while living hands kept their weapons. The answers came clean and useful, which was how the gift had always tried to make cruelty sound practical.

"Leave every dead person where their living people placed them."

The bodies hit the storage door again. Kieran lowered Jade beside the overturned cafeteria table and moved between her and the hall.

"Your order stands, but tell me what is trying to break it."

Jade wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. The blood smeared white across her skin.

"The thing that lent me these eyes has come to fight Ty."

Waddell checked the kitchen route. The last family had cleared the serving line. A deputy called seventeen children through the rear door, followed by six wounded adults and the shelter nurse.

"Then it can wait outside after everyone living clears this room."

The broken monitor answered in a voice with no need for its speakers.

"He came through my gift, touched what carries me, and opened the match."

Kieran's fire struck every shard at once. The reflections burned black around the robe, yet the skeleton stayed white.

Jade pressed harder against the floor before her right arm could buckle.

"You offered a battle, not my shelter as an arena."

The scythe moved in the glass. Frost crossed the cafeteria floor and turned toward the kitchen where the families had gone.

Waddell shoved two steel serving carts into its path. The frost climbed the wheels and locked them together, buying enough time for the nurse to clear the rear door.

"Kieran, cut the kitchen line after Tessa gives the outside count."

"The cut may take your connection with it, so choose with that included."

Jade saw the offer inside the warning. Keep the line and let the Reaper follow the living. Cut it and lose the cleanest path Ty had touched since Earth.

The old bargain wanted her to choose Ty over everyone walking through the kitchen.

It had never understood why he loved her.

"Cut the line after Tessa confirms every living person outside."

Kieran put the radio against Jade's good ear. Tessa counted again from the rear yard. Seventy-four shelter residents, nine staff, three deputies. Waddell made her include herself. The corrected count reached eighty-seven.

Kieran drove gold fire across the kitchen threshold.

Tile split under the heat. The frost broke against it, rushed up the walls, and tore cabinet doors from their hinges. None crossed into the yard.

The cold-storage door bent inward under another blow.

Jade felt thirteen dead bodies waiting for the smallest permission. She forced their names through the white pressure, one by one, using the labels the shelter had verified rather than the jobs the Reaper offered them.

The first body settled. The second stopped pushing. By the sixth, blood ran from Jade's nose and mixed pink across her hand. Kieran knelt behind her and held her shoulders level while Waddell braced the storage door with a serving cart.

"Keep naming them because I can hold this door longer than you think."

"Save your lies for frightened civilians who need the extra minute."

Waddell planted one boot against the cart and laughed through clenched teeth.

"Those civilians are outside, so you inherited today's worst lie."

Jade reached the thirteenth name. The pressure left the bodies and gathered behind her closed eye.

Across the separate proceeding, frost formed around Omina's writing hand.

Creel's signed denial stayed on the table. The empty witness field disappeared beneath a film of white, followed by every route that had tried to reach Ty through another person's answer.

Ty heard Kieran through the failing shelter feed.

"Jade says the white Reaper found the road we closed."

The feed broke. White crossed the tablet screen and sealed Kieran's face beneath it.

Ty grabbed the device before it slid from the table. The cold bit through bone and reached the fire in his ribs. Three knocks answered from inside his chest, matching the pulse Jade had forced through the broken beacon stones.

JJ took one look at his hands and moved the sworn records away from him.

"Tell us whether that cold belongs to Jade or the thing hunting her."

"Both are holding the same road, and Jade is losing ground."

Omina pressed her hilt into the frost. Green light opened a narrow ring around the tablet without clearing the white from its center.

"This is collection ground, so anything crossing it enters under the creditor's terms."

Zunoder watched from the corridor in Ty's old face. He offered no argument and made no move to help. That restraint told Ty the road frightened him too.

Yun-Jin tightened the wrap around her side and lifted her bow.

"Choose quickly because fear looks unnatural when that face tries wearing it."

Ty set one sickle against the frozen screen. Red fire entered the white and opened a line no wider than the blade.

The cafeteria appeared beyond it in broken pieces. Waddell held the storage door. Kieran held Jade. The Reaper filled every shard of glass without setting one foot in the room.

Jade raised her good eye toward the opening.

She saw Ty before the Reaper turned to claim him.

"Keep the dead down, and make this road expensive enough for me to reach you."

Jade's white-stained hand closed around Kieran's wrist.

"You heard him, so help me charge interest."

Kieran drove both hands into the frozen floor. Gold fire ran under every table and reached the cold-storage wall. Waddell kicked the serving cart free as the ice released it, then shoved the door closed on thirteen quiet bodies.

The Reaper lifted its scythe inside the shattered monitor.

Ty forced his second sickle into the opening before the blade could fall. The road widened enough for one skeletal hand, and Jade reached for it across the cold.

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