From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

Ty's fingers closed around Jade's wrist, and the road gained weight.

The frozen tablet pulled against Omina's table. On Earth, Jade slid across the cafeteria tile until Kieran locked an arm around her waist. The distance between both rooms narrowed without bringing either room closer.

Jade felt Ty's thumb bone against her pulse.

Four months on Earth had become years for him. She had held another shape of him in the white space, seen his skeleton in the gym, and spent too many nights arguing with borrowed versions of his voice. His hand still settled around hers the way it had when they crossed icy parking lots together.

The Reaper swung its scythe through the shattered monitor.

Ty caught the blade between both sickles. White fire ran down one arm and opened small cracks through his wrist. Jade tightened her grip before the impact could tear them apart.

"Complain about my eye after you get the rest of yourself through."

"I planned a better greeting, but the scythe changed my priorities."

Jade laughed once and hated how close it came to crying. The Reaper pushed harder. Ty's elbows bent toward the tablet while frost climbed his sickles.

JJ seized the back of his belt and planted both boots against the table.

"I know this looks romantic from your side, but help would be useful."

Yun-Jin drove an arrow through the table beside the tablet. Violet thread wrapped the frozen frame and stopped it from dragging Ty into the corridor.

"Your romance is damaging furniture that still belongs to Omina's proceeding."

Omina kept one hand over Creel's denial and used the other to seal the open records. The direct witness lane stayed closed beneath her palm. Zunoder stepped out of the corridor when the Reaper's white fire touched Ty's old body.

He reached toward the opening with Ty's old hand extended.

Omina's hilt struck his chest and drew a green bar between him and Ty.

"That road named its opponent, and your borrowed face receives no invitation."

Zunoder stopped against the bar. The white fire along his skin leaned toward Ty's trapped hand and then recoiled.

"The collector may decide this body answers the match more cleanly."

"Then you can make that argument after you stop hiding behind my face."

Ty turned one sickle. The Reaper's blade slipped aside and cut through the tablet frame. A white gap opened from the tabletop to the floor.

Behind Jade's ruined sight waited the old white place where the Reaper had found her soul outside her body. Her left eye kept the cafeteria. Her right offered no cots, children, or covered dead waiting behind a door.

Only the people foolish enough to enter the white room needed her protection.

"You wanted your match, so take it where no child sleeps."

The Reaper's reflection lowered its skull toward her.

"The stake may choose the ground, while the winner chooses what leaves it."

The cafeteria floor split open beneath Jade's knees and boots.

Kieran hauled her backward. Gold fire tore two grooves through the tile but found nothing solid beneath the white gap. Waddell let go of the storage cart long enough to catch Kieran's shoulder.

"The yard count remains eighty-seven, and the dead room remains quiet."

"Then keep both numbers true after this floor takes us."

Waddell looked at the gold fire wrapped around Jade's waist. He understood what Kieran intended before Jade did.

"You can anchor her from this side without following her into that place."

"I can anchor her until the thing cutting the rope decides my side is weaker."

Kieran wound the gold line around her forearm and stepped closer to Jade.

"She needs someone beside her who can burn the hand holding the rope."

Waddell wanted to order her back. The command reached his face and stayed there. He checked the cold-storage door, the empty kitchen, and the frost breaking apart where Kieran had sealed the threshold.

"Bring both of them back, and I will keep this building out of your way."

He released Kieran's shoulder and dragged the serving cart against the body-room door again.

The white gap took Jade to the hips.

JJ tried to follow Ty into the opening. White fire struck her boot and threw her against Omina before her second step landed. Omina caught her by the collar while Yun-Jin pulled the violet thread free from the table.

"Do not mistake a closed door for me agreeing to stay behind."

Ty looped Yun-Jin's thread around the wrist that remained outside.

"Keep Zunoder out of my life until I return with another problem."

Yun-Jin tightened the knot with her teeth and drew her bow across it. A violet mark sank into Ty's wrist beside the spreading white cracks.

"This mark will remember which direction steals you when we cannot follow."

Ty pulled from the other side. The gap peeled her from the cafeteria without bending her body. Her hand reached his forearm, followed by one shoulder and the side of her face.

The white gap gave her a steady view of him without water, a borrowed voice, or a failing breach deciding when to take him away.

Red fire moved through his ribs. One rib sat crooked where JJ had thrown it back. Old scratches crossed his skull, and fresh white cracks spread over the hand holding her.

"You lost an eye while I was still looking for a road home."

"You lost all your skin and still made this conversation about me."

His free arm came around her shoulders. Jade struck his ribs with her forehead because the road gave her no room for a cleaner embrace. Bone pressed against her cheek. The contact hurt and stayed real.

Her fingers moved over the back of his skull and found repairs she had never seen. Ty held her tighter when her hand reached the deepest crack.

"I had better speeches ready while I thought you were dead again."

Ty's ribs shifted around a laugh that never found lungs.

"Keep the longest speech because I owe you enough time to hear it."

Jade pulled back until her good eye could hold his whole face.

"You owe me the ending more than you owe me any speech."

The white room pulled at the rest of her.

Kieran came through with both hands wrapped around Jade's burning tether.

Gold fire crossed first, still wound around Jade's waist. Kieran hit the white floor on one knee and kept both hands locked around the line. Waddell vanished behind the closing gap, standing beside the braced door with his rifle raised.

Ty looked from Kieran to the fire cinched around Jade.

"You must be the woman who keeps refusing her terrible orders."

"You must be the fiance who makes those orders necessary."

Jade pushed away from Ty far enough to stand between them.

"Save the introductions until the skeleton with the larger scythe commits to murder."

The violet mark around Ty's wrist stretched toward the closing gap. JJ held the far end with both hands until white fire cut through it. The severed thread stayed embedded in Ty, its loose end pointing back toward the vanished proceeding.

Kieran tugged the tether and felt it hold. Her second hand formed a short blade from the remaining fire, giving the three of them one route home and one weapon that had survived the crossing.

The Reaper stepped out of the white distance.

Its robe burned without moving. The scythe blade carried a dark edge that erased the floor wherever its shadow crossed. Jade recognized the missing piece of skull above its right eye. The hollow matched the thing it had pushed through her chest during the first ritual.

The white blood on her face lifted toward that hollow.

Ty caught it on one sickle and burned it red before it reached the Reaper.

"Her soul was never part of a fair wager, so collect your fight from me."

The Reaper raised its scythe and aimed the point between Ty's ribs.

"One opponent arrived wearing several deaths, two bodies, and a stolen crown."

White lines searched Ty from skull to feet. One followed his soul. Another traced the old body behind Zunoder. A third stopped at Bone Half. More reached for the restricted Skeleton King title, the creature inside him, and the human body Erebos had prepared on the later planet.

The scythe shifted in the Reaper's hands when Jade found the error. The wager named Ty Hockenson, while every road touching him supplied a different answer.

"You came all this way for a match and never checked how many of him survived."

The Reaper cut downward with both hands on its scythe.

Its blade passed through the first white line and struck six others beneath it. The floor broke under Ty, Jade, and Kieran. Openings spread through the collection room, each holding a different sky.

Black water fell through the nearest opening. Green fire hung above a dead city in the next. Through another, the edge of a flute split Earth's moon. The farthest showed a throne surrounded by twelve empty chairs.

Kieran pulled the tether tight around all three of them.

The white floor gave way before the Reaper could choose which Ty it meant to kill.

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