To You, From This World to the Next
Summary: A blasé god of death roamed the earth for centuries, seeking for something that would alleviate his constant boredom. It was by chance that he laid his eyes upon him—that being that will turn his mundane life upside-down.
This foolish being who proclaimed himself as fearless was toying with him, that much he knew.
Yet, here he was, the feared god of the underworld, walking down the meadows with a mere mortal hunter who looked completely defenseless save for his strange ability to nullify the heart-wrenching effects his presence should have brought.
"Say, child," he started, and he blinked when said child snorted and openly glared at him.
No one in the underworld would even dare to glance his way, yet here was a foolish mortal being, staring down at him with the most menacing stare he had ever seen.
It piqued the god's fascination.
"I told you I am not a child. I'm already 19 summers old," he growled, and to prove his point, he flicked a finger at the god's face, "and I'm taller than you."
Eren heard the god huff proudly, and from the corner of his eye, he could tell he was somehow trying to stifle a smile.
"I'm more powerful than you."
"Yet your deadly fingers cannot touch me, or anything that I touch—into a deathly state. Besides, I can't call you powerful if you refuse to show your face to me."
A sound that greatly resembled a dry laugh passed through the masked god's lips, and Eren couldn't help but smile.
"You sure are persistent about that. Why do you want to see my face that badly?"
Turquoise eyes glanced at the black-clad god, and noticed that some of the wisps of black smoke were now surrounding his own person as they walked on the fields. Eren looked behind him to assess the damage that Levi caused, and he breathed a sigh of relief when all flowers remained blooming from where the god stepped on.
He didn't know what he would do if she found out that the sole flowering tree in the fields almost died because of the god of death decided to drop by in the human world.
"I just want to see the face of the person I am talking to, is that bad?"
A snide remark crawled to the tip of Levi's tongue, but upon seeing the genuine sincerity in the mortal's eyes, he paused in thought. "Letting you hear my voice is enough, is it not? Letting you see my exterior form is enough, is it not?" His approach was evasive, yes, but he tried all that he could to slyly push the hunter away. The fool didn't know what he was capable of—and the mortal might die if he stayed with him long enough, but—
"Hearing your voice is nice, too. Reminds me of a confection I ate a while back—cacao, I believe. Deep and bitter yet enticing to the palate. But really, I want to see your face. It intrigues me," and he jumped in front of the god and swayed playfully as he grinned, "and I want to see your face so I could imagine what you'll look like with that wreath on your head."
Stunned, Levi stopped in his tracks, and he reached out to the circlet of flowers that still sat atop of his head. He thought that the flowers died already. He yanked it at eye level, mindful of the petals that flew from his grasp, and looked at it in confusion. None of the leaves nor the stems nor the blossoms withered and died upon his touch.
He stared at the petals that stayed stuck on his talons, and little did he know that Eren studied him carefully with hardened turquoise eyes, as though searching for an emotion present in his masked features.
The masked god looked up, and by his statuesque form, Eren assumed the immortal was confused. Judging from his hitching breath and the peek of slackened jaw from beneath his mask, Eren took it as an initiative to touch the tips of the god's talons.
Levi, as the hunter expected, jolted and recoiled, and the latter merely offered him a friendly smile, and that raised hand remained, waiting for another reaction from the god.
"Don't," he snarled, "you'll die." Yet Eren paid no heed to his words, and he moved to hold the god's talons in his hand.
The immortal acted on instinct, and the black tendrils of smoke surrounding him coiled around the hunter's neck as tight as he could, to prevent him from touching his person altogether.
Yet, Eren stood still, smiling warmly at him even as black smoke engulfed and entwined around his neck—
"Don't worry, god of death. I won't die from your touch."
—and Levi stopped.
The swirls of smoke slackened their hold on the mortal, and it moved away from him. Eren, though, kept one curl of the black mist wrapped around his finger with a warm smile, and he gently kissed it with his lips—
—and Levi became wholly enamored of the enigmatic mortal.
In that moment, he knew, and he believed, that he must have him at all costs.
They talked about anything of everything, with Levi opening up subject by subject regarding the issue of immortality, and Eren lapped up everything that the god had told him with those wide eyes of his, and he craved to know more, following the god closely wherever he stepped, like a loyal canine to his master.
And it came the time when the sun was slowly setting in the horizon, and Eren was saddened by the fact that he had to leave the immortal to his own. Breathing in the fresh air of the meadow, he forced a wide smile when he turned to the immortal with open arms.
"You will come here tomorrow, too, yes? Tell me you will."
Levi stood still in front of the young hunter, unmoving at his words. The god had made plans beforehand that he would never return again to the world above—a liaison between a mortal and an immortal was commonly heard of between the gods themselves, yet Levi himself was not prepared to dive into such a complicated matter—
"I… Yes, I will."
—so why did he agree?
Days passed by, and the death god's visits to the human realm became more frequent, and it was noticed by his ever faithful guards and his only confidant.
The flower crown that the young hunter had placed on his head days before had withered away as soon as he went away from him, and Levi deduced that whenever Eren was with him, the effects of death around him were nullified, and when the hunter was away, the god's power to unintentionally destroy everything his skin would touch inevitably returned.
The wreath of beautiful woven flowers were now nothing but dead stems and brittle and brown foliage in his gentle grasp, yet the god kept it close with him whenever he roamed the underworld.
"Did you finally see something interesting in the world above, my King?" one of his guards, Eld, asked one day. The cloaked man was tasked of keeping the stray souls away from the throne room of the god today, and he saw to it that his orders were properly obeyed. He could never anger the god of the underworld, after all.
The masked god hummed in his throne, his attention focused on the seam that showed the state of the earth for today—in particular, he was looking at the field of flowers, as though looking for something, or—
"My King?" Eld asked once more, coming closer to the god who was clearly deep in thought.
Levi jolted at the sound of his title, and he turned to Eld, forcing to keep a level tone when he mumbled, "What?"
The cloaked man suddenly froze at the clipped voice, and he gulped. "My King," he started lowly, "did you, perhaps, finally found something of interest on earth?" And when the masked god tapped his talon on the bony armrests of his throne twice, Eld almost squeaked uncharacteristically, "B-because! M-my King has been spending more time on earth lately and—"
"And?"
Eld shivered at the voice, and his masculine features turned pale when a smoke-tipped talon was pointed at him.
"Your point is? Eld?"
Eld squeaked and bowed profusely, his whole frame a wreck of nerves, "I-it's just my King hasn't visited the souls lately for—"
"That's the Judges' job, not mine. Though Kitts is doing pretty stupid job for being a Judge," and Levi scratched his jaw, already bored at the turn of the conversation. "Anything else?"
Eld gasped and stood straight and saluted him, "Nothing else, my King!" And he fidgeted under the god's scrutiny despite not really seeing his face.
"There is something more you want to say," Levi drawled, tapping his talons on his knee as he did so.
Eld clenched his fists and bit his lip, clearly trying to find the words to say, and he looked at Levi in the eye—something that he never dared to do.
The god merely let out a single rope of black flames from his left hand.
"Th-the Fates saw you with a mortal!"
Eld clenched his eyes shut, and remained prostrated to the stoned ground, ready to die the moment he spouted his words.
Moments passed, and he heard no sound nor shuffle of the wisps of smoke that constantly surround the god.
Eld held in his breath and looked up, and saw that the masked god was back to watching the seam in front of him. He didn't know if that was a good or a bad sign.
Sensing the unspoken question, Levi sighed and rested his chin on his knuckles, resting his elbow on the bony armrests as he did so. "I knew it would come to that. They know everything about the past, present, and future, after all."
"B-but King! A mortal! A mortal! He is unfit to be with the king of the underworld—"
A pillar of black flames roared behind Eld, and he merely clenched his teeth as bit of the fires licked his cloak.
"Silence."
And the guard did as he was told.
"I know he is a mortal from the moment I spoke to him. And I enjoy his company far more than this dull excuse for a netherworld. I desire his ways of thinking—a breath of fresh air, he is. Now, leave me be before I replace you with Oluo."
The guard bit his lip, and he apologized and left.
All the while, Levi's attention was caught back to watching a certain mortal hunting in the fields.
And a smile—so unlike him—graced his seemingly stoic and masked façade.
Three wild boars were feasted upon by the people in the market, and Eren, being the proud hunter that he was, had received a great amount of money from the people buying meat—and Eren was quick to take it, and he used it for buying steel-tipped arrows and new knives and nets for hunting.
Today, he was hunting for a deer—as requested by one of his neighbors. He would use the money to further refine his hunting gear, so he would be a great hunter—
"And I will be noticed by the hunting goddess herself," he said excitedly to a silently observing Levi, who stood behind him with crossed arms. His traps were laid in perfect condition on the ground, waiting for the prey to take the bait. Hiding behind the bushes, he grinned at the immortal, "Because there is a competition next week on who will be the greatest hunter of the land—and whoever wins will be granted a wish by the goddess, Mikasa." He turned to Levi, who still had his mask on despite begging him numerous times to take it off, "I want to have wings, you see!"
Intrigued, the god's ears twitched on instinct, and he tilted his head. Swirls of black smoke wove around Eren's smiling form softly, "And why would you want that? Do you desire to be a god?"
Eren laughed and shook his head, giggling when a tendril of smoke touched his cheek. "I want to have wings so I could travel the world. I want to have the same set of swift wings that Sasha the messenger has."
The god hummed, impressed by the mortal's wish, "Are you sure that is the only thing that you want? Most mortals like you would wish for flowing riches and power and undying beauty… though I could say you don't really need the last one anymore since—"
Eren huffed his chest and crossed his arms like a petulant child, and Levi didn't know if the mortal had heard his last words. "Money can be taken away with just a snap of a finger—"
"But so can the wings you're so keen on getting. It could be taken away just like that."
Eren groaned and glared at him, and Levi thought that even with an angry face, the hunter still looked breathtaking.
"But I will try to escape if someone were to threaten me that way. I won't have to be chained to these lands anymore, and I will soar above the earth to search for things that will make me free."
Levi's eyes sparkled unbeknownst to the hunter, and a peek of his tongue could be seen, apparently trying to come up with a proper retort. And upon seeing the great determination in Eren's eyes, his pale lips hardened into a thin line, and his mind tried to juggle ways to make him his.
To drag him into the underworld to be his own.
Just as he was about to speak, the tell-tale shuffle of leaves were heard, and Eren's eyes shifted back to the nearby trees, his whole body stiff as he watched the deer approaching the net concealed by dead leaves.
The hunter counted in his head, biting his lip in excitement as the sound of swinging ropes and cries of the animal were heard.
Eren shouted in victory, and he jumped out of the bushes to inspect his work. Levi, on the other hand, calmly walked by, ignoring the leaves that decayed as soon as the hunter left his side.
"Did you see that, Levi? I can be the greatest hunter of the land!" And the joy was evident in those sea-green eyes as he took out ropes from his toga and hogtied the deer through the net, apologizing to it in the process.
"Aren't you supposed to kill that thing?" Levi asked, careful not to get too close to the whining animal lest it died because of his mere presence.
Eren blinked at him, and laughed as he waved his hand, "Oh, no I wouldn't do that! That's for the people down in the market to decide, not me. I only bring them in alive. I don't do the killing."
"So you've never killed an animal in your whole life as a hunter?" It sounded disbelieving to the god, as he knew that hunters would always kill their prey.
Eren hummed and looked thoughtful for a moment, pursing his lips before replying slowly, "I've killed hares and pheasants before for dinner, but I never really kill large wild animals. It's not like I do this for fun—that's just cruel."
Levi nodded solemnly, contemplating on what he should say, and his words came out low and unhurried. "So you don't really do the hunt and kill method?"
He shook his head, smiling almost sadly. "No," he mumbled, his lips scrunched up in musings, and when the deer tried to break free once more, he used another rope to tie it up. "I just can't stand it, seeing them get killed—heh. I am quite sure I look like a hypocrite to you now, huh. Saying such things when I am the one sending them to the slaughter."
"I never thought of you like that," the god replied just as quickly. "It never occurred to me that you are like that. Brash and impulsive, yes. Foolish, even. But a hypocrite, no."
Eren let out a forced laugh and scratched his nape sheepishly, trying to fight off the dust of pink that was surely staining his tanned cheeks. "I just need this as a means to get by and… oh! Do you want to go to the market with me? I can show you around and—"
"I can't deal with any more mortals. I'm already busy enough with you as it is," Levi quipped, and Eren thought it was his way of saying that the god was trying to avoid spreading unnecessary deaths. Yet the hunter shook the thought away.
"But I really want to show it to you…" It was a soft-spoken plea, quite unlike the hasty words that Eren just said earlier, and Levi himself didn't know what came over him when he carefully replied a mumbled affirmative upon seeing the youth's dejected face.
"Ah, you will accompany me? That's great!"
Such naïve words coming from the fiery hunter, and when he took the taloned hand in his, Eren laughed as he dragged the deer with his other hand with all his might.
Levi silently followed the teenager with no resistance at all, silently looking forward to what he would see.
Mingling with humans had never been his cup of tea, after all.
Eren sold the deer for a hefty price in the market, and as he was being paid by a kind woman, she noticed a black cat cradled upon his bosom.
"Oh, what a nice little feline you have there!" greeted the woman, leaning closer to inspect the cat, and said feline merely turned its head away, nudging its nose to Eren's chest, effectively hiding its head in the softness of his toga.
The young hunter smiled awkwardly at the woman, cautiously leaning the cat away from her. "He is a bit shy, you see. But he easily warms up to people he knows well," and he felt the feline raising its hackles, spitting and clawing into his skin. Eren tried to ignore the pain with a high-pitched laugh as he bid the woman farewell. "See you next week!" and with that, he ran away fast from the nearby people, some of them being inadvertently nudged by him in the process.
Eren heaved and darted his eyes back and forth quickly, making sure to avoid the people he knew as he turned to a corner, away from the merchants and other prying eyes.
He crouched behind a large vase made of red clay, looked around to see if the coast was clear, and when all was done, he peered inside his toga to see the black cat hissing and glaring at him in all its fluffy glory.
Eren bared his teeth at the little thing, ready to grab it by its neck and throw it away, but he couldn't. So he did the next best thing—he rubbed its chin with his forefinger.
And the feline closed its steel-gray eyes and purred in his hold, twitching and lowering its ears as it leaned its neck back—
"Now, now. Don't be so fussy, god of death—I can't handle that scratch on my chest if you keep on clawing at it."
As though he said the magic words, the feline—the god-turned-cat—opened its now slitted eyes once more, and the black wisps of smoke that have been surrounding Eren unknowingly became larger, engulfing the hunter's vision around him.
A low hiss could be heard, and Eren felt the little claws on his chest turn into something longer, and sharper—sharp enough to draw a bead of blood.
Hot breath fanned on his neck, and while he still couldn't see because of the amount of smoke around him, he was sure that the god—
"Next time, don't describe me like I'm an incapacitated being that's needed to be coddled."
—had finally returned to his real form.
The black mist slowly dissipated, and sea-green eyes squinted at the black-clad god leaning a bit too close on his chest and neck.
Eren felt his heart stop for what seemed an eternity.
The immortal, the god, was licking away the little wound he caused with his claws and talons, and he wordlessly dared him with steel-gray eyes.
Eren gulped, and felt the wind being knocked out of him as he locked eyes with the masked Levi inclining so intimately on his torso. Before, he didn't mind it at all that Levi accompanied him in the pretense that he had to carry a portable-sized, feline-shifting god of death in his hands, but now—
"Stop ogling at me, brat. You're going to catch flies in that mouth of yours."
—he was sure that those were Levi's hipbones and backside he was feeling on his palms.
Eren's mouth suddenly became dry as threads of black smoke curled teasingly around his arms, tickling his suddenly feverish skin to no end.
How did it end up like this?
In the realm of the underworld, three pairs of eyes watched intently at the scene unfolding before them. Shown in the seam was a pale-faced and wide-eyed male adolescent, mute and unmoving at the mysterious, black smoke-clad being draped so personally on top of him.
A black-hooded, blond man chuckled at the sight he was seeing through the seam, "Looks like this is about to get interesting, eh, fellows?"
A black-hooded blonde and blue-eyed woman merely exhaled, as though she had seen the event developing through the seam so many times. "As long as they don't cause massive deaths on earth, then all is fine with me. I don't want them to be harbingers of massacres. Just think of the pains I have to go through to spin more threads only for you to cut it."
Another hooded man laughed, albeit more sincerely than the other male. Scratching his short, ebony locks, he placed a comforting hand on the temperamental female. "Let's just see where this will all lead to, all right? Maybe this will end for the better. And if it doesn't, well, I can always cut their threads for you."
Hange, the ferrywoman setting her ships of souls from the river Styx, whistled a chipper tune as she rowed towards the gates of the underworld. Upon arriving there, she stretched her arms overhead, almost whining as she heard her bones crack. She turned towards the gray and washed out spirits with a huge grin and raised her scythe in the air.
"All right, new recruits! Time to face the gods of the netherworld! To your right is the Elysium fields—lucky you if you get there. On your left is where all of you will be judged by the stuck-up Judges." She placed her hands on her hips, her smile still wide as she pointed her scythe to the place where the Judges reside, "In there, you'll see the final stuck-up Judge I'm talking about. He'll be the one who'll see where y'all be heading. The name's Kitts. Don't let his squeaking, scratchy voice fool ya—he's just a scatterbrained fool. Or so my friend said."
Hange beamed at the sullen faces of the moaning spirits, and upon realizing that they have nothing to say at all, she clapped her hands energetically with a loud cheer. "Off to see the god who rules this place! And if it seems that I'm rushing explaining and not explaining certain things here… it's because I really am rushing trying to explain things not worth explaining. Did that make you confused? Haha—fine, I'll stop." And she clamped her mouth shut and turned around, rowing towards the throne room of the god of death, purposefully ignoring the wretched cries of some of the souls clawing at her oar and ferry.
"Ah! Oluo! Where's the king?" she cheerfully asked as she came up to the throne room of the king of the underworld. Seeing all four of the guards—the Cerberus—standing watch in front of the gates was a daily occurrence. It meant that either the king was inside his throne room sulking in front of the seam, or he had ventured another trip to the world above.
"My King iss out today. Ssays he doessn't know when he'll be back," Oluo hissed, visibly relaxing at the sight of the king's close friend. He and the other guards immediately lowered the spears in their hands, and they welcomed the gondolier with a quick salute.
"Eeh," Hange frowned, scratching her auburn hair as she stared at the door handles made out of bones and swirling ebony smoke, "but I want him to greet the new recruits for today… These guys look like they've seen death in the face."
Petra, the sole female guard, bowed in apology, stifling her laughter from what the ferrywoman said. "I'm sorry, Leader, but we really don't know when the king will be back. Perhaps I could just relay it to him that there are new ones today once he returns?" It was a futile attempt at its best, but Petra tried all she could to convince the other female that Levi was really away.
Hange Zoë had always been insistent in all things concerning who she deemed to be her friends.
In the end, the ferrywoman gave up, whining and complaining to the guards that Levi should "come home more often so I could show him my new collection of trifocals."
The four guards promised the strange woman that they would relay her message to the king, and with that, she left, cackling something about half-dead ghosts.
"I wonder what the king sees in her. I mean, lumping her with our Highness just seems too strange, don't you think?" Gunther, a dark-skinned man with a mohawk, idly observed the still cackling woman from a distance. "I've been in charge of keeping the residents in hell in check, but I really just can't make any sense out of her."
Oluo harrumphed and crossed his arms, looking snidely at Gunther with a smirk, "You don't know how the king'ss mind workss at all, do you? He sseess the potential in everyone he assignss in this place, and I'm ssure he chose her for a role that'ss ssuitable only for her—ah!"
Petra merely raised an eyebrow at the now kneeling and cursing man, "If only you'd stop biting your tongue so much… ah. My King!"
And all four of them looked at their right, and they quickly saluted the slowly approaching god.
"Leader Zoë has just left, My King!" announced Petra with a stern face, "she told us the newly-dead souls have arrived!"
"I'll see them later," Levi, whose face still remained masked, merely hummed and nodded slightly, and he turned to Oluo, who was still saluting him with a bloody mouth.
"Wipe off the blood from your face, Oluo. You're embarrassing me."
And the snake-tongued man quickly excused himself and obeyed his order, ignoring the hushed snickers from Eld and Petra.
Levi turned to the doors, and Gunther, who was near it, opened the throne room with a bow, not before noticing something odd perched on top of the god's head.
"My King," he began, eyes blinking at the strange string of stems sitting on the king's horns, "what is that on your head, if I may ask?"
Levi paused in his steps and tilted his head.
Petra noticed it, too, and she observed the ring of thin stems peculiarly placed on his head. "Are those stems from flowers perhaps, my King?"
The god suddenly stiffened, and he patted his head and took the peculiar adornment in question, huffing and stifling a smile as he regarded the dead leaves and circlet of stems with something akin to contentment. Toying with some of the brittle sprigs and malleable petals, he couldn't help but remember the one who made it for him.
A certain pair of aquamarine eyes flashed in his mind's eye, and he suddenly felt the urge to hold the decayed flowers dear.
"They used to be flowers, yes," Levi replied lowly, and it didn't escape Petra's keen sense of observation that something inexplicable happened to their precious king. Something inexplicable and, dare she think—positive.
Eld silently glanced at a poker-faced Gunther, and Oluo looked at a furrow-browed Petra.
They all seemed to want to ask a single question out loud, but they lack the courage to do so, and Levi, unaware of what his guards were thinking, merely clutched the circlet of stems and dismissed them with a solemn nod. He went inside the throne room, and the doors were shut closed.
The four guards looked at each other knowingly, and they all nodded to themselves.
Seventy-five withered coronets of thin stems and dead flowers in all. Those were the number of days he had been spending with the mortal hunter.
Levi rested on his velvety chaise longue made of raven's feathers and ivory, studying the way the stalks were coiled and intertwined around each other. Careful not to undo a single stem, he touched the fragile thing with only the tips of his talons, inspecting it at a reasonable distance from his eyes, and his mind would reel back to the times when he would be given a flower wreath.
Every day, since the day that they met, Eren would give him a flower wreath, to remember him by, was what the hunter reasoned—and it really did the trick. The mortal knew the flowers would die the moment he left the god's side, yet that didn't stop him from giving him a wreath of fresh blooms a day, totaling to the number that Levi had now.
The god let out a chuckle, and rested one of the withered circlets on top of his head, twitching his ears every now and then, as the edges of the wilted stalks tickled him.
It was nighttime in the human realm, and it meant that the young hunter was fast asleep in his house near the meadows.
He recalled the day when he met the brash male—all smiles and laughs and occasional frowns and glares, yet Levi intrigued him, captivated him, even.
And he remembered, on the day of the competition that Eren was so determined to win on, the hunter had tried all his best to capture the evasive stag needed to hunt. 'Whoever could catch it would be granted a wish by the hunting goddess', after all.
Yet Eren didn't win. He had been defeated by another mortal by the name of Jean—a steed-faced fellow, as Eren described. Since then, Eren became even more hotheaded than ever.
Although, whenever it came to showing Levi around the meadows and the forests, he seemed to emit a strange level of calm and contentment, oftentimes trying to show the god a thing or two that never grew in the depths of the netherworld.
Levi closed his eyes, Eren's recent words ringing in his ears—words of wanting to be free from the lands that bound him.
And through it all, the words that Pixis said to him during his last visit echoed loud in his memory.
"Should I suggest someone who doesn't know of your reputation to steal the life of anything that you pass by?"
All this time, Pixis knew. He knew that he would meet Eren—that sly geezer—yet something seemed amiss.
The hunter, even before they met, knew of Levi's reputation to bring death all around him, nevertheless, he still chose to stay close to him.
The immortal wondered why.
Steely eyes glanced at the seam, and it showed a darkened room, wherein a certain impulsive hunter was resting on a bed of linen sheets and feather-down pillows, frowning the world away in his slumber, and the god couldn't help but twitch the slightest hint of a smile.
His eyes widened, however, when he saw Eren suddenly woke up, completely startled by something, and observed everything around him, looking much shocked to something that the god didn't know.
And Levi watched for a sign of anything that screamed danger lurking nearby.
He saw Eren jolting to a sound that Levi hadn't heard, and the hunter gritted his teeth and bolted up the bed, and he reached under his pillow to take out a rather large knife as the door to his room opened.
Levi's fanged teeth gnashed at what he saw next.
Black flames erupted from his form, and it engulfed the dark room, setting everything ablaze.
The cloaked, black-haired man gulped as he looked through the seam. Standing smiling beside him was the blond man, who had his arm draped on his shoulder. The sole woman of the Fates stood idly by, watching the unfurling scene with disinterested blue eyes.
"I told you two it will be interesting. Heh. Do it, Bertolt," the blond jeered, grinning at the sight of the mortal taking a stance to fight for the unknown being that was to barge in his room.
Bertolt, the reaper of the thread of life, stood still as he watched through the seam hopelessly.
Clenching his eyes shut, he reached for the shears meant for cutting lives—
—and he snipped the mortal's thread.
From a distance, the Fates swore they heard a piercing cry.
Hah. Cliffhanger for everyone—because I can. :3