Chapter 219: Back to the present
The air cracked, then shattered, a thunderous explosion splitting the midnight silence.
The matte-black car where Lila and Tila had sat moments ago detonated like a bomb, its frame splintering into countless shards of black shadow that sliced through the moonlight like razors, tearing into the pavement.
The blast hurled the twins towards opposite sides, their bodies twisting mid-air, landing in low, predatory crouches, already moving.
Their skin shimmered black, limbs dissolving and reforming as patches of living shadow, their forms fluid, lethal, their black gowns rippling like liquid night, their black eyes glinting with defiance.
Across the wreckage, the Reaper stood unmoved, a void against the flickering streetlights, her cloak billowing in the still air.
Her red eyes burned like twin coals, her grin—wide, unhinged, ravenous—baring a hunger that froze the blood.
Midnight had struck, the hour of monsters, of the lost, of death’s own children, and the Reaper was their harbinger, her presence a suffocating promise of annihilation.
This was the time when the shadows were at their strongest, in this ungodly hour.
Tila struck first, her body fracturing into tendrils of black, streaking across the pavement like a swarm of blades.
She attacked from three angles simultaneously—a slashing tendril at the Reaper’s knees, a whip-like strike at her ribs, and a phantom claw arcing from behind, each move a blur of shadow and fury, her black eyes locked on her target, her lean frame coiled with rage.
But the Reaper vanished, not teleported but dissolved, her form blinking out of existence, leaving only a curl of smoke in her wake.