Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 210: GET THE DOCTOR_Part 2

"Rohan," she called, looking at his face, "about Astral, why did he break the rules to give you back your soul instead of crossing the River?" She had always been curious about this question since Kuhn told her.

Rohan was silent for a moment before he began to speak.

"I started to see Astral a few weeks before the day my heart was removed. I think it was because I was getting closer to my death, that’s why I was able to see the reaper. At first, I pretended not to see it creeping into my room, until one day I was so desperate to talk to someone," his eyes held a distant look as he told her about the reaper he had befriended many years ago.

The boy, who feasted on rodents that lived with him in the lonely room—since he wasn’t allowed to feed properly as a form of punishment for something he had done—put the half-eaten rat away as he felt the presence of the cloaked figure in his room again.

The cloaked creature did not stay there always; it came and went, and the boy could no longer ignore its presence, not this time, when he hadn’t spoken to a soul in months or seen anyone.

Sighing and wiping his mouth against his sleeve, he turned to face the creature. He did not say anything and stared into the jet-black eyes of the reaper.

"You can see me," came the raspy voice of the creature of the dead. It was more of a statement than a question.

The boy gave a curt nod. "I’ve been able to see you for a week now. What are you, and why do you keep coming back to my room to watch me? It’s getting unsettling," the boy remarked with his head tilted back as he studied the creature.

"I’m the one whom man fears the most," said the reaper. "I’m the one you call... Death."

The boy’s eyes moved up and down the length of the tall reaper, and then the side of his lips pulled up. "I am not scared of you. I’m not afraid of death."

"Why?" the reaper asked.

"Because I’ve lived in hell for years. Although I’m not afraid of you, I’m not ready to die. I haven’t lived yet. I still want to go around like everyone does," the boy said to the reaper. "Are you here to kill me?"

"Not yet. Your sand hasn’t finished running out."

"What do you mean?" Rohan asked, unable to understand what the creature of the dead meant by his sand.

"Life is an hourglass, boy. It inevitably runs out. And everyone’s amount of sand is different. Yours..." He pointed his scythe to the boy, "is almost out, and I am here to wait until it’s gone."

"You’re a demon that takes souls then?" Rohan asked with no fear in his voice, but instead fascination at the fact that he could see death with his eyes and could talk to it.

"You may think of it that way."

"When does my sand run out then?" Rohan questioned with a collected voice that made the reaper stare at him like he couldn’t believe it. No one stayed calm in the face of death. People always go crazy when they got a glimpse of death. Many did not want to leave this world behind and move into the next life, and the reaper had seen many reactions from people who faced death—but he hadn’t seen one this calm.

Even those who prayed and longed to die also feared it. But this one did not hold that kind of fear in his heart.

"Death does not give its victims the date of their death. It hits you when you least expect it. You shall have to live the rest of your days knowing you don’t have much time left. And until then, I won’t be far away from you to take you."

Rohan looked around the room he was in—filled with cobwebs and dust. He would be losing nothing if he died, and then he sighed. "Then at least if you will be here, you can be my company before the day. You must be really lonely to keep standing without talking and watching me."

"Death does not bond with their victims. I am not here to make friends, but to keep an eye."

Rohan smiled bitterly. "Well, I will take you as my friend and talk to you. If you don’t want to listen, you can go back and come again the day you’re meant to take me away." The boy eyed the reaper. "I can sense loneliness when I see it. You are as lonely as I am. It can get truly hard, you know, living, yet not feeling it. Hearing the laughter of others beyond these walls and being unable to understand how they could laugh and truly feel it."

The reaper did not leave. It stood right where it was and silently listened to every word of the boy as he spoke about various topics—about what he would like to do if he had the chance to live long, and how he wanted to please his parents and show them that he wasn’t a devil.

Despite the reaper’s reluctance to be friends, he stayed in that room with the boy every day, rather than go and come—which, in the process, made him neglect his other duties of taking back other souls before the boy’s time ran out.

It was something that had never happened in the history of reapers. No reaper had ever bonded with his victim like Astral had with the boy.

Belle, who was listening to Rohan, saw as he smiled bitterly at the thought of his lost friend who happened to be Death.

"From what I heard, it wasn’t the first time Astral had broken the rules and changed things in time. He had interfered in the death of a few. I was the last one he interfered with that made the elders decide to punish him by wiping him off completely.

Astral knew how much I treasured my heart, and when I was killed by it being taken out, he decided to give it back to me and make me live—which, in the process, caused the death of those whose time was not supposed to run out. If I had died that day, I wouldn’t have killed the king and queen and all those who spat on me when I grieved for my heart. That caused a change in many people’s destiny and time itself."

And to be frankly honest, Rohan thought to himself, he still held not an ounce of regret for all the people he killed because they all deserved it—and worse, if he could still turn back time, he would do it all over again. The only thing he regretted was losing a friend.

"What happened to the reaper after what he did?" Belle asked curiously.

"I don’t know. Nobody knows. He suddenly disappeared after giving me his pet. All I knew was that he told me we would meet again. I never saw him again, and neither does Kuhn know. But sometimes, I believe Kuhn is hiding something from me about Astral and his whereabouts."

Many times Rohan had questioned Kuhn, but the creature would either ignore him or say things like, "I shall not interfere in things that will cause a change in time and what is meant to be. I have promised."

It had reached the point where Rohan had let Kuhn be and gave up on ever finding out what happened to the reaper who had saved his life at a time like that. And to repay the debt, he had made sure to take care of Kuhn and gave him everything—from gardening apples to giving him the chance to feed on the last moments of a dying soul.

But now that it came to his wife, Rohan knew he had to get Kuhn to speak to him about Astral.

Could it be that his wife was part of those souls the reaper had refused to cross through the river? But then, that was impossible, as Astral had disappeared before she was born.

What was his wife’s role in this, and how could she be dead and alive at the same time? The thought was twisting his head, as he had no answers to any of them. And the fact that he could only get to see Kuhn when he went to Nightbrook wasn’t helping. frёeweɓηovel_coɱ

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