Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 95: The other world_Part 3

"Fresh soul... Eat to live." The bony creature that had once been a human rasped as it stared at the struggling Belle while it pulled its own bony body out of the ground.

Many had lived in misery in the land of the dead and had no way of living again or going back to the life they had once known. Some remained dormant in the grounds where their body had been buried rather than wandered in a world that was a mirror of what the real world was.

The land of the dead was a place for many miserable souls who believed they had been denied life in the real world and would take any chance to return to it, though they had never gotten that opportunity.

But then not once had the scent of a soul that lives awakened them, because a living soul had never been able to venture into this land. Now the scent of it spread and every dead creature was out to get the soul to eat it and be able to live in the world they had once lived before.

It wasn’t only the dead souls who could smell her, her scent went beyond the realms where the reaper who escorted the dead souls into a mirror of their world were. One in particular, who was currently escorting the soul of a boy across the vast ocean that separated the living from the dead, sniffed the air. His red eyes, hidden beneath his hood, narrowed.

"Unusual scent," he muttered in his language, while the soul of the boy in his floating boat briefly looked up at him. The boy, looking around the vast ocean covered in thick mist, had terrified eyes. He had just died of fever and was being taken to the mirror of his house in the land of the dead.

"I want to go back home," the boy muttered. But if the sniffing grim reaper heard him, he ignored the soul and tried to determine where the scent was coming from. Souls were always in denial at first, until they realized this was home and the life they had once known was no longer theirs.

The reaper, with his hooded cloak and scythe clutched in his hand, made a sound that was transmitted to another reaper to go and investigate what was disturbing the world. It had never before been this chaotic, as the dead souls typically remained silent and only moved around without purpose—until now.

Soon another reaper, who was known among them as Reaper Selric, the watcher of the land of the dead, was sent out to check upon the chaos, and the reaper moved with swift fast movement. It soon came to where the burnt flesh woman who was recently brought to the world was limply running in the direction of where the others were running to, but she wasn’t fast enough and was left behind.

"I will take the bitch’s soul and eat it to live again!"

A living soul. The reaper thought as it sniffed the air and looked in the direction. The scent was awfully familiar that it began to walk to the direction with its cloak dragging behind it.

Belle, on the other hand, was whimpering in fear as the bony hand that clutched her ankle had pulled itself out of the ground and had opened its mouth to a degree she had never imagined was possible for anyone’s mouth to open, ready to swallow her, but right at that moment, the bony creature was swiftly knocked away from her, causing her to scream as she had not expected it.

Trembling and terrified to a point she had never been before, she looked up to see a familiar cloaked figure standing in front of her with its wooden hand fisted and stretched out in the direction it had knocked the bony creature away.

Belle knew she shouldn’t feel relieved but then she felt herself letting out the breath she did not know she was holding at the sight of someone familiar. She looked up at the cloaked figure who was staring down at her through its hooded head.

"Reaper Selric... coming to get you. You need run. Now!" came its hoarse words that was another language but to her utter disbelief she understood it perfectly like it had spoken in the language she knew.

"Reaper? You mean a grim reaper?" she questioned with widened eyes as she stared at the cloaked figure who nodded its head.

"You be unable to go back if don’t leave now. We need run!"

Before Belle could stand up the cloaked figure had reached its hand out and grabbed her wrist and began to run in the direction of the gate. It was moving like wind that Belle was being dragged behind it, limping slightly as her ankle had been injured by the bony creature.

"Where are you taking me?" Belle asked as she tried to match its speed as it was dragging her away from the castle. She did not know why she trusted that this cloaked figure wasn’t here to harm her like the others who had been chasing her and kept following it.

"Away from all reapers. You need wake up now. Urgently or you will be stuck and punished by reapers for rules breaking."

"I am in a dream, right?" she asked, already breathless from running and being dragged like a child. She’d heard about grim reapers and had always thought of it as myth, but here she was in a land said to be the land of the dead and being dragged by a creature she did not know because the reapers were after her. It must be a joke of a dream!

"No dream. But need to wake up," said the figure as it came to a stop on a path that stretched out endlessly into darkness, with thick rising mists that covered up to her thighs. The thought of walking into such darkness sent a cold shiver down her spine. She looked away from the path and glanced at the faceless figure, asking, "How can I wake up when you said it’s not a dream?"

"Watcher Reaper Selric, getting closer. Do something to wake up now!" came its urgent voice but not telling her what to actually do to wake up. It seemed to be looking around for the reaper it had said she should run from. Why was a reaper after her? And how was she in the land of the dead when she was very much alive?!

Many questions popped into her head, and she wanted nothing more than to get answers to them. But the most important thing at that moment was to wake up from this. She could sense the air of urgency around the cloaked figure that had helped her, and it was baffling how it wasn’t telling her what to do. Instead, it just stood there, looking around.

"How can I_"

"Sweetheart?"

Belle froze as she heard the familiar husky voice of her husband call out to her. She looked around anxiously, hoping to see him walk out from the darkness but there was no sign of him, but then his voice came again.

"Isa? Can you hear me?"

"Yes, I can. Where are you? Rohan?!" she called panickedly as she frantically looked in every direction, but he wasn’t in sight. Her eyes began to burn with tears, and her body trembled in real fear this time. "How can I wake up? What is going on?" she asked the figure, who wasn’t paying attention to her anymore and was instead looking ahead, behind her, as if something was coming.

Belle spun around and stepped back instinctively when she saw a figure in a cloak similar to the one her savior wore, only this figure was much taller and larger than him, with a scythe in its hand. Bright red eyes glowed from within the hood. She felt her bones and blood turn cold at the sight of it.

Danger! Her gut instinct screamed at her, and she found herself backing away further as it began to walk toward them, staring at the cloaked figure who had helped her, standing beside her.

"Kuhn. You have grown and dare to come. And it has..." the reaper’s voice trailed off as its eyes came to settle on Belle. "You!"

"You need to wake up now!" Kuhn said urgently as it came to stand in front of her as if to block her from the reaper’s view and to protect her from the danger she sensed.

"You have come back, Kuhn. I shall take the two of you to the elder reapers for judgment," remarked the reaper gravelly as it continued to approach them, and the closer it got the more Belle sensed the overwhelming grip of danger and fear. She knew she needed to wake up like Kuhn had said but she did not know how, and as she was panickingly looking around her, her eyes fell on a stone with a sharp edge.

Without thinking, she ran to it and grabbed it. Mustering the courage, she used the sharp edge to cut her wrist open. The pain shot through her entire body and made her moan in pain. From an intense pain, she felt herself blanking out, before she could fall unconscious she caught sight of the reaper and the figure facing each other like they were about to fight. She found herself worrying for Kuhn before she blanked out.

She gasped awake on the bed.