The Wish Bearer
I’ve ended enough lives to stop counting. Faces blur. Names disappear before they’re even spoken. I don’t need to remember. I just finish the work.
Every kill gives me something — not remorse, never that — something more like contact with the raw core of existence. A flash of silence, a moment where nothing lies. But it fades, fast. So I chase it again. And again.
This job came wrapped in a message:
Quick. Painless. No trace.
Clean. Sterile. Uninteresting. But well-paid.
I found the target in a modest apartment. Empty walls, clean floor, curtains drawn. No distractions. Just a man sitting cross-legged on the hardwood, like he’d been expecting me.
He didn’t look surprised. Didn’t beg. He just looked straight at me — steady, almost calm. Eyes hollow, but clear. Like he’d been waiting for this exact moment.
I stepped inside without a word. Closed the door.
His hands were laid out on his knees, palms up, welcoming.
I reached into my coat and pulled out the locket.
An old thing — forged and redesigned long before I ever used it. It kills without sound or mess. A gift from another life. My cleaner.
I thumbed it open.
The hum began low, almost beneath hearing.
A soft vibration. Familiar. Controlled.
Then it came.
A slender ribbon of flame spilled out, golden and slow — alive. It didn’t strike. It drifted, winding through the air toward him like it knew where it was going.
And then it did something strange.
It split — delicately — and reached for both of his hands, touching his open palms at the same time.
It held them.
I don’t mean that poetically. The fire held his hands — the way one might greet an old friend or a dying loved one. Not to burn. Not to seize. Just to be there.
I felt something tighten in my chest. Brief. Foreign. I ignored it.
The flame began its climb — up his arms, shoulders, chest.
It moved like a robe being wrapped around him.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t resist.
His eyes stayed on the flame, not on me. He wasn’t afraid.
He was being released.
The fire kissed his throat, his cheeks, his eyes.
And just before it reached the top of his head — he smiled.
Barely.
But I saw it.
A tiny curve at the edge of his mouth. A soft exhale.
Like he was finally getting what he’d waited for.
And in that moment, a thought passed through me.
He saw me as a kindness.
He looked at death, at me, and felt grateful.
The last ember vanished. The room was empty.
I stood there.
Not triumphant. Not cleansed.
Not pity. Not grief.
A sharp taste at the back of my throat.
Disgust.
Not for him.
For the fact that I’d been mistaken for mercy.
I closed the locket. Slipped it back into its place.
There was another name waiting.
And I don’t break schedule.