Lahat ng Kabanata ng Claimed by Death : Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

Nora’s Point of View The first time I changed someone’s death, it felt like a bad tarot joke. Rain tapped against the café windows in a tired, half-hearted rhythm. Streetlights blurred into soft halos. The Friday crowd had thinned to a few lingering students and a couple arguing softly in the back. I sat in my usual corner booth, my tarot deck resting between my palms. The cards were old. Worn. Familiar in a way nothing else in my life had ever been. I’d owned them since I was sixteen, one of the only things that didn’t make me feel like an accident. Tonight, though, they felt heavy. “You’re Nora, right? The tarot girl?” I looked up. Mid-thirties. Office clothes. Loosened tie. Expensive watch. Eyes red from exhaustion. He radiated the kind of panic a person only has after running out of answers. “That’s me,” I said. “Here for a reading, or to tell me I’m summoning demons?” He gave a weak laugh and slid into the seat across from me. “Reading. My coworker said you’re cr

Nora’s Point of View Sleep claimed me only after exhaustion dragged me under. My body felt too heavy to hold my thoughts, but my mind refused to settle. One moment I stared at my ceiling, tracing the familiar cracks in the paint. The next, I was somewhere that wanted to look like my bedroom. But wasn’t. The shift was subtle at first. The air felt thicker, like it had weight. Then the details sharpened into wrongness. The walls leaned at angles that distorted the room, subtly bending toward me as if listening. The moonlight glowing through the window carried a blue so unnatural it hummed against my skin. My nightstand lamp flickered weakly even though I hadn’t touched the switch. I knew immediately. This was a dream, but not one born from my own mind. A chill slid across my skin, thin as ice water. Someone stood in the room with me. I pushed myself upright slowly, bracing my hands against the mattress. My breath fogged in the air as though winter lived inside the walls. In

Nora’s Point of View I woke with my heart pounding. Not from a nightmare or fear yanking me upright, but from the strange heaviness that followed me out of sleep like a second shadow. The dream replayed behind my eyes. The room that wasn’t my room. The blue moonlight. The cloaked figure who shouldn’t exist. That impossible voice speaking my name. I tried to tell myself it was nothing. Stress. Exhaustion. Too much caffeine. The kind of dream people had when their life suddenly felt off-balance. But the Death card on my pillow said otherwise. I didn’t touch it at first. I pushed myself upright, rubbing both hands over my face, trying to smooth the trembling out of my breath. My fingers were cold. My whole body was cold. “Get a grip,” I whispered. My voice felt small in the quiet room. I reached for the card, bracing for it to feel warm or icy or somehow wrong. But it felt normal. Ordinary. As if it had not changed in my hands the night before. As if it had not shown my

His Point of View I did not intend to return to her that night. Nora slept quietly, curled beneath her blanket, one hand wrapped around the strap of her bag where she kept her tarot deck. Her thread lay still in the weave. Calm. Steady. Unthreatening. It should have been a simple observation. Confirm stability. Confirm silence. Confirm she was not bending fate again. Then her pulse hitched. A dream. I reached toward the tether linking us, and the dream sharpened at once. Not hazy. Not symbolic. Memory. She walked straight into it, and I could only watch. The boundary around her mind held firm, shutting me out. The office formed around her: fluorescent lights, gray carpet, the soft hum of printers. She moved slowly, fingers white around her bag. She had walked this hallway once before, when she still believed love and promises mattered. I knew before she touched the door that she should not open it. She opened it anyway. The man she once loved sat at his desk. The

His Point of View She thanked me. The words left her lips in the cold morning air, soft enough that no mortal ear should have caught them. But I did. The whisper brushed against the tether between us, and something inside me tightened. Gratitude was not unfamiliar to me. Mortals thanked me when I ended their suffering. They begged when they feared their end. They prayed when they misunderstood what I was. They did not thank me for compassion. No one had ever thanked me for stepping beyond my role. Because I never did. I drifted through the in-between until I found her again. Nora walked toward the café with her bag at her side, unaware that each step tugged faintly on the thread tying her to me. It was not a chain. It was not a bond I had chosen. It existed only because something had been seen, and something had been acknowledged. I should have severed it. That was the rule. Threads were meant to be clean. Brief. Untouched by sentiment. I had severed countless c