Death Mask Jim Butcher

After days of torture at the hands of my family’s rival gang, they offered me one last phone call. I called my brother, Matteo. I just wanted to say goodbye—while I still had the chance. “What is it now?” he snapped. “Matteo, I—” He didn’t let me finish. “Fix your own mistakes. Until then, don’t call me again.” Death didn’t hurt as much as those words did. I felt my heart slow to a stop as my brother’s words echoed in my ears. I guess you’re finally at peace now, Matteo. I won’t bother you again. And you’ll never have to see me again.

I was the real heiress in a case of a mistaken identity. Three months after my return, the imposter heiress disappeared.   My brother, Caleb Carter, accused me of jealousy, believing I had driven the fake heiress away. The disappointed look on my parents’ faces revealed their true thoughts.   I was confined in the basement, subjected to daily torture.   Even after my death, my family donated my brain to a research institution.   Later, I watched from heaven as my family broke down upon watching my memories.

When the criminal tortured me to death, I was three-month pregnant. But my husband Mark - the city's most prominent detective - was at the hospital with his first love Emma, accompanying her for her medical checkup. Three days ago, he demanded me to donate my kidney to Emma. When I refused, telling him I was two months pregnant with our child, his eyes had turned cold. "Stop lying," he had snarled. "You're just being selfish, trying to let Emma die." He pulled over on the dark highway. "Get out," he ordered. "Walk home since you're so heartless. " I stood there in the darkness and was kidnapped by the vengeful criminal, whom Mark had once imprisoned. He cut out my tongue. With cruel satisfaction, he used my phone to call my husband. Mark's response was brief and cold: "Whatever it is, Emma's medical checkup is more important! She needs me right now." The criminal let out a dark chuckle. "Well, well... Seems like the great detective values his ex's life more than his current wife's." When Mark arrived at the crime scene hours later, he was horrified by the brutality inflicted on the corpse. He angrily condemned the murderer for treating a pregnant woman so cruelly But he didn't recognize that the mutilated body before him was his own wife - me.

A blizzard erupted without warning, and the glacial mountains began to collapse. My instinct screamed at me to shift and run, to let my Inner Wolf take over and flee—but it was too late. The storm swept in, laced with a strange silver dust that hung heavy in the air. It was like an invisible chain, binding me tightly, locking away my wolf. Worse still, my strength was nearly gone. As captain of the Silvermoon Patrol, I had been out on the tundra all night. Hours ago, I had fought off a vicious ambush by Rogues, and my body still bore the wounds—deep, bleeding, and far from healed. I could feel it: my wolf energy had been pushed past its limit. Maxin, my Inner Wolf, was silent now, his strength depleted and unresponsive. My limbs were going numb, my body sinking into the snow as the roar of the wind drowned everything else out. But I wasn’t afraid. Because I knew he would come. My boyfriend—the head of the tribe's Search and Rescue Unit—had never failed a mission. I believed with all my heart that he would find me. And yet… he didn’t come himself. He sent a rookie instead, while he went after Daisy, whom he believed had been caught in an avalanche. But Daisy hadn’t been in danger at all. She merely wanted a dramatic way to confess her love to him. Three days later, Xander finally found me, buried deep beneath the frozen layers. He froze at the sight—my body, encased in ice, unmoving. He couldn’t believe it: the fierce, relentless warrior he knew, dead beneath the snow. He reached out to touch me… but the ice cracked. And before he could react, my body slipped into the depths of the glacier, vanishing into the abyss.

I took my last breath when his hatred for had reached it's peak. I chose to take my own life, when I could no longer bear the wait of his hatred When my ashes was handed to Leo, my mate, he smiled and patted it. He was pleased I had finally died. “Filthy thing. She should’ve died a death more painful than this,” he said as he tipped the urn sending it crashing to the ground. He believed I had killed his first love. Despite all our years together, he was waiting for this moment to get his revenge. The air carried my ashes as he stepped over them and walked away. But not long after he returned in regret begging to have me returned to him.

Four days after my death, my four-year-old daughter finally sensed that something was terribly wrong. The fridge door slammed into her forehead when she tried to get a snack. Normally, I would've been there in a heartbeat—arms open, kisses ready, whispering, "You're okay, sweetheart, Mommy's here." But this time, I just lay on the bed, cold and still.​ She didn't understand. She thought the sweet treat would make me respond. So she held the final piece of chocolate up to my mouth. "Here, Mommy. Have some chocolate..." But I didn't even blink. She climbed into my arms, clutching my clothes tightly. "Mommy... Mommy, wake up..." She waited for me to stroke her hair, to tell her that everything was going to be fine. There was only silence.​ Completely lost and scared, she found my phone. "Daddy, why is Mommy still sleeping?" she asked, her voice filled with desperation.​ In response, Oliver sent a photo of himself having Christmas Eve dinner with his childhood sweetheart. His voice was icy cold when he replied, "She's just sleeping, not dead. It's Christmas Eve, and I'm busy. Tell her to stop playing games and come apologize when she's done sulking." Then he hung up.​ But when the truth finally hit Oliver—when the coroner's report came, when the police knocked on his door right in the middle of his laughter, when he realized I'd been lying dead for four days while he toasted—he broke.

…from his responsibilities as a father, hiding out from his pregnant girlfriend, and working as a groundskeeper in a rural graveyard. He’s running from a lifetime of guilt and bad decisions, but principally he’s running from the murderous entities that have possessed the very ground at his feet. Jim has no idea what these entities are, but they’ve done unspeakable things to everyone in the graveyard and now they’re hunting him down. There is nowhere Jim can hide, nowhere he can walk and nowhere he can run that isn’t under the lethal power of the things in the ground. If he stands any chance of survival he must uncover the link between his murderous tormentors, three mysterious graves and an ancient heresy that stretches back to the beginning of time. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

In the third year of my relationship with Aden, he died in a war between werewolf packs. His beta twin brother, James, brought back the obsidian pendant that Aden had dropped on the battlefield. He told me in a choked voice, “Emily, Aden isn’t coming home.” I fainted on the spot. After waking up, I went mad and tried to go to the battlefield to die with Aden. However, James held me back. Later on, I attempted suicide multiple times, only to be saved by James and his mother, Louise. All the werewolves in Moon Forest Pack said that Aden and I were deeply bonded. It was not until the third month after Aden’s death that I finally discovered the one who died wasn’t him at all.

Once upon a time, Kayla thought she and Winston would be together until the day they died. She would never have expected them to take separate paths so soon. After retrieving her diagnosis report, she sees him holding another woman in his arms. A final tear trickles down her face. She's tired and doesn't want to use whatever time she has left to argue with him. She makes the arrangements for everything that will happen after her death. Then, she prepares a final gift for Winston. From this day onward, she'll leave for the afterworld while he remains on Earth. They won't see each other again.

When my fiance's student argued with me, she knocked over a gas cylinder and caused an explosion. As the fire spread, my fiancé rushed into the lab wearing a gas mask. However, his priority was to carry his student to safety. As he left, he said, "Wait for the rescue team! A teacher should treat their students like how a parent treats their children. If something happens to Amanda, you don't deserve to be a teacher!" In the end, I inhaled too much toxic gas and died, never having waited long enough for the rescue team to arrive. Since I was the only one who had mastered the core data of the lab, no one could take my place. This meant that five years of hard work in the lab were destroyed, and Astran University was kicked out of a global research project. Later, William, the once esteemed professor of Astran University, became a pariah—someone whom everyone scorned and reviled.