He walked past the rows the others had taken from.
Something at the back of the vault was waiting for him, and he knew it the way he knew when a corpse was fresh enough to raise. It pulled at the inside of his chest with a slow, cold weight.
He went to it.
It was a scythe.
The blade was cracked along its length, chipped near the curve like it had cut through something it should not have been able to cut. Old black-gold chains wrapped the haft, sealed at the joins. The metal was dark and the cold came off it before he even reached out, numbing his fingers a hand's width away from the surface.
The name came up on its own.
[AZRAEL'S BROKEN SCYTHE]
[GRADE: ???]
[STATUS: SEALED]
[COMPATIBILITY: PARTIAL]
[WARNING: AUTHORITY FRAGMENT DETECTED]
James did not understand most of it.
