Soul searching.

“Is that...?”

“I think I'm hallucinating.”

“Impossible, I thought most of them were dead.”

“She looks enough like one, though.”

“At least one that hasn't turned.”

“Yet.”

“I'm scared, I've never seen one in person before.”

“She's so pale.”

“What's she doing here?”

“And what is that on her back?”

The topic in question was somebody who wandered into the village. A young girl who looked no older than her late teens dressed up in a rather extravagant manner. Pale enough that she almost appeared translucent, although you could only tell from her sickly, tired face. She was in an intricate black dress reminiscent of the Victorian age that covered all her bare skin save her face. There on her head rested faded blue eyes that were stuck upon the face of a porcelain doll, framed by her black bangs and long hair. She was a bit dainty, which seemed to undermine the amount of strength she seemed to possess carrying what appeared to be a coffin on her back.

Of course while that was odd enough, what struck the townsfolk the most was that she appeared to be a human.

“A crowd has gathered, it seems.” she said what appeared to be to herself.

“They detect the presence of your souls. You best tread carefully or get tread on yourself.”

“I seem to be the popular gal everywhere, I say.” She hesitantly looked around as the citizens of the small village looked at her. Some wearily, some perplexed, some curious. In a world where humanity has long since declined to the point of extinction, seeing the young girl could be interpreted as a lot of things. She was a rarity, a myth only heard in legend or fairy tales. She was an ill omen to some, seen as the harbinger of death. To others, she was money. To capture a long sought-after species that was widely considered extinct, scientists, alchemists, cultists would pay top coin to dissect her or study her. But none dared to try, because nobody knew if all the woven stories and legends were true about what they could do.

“It can't be a human.” one of the villagers said. “It's probably another doll, a homunculus.”

“She's a walking defacement of everything we believe in.”

“She could be a prophet.”

“Who knows? I don't want to ask her, her eyes scare me.” But the girl didn't seem to care for their expressions. They didn't have any. They weren't human.

“...a village of Shadowmelds.” the girl stated. “A misplaced judgment in safety to come here, I'm beginning to think.”

“You think?”

“Regardless, the trail led us through here so we might find some clues, one would hope.” The girl scanned her surroundings with her weary eyes. She was surrounded by a sea of black tendrils with white masks checkering the crowds, their voices becoming increasingly more frantic and nervous as they looked at her. Shadowmelds were nothing more than dark apparitions, gelatinous shadows that extended from the ground to a height of an average human. Their most distinct characteristic were their masks, vaguely modeled with human facial features to discern themselves from one another.

“I believe retiring to an inn would be wise, yes?” she uttered as she was growing concerned of the gathering crowd.

“Yes, make haste. We can gather information if one's showed up here there.” And so the girl did. The sun cast an orange glow on the village as it started to sink over the horizon. The entrance of the inn was a bar, where a wide variety of salty creatures and apparitions stayed. Drunk off of sorrow, the rabble-rousing in the bar seemed to get significantly quieter as the girl walked in. Demons and lamias and bloodthirsty horned minotaurs all stopped drinking and noticed the human walk in. Some averted their eyes. Some sneered. She approached the shadowmeld innkeeper, who was also playing bartender to the rest of the folk inside.

“I'd like a room, if you have a spare.” she said. The innkeeper couldn't speak. His white mask began to sink a bit into himself.

“Um. I'm not sure we serve your kind here.” he nervously choked up.

“I have money, I do.” she pulled out her wallet and laid a handful of bills on the counter. “Surely that's enough for a room, yes?”

“Uh... what about... what about that?” He formed a tendril to point at the coffin.

“She'll be staying with me too, yes.”

“Err, what's in it?” the innkeeper asked.

“That's probably best left unanswered, I say.” That didn't seem to make the atmosphere in the bar any less tense. A chair could be heard screeching against the hardwood floor as a tall and lumbering beast stirred himself from his seat to confront her. His musculature was similar to an enormous man, but he had the head and hooves of a bull. He was covered in ragged clothes in a somewhat vain attempt to humanize himself.

“I don' like yeh comin' here one bit.” he shouted as he approached her. “Another fuckin' bloody doll comes wandering in here. Does yer master think yeh're special enough to be sculpted after a human or wot?”

“I have no master, sir.” she rebuked.

“Who da hell are yeh?”

“Reo Sterling, sir.”

“What da hell are yeh?”

“If I told you I was a homunculus, would that pacify your insistence to pry information out of me?”

“Reo, watch your tongue.” The minotaur paused.

“Where'd that voice come from?” he slurred out.

“Pay no heed to it.” she muttered. “May I retire now, I've come far from the East and I would like to get some sleep for the night.” Her comment got the bar stirring.

“What, yeh came from thar? Yeh managed ta escape after wot happened over thar?”

“Yes.” she plainly stated. Another folk, a skittish fox stood up.

“I heard a chain of villages were getting burned down and working their way over towards the west.” He began trembling. “Y-you, you were the one who did it, weren't you? WEREN'T YOU?”

“Talk to me after you've crawled out of that mead-soaked hole before throwing accusations around, you pillock.”

“Reo, no.” Reo averted her glance from the fox back towards the beast in front of her. The minotaur huffed.

“I don' know where that voice is comin' from, but it's right y'know. Best watch yer lips around here, doll.”

“Can I just go to bed?” Both stood facing each other for a while. The minotaur stood a good three feet over Reo and looked as if he could crush her head with his palm, but she didn't move an inch. He let out a snort and walked back to his table and started drinking. She let out a sigh and grabbed her room key as she headed upstairs.

“Reo, you almost started another scene.”

“I will not be talked down by cattle, Mog.”

“Unless you want what happened at the other villages to happen again here, I would refrain from opening that big mouth of yours.”

“Hmph.” The coffin was propped against the wall. Its features could be barely seen in the dim candle-lit room. It was in the traditional hexagonal shape of an old-style casket while it had an ornate cross resting on the lid. The cross was affixed with slots for a handful of leather straps running through it to keep the lid bound to the casket. It's where the voice Reo was speaking to was coming from.

“And as if further wanton destruction of said villages wasn't because of a little strumpet who couldn't control herself, am I correct?”

“No fair, you know how I get when I'm around people.”

“Hence why you're in there, child.” Reo sighed and took off her boots as she crawled into bed. “Now I expect an eventful night, so I'm going to get as much sleep as I can at least before then, yes?” She blew out the candle and almost instantly fell asleep in her dingy bed.

“REO.”

“Hmm... wha... is it time already...?”

“REO GET UP.” And as Reo rubbed her sunken eyes to consciousness, she took benign interest in what was in front of her. The moon was shining brightly through her room, lighting it up more than her candle previously did.

“Well at least the li'l doll will be awake fo' when I rip 'er limb from limb.” The large minotaur beast was in her room, reeking of alcohol. Earlier signs showing he peeled off the door with his enormous strength and ruined the frame working his way into the small room.

“The things you sleep through, Reo. For Heaven's sake.” the coffin muttered.

“Do you mind?” Reo nonchalantly yawned. “A single night's rest is all I ask for, I do.”

“Yer a cocky li'l shit until the very end, aren't yeh?” the minotaur spit. “High an' mighty because she's modeled afta a pretty li'l human.” She pulled her feet out of bed and crossed her legs as she stared at the towering behemoth, his horns only a foot or so away from scraping the ceiling.

“So what is it that you want, Mr. Cattle?” she sighed. “I have money, yes. I have research notes for what I do in my line of work, yes.”

“I want to smash yer disgusting head in.”

“You do realize that we're in a land where everybody is effectively immortal, correct? Hardly anybody in this world has a soul to speak off, we're all mostly just walking corpses, I say. What good would it come from 'smashin' mah head in?'” She shifted into his rough English accent mockingly.

“I can't kill yeh, but it doesn't mean I can't make yeh wish yeh weren't dead and then stealin' everything but the clothes off yer back.”

“Well good, glad we got that cleared up. Most of my belongings are in that coffin, you see.”

“Reo...”

“I dare say, you should let me display my wares first. There's quite a hoarder's delight in there, yes?” The minotaur turned around and began unhinging some of the locks and straps on the coffin.

“What could yeh possibly have that I would even wa--” The minotaur was cut off before he could finish his sentence. And by “cut off”, his throat was impaled by a dark tendril as he started letting out a gagged moan choked with blood before more dark appendages reached out of the coffin and began ripping pieces of him off and pulling him in before he was enveloped entirely and dragged into the casket. The lid clasped shut as only the sound of the monster howling in agony and his bones crunching could be heard from the shaking coffin.

“No one is immortal when I'm around, baby cow.” Reo smirked. “Is it at least prime cut, my dear child?” The coffin stopped stirring and her room became silent.

“He struggled a fair bit for a single creature.” Mog muffled out, the sound of her mouth crammed with food.

“Well he is a minotaur. Many of them in our studies has shown them to be quite the lumbering beasts, yes?” Of course as she talked, she looked at the door. The jittery, paranoid fox was holding a lantern as he peered into the entrance to her room, terrified out of his mind at the sight of blood smeared and splattered all over the ground.

“I—I KNEW IT! SHE'S A MONSTER! I HAVE TO GO ALERT THE VILLAGERS BEFORE WE ALL DIE!”

“MOG.” But before Reo could open the casket, the fox bolted through the hall downstairs. “...so this again.” A sneer crossed the girl's exhausted face as she lurched herself onto her feet and proceeded to get ready to go downstairs.

“It's going to be trouble this time.” Mog stated.

“I'm aware.”

“You haven't fixed your cross yet.”

“I'm aware.”

“And you know how Shadowmelds get under a full moon.”

“I'm. Aware.”

When Reo went through the bar, it was empty. It was empty because all of its residents alongside the residents of the town were outside with torches. She stepped out the door, and there the mob looked her down. A sea of torches checkered with white masks and horns and other appendages loomed in front of her.

“THERE SHE IS, THE MONSTER!” the fox shouted.

“Do you folks really want to do this, I ask?” Reo sighed.

“IT'S NOT LIKE SHE CAN KILL US!” a Shadowmeld yelled in the crowd.

“Yeah!”

“We can't kill her either, though...”

“But we can rip her apart and make it impossible for her to pick up the pieces.”

“What if she really is a human?”

“What if the legends are true?”

“She's probably a doll, there's no way she can be a human.” Reo shook her head.

“I... gave up my humanity a long time ago, I did. But now,” lifted the casket over her head and slammed it in front of her. “If you heathens and ne'er-do-wells think it would be a wise investment to provoke me, I am warning you now: nobody here will escape without the stench of death following them indefinitely.” Of course Reo was preaching to a sea of corpses, creatures without souls and thus were immune to most standard threats of mortality. They could be battered and bruised but they would either reassemble themselves or they wouldn't ever truly die. It was the fate of all creatures in the land. But Reo was not a standard threat of mortality because she wielded the most significant danger to life.

“...”

“...call her bluff.”

“...let's tear her to pieces.”

“LET'S RIP HER TO SHREDS!” The crowd howled and began closing its ground.

“Mog,” Reo whispered into the back of the coffin. “Time to feast.”

“I'm not fond of Shadowmelds, but a meal's a meal.” Reo ripped the binding leather off the casket lid and swung open. It was pitch black inside, as if it was a door to the abyss itself. The last thing the mob saw was a pair of glowing red eyes and a Cheshire grin visible from the reflecting moonlight. And what they felt before fear and death enveloped them was the one threat to immortality; humanity.

“They actually got me that time, I say.” Reo's left sleeve was torn off, her left arm drenched in blood. “Shadowmelds are such wily creatures in a full moon.”

Reo hoisted the coffin onto her back and began walking through the burning village. Torches strewn across the ground, maimed giblets of things, black quivering masses of what used to be alive were everywhere. A trembling white mask laid on the ground, as if it was still alive before it was stamped beneath Reo's heel and shattered into pieces.

“Is that all of them?” Mog asked.

“One more, yes?” Reo walked over slowly. “Our little fox friend.” The fox was crawling away behind a storage shed in the village, his legs mangled and bleeding as he frantically backed himself against the wall, terrified of the young human girl approaching him.

“Y-you... you really a-are a human, aren't you?”

“I'm not, anymore.” she knelt down in front of the fox. “I'm what you call a corpse collector.” The fox's eyes widened as he trembled violently.

“Y-y-you're the corpse collector? THE CORPSE COLLECTOR? THE GRIM REAPER!?”

“Well I suppose 'the' is a more appropriate term, yes. I appear to be the only one at the moment, it seems. My job is to make sure that death still occurs in this disgusting world. I've been alive far longer than you have, fox boy.”

“...it's impossible. Humans were killed off centuries ago. If you're human, you should be dead!”

“Again, I gave up my humanity a long time ago, child. I will die eventually, when my source of nourishment eventually depletes itself in time. Which given that I escort the carrier of all human souls that once existed, could be quite a while.”

“Reo, why are you telling him this?” Mog muttered inside her casket.

“Merely exposition, dear child. There's not many people who will learn about the world that existed before this.”

“W-why me... WHY ME THOUGH?” the fox yelled.

“Because you can keep a secret, my dear.” a slightly solemn smile crossed her face. “The dead can keep secrets like no other, and soon you'll be dead too, fortunately.” The color left the fox's face as he began to weep.

“I-is... is everyone in this village dead now?”

“Of course, humanity is the threat to all immortality, yes?” She knocked against the casket on her back. “This abomination is the biggest threat to this world imaginable, so I keep her locked up in here, you see.”

“...what is she?”

“She's the first real human of this age, of course.”

“...t-that thing, THAT WASN'T HUMAN! Even I know that much...”

“She is the fate of humans who reap too many souls of other humans, they're twisted into what lurks in here. She has turned, she is what humans are now, which thankfully there are precious little of left in this world. I was hoping a human passed through this village at some point, but it appears my leads were cold.” She dusted her dress as she stood back up. “But it appears I've exhausted your time.”

“I'm... I'm not actually going to die, am I?”

“Oh you will, my dear. Be grateful, next to souls death is a prized commodity in this world. No longer do you have to be a breathing corpse, you can know rest like everyone else here does now, I say.” As the fox's panic began to bleed out of him, his eyes dimmed and his breathing ceased. Reo closed his eyes as she stood up.

“So there wasn't a human here, either, I suppose.”

“Nope.”

“I suppose we keep trailing our lead to the west and hope God smiles on us, yes?”

“Ironic that you of all people talk about hope and God, Reo.”

“Yes yes, I thought it was rather clever.” The sun started to rise over the smoldering town, but it remained engulfed in darkness from all the smoke in the air deflecting choking the light. Reo began walking alongside the dirt road out of the village to the west.