As if responding to his despair, a voice spoke from the crystalline surfaces—his own voice, but older, carrying the weight of cosmic eons and hard-won wisdom: “Then find a new shape for what you are, or lose everything that matters.”
The words echoed strangely among the ruins, neither promise nor threat but simple statement of impossible necessity. Change or die. Transform or be transformed. Accept evolution or face extinction.
“How?” Cael asked the empty air, his voice raw with desperation. “How do I become something that can exist within cosmic law while preserving what makes existence worthwhile?”
No answer came, only the wind through broken stones and the distant sound of Varos struggling to function around the growing instabilities his presence created. Thunder rolled across the sky above the city, unnatural storm clouds gathering with geometric patterns that spoke of reality preparing for upheaval.
The approaching tempest wasn't meteorological—it was cosmic, the universe itself mobilizing to correct the anomaly his transformation represented. Soon, forces beyond hiscomprehension would converge on Varos to either contain or eliminate the threat he'd unknowingly become.
Returning to the city proper, Cael encountered the first direct consequence of his cosmic instability. The Hollowed creatures throughout Varos had begun moving with unprecedented coordination, swarming toward the city center in response to Senra's accelerating ritual preparations. Their movements were too organized to be natural, too purposeful to be random wandering.
Cael attempted to intervene as he always had, to guide the lost souls toward peaceful rest before they could be weaponized by forces that saw them as raw material rather than tragic remnants of human life. But when he reached for his reaping blade, the fractured cosmic tool shattered completely the moment he tried to summon it.
The destruction was absolute and irreversible. Where once he'd carried the fundamental instrument of his purpose, now only empty air remained. His ability to guide souls across the threshold, to provide mercy in the form of clean endings—all of it was gone, dissolved by the same transformation that had made him capable of love.
“Shit,” he breathed, staring at his empty hands in horror. “Shit, shit, shit.”
When he reached out to touch a wandering soul—a young man whose time-debt had consumed his last breath, leaving him trapped between states—something catastrophic happened. Instead of guiding the spirit to rest, Cael accidentally absorbed it into his own transformed essence.
The foreign soul burned inside him like swallowed fire, its memories and emotions mixing chaotically with his own consciousness. He experienced the young man's final moments—the crushing weight of debt, the moment hope died, the terrible transition from life to partial existence. But more thanthat, he felt the soul's essence becoming part of his own, adding its weight to a consciousness already strained beyond safe limits.
Overwhelmed by the spiritual contamination, Cael collapsed in the middle of Hourglass Plaza, his form flickering wildly between divine avatar and mortal man. Civilians fled in terror as reality warped around him—flowers wilted and bloomed simultaneously, shadows moved independently of their sources, and the air itself tasted of temporal distortion sharp enough to make nearby observers gag.
“Help him!” someone screamed from the edges of the growing chaos. “Someone help him!”
But no one could approach safely. Cael's presence had become a zone of cosmic instability that threatened to tear apart anyone who came too close. The very compassion that had driven people to call for aid made it impossible for that aid to be provided.
A child, too young to understand cosmic propriety or the danger she faced, broke free from her mother's restraining hand and approached the writhing figure in the plaza's center. Her innocent voice cut through the chaos with devastating clarity: “That's not Death anymore. That's broken.”
The observation hit deeper than any cosmic punishment, confirming Cael's worst fear—he'd become a threat to the very people he'd once served with gentle hands and merciful heart. The love that was supposed to save him had instead corrupted his essential function beyond repair, transforming him from cosmic mercy into cosmic menace.
The child tilted her head with the fearless curiosity only young humans possessed. “Are you sad?” she asked, as if sadness were the most important quality to assess rather than cosmic threat level.
The question broke something in Cael's chest, some last vestige of the being he'd been before love taught him what losscould mean. “Yes,” he whispered, his voice raw with grief and cosmic terror. “I'm so sad I can't bear it.”
Lying in the dust of the plaza, surrounded by the chaos his presence created, Cael finally understood the full scope of his transformation. He was no longer the merciful ending to mortal suffering—he'd become unstable, unpredictable, dangerous to everyone he encountered. The love that was supposed to elevate him had instead made him a threat to everything he'd once protected.
Seventeen days until cosmic erasure. Seventeen days to find a solution that didn't exist, to become something that cosmic law could tolerate without sacrificing what made existence meaningful.
Seventeen days to say goodbye to the first person who'd ever made him want to be more than what he was created to be.
As emergency responders cordoned off the plaza and the crowd dispersed to spread word of Death's breakdown throughout the city, Cael pulled himself to his feet with movements that felt foreign and unstable. His body was learning to betray him, to respond to emotional trauma with physical symptoms that cosmic entities weren't designed to process.
The absorbed soul still burned in his consciousness, its memories bleeding through his awareness like ink through water. Soon there would be more, he realized with growing horror. Every Hollowed creature he encountered would be drawn into his destabilized essence, adding their spiritual weight to a consciousness already fracturing under pressures it was never meant to bear.
He was becoming a collector of the damned, a repository for souls too broken to find rest and too lost to resist his involuntary absorption. The man who'd once provided gentle endings was becoming a cosmic black hole, consuming the very spirits he'd sworn to protect.
Walking through the streets of Varos toward an uncertain destiny, Cael carried the weight of seventeen days like a stone in his chest. Each step felt heavier than the last, his body struggling to contain the absorbed soul that burned through his consciousness like acid through silk.
The young man's memories bled through his awareness in chaotic waves—final moments of crushing debt, the moment hope died, the terrible transition from life to something less than death. But worse than the foreign memories was the growing certainty that more souls would follow, that every Hollowed creature he encountered would be drawn into his destabilized essence.
“I’m turning into a keeper of the lost,” he whispered to the empty street, his voice echoing in strange, layered tones—too many selves tangled in one changing body. “A resting place for souls too wounded to move on.”
As if summoned by his words, another wandering spirit materialized from the shadows—an elderly woman whose time-debt had consumed her final breath, leaving her trapped between states. She moved toward him with the inexorable patience of entropy itself, drawn by forces neither of them could control.
“No,” Cael gasped, stumbling backward against a crumbling wall. “Stay away. I can't help you. I'll only make it worse.”
But the soul continued its approach, and Cael felt the terrible magnetism building in his transformed essence. He was becoming a cosmic black hole, consuming the very spirits he'd once guided with gentle hands toward peaceful rest.
