A Final, Anonymous End
The end of Jason's life was as bleak and anonymous as his final years.
The official cause of death was clinical and indifferent: Exposure, compounded by acute and chronic alcoholism. The police found him slumped behind the restaurant, limbs stiff with cold, the last of the whiskey bottle still clutched in one blue hand.
" He was initially a nameless body, "John Doe #3," at the morgue until his fingerprints surfaced in a decades-old system and returned a name: Jason Miller.
There was no one to notify. The police found no next of kin, no friends, no one who cared enough to claim him.
After the required holding period passed without inquiry, the state authorized cremation. His ashes were quietly buried in a potter's field, a stretch of land crowded with the forgotten.
No obituary was ever written. No one mourned his passing. Jason Miller's life, a story of relentless misery and brokenness, ended without a trace.
Jason's life—defined by pain, neglect, and the long erosion of hope—left nothing behind but a thin line in a government ledger and a body count that raised no alarms. He was a casualty of trauma left untreated, addiction left unaddressed, and a system that never really saw him.
He died exactly as he had lived: alone, unremarked upon, leaving behind only the ghost of a cautionary tale that no one would ever hear.
in the end, the world simply moved on without him, as if he had never been there at all.
Gone and forgotten.
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Alatar awoke after everything had gone black again. He stirred slowly, disoriented, the remnants of shadow still clinging to the edges of his mind. Moments earlier—or was it hours?—he had plunged deep into Jason's memories, consuming them one by one like brittle pages in a burning book.
But they had been frustratingly unhelpful.
Flickers of mundane life, hollow emotions, and irrelevant details had filled the stream. No secrets. No revelations. Nothing that explained where they were or what they were. Or why Alatar had been drawn to him in the first place.
Alatar Pov
"Sigh," Alatar muttered, the sound half amusement, half exasperation. "How extremely unhelpful."
How lucky of me that the first soul I devoured is of a man even more unfortunate than me.
He stood in the dim, alien silence, the aftertaste of Jason's essence still lingering like ash on his tongue. Fragments of another man's life flickered behind his eyes—frustration, fear, hopelessness—but nothing of value. No answers. No clarity. Just pain wrapped in confusion.
"I thought I'd gain some understanding of where I am. Perhaps a map, a memory, a clue." He paused, eyes narrowing."Instead, what do I get?" He gestured vaguely, almost laughing. "A trauma dump."
He shook his head slowly, the weight of disappointment settling on his shoulders like a second cloak.
"Next time," he muttered, "I'm eating someone smarter."
And with that, Alatar turned away from the shadows, the stolen soul within him already fading into background noise. One failure behind him. A world of unknowns ahead.
Moving further into the void, Alatar slowed his pace. The silence here was oppressive, so vast that even his own thoughts seemed muted. It struck him then—he had not seen even the faintest speck of soul-light for what felt like an eternity. The realization brought an edge of unease.
Was Jason a stroke of luck? he wondered grimly. Or was that miserable man the only flicker in this endless dark?
The thought unsettled him, but he pushed it aside. No—there had to be another. He was certain of it. Certainty was all he had left to cling to.
And as if Lady Luck herself had taken offense at his doubts, the void stirred. There—distant, wavering, yet unmistakable—a glow emerged, delicate and steady. A soul-light.
But this one was different.
Not the elusive yellow-gold of Jason's fading spark, fragile and human. No, this one burned blue—deep, cold, and strangely resolute. The hue bled into the void around it, shimmering like frost beneath a moon.
As Alatar drew closer, the shape within the glow grew clearer. Not a withered husk, nor a trembling shade, but a figure upright and still, as though awaiting him. A name pressed itself unbidden against his mind, carried on the strange current of the void:
Mikaela, the Frostborne.
Her presence was unlike Jason's scattered fragments of suffering. This soul carried weight. Layers. Secrets. A resonance that pushed against the silence rather than being swallowed by it.
Alatar's lips curled into the faintest smile.
"Finally," he breathed. "Something worth finding."
But unlike Jason, who had been little more than scattered specks of light, she looked real. Whole. Complete. Almost alive—yet Alatar could tell with certainty that she was not.
Her form shimmered with the illusion of breath, her posture still and patient, as if she were merely waiting for him to take the next step. The void clung to her like a shroud, but her presence cut through it, undeniable.
He wondered, then, what he would gain from her. What truths might be unlocked, what power might flow into his veins, what memories or fragments of forgotten worlds might be torn open if he chose to devour her. The thought was intoxicating. Dangerous.
And the mere imagining of it filled him with a terrible delight. His lips curled into a smile too sharp to be human, his heart thrumming with anticipation.
He did not realize it—not yet—but he was changing. Subtly, steadily, piece by piece. Each soul he touched left its mark, etching lines of shadow into his essence, shaping him into something other. A being no longer bound to the limits of what he had once been.
It was a transformation that, in time, would make his name feared across realities.