Thanatos

At Death’s Mercy: ACT 4:

            The decree still echoed in Thanatos’s mind like the slow toll of a bell in an empty cathedral. Kanna had spoken the words with the calm certainty of one rewriting the laws of gravity. To the creator, it was clarity. To Thanatos, it was an avalanche of new obligation.

Reaping entire strands had been always been efficient, terrible yes. But necessary, quick, and merciful. But shepherding millions… billions, across countless worlds? That was not quick. That was endless. Thanatos stood within Temporal Limbo, looking out at the countless Strands that filled the weave. Threads pulsed with new deaths every instant.

He closed his eyes. “I cannot do this alone forever,” he murmured to the void. And then he thought of the one Pillar who never seemed burdened by anything. Eriselpis. He reached out, feeling where his sibling’s presence was. He found it, on a strand called Nocturne.

Nocturne had no day. The sky was a permanent velvet black, pierced only by the slow drift of glowing spores that fell from the towering mushroom caps like lazy snow. Geothermal vents hissed in the valleys, their heat rising in shimmering columns that made the air waver. Hot springs bubbled, steaming, their surfaces rippling, reflecting distant stars above. The ground itself thrummed faintly—alive, warm, never still.

Thanatos stepped from Limbo into the mushroom forest. His ashen form did not stir the spores; they simply parted around him like water around stone. He found Eriselpis almost immediately. She was dancing—spinning barefoot among the glowing fungal stalks, arms wide, laughter bright and wild. Hair a riot of nebulae and storm-clouds. Half a dozen small, colorful balls of fur rolled and tumbled around her feet, chirping with delight whenever she scooped one up and spun it overhead.

Thanatos paused. The fur-balls were vivid—reds, blues, purples, golds—each one no larger than a child’s fist. They moved with surprising coordination, bouncing off mushroom stems, chasing spore drifts, occasionally colliding in soft impacts. But Thanatos viewed them with a Pillar’s eyes… he saw their fibers, the glow of their life force. That glow did not match the threads that spun in Nocturne’s Strands.

Thanatos’s voice was the hush of graves opening. “Those should not be here.”

Eriselpis spun to face him, cheeks flushed with delight. One of the fur-balls clung to her shoulder like a living brooch. “They’re not hurting anything!” she sang. “And they’re adorable. Look at this one—it has little star-speckles!” She lifted the creature. It chirped happily, rolling over as if trying to decide what part of it was the top and what part the bottom.

Thanatos’s face tilted. “They followed you from another strand. That should not happen.”

Eriselpis pouted, but her eyes sparkled. “I didn’t bring them. They just… appeared. And kept following. What was I supposed to do? Kick them?”

Thanatos exhaled—a sound like wind through dry leaves. “Leave them be,” he said. “I wish to speak with you.”

Eriselpis sighed in an overly dramatic fashion, set the fur-ball down among its companions, and followed him a short distance away. The little creatures immediately began rolling in circles, chasing one another through the spore-lit undergrowth. Thanatos stopped beside a steaming vent.

“Kanna has added new law,” he said without preamble. “Death is no longer final passage. I must shepherd every soul to its marked afterlife. No exceptions. No swift release.”

Eriselpis tilted her head, spores drifting around her like fireflies. “That sounds… busy.”

“It is more than busy. It is relentless. I was built for endings, not for endless shepherding. Entire strands. Entire worlds. The calls will never stop.” He looked down at the glowing forest floor. “I fear I will have no rest.”

Eriselpis was quiet for a long moment—rare for her. Then she began to dance again, slow circles around him, arms trailing spore-light. “Everyone’s feeling it,” she said. “The workload. The new rules. Both their own and Kanna’s. He’s working on a new Pillar—someone to help carry the weight, let the rest of us breathe.”

Thanatos’s form flickered in the spore-light. “And until then?”

Eriselpis stopped dancing. She looked at him—really looked. “He said their existence continues. That their afterlife is determined by the marks on their souls.” She tapped her chest. “But what about the ones who don’t have their destination marked yet? The ones still drifting? The ones who don’t know where they belong?” Thanatos was silent. Eriselpis smiled—soft, almost gentle. “Maybe they could help you. The unmarked ones. Let them shepherd the easy souls. Lighten your load. Give you time to focus on the ones who struggle.”

Thanatos considered this. It was… elegant. Simple. Almost kind. “I will think on it, if Kanna allows” he said.

They continued talking for a long time—hours, days, perhaps weeks. Mortal measurements meant nothing to Pillars. Eriselpis paced, gestured, laughed, grew bored, paced again. Thanatos stood still as stone, listening, weighing, considering. Eventually Eriselpis yawned theatrically.

“I’m going back to play with the fur-balls,” she announced. “You think too much big brother.”

Thanatos nodded once. She danced away through the spore-glow. Moments later, a shriek split the air—high, startled, delighted. Thanatos moved instantly. He found Eriselpis crouched beside a fallen mushroom cap, cradling something in her arms. It was child-sized, a build similar to their own, but with the wings of a moth. Large, bat-like ears framed its face. Its eyes glowed a deep, menacing red—clearly visible even in the spore-light.

A Mothbeast.

Eriselpis was hugging it like a lost toy. “Look!” she cried. “Where did you come from little guy?”

Thanatos’s smoke swirled around him defensively. Something was wrong, something that even as a Pillar his body recognized as dangerous. The fur-balls were gone. Every last one.

He felt it then—not the familiar pull of a strand needing death’s touch, but something similar. Close. Insistent. “Stay near me,” he told Eriselpis. “I have work.”

He followed the sensation. It led to a colony of the local sentients, nestled in a geothermal valley. They were called the Pinna. small, chirping mammals with enormous ears that moved among the mushroom roots—building nests, gathering spores, singing to one another in ultrasonic melodies. There were souls here that were marked for shepherding. Some who would not move on alone.

A flutter of wings passed overhead. Two red eyes looked down. Then the ground split. Burrowing shapes erupted—massive, cat-like predators, gray-brindled fur streaked with ash, eyes burning yellow, paws the size of shields. They moved with terrifying speed, mouths open in silent snarls.

One of the Pinna chirped a single, sharp note—panic spreading through the colony like wildfire. “Nunda!” The word carried. The colony scattered.

Eriselpis pointed, eyes wide. “That one!” she cried. “Its fur—the pattern! It’s like one of the fur-balls that followed me!” Thanatos saw it too. The brindled pattern was unmistakably familiar.

Chaos erupted.

The ‘Nunda’ pounced.

One tore into a fleeing Pinna. Thanatos moved.

His scythe flashed—once, twice, three times. Souls rose, severed cleanly from their bodies. He worked quickly, mercifully, sparing them prolonged pain.

The attack lasted less than a minute. When it ended, twelve Pinna lay dead. Thanatos had collected only three souls. The other nine had moved on without him—slipping into the weave on their own.

He felt mild surprise. He had thought he would carry every soul, but it seemed he need only be concerned with those unsure of their path.

Then he heard Eriselpis crying. She knelt in the spore-lit undergrowth, arms wrapped tightly around the child-sized Mothbeast. Its wings—thin membranes veined with faint luminescence—fluttered weakly against her chest. The creature’s large, bat-like ears twitched at every sound, but its glowing red eyes had dimmed to a dull crimson, watchful yet strangely subdued. Before her lay one of the cat beasts, what the Pinna had called a Nunda. The great cat-thing had collapsed mid-leap during the final moments of the attack, a large gash on it’s side, likely caused by one of the Pinna that had escaped. Its brindled gray fur was matted with dark blood, one massive foreleg twisted at an unnatural angle.

Yet even as they watched, the body was changing. The fur rippled. Colors bled through the gray—first violet at the edges, then a soft blue, settling on a forest green of another world. The massive form began to shrink, bones cracking softly, limbs retracting. Muscle and sinew folded inward like collapsing stars. Within moments the hulking predator was gone. In its place lay one of the small, colorful balls of fur—the same one Eriselpis had spun overhead when Thanatos had first arrived. Thanatos approached silently, faint white embers trailing in his wake..

Eriselpis’s voice was small. “I… I think I caused this.”

Thanatos knelt beside her. The Mothbeast shifted in her arms but did not flee. “You did not cause their actions,” he said quietly. “You did not choose to bring them across the strands. They followed. That was their choice—their instinct. Their nature.”

Eriselpis shook her head, tears carving clean tracks through the spore-dust on her cheeks. “But they were so cute. So playful. How could they… how could they do that?”

Thanatos looked at the tiny fur-ball. It lay still, breathing shallowly, colors pulsing in slow rhythm. “Instinct is not morality,” he said. “They followed the rules of their creation. Just as we follow ours.”

Eriselpis sniffled. “Maybe they were just playing? Maybe they didn’t know their own strength. Maybe—”

Thanatos sighed—a sound like wind through dry crypts. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But we should not place hope on a maybe.”

Eriselpis opened her mouth to argue, then paused. She looked up at him, noticing the stillness in his posture, the way his head was tilted slightly—as though listening for something that had not yet arrived. “Is there more?” she asked quickly. “More pain coming?”

Thanatos was silent for a long moment. “I do not think so,” he said at last. “But…” He trailed off. Eriselpis wiped her eyes with the back of one hand.

“Then what? Why are you just… waiting?”

Thanatos looked down at her. His eyes softened—almost imperceptibly. “I thought Chronos would come,” he admitted. He remembered Sylvara—the way Chronos had stepped in, gears turning, time folding backward. “I thought what happened here was not meant to happen. That this event would be rewound. I thought it was not a maybe. That we could hope. I was wrong.”

Eriselpis’s gaze traveled to the Pinna colony. The survivors were emerging from their hiding places. Small, trembling figures with enormous ears crept forward, chirping mournfully. They gathered their dead—twelve small bodies laid in a circle beneath the largest mushroom cap. Gentle paws smoothed fur, arranged limbs, placed glowing spores over closed eyes.

Thanatos watched the grim procession.

  Eriselpis’s tears began to swell again.

Thanatos spoke quietly as he rested one hand gently upon her shoulder. “Maybe… maybe even this chaos can bring hope.”

Eriselpis looked up at him in confusion. Then understanding dawned. She raised her arms. The Mothbeast fluttered free, hovering above her shoulder. Its red eyes shifting to a gentle blue. “Bring them peace of mind,” she whispered. “Turn their sadness into comfort. Give meaning to their loss.”

The spores drifting from the mushroom canopy began to glow brighter—first silver, then warm white. They settled over the fallen Pinna like slow-falling snow. The survivors looked up. A low, melodic chirping rose—first hesitant, then stronger. A song of farewell to the dead. The Pinna swayed, ears fanning gently, catching the spore-light.

Thanatos turned his attention to the three souls he had collected. Two were clearly marked—destinations already written in faint silver script across their essence. The third… had no mark. It hovered before him, small and uncertain.

The unmarked soul spoke— it’s not quite-voice soft, like wind through tall grass. “May we speak? May we tell our families we are not gone—that we are moving on?”

Thanatos opened his mouth to refuse. But he looked at Eriselpis—dancing now among the Pinna, laughing through tears, trailing her own storm-colored light—and something in him shifted. “Very well,” he said. “Be quick. I must take you beyond this world.”

The three souls drifted upward, carried on invisible currents beneath the Mothbeast’s blue-glowing wings. They became visible—soft, luminous outlines of Pinna—hovering above the circle of the dead. The colony fell silent. One by one, the souls spoke.

“We are not lost.”

“We continue on.”

“We will wait for you.”

The words carried on the spore-wind, sinking into every ear. Grief did not vanish—but it changed. Shoulders straightened. Chirps turned from mourning to celebration. Small paws lifted glowing spores into the air like lanterns. The grim procession became a festival. Pinna danced. They sang. They spun in circles beneath the falling light, celebrating not the end, but the continuation. The knowledge that there was more existence beyond Death. That they would one day be rejoined with their loved ones. When the words faded, the unmarked soul placed translucent hands upon the other two.

“Go now,” it said. “I will remain behind.” The two marked souls rose—silver threads pulling them gently into the weave, toward their destined afterlives. The third approached Thanatos. “You saved me from pain,” it said. “Gave me peace in place of torment. I want to do the same—to spare my people from needless agony. Can this be done?”

Thanatos knelt—slowly, deliberately—until his eyes were level with the small, luminous figure. “I do not know if it is allowed,” he said. “But…” He glanced at Eriselpis, still dancing among the celebrating Pinna. “A friend of mine thinks it may be possible. We will try.”

He extended one hand. White fire flickered along his fingers. “What is your name?”

The soul straightened. “I am Reepur.”

Thanatos inclined his head. “Reaper. I give you grim tidings—and a small fragment of my power and duty. You are now my Grim Reaper—one of what I hope will be many to follow.” A thin thread of white fire flowed from Thanatos’s hand into the soul. Reaper’s form brightened—edges sharpening, a faint scythe-like shadow appearing at its side.

Then it bowed. “I will serve.”

Thanatos rose.

Eriselpis ran to him, breathless, eyes shining. “Did you see? They’re singing! They’re happy!”

Thanatos looked down at her. “I saw.”

The newly christened Grim Reaper spoke “I… feel? No, I sense brethren that call to me for release.”

Thanatos nodded, Kanna had allowed the transfer of power. He focused, sensing the pull himself, faint, as though it were being redirected, but it was there nonetheless. “Then go, make their endings as painless as possible. Guide them with care to their next phase.” The first Grim Reaper bowed before leaving.

Thanatos looked once more at the colony—Pinna dancing beneath falling spores, grief transformed into something gentler. Then he turned.

“Come,” he said. “We should not remain.” Eriselpis nodded, wiping her eyes one last time. The Mothbeast settled on her shoulder, blue eyes calm. Together they stepped back toward temporal limbo.

Behind them, in the shadowed tunnels beneath Nocturne, something stirred. Forgotten in the grief of the fallen and the celebration after. A small ball of fur drifted away. It had fed. It had changed. It had learned. It returned. It stepped out of the strand as the Pillars did—returning home.

Returning to Temporal Limbo.

Its brethren remained—scattered now across Nocturne’s dark valleys, burrowing beneath mushroom roots, fluttering through spore-clouds.

Becoming legend.

Becoming myth.

Becoming the first cryptids of Nocturne.