Dung, dung, dung, dung, dung…..

A sound, and a very unfamiliar one at that. Desolai was alarmed to hear it within her own domain. She scanned her surroundings but could not find anything within her vicinity. She chose to follow her hearing and flew in the direction the sound came from. It was coming from the barn.

She quickly flew by to the barn and found an unexpected sight. The wall of the barn was broken as if it was pierced from the outside by a strong force. The barn was intact just with a huge hole in its wall. She was perplexed, how was there damage on the barn when she was the only occupant of her domain, aside from the animals, but there wasn’t an animal that was strong or smart enough to do this. Granted, the barn was made with inferior materials due to the fact that she imitated the barn of a commoner, but still it is not easy to make a hole like this.

She opened the door of the barn. She found something, someone she didn’t expect.

A human being. Young man with black hair, average height, and yellowish face. He looked to be in his late teens. He was sleeping on a hay stack. His clothes were shredded so he looked rather bizarre considering the only piece of clothing that was intact was his underwear. Desolai was somewhat embarrassed for reason she could not understand.

When Desolai approached the young man, he opened his eyes. When he saw her he proceeded to scream. “Aaaah! A skeleton monster!”

Desolai was still in her form of Reaper, it was a form she changed into when she was taking care of duty, so she was rather scary. She took on that form because human beings associated death with such appearance. It was not her preferred form. She looked like a three meter tall skeleton with black wings dressed in black dress.

“Apologies for the appearance, human” Desolai changed her form to her preferred form. The three meter tall skeleton was replaced by a beautiful woman with very pale skin. Of course the height of the being stayed the same.

“You changed!” man was rather surprised. He could not contain his shock. There was genuine surprise in his eyes, but the fear didn’t seem to completely vanish.

“What are you?”

“I am a Shinigami, the master of this domain.” She looked at him with a questioning look. “The one who should be asking questions should be me, why are you in my domain? Who are you?”

“Shinigami? What is that? And also… Who am I?”

“You don’t know?” Desolai was not sure if he was making a joke out of her or was pretending to be an imbecile. She was not familiar with ways of human beings or how to have a valid conversation for that matter. She usually conversed with the souls of deceased and they were not the most talkative bunch.

“I don’t think so” the young man shook his head.

Desolai approached him. He seemed frightened but didn’t stand back or tremble. She placed her palm on his forehead. Her palm felt very cold as if it was made of stone.

She inspected him. He was not lying. His mind seems to be completely empty except for his ability to speak and some skills. She couldn’t even find any trace of his past, as if it was completely erased. She could sense that he wasn’t completely a human. She felt the energy in his body. Yes, it seems like he is only a half. What is the other half, she inspected his aura further, she felt it, and it was aura of a demon. He was half demon.

“A demon, I see…” she murmured. He was rather perplexed at what she was saying.

She poured her intent through her palm into his forehead to see within him. She wanted to see what constitutes the person who intruded upon her domain and knew absolutely nothing about himself.

To her surprise she found that the man’s soul was fractured. It was half, no, one half the size of a normal soul. The living soul in his body was not whole and to make the matters more complex, there were countless dead souls occupying his body as well. The living souls had a spark in them that Shinigami could see, and at death the soul loses that spark.

Desolai was astounded, how did this man get his soul fractured and how in the world did he become infused to so many dead souls? This is not supposed to be possible in nature, yet here is a freak of nature within her own domain! She was speechless. A soul is supposed to be whole and stable, that is the rule. Yet his soul was rather a weird sight. Yet that would explain the memory loss. If his soul was fractured, then it would mean he lost piece of himself. As for the dead souls, they seem to have permanently fused to his body, desperately clinging to him. She could not do anything to pull them off of him. The dead souls clustered around the fragmented living soul, clinging to it for life. Essentially it was a symbiotic relationship. Desolai felt that fractured living soul allowed the other dead souls to cling on to life, while they allowed the living soul to stay stable. It was a rather bizarre sight.

“Human! Follow me” Desolai told the young man. She flew off ahead towards her mansion. She deliberately flew in slow motion so that he would be able to follow her.

As expected, man followed her on foot in a rather slow pace even though he was trying his hardest to keep up. The entrance of the house was surrounded by metal fences that were shaped like spears. No doubt, to keep the intruders away, if there were any. While there was vegetation and life outside the house, inside the fence looked far different. It was as if someone took all the paint of life and just proceeded to erase them, leaving just bare soil and bleak atmosphere. With a gesture of Desolai hand the gate to the mansion opened. Man followed her to the inside.

The mansion itself was decorated with various things that did not seem to match up in style. It was almost like a mix up of various forms of decoration taken from different periods in history. Some were angular, some were round, and some looked rather unusual. It seems like the owner of the house was trying to imitate human beings for a long time without any sense of style of their own. That would explain the giant triangular door that opened by spinning around horizontally along the center of the door. There was no decoration on the door, it was only distinguishable from the rest of the house because it was colored pure white instead of greyish black like the rest of the outside of the house.

Shinigami and man entered the house. Somehow the inside of the house seemed far larger than the outside. When man tried to focus on his surroundings he understood that the size of the inside made him feel like some sort of an insect inside of giant’s lair. He felt dizzy at the thought and sat down to relieve his senses. Desolai sensed his discomfort and she waited a little bit for him to snap out of it. It was rather curious for her to see a living being’s reaction to her house, considering he was her first mortal guest.

Man managed to take few deep breaths and followed Desolai further. There were so many hallways that he was sure he would be lost for eternity if he wasn’t guided by Shinigami. She on the other hand was flying around confident of the whereabouts of absolutely anything within the house considering she is the one who built it. Man could not keep up with navigating inside the house, and soon he gave up trying to mentally map the inside of the mansion.

Finally they arrived to the entrance of a room. The room had a round entrance without a door. It was gigantic entrance size of an elephant. It was decorated in gold and precious stones. The archway had some words decorated on it with black ink. Man squinted his eyes in an effort to read it. It said “Answers you seek lie on the inside.” He wasn’t sure why it said that and why Shinigami would design the entrance in such weird fashion.

They entered the room.

“This is my library” Desolai spread her arms around gesturing towards the entirety of the room. Man’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. The library was simply gigantic. Other than the entrance there didn’t seem to be any boundaries to the library, no walls or ceilings were visible. It was almost as if the library occupied a small realm of its own. He was partially right in his assumption.

There were countless books lining up the shelves. Man tried to take in how many there were in total, but he lost count in low thousands. Shinigami ignored the magnificent sight of the books, most likely because she visited this place very often. Instead she ordered her library in an authoritative voice.

“Bring me this mortal’s book of life!”

The room obeyed the command instantaneously. From the far corner of the room in a huge section labeled living, a single book flew out at an alarmingly high speed towards the Desolai. The book didn’t seem to have an ability to track anyone’s direct location except for Desolai, so it almost ended up hitting the man in the head before he ducked just in time. The book landed in Desolai’s hands. The book seemed to be made of rather rough material, but it was coated in leather making it feel rather smooth to the touch. The pages were of golden white color.

Desolai looked at the book’s cover. It said Sabgyn Finnerman. She opened the first page, there were accounts detailing the person’s earlier life. She flipped through the pages in order to find the entry in the book that was happening at the present time. Each person’s book of life kept up with the person as long as they were alive and it wrote the account of the person within its pages for every action taken by the said person. Right now it should be easy to find the page writing his current state, considering it would be moving along and writing within its pages, making new words appear within it. To her surprise she couldn’t find the page that was writing anything new. Instead she found a dead end. The point in the book where the writing has stopped. She looked at the dead end in the book and the person next to her. Impossible, he was still alive, not a soul, but a flesh and blood. Furthermore, his book should have arrived from the section named Departed if his life already ended and his book met a dead end.

There was no mistake. This book belongs to this man, no, used to belong. Now nothing was keeping track of him. But how could this be? Desolai, out of her curiosity towards the exact nature of her visitor opened up the last entry within the book and read it.

“Sabgyn Finnerman knew that his death was near, which is why he attempted a last desperate shot against a man turned angel, Aldan. He managed to trick Aldan into getting into a trap that sent both Sabgyn and Aldan flying out of the city at a speed faster than the speed of sound. During the skirmish, Aldan managed to fatally wound Sabgyn and attempted to explode him by overloading him with heavenly energy. It would have been successful if not for the fact that Sabgyn refused to give in to his fate and used his only ability to channel the energy within himself towards splitting himself. Of course their actions backfired both ways. Instead of temporarily splitting once, the overload in energy forced Sabgyn to permanently split twice and his animal spirit left his body. His existence as a single living being is over, his account ends here.” Desolai read it out loud, but she still could not believe it.

He, Sabgyn Finnerman, no longer existed as a single entity. Does this mean there is more than one of him going around this world? That would seem rather bizarre.

She turned towards her guest. She asked him in rather gentle tone in contrast to the scary tone she used before. “Is name Sabgyn Finnerman seem familiar to you?”

He shook his head. That name did not ring a bell to him. He looked rather confused upon hearing the name.

“Well, the name is somewhat complex, so for now I shall call you Nur, is that fine with you?”

“Nur, seems easy enough to remember” man now called Nur replied. “But what does it mean?”

“A ray of light, simplest thing I could think of at the moment.” Desolai replied honestly.

She had no idea how to treat this human being. Having only a fraction of his living soul within him meant that he was effectively exempt from entries to the book of life. She suspected that due to his condition his capabilities were likewise reduced. Desolai scratched her head; she didn’t know it was possible to end up dividing a soul and live with just a fraction of it. He was the first case she ever witnessed of this strange condition. Not to mention the fact that she had no clue how the countless dead souls within him could influence him. For now, the fractured living soul seems to be in control.

Wait just a minute! A realization hit Desolai. She should be able to predict the next action of any mortal when they are near her. It was a passive ability of Reapers; they could see the immediate future of the ones they gaze upon. Yet, when she looks at Nur, she can see him only in present time. She could not see anything.

“Nur, catch this!” she threw a book at him.

She half expected him to catch it in order to verify that her ability was still functioning. Instead, Nur was too slow and the book hit him in the face with a loud slap. He fell over backwards with his hands clutching his face in pain.

“Shinigami, what was that for?”

Desolai’s suspicion was confirmed. She could not see his future or his fate. The fact that his account of life has stopped but has not departed could only mean one thing. He currently exists outside of fate. The books of life were intricately connected to souls and fate, so anything occurring within the books was not a surprise to a Shinigami who could see the future. In the eyes of Shinigami, fate was predefined, so there was no use to be even surprised. Everything just follows a script set by the creator.

“Apologies, your action was not what I was expecting.”

“What do you expect if someone throws a brick sized thing at your face!”

“Not this.” Desolai replied calmly.

His original fate was severed. She was sure that his original fate was supposed to be ending with death, yet with his actions he has ensured his existence outside of fate. Having a complete soul means one has a predefined fate, but an incomplete soul makes the fate obsolete, considering the person is incomplete. This meant that he is now some sort of existence that actually had a choice of its own in existence, not following a predefined path by the creator. He was an interference.

Desolai wasn’t sure when he would die, incomplete soul does not display the time of death. Until he dies, she had no power over him. She could not control him.

Then what in the world should she do with him, after all he is not bound by the laws like the others. But maybe he might have some uses.

“Nur, do you have anywhere you are willing to go?”

Nur scratched his head for a moment, and then returned a blank stare as if telling her that he has no idea. To add more emphasis he shrugged his shoulders with a goofy grin spreading across his face almost in a clown-like fashion.

“I see. Then would you like to be of service to me?”

“Service?” Nur asked with a look of total confusion laced with uncertainty.

“Indeed. It has been an eternity since I last had a visitor, and never was a case when my visitor was a mortal.” That was the truth. Occasionally other Shinigami came by to greet her, but the last time that happened was around seven hundred fifty years ago. Due to immortal nature of Shinigami the time was inconsequential to them for the most part. Yet, Desolai could not conceal the fact that she felt loneliness within this quiet house of death.

“I would like for you to become a servant of mine, even if temporary, in order to assist me in my duty.” Desolai lied about this part. She did not truly require anyone’s assistance, yet a mortal visitor was not something she wanted to let go of just yet. Not to mention the fact that he is Interference. She has heard of them before but she considered them to be just a myth. Yet now there is a flesh and blood Interference standing right beside her. Also, the fact that she felt if she let her visitor leave so soon she would be left all alone in this land of emptiness.

If anything, she wanted to observe him for the time being. This would aide in relieving the boredom and need for company she felt for centuries.

“So, if I become your servant, does that mean I get to stay here?” Nur asked.

“Indeed”

“Then I accept.” Nur said with a beaming smile on his face. Truthfully, he did not know where he was but by agreeing to Shinigami’s terms he was able to procure himself a safe place to live in for the time being. Now, more importantly…

A growling sound emerged. It echoed throughout the library, bouncing off of non-existing ceiling.

Desolai looked at Nur, the source of the sound. Nur finally realized it was a sound made by his empty stomach. She tilted her head as if to question the reason for such a strange sound while Nur lowered his head in embarrassment.

“It seems like I need to eat.” Nur said while rubbing his empty stomach.

“Of course! Mortals must consume remains of other mortals to survive! I must have forgotten it.” Shinigami don’t require food, which is why the concept of eating was rather foreign to someone like Desolai.

With such a vulgar description of eating, Nur could only suppress a chuckle and nod in agreement.

“Then let us leave for the mortal realm. But first you must get yourself cleaned and get a change of clothing. I will not let my servant perform his duty while looking like a vagrant!”

She beckoned Nur to come closer. When he approached her, she lifted him up by the waist and carried him off with her like a sack of potatoes.

In Nur’s eyes it was being carried by a three meter tall beauty. It was nothing to complain about other than being highly embarrassing. Still he kept his mouth shut, after all, his new boss was being generous to him.

He smiled, Desolai really is a nice person, no, a Shinigami.