Whether they were ghosts or simply echoes of souls that had long since passed on, I saw them as clear as day. Sentient beings, in their trillions, floating in a translucent cloud, like a living atmosphere around the planet. It was terrifying yet magnificent. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Then, as if the anti-light cord that kept my soul attached to my body was a bowstring that had been stretched as far as it could go, I was pulled back. I hurtled through the sea of souls, tore through the sky, and plummeted to the mortal realm, falling at a terrifying speed.
With a violent impact that felt like it had shattered every bone in my body, I was back.
I fell to the ground, gasping and convulsing. The experience had almost killed me, I knew that much. My pulse was racing at such a speed that I felt on the verge of exploding. My stomach twisted in knots of excruciating pain. My lungs were aflame, and I could barely breathe. I managed to get up onto my hands and knees, but only to start puking.
I threw up over and over again, until my stomach was completely empty. Then, I retched some more. I collapsed, drenched in sweat, shivering and gasping for breath, my heart hammering. I lay like this for a while, feeling like I was on the verge of death—real death this time.
Then something stirred within me. A buzz of immense power that started in my heart and spread out through my body. It coursed through my veins and swelled my muscles, supercharging my blood and electrifying my nerve endings. In seconds, I went from feeling like my death was at hand to feeling like I’d never felt before.
I jumped up onto my feet, high on raw power.
I was a god.
I was no longer simply Vance Chauzec. I was Vance Chauzec, God of Death.
Grave Oath lay on the floor, trembling with power invisible to anyone’s eyes except mine. I picked it up and noticed an ethereal glow swirling around its blade. When my eyes focused on the peculiar light, I discovered it was actually a composite of many lights. Each individual glow represented a soul Grave Oath had taken. I could identify every one of them with my new divine senses. I rolled through them, recalling the memory of killing them, and also seeing lives that I hadn’t taken personally. They must have represented Grave Oath’s former owners.
Looking down at Isu’s lifeless corpse, I knew right away what my first act as a god would be.
“Time to see just how this resurrection thing works,” I said.
I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t have Isu around anymore for advice or guidance either. But I was a god now, so these things should just… well, come to me. I stared intently at Isu’s body and pictured life returning to it. I remembered how I’d raised Fang and focused on that memory, combining it with determined thoughts of bringing Isu back to life.
I felt a brief lurching sensation, almost as if my soul was about to be stretched out of my body—as it had while raising Fang—but this time. it was definitely different. My spirit seemed to stay put after that quick jolt. However, I could see inside Isu’s body, as if I had once again shrunk to a microscopic size to travel through her veins while retaining my regular sight. But I still felt like I was very much myself, present in my own body.
The process of resurrecting her was very different from raising something from the dead to serve as a zombie, though. That simply required reactivating the mechanisms of the body and had nothing to do with a soul. To truly resurrect Isu, I needed to return her soul to her body.
Grave Oath hadn’t taken her soul, as it had the soul of a human or animal it killed. And why would it; it was her own weapon, forged and enchanted by her hand. If there was a single soul that Grave Oath was incapable of stealing, it had to be Isu’s.
So, where would it be? I considered my spiritual journey in the stars and came upon a reasonable answer. The only trouble was how to find a single soul swimming out there in a sea of billions. However, as soon as this thought entered my head, a realization came over me: I had a compass that was attuned to souls.
Resting Grave Oath in the palm of my hand like a compass needle, I angled my hand up, keeping my thoughts focused on Isu’s soul. Grave Oath rotated madly for a few seconds, then suddenly came to a jolting stop, pointing upward. I pictured the sea of souls I’d passed through, focusing my mind on the direction Grave Oath’s tip was pointing, as if an immensely long, perfectly straight rod was attached to it.
I sent a spectral hand shooting up into the sky. It was as if I could see via the fingertips of this hand. I traveled in a perfectly straight line, directly along the path Grave Oath pointed. There, up among the stars, I found her: Isu, in spirit form.
She gave me a look that suggested she was expecting me. I curled the fingers of my huge, ghostly hand around her form, then shot another hand up, this one traveling far further into the cosmic darkness.
My next action I knew completely by instinct, as though the act of becoming a god had given me infused knowledge. I needed a handful of pure sunlight, the original source of life. That, plus her soul, was what would truly resurrect her from the
