Chapter Text
A pale figure drifted through the forests of Burgess. Dressed in an elaborate white dress that left a twisting train behind her, the woman’s face was somewhat unremarkable. The features were blurred and indistinct, all except for her eyes.
Sharp blue pinpricks watched the world within that faded face, depthless irises that seemed to hold infinity. The gaze was all at once sad and kind, ancient and beautiful.
Dark hair joined the line of her train, never catching on branches, for though she walked around the trees, it seemed that she was as insubstantial as breath. And yet, looking upon her, one could see she was more real than anything in the world around her.
A piercing scream cut through the forest, and the woman paused, listening. When it came again, she changed direction, aiming for the direction of the scream. The snow-covered ground did not impede her, and though she moved with languid grace, she ate up the ground with impossible speed, arriving at the edge of a pond...well, a mostly frozen pond, in moments.
The scene was familiar to her. Winter was a busy time. The cold, the ice, the sicknesses, took enough even were it not for whole species whose adult members died off en masse in the months leading up to it. A girl human knelt at the edge of the pond, screaming a name.
“Jack!”
“This will do you no good.”
The girl’s head snapped up, and she met the gaze of the woman. Eyes widened, and the girl’s body shook.
“You are...”
The woman drifted close, and laid a hand upon the girl’s head. “You must tell others. You must mourn. You must heal. But pleading here will change nothing, and will risk your own life. Jack has gone beyond your reach.”
Death had never accepted the pleas of the Lunanoff to join his crusade. Her duties were constant and could not be ignored. But she believed herself to be the First Guardian, for in the moments of death, those surrounding the deceased struggled with the impossibility, the unfairness of it all. Death offered what comfort there was to be had. To be Death required more than the Duty. Death’s center was Compassion.
And so when one saw her, she sought to ease their pain, to push them from dwelling on the loss of those who had passed and cherish what still remained. It was cold comfort, but the best she could offer.
And once the girl had left, moving with the reluctance of one weighted with sorrow, Death knelt at the edge of the broken ice and reached down.
Her hand met with resistance, and she paused. No physical barrier could shut Death out, which meant she was dealing with a power beyond the mere physical. A closer look identified a shimmering of moonlight about the pond. Death narrowed her eyes and leaned over the ice. The boy in the water was dead, but his spirit still lingered. Without Death’s hand, he would struggle within that body and become something monstrous. Glowering, she tried to punch her hand through the barrier, but it held. She could feel the panic of the trapped spirit, the confusion and pain of the dead child, and it hurt her.
With a desperate lunge, Death reached through the barrier, finding that her essence could just barely squeeze through. She brushed against the dead boy’s spirit. But something anchored him here, anchoring his mind to his pain and loss and fear...
Death could not help him cross over. But she took the pain. She took the memories that tied the pain to him and bound them within his hourglass. Whatever the Lunanoff was doing, she would not let him harm this child more than necessary.
She returned later that night, in the hopes that perhaps the boy was free to pass on. But the pond was empty, the child’s body and spirit both absent. Death (or this aspect of her) hovered by the pond for a long time, brooding. There had been magic, back in the Golden Age, that could steal spirits from the next world. But the child would be a spirit, bound to the rules of that realm. She could seek him out, but...
If the Lunanoff had raised him, he had a plan. He would see to the child’s well-being. His Guardians would see to the child’s survival, until his time came again. So except for making sure the Lunanoff had no other devices to allow him to raise the dead, she mostly forgot about the boy.