The Ashen Keeper

Chapter 16

[Firekeeper POV]

"Can you separate yourself?", asked Tony Stark out of the blue.

"I'm afraid I do not understand what you are trying to say?", she replied.

"Separate yourself. You told us that you existed before becoming the flame. You got a soul right? This means that you are not always the flame.

Separate your old soul from the flame and you can let the flame die without consequences. You can live a normal life."

"Ah... I get what you mean my dear Stark, but I am afraid it is not possible. My soul was used as the final sacrifice before the flame finally burned out in a blaze. My soul no longer exists.

I am now the flame and nothing more or less. To burn out the flame means letting myself burn out. We are not separate entities but one single entity."

"How about becoming an undead?", suggested the doctor. He seems guilty by this suggestion.

"I mean you might become a monster, but you will definitely live. And you will not turn mindless right away, but it gives you more time.

We can think of another solution for that later. But we can think of another way if you don't like it."

His voice got smaller and smaller as his speech ends. The doctor think in a different direction from Stark due to their different experiences.

"My good doctor, your suggestion is a possible one, but it might not come true due to how the undead are born. The undead doesn't turn into one from a human. They simply stopped growing as human."

This seems to confuse them. "Explain", said Nat. She was fully concentrated on her every word.

"Very well, I will give you a comparison. Imagine a human whose lifespan is a hundred years old. A human would turn one in the first year and two in the second year. He will turn three, four, five as time goes on and on.

Time goes in a linear span and is pretty simple. As one-year passes, you turn one. But let's say that a man turned 30 and did not wish to grow older.

So, he cuts off one year from his life span. He erased the time in which he turned 31. If another year passes by, he will not turn 31 due to cutting off that time but he will turn 32.

He stayed 30 but his overall lifespan is now only 99. His soul continues to grow while his physical body stays the same.

This causes a small amount of imbalance as he only cut off a year's time. Eventually, he will cut out more and more times as he stayed 30 after years.

His soul is now in a complete imbalance with his body, and he will suffer from various forms of pain, but his physical body stays the same. He will forget things and eventually be driven mad.

That is what we call an undead. Time itself is cut out from them preventing them from ever truly dying. They will always suffer from pain due to their souls being shackled to their physical bodies.

With even the time of their death cut off from them, they can no longer die. They will slowly lose their remaining sanity and become mad as they seek to destroy everything around them.

To become an undead means to suffer for eternity."

"I see, just forget my words.", said the doctor.

"So, why did Gwyn killing himself has to do with humans turning into undead.", asked the captain as he sounded genuinely curious in her painful world.

"Tis a speculation and I do not know how your world works. But mine works in the form of souls. Souls can even be used for currency in some parts and are most fundamental existence.

I reckon that the world itself need souls to continue working. As time passes from era to era, it needs souls to continue sustaining itself. It works naturally when a person dies, their souls are used for the nourishment for the world.

Eventually after, taking all nourishment from the soul, the soul turns blank and returns in the form of another life, whether it be a human baby or an animal cub. The world uses a portion of the nourishment they absorbed to complete the deed of reincarnation.

However, due to Gwyn sacrificing himself, a huge chunk of soul was gone to simply prolong an era that is long overdue. It was supposed to go into the next era, but the lack of souls prevents it from doing so. So, it stays in the same era.

To preserve its energy from the lack of a powerful soul, the world stopped souls from being reborn and return them to where they were and simply took the nourishment in the form of memories and sanity.

This cause the dead to return to where they were. Whenever a soul powerful enough emerged, they would simply kill themself to prolong a doomed era. Even worse is that new souls are still produced in the form of new babies. No new nourishment came into the world and the world itself becomes harsher and harsher to prevent newborns and losing even more souls.

It also tries its best to kill all the living residents to take their nourishment and return them so they could kill them and absorb it again. This always continue in cycle until eventually, every possible form of nourishment had been taken.

Once noble knights like Siegward of Catarina or Gael, who was once part of Gwyn's knights has also been driven as mad as possible with no hope of salvation or ever returning to their former selves.

The past lords of Cinders now a mere shell of themselves when revived with only knowing how to swing their power around with no essence. This is why the Ashen one was able to slay four Lords of Cinder even when he wasn't one yet.

Eventually, all living beings were driven mad and hollow with the exception of a few. The world could no longer last another cycle as it slowly dies off. This was why the Ashen one chose to end it rather than letting to remaining sane ones to continue suffering."

The avengers remained silent as they thought of the prospect of a painful, dying world that they have only heard in the form of words.