Page 7 of Death’s Gentle Hand

The Weight of Stillness

Cael

T he Threads existed in the pause between heartbeats, between inhale and exhale, where time twisted itself into impossible patterns. Cael moved through the silver mist like a shadow given form, his essence drifting between the faint echoes of souls in passage—the only rhythm that had ever mattered.

Here, in this liminal realm, he was what he had always been: inevitable, impartial, alone. The Threads recognized him and parted with the silent deference reserved for the oldest truths, making way as he slipped past, guided only by the cosmic necessity that summoned him to every ending.

He felt the next summons before it fully formed—a pull at the core of his being.

But even as it shaped itself into duty, something in this call unsettled him.

Not the familiar sharp demand of approaching death, but something gentler, almost questioning.

The difference was so subtle that Cael paused mid-motion, his form rippling with something he could not name.

For eons, he had drifted passively, responding to the weight of souls reaching the threshold. Choice was not part of his nature; he was the shadow at the end, neither cruel nor kind, simply the inevitable. Yet now, this summons felt… less like a demand, more like a door left ajar.

Cael emerged from the Threads into the world of Varos—a city sprawling below, built of obsidian and bone, stitched with centuries of desperation. Through his perception, the living flickered as distant sparks, their feelings muted and remote until the precise instant they crossed into his care.

Only then, at death, did mortals become vivid to him. Only then did they fully belong to his keeping.

He moved toward the source of the summons, his form insubstantial, passing through walls and memories. In a weathered tomb, an old woman lay dying—her years spent, her soul loosening from her bones. The Reaping should have been simple: arrive, sever the Thread, ease the passage.

But as Cael drew near, he sensed an unfamiliar magic, a quiet web of power stretched between the woman and something far away. Her soul was tethered by emotions too fierce, too focused. She was not afraid. She was not even thinking of herself.

“Mrs. Kess,” he murmured, drawing her name from the cosmic records, “your time has come.”

She met him with unblinking eyes, sadness weighing her down but not fear. “I know,” she whispered, voice thin as fading mist. “But he’ll be alone now. Damian… He thinks he’s strong enough to carry everyone’s pain, but he’s just one man. Someone should watch over him.”

The name meant little to Cael at first—just another mortal.

But as Mrs. Kess whispered it, her soul carried a request no reaper could ignore.

He realized, distantly, that he’d brushed the edges of Damian’s pain before, but never looked directly.

Mrs. Kess’s words brought Damian into sharp focus—an echo finally resonating in the place where death and the living meet.

“Damian,” she breathed again, the name falling between worlds. “He needs… someone needs to look after him, when I’m gone.”

Duty called. Cael performed the Reaping, severing her Thread with practiced gentleness. Mrs. Kess slipped into the mists, her suffering ended. Yet, when he should have departed, he lingered in the tomb, drawn by a current he could not ignore.

This, too, was forbidden. A violation of the order he embodied.

But he remained, unsettled by the strength of the woman’s final thoughts—her fierce, stubborn care for someone she would never see again. Most souls died clutching regrets, or afraid. But Mrs. Kess’s last tether was love, fixed on a man who healed others by shouldering their pain.

What kind of person inspired such loyalty at the very end? What mortal’s name could echo so loudly across the Veil?

Within the Threads, Cael sifted through the residue of emotion.

Mrs. Kess’s focus had not been on herself, but on the one she left behind.

Her love felt like an anchor, her memory a door he could not close.

For the first time in millennia, something that might have been curiosity caught at him—alien, insistent, impossible to brush aside.

He tried to let it go, to settle back into the comfort of emptiness. But the questions multiplied, soft as snow and just as relentless. What did it mean to carry another’s pain? Why would anyone choose it?

The Atrium of Silence lay at the heart of the Threads, a sanctuary Cael had shaped over centuries—a place woven from the last thoughts of the dead. Here, memories drifted like smoke and the air tasted of final breaths. It was usually peaceful. Tonight, it felt charged, unsettled.

“You’re different,” came a small voice.

Mia’s spirit shimmered at the edge of his vision, a child’s echo preserved by her own resilience. She hovered, face round, eyes too old for her years. “The old woman’s death troubled you,” she said.

“I am unchanged,” Cael replied, but even to his own ears the words were brittle.

Mia drifted closer. “She spoke of someone you’d never met, but you stayed anyway. That isn’t like you.”

He considered this. “Her last thoughts were not for herself. She was concerned for someone she called Damian.” The name left his tongue unfamiliar, yet not unwelcome. “I… wondered about him.”

“Wondered,” Mia echoed, almost smiling. “That’s new.”

“It is.” The admission lingered in the Atrium’s cool air. “I don’t understand why her thoughts clung to him, not her own ending. It seems… inefficient.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Mia offered. “Loving someone more than you fear death. That’s the beauty mortals find, even at the end.”

Cael found no logic in it. Endings were meant to be clean. Love, suffering, all of it should dissolve at the threshold. Yet, Mrs. Kess’s worry still pulled at him—a thread left uncut.

“What does it feel like, to wonder?” he asked softly.

Mia’s smile was gentle, impossibly patient. “It’s like hunger, but not for food. It’s reaching for something you don’t know, a question that makes you ache a little.”

Cael let the Atrium’s hush wrap around him, but tonight the familiar emptiness did not come. Instead, pieces of the Reaping floated to the surface: a name, a longing, a thread of magic that refused to break.

“Damian,” he whispered, tasting the name in the silence. It vibrated through the Atrium, echoing deeper than he expected.

For the first time in centuries, something like a dream found him. Sensations not his own: the scent of healing herbs, the hush of breath in darkness, the careful brush of hands wrapped in linen. None belonged to him—yet they felt close, heavy with meaning.

In the dream’s deepest core, he sensed a figure working by candlelight—dedication in every movement, gentleness in every touch. Someone who soothed pain, not by ending it, but by sharing the burden.

He woke with a start, uneasy.

A new summons tugged at him, another soul waiting at the edge. For endless eons he had answered such calls without question. But now, a moment’s hesitation rippled through the Threads.

He obeyed, as always, but the hesitation lingered, unsettling the mist itself.

Back in the liminal realm, Cael found himself drawn not by cosmic law, but by the lingering echo of that name. He moved once more toward the world of Varos—not to end a life, but to follow a thread of longing that was not entirely his own.

He passed through the city unseen, the misery and hope of Veil Row blending beneath him. Guided by instinct, he drifted to a converted clockmaker’s shop—a small, hidden place soaked in healing magic. The air was thick with pain, but here it had been transformed, softened, made bearable.

He hovered outside, listening. Within, a presence resonated—a mortal whose soul seemed to ring with the ache of others, layered upon his own.

This, Cael knew, was Damian.

He let his consciousness linger at the threshold. Through the walls, he could sense the healer moving quietly, tending to pain with a kind of reverence. Even at a distance, Cael recognized the cost. Each act of healing left the man a little more hollow, but still he persisted.

Cael lingered longer than he should have, telling himself it was only to understand the anomaly—a mortal whose pain drew others’ love so powerfully that even the dying could not let go. But the lie grew thin as he pressed closer, curiosity growing roots in the silent spaces of his mind.

He wanted, for the first time, to see not just the end, but the living struggle.

Returning to the Threads, he was met by silence less welcoming than before. Mia watched him, knowing.

“You found him.”

“I observed,” Cael said, choosing caution. “He is unusual. Where I end suffering, he carries it.”

“Does that trouble you?”

He hesitated. “It… interests me. His methods are painful, but effective. The mortals he tends leave lighter. Their suffering eases—without dying.”

“Is that all?” Mia’s voice was soft, but the question dug deeper.

Cael did not answer at first. The truth was uncomfortable: he could not dismiss Damian from his thoughts, nor the way the man’s pain resonated inside him. “I do not know,” he finally admitted. “I am not meant to be curious.”

“Maybe that’s what’s changing,” Mia said. “Maybe you’re allowed to change.”

He stood at the edge of the Atrium, gazing into infinity. “He carries their pain,” he said, speaking to the Threads. “He does not end it, but transforms it. I want to understand how.”

Another summons reached for him, duty calling him back. He obeyed. But as he moved through the mists, the questions trailed behind him, quiet as snow. Something in him had shifted. Obedience no longer felt like enough.

He wanted more. He wanted to know why love—why one man’s suffering—could reach across the Veil and call to Death itself.

And that want, that flicker of longing, felt like the beginning of something new.

Something for which he had no name.

Something that, for the first time, made him wonder what might happen if he followed the thread instead of the summons.