The Lord of Night and Ravshika worked together and scoured every tome of the dead, examining every and any details of every single person who had lived in the past two thousand years for clues of the missing souls.

And they soon became bored out of their minds, fear of the apocalypse forgotten. The Lord of Night grumbled, he had once again been reminded of why he had built the Ancestral Memorials in the first place: lives of mortals were so mundane and uneventful, he couldn’t be bothered to store all the useless junk that were people’s boring lives in his head.

So to save the information securely and keep his mind clear from the millions of versions of how mortals wiped their butts after a morning excrement -and that was just from a single mortal, mind you, all the mortals had such similar lives, it was actually hard to tell if he turned the page or if he accidentally reread the same one- so the Lord of Night opted to expel all that unhelpful knowledge onto paper, only bookmarking the few remarkable mortals who had done something worth remembering in their short bright lives.

His laziness had gotten to the point where the Lord of Night was tired of inscribing every silly mortal thing that mortals do onto paper by hand, so he built the Ancestral Memorials to automate the entire process. He then found himself with a lot more free time to play with the other pillars.

The Lord of Night idly floated upside down while reading the second lizardman who died because he got hit by bird poop and lost his footing while on the edge of a cliff. It was funny that it happened twice on the same cliff, but that was about the only remotely memorable thing in the tome he was reabsorbing.

He huffed with boredom, and stretched his cramped muscles lethargically mid-air. Having a physical body again was nice and grounding, but having to sleep was a complete waste of time.

The Lord of Night closed the current tome in his hands and reshelved it. It was pointless, the mortals recorded so far did not provide any insight on the origins of the war for most of them just stayed within their little bubble, happily oblivious to the world.

But at least they had found a little more about the situation from the records that were lost instead.

The missing souls’ absence was abrupt: the tomes thinned some few years into the start of the last two thousand years, so the cause of missing souls was not natural or gradual. So either the massive amounts of souls couldn’t find their way through the abyss or were stuck in the mortal realms for some reason, or someone had been collecting souls.

The Lord of Night frowned. It was not the first time either scenario had happened, but once again, the scale of it was absurd. He could rule out the first cause since the abyss of shadow between realms and the mortal realm had not been overrun with souls, as he could easily detect a dead soul wandering around, no less a whole tsunami of them.

But the second cause…well at least it would’ve been unlikely that a single person pulled it off all by themselves, so it was either a very powerful group of spirit mages across generations, or if soul collection had become a hobby or cultural tradition for mortals.

He groaned inwardly in aggravation just thinking about needing to deal with the stupid mortals. They always give him so much grief with their annoying world ending shenanigans, yet had the audacity to complain that the gods were out to get them when he takes their very deadly toy away.

The Lord of Night felt a sense of comradery with all parents past and present, the sheer collective exasperation across the ages echoed soundly with him. What a mess.

He would be in for a rough time, especially if toying with souls of the dead were the average people’s pastime, the Lord of Night’s divine authority most likely would have waned significantly if everyone had ignored the rituals of the dead he had advised them to do three thousand years ago in favour of making the dead their playthings.

Yep, those were weird times. He shook himself in disgust. Mortals are sick in the head. If only the culprits were an obvious cult that he could smite in one fell swoop, preferably at a safe distance so he wouldn’t dirty his new cloak.

Eager to get away from the dreary past, the Lord of Night bid Ravshika farewell, after brainstorming plans of action together and ultimately deciding to play the long game and gather information in place of active searches, afterall, they were already late: the problem could afford to wait for a little while longer as he recovered his mana.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“My Lord, why not retrieve some of your mana that you stored to power the Soulprint Formation?” Ravshika urged when the Lord of Night objected vehemently. “We still have more than enough to last a few hundred years even if you took half, since it hadn’t needed to do as much imprints as you predicted,”

He finally agreed after Ravshika refused to let him leave, magically locking down the fortress and chiding his recklessness, ranting up a storm about neglecting safety and foolish selflessness.

After caving in, the Lord of Night started feeling a lot like his old self after he drew half of the fortress’s reserves, so he thanked the owlbat for her insight and took off for the mortal realms where Theodric was surely waiting.

…

“Did you miss me?” Valendor popped out without a warning, fangs flashing.

“What the-” Theodric had swung his sword without thinking and barely cleaved right into that smug face, thankfully stopping himself in time.

“Well that’s quite rude wasn’t it,” Valendor’s smile widened, and pointed out. “Your guard is up, what’s going on?”

“My guard wouldn’t’ve been up if you had just told me what in the eight realms could scare even you,” Jabbing his finger at the Night Warden’s chest. “So much so that you just up and disappeared on me,”

“Hmm,” Valendor shrinked away a little at the smell of sour cold-sweat all over the human. “You’ve been pretty distressed, haven’t you?”

“What? Of course I was. Who knows what kind of stupidly strong Ebonic monster that could be on your tail,” Theodric scoffed a little hysterically, waving his sword. “If it was hunting you there’s no telling you could survive an attack like that.”

He frowned and squinted at the Night Warden. “But you don’t seem to be nearly worried enough,”

“Because there is no Ebonic monster,” Valendor blinked at Theodric, amused as the warrior’s tense stance relaxed just for a fraction. The Lord of Night found it oddly endearing.

“Good, good, but what got you so worried then?” Theodric crossed his arms, sword dangling limply in his hand. “You owe me a full explanation for making me sweat like a wimp in front of my students,”

“Later, when no ones’ around,” Valendor glanced around the top of the tree Theodric was perching on, slightly surprised that the warrior hadn’t lost his footing at his little prank, and saw twelve pairs of eyes blinking back in the dark curiously, their owners similarly perched on branches. “I suppose these are your students?”

“Oh yeah. Class? This is Valendor, my new familiar. You can all introduce yourselves tonight back at camp,” He turned back to Valendor. “We’re currently hunting a pack of Direwolves, but I think there is more than I thought,”

“I can’t take care of all twelve students, as half is supposed to be your group, and thin the pack by myself,” Theodric pointed at the pack a good dozen metres away on the ground. “This will be a good opportunity for us to judge your fighting style if you could clear about half of them,”

Catching himself, Theodric added. “Of course, you don’t need to fight with magic if you can’t afford to use mana. You can also choose not to fight at all and stay with the students, I won’t force you,”

“I’m fine with fighting, but yes, I will not be using magic today,” Valendor appreciated the thoughtful gesture. “Be back in a moment,” He flashed his fangs again, shadow phasing into the air above the pack.

Pushing a little mana into his boots, obsidian blades unsheathed themselves from the sides of the leather, snapping into position like a pair of ice skates’ blades, but larger and serrated at the front.

Valendor tucked into a flip and landed on a Direwolf, one leg outstretched with its blade buried in the skull, with the other tucked underneath him, landing in a crouched position. The wolves immediately leap to their paws and howled with fury, attacking him, jaws snapping.

Valendor flicked his wrist and summoned his bow. Fingers cradled the frog of the bow in elegant arches, his grip tightened as he cleaved upwards, beheading one of the beasts when it leapt at him. Its corpse landed behind him in two.

The Lord of Night flashed his fangs in delight as the rush of adrenaline hit him. He also drew the knife strapped to his left thigh, and surged into battle. He growled with relish as he stood up and launched a flurry of slashes at the wolves in front of him. His silver antlers danced in the moonlight.

Mowing through their numbers like hot knife through butter, the Direwolves’ tough fur gave no resistance to his angel-hair bow and imbued obsidian blades. The Lord of Night whirled and spun, severed a paw with his bow, then shadow phasing to the outer edge of the pack and sliced off a head with a spinning kick. His long hair and cloak fanned out with every twirl he made.

He repeated this, slashing at one end of the pack then immediately popped out to the other end. Forcing the pack into a defensive circle and unable to escape. Exhilaration from the hunt trilled in his chest.

It was a thrill to once again fight in a body, phasing in and out of shadow, slaughtering enemies while chasing the adrenal high - one of the best pros of having a body. The feel of flesh under his bow and bones caving from his kick was addicting and the Lord of Night enjoyed every second of it.

But this fight did not sate his bloodlust at all and the Direwolves made for fragile punching bags. It served as a good test run, however, as the Lord of Night was massively pleased at the smooth movements and good coordination of phasing and fighting.

So with the poor wolf pack sufficiently culled and frightened, Valendor stepped back to let the children have their fun.