The video starts with a fade away from a black screen. An environment of the same color replaced it, the floor shining from the light above—a stage. In the middle of the screen was a small, black office chair without arms. Behind it were black curtains that seemed to stretch far beyond the screen’s width.

The squeaking of boots fills the air for a moment. It’s not too long until the source of the sound walks in: a tall man in a beige trench coat, gloves on his hands. He sits down on the chair backward and crosses his arms. His entire head is wrapped in white bandages, making his face completely invisible. His eyes are covered by black goggles. In the bottom left, the screen shows the text:

Faraday Kelly

TOTY Winner 1987

The man begins to speak, “Welcome back, future miracle workers. In this lesson, I’ll tell ‘ya all about the nature of the soul, willpower, and whatnot. Yes, this will be on the test, so pay attention, yeah?” His voice has a gruff and tired tone to it, with a tinge of an Australian accent. The camera shifts over to the right, and he spreads out his arm there. In his palm, a large white orb manifests. Trails of light fly all across it rapidly like solar flares.

“This is the soul. It’ll sometimes look different, maybe a different color or size or texture– but the basic idea remains. Now, you can’t see the soul unless you’ve gone through training to do so or just born with an inherent sense of it.”

The ball floats down back to his palm, and he spins it on his finger as if it’s a basketball.

“The soul is our ‘origin point’. Our bodies are formed around it and act as sort of a container for it. But, at the same time, it contains all of our essence. Our hopes, dreams, love, and life. Without a soul, you wouldn’t be much outside of organic matter.”

He grabs the orb and splits it into two squares, and places them above his head. They turn black with a white outline, like little miniature televisions.

“The soul gives us free will– the ability to change reality as we know it. Now, you may think that sounds like utterly stupid, but it’s true. You do it every day. Let’s say you want to order food, right? Burger or pizza?” The ‘screens’ above him shift to show a picture of a cheeseburger and a pepperoni pizza slice. “Whichever choice you made is a result of you changing reality. Because without the ability to do so, you wouldn’t have ordered food at all and just starved. The screens fuse into one and go to his side.

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A more extreme version of this is Thaumaturgy. Miracle work. Magic. Whatever the hell you want to call it. By projecting your goals into reality, your willpower as an energy source, and your body as a conduit, you can manifest things you’ve probably seen only in movies and stories. Think of it like a projector. Your goals are film reels, your body makes sure the film plays, and your willpower is the electricity powering it.”

He stands up, and kicks the chair over to the side, but ends up sending it too far. It flies off-screen with an audible thud. He looks over for a second, before shaking his head and turning back to the camera. He makes hand gestures as he begins to speak:

“All our goals are unique, no matter how similar they may be. The power that your soul manifests is unique to yourself and reflective of you as a person. We call one’s unique ability a ‘Resolve’.” He summons a sheathed, middle-eastern sword into his hands. “This is mine. I’m not telling you what I call it, but it lets me make weapons and all that sweet stuff.”

He puts the sword to his side and continues making hand gestures, and begins walking around as if he’s actually presenting to a live audience.

“This isn’t the most important part of the soul, though. Though Resolves are, admittedly, pretty cool, they wouldn’t be possible to make without the willpower your soul produces. Your desire to pick yourself out of the mud and fight for yourself. With willpower alone, you can strengthen your body tenfold, heal wounds, and live for a ridiculously long time. If you know how, of course.”

He stops himself for a moment.

“...When a living being has too much willpower at the moment of their death, they become monsters. You know zombie movies, right? It’s like that. We call them Revenants. Walking corpses that can regenerate from any injury, lift any weight, and resist any force. You don’t even need to know how to do it to become one. Revenants are dangerous, so it’s important you know what one looks and sounds like—”

He pulls up a diagram that can barely be made out due to the video’s shoddy quality.

“A revenant will have incredibly pale skin. Like, paper white, unless they were some darker shade when they were alive. They don’t sleep, don’t eat, and only occasionally breathe. Any wounds you see on them will be blackened. Their bodies run off of willpower alone, and they have an immense amount of it. Most of them are animalistic. But, there are some intelligent ones who retain their memories. It’s important to know, though, that despite this, they aren’t human. No matter what kind of person they were in life, the need to violently assert their will overcome their mind, and anything they perceive as an obstacle will be quite literally torn apart in their wake.”

He picks up the sword and spins it. It disappears from his hands like it was never there.

“...And that’s it! This will be on the test, so make sure you wrote that down, yeah? Faraday Kelly, signing off.”

The video ends.