“...” Silence followed after my rant, settling down like a suffocating blanket. The longer it stretched, the more anxious I became. Eventually thinking: Could I really be the first?
“Bwahahahaha, that was amazing!” Suddenly the Original burst out in roaring laughter, Thanatos wryly starting to smile behind him. This went on for a minute or so before it again settled down and Thanatos began to explain: “You were correct, though I only know this after making contact with the original, it seems that we copies can only remain the way I was before for a limited time, after this time passes we gain or perhaps it is better to say regain our individuality...”
Thanatos then explained to me the origin of the copies. Apparently the Original personally guided all the souls that came here to their next life, however as time progressed more souls appeared and with this his workload increased. While reincarnation is able to recycle souls, whenever there is no soul available for reincarnation a new soul is formed. This happens similarly to physical reproduction. Simply put, when mommy and daddy loved each other very very much, created a baby and there was no soul available. A sliver of the soul of both parents would be used as a catalyst to form a completely new one. Both souls would eventually regenerate on their own and by then 2 souls would have become 3.
As I was also correct of earth not being the only place to sustain sentient life and there being a multiverse. The workload put on the Original had become extremely heavy in no time, especially since not every soul deserved the same treatment. Death is not the only thing that is eternal after all. Time & Space (who are twins) may not care what happens, but Fate & Balance did care. And when they found out that souls have the tendency to form core behaviour, they demanded from Death that he’d try to change souls for the better.
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This was apparently needed because, after having to donate a sliver to form a new soul and then regenerate it. Souls eventually seem to erode at their core, causing them to reincarnate into people that more or less become evil. While mostly this was stopped in time with people like Roman Emperor Nero being the limit. If the erosion remained unchecked, Hitler and Stalin would become the equivalent of Gandhi in comparison to the resulting reincarnations. And since this would sway the balance of everything towards total annihilation, Balance wasn’t a fan.
That is when Death came up with the plan to use copies of himself imprinted on eroded souls, Since Death is not only the end, but also a new beginning and Death itself gains power as long as things die. He used his effectively infinite power to let those souls work as copies until healed. And so ends the explanation. With the Original being Death and Thanatos being a soul that while being healed fulfilled Deaths duties while thinking of itself as part of death instead of being a soul.
Death, After seeing that Thanatos was done explaining his origins, then continued. “But after a while the system got too perfect, I don’t have any work left. The imprinting of souls happens in groups and only takes less then a second. Leaving me with only free time, which was fine at first. But it gets boring real quick when your amount of free time is infinite, so I decided to create a lottery. A lottery where every soul that happens to encounter a copy that is done being healed and therefore regains the ability to express individuality, gets a reward.
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As I mentioned in the previous chapter, next chapter will probably take longer because of a lack of time.
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