Chapter 194: The Harbinger of Death
"The death of the soul?" Ashlynn whispered. "What... does that..." her mind shook, struggling to process the concept. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. It was that it was too horrifying to accept.
"If you can cause the death of the soul," Ashlynn said, her eyes trembling as she met Nyrielle’s midnight gaze. "Then you can stop a person from ever reaching the Heavenly Shores. If they die, then they will never..."
"That’s a human belief," Nyrielle said, interrupting Ashlynn before her mind could go too far down that path.
Nyrielle had seen too much of the human’s ’faith’ in their ’Holy Lord of Light.’ To her, the scriptures that spoke of struggle and rebirth into a higher station were nothing more than methods to convince the masses to accept their painful lives while the lords above them carried a ’divine mandate’ because of supposed virtues in a previous life.
She hoped that with time, Ashlynn’s faith would fade. Years of experience and perspective would wear away at ideals her lover’s beliefs like a millstone. It was pointless to argue matters of faith and asking Ashlynn to forsake her faith would only have created unnecessary conflict between them.
The fact that the Church Ashlynn grew up in considered her to be a heretic who must be put to death was like a hand upon the wheel. The Church’s lies about the Eldritch people were another one. Eventually, they would add up to something that eroded what faith Ashlynn still had in the Holy Lord of Light, freeing her from the human superstitions.
Now, however, Nyrielle’s nature presented an existential threat to Ashlynn’s faith, one that could drive a wedge between them if she didn’t address it.
"I cannot say what happens to the soul after a person dies," Nyrielle said. "Not with any certainty. A vampire exists between life and death. I may be able to glimpse the other side but if I reach out too far toward death then I would succumb to it."
"Can you feel it though?" Ashlynn asked. "Can you feel a soul’s departure at the moment of death? Or see it?"