The blackness rising was not smoke, but ash. Ruined carcasses finally leaving to the world beyond this one, heaven or hell, or perhaps another purgatory. Somewhere in the hills beyond this gate they were turning to ash and flying into the sky, never to be seen or thought of again. Even the memories of the people here faded unnaturally quickly when they departed from Remoria. The green skinned guard didn’t know or let such matters concern him as he stood his post, one of a two man team on the tower tonight. Vine covered stones reached with their tendrils to caress his fingers—he quickly moved his hand away from his partner’s gesture.

“Stop it. Have some respect.” “For what?”

The man next to him chose to have the vines in his hair longer, more flowery and kept. Not often would you see him without a spray bottle on his hip, prepared to give himself a touching up if he looked a little withered. Even for a Blost he was fruity.

“The ash. Some of the outer rings reported a mass exodus of people from the north going to the mountain to die. Hundreds in the same suicide pact. I doubt they even brought gear…with the way it billows and all.”

Spritz spritz. There he went again. He patted the well curled bleeding hearts on his shoulder.

“Oh spare me. I care not for the dead and the ash they ruin the sky with. Passing on from Remoria into the great unknown that was supposed to be their grave is their own damn business. Keeping you and myself healthy and brimming with light is mine.”

He made no more advances toward his guardmate that night, the both of them sitting in an only occasionally misty silence atop of Trimbuli’s main tower. The world outside of the plant race, the world that welcomed pink haired humans and walking skeletons, or even beasts with human hearts; it perplexed him.

In all the wide madness of the Remorian world, how did any individual stay sane? How did a single soul outlive the masses of ashen sky for days on end? At even this comparatively smaller cloud of darkness, the guard felt his insides run cold, as if his moving blood had slowed to an icy crawl.

To turn to ash and be forgotten forever. What an end to a promise at a second life that was.

Day three thousand and thirteen without his lamp had been a stumbling success.

The guard wished his heart covered mate goodnight, walking slowly down the steep staircase and into the towers insides, where his bunk would await him just a few hundred paces below. Once he was gone, the other guard leaned his entire chest on the brick, vine covered top of his post, setting water sprayer down unevenly among some leaves. A fine holder. The condensation would supply that little vine for at least a week to come.

His bleeding hearts began to droop, turning from one shade to another. No water had satisfied their need in a long time. To give it a proper place atop the tower, for it spent more time there than he did, was only fitting. Placing a sturdy boot on the bricks above him, he only mourned the bruising that the vines would suffer as he plummeted to rejoin the earth below.

Day five thousand and twenty without his lamp had been a failure.

Those who are afflicted, in a way, share a soul. They’ve the same experiences, trials and downfalls. There is a kind of disease that rots at the soul, turning living beings with great potential into nothing more than walking husks. These people live among the living, but are disinterested in this world entirely. So the fact that there is someone there, someone who understands you, hardly even matters.

They have lost all joy with this world. Many choose to inherit their riches in another one. A world within themselves, one where they can live forever. Whether this world was created through demons, magic, or the delirious will of man in his last gasp of life none can tell. But those who are chosen to visit this undying land to lord over it call this place Remoria, The Land of Wandering Souls.