Page 21 of To Trap a Soul

He thought it may be a grin of some kind.

Although he’d had many souls look upon him, it had never been a pleasant conversation. They were spectral echoes of their past selves, their personalities alive enough to react to their current predicaments but not remember them. They spent every day resetting and forgetting, just to re-experience their terrifying first moment of realising they were dead – every day... forever.

He’d given up on befriending them when they’d only forgotten him and screamed upon him introducing himself.

This felt different.

This female was his mate, and her soul was alive. She should remember her life and the way it ended properly. He already liked that her gaze appeared curious rather than frightful, and like she was really...seeinghim.

“What am I looking at?” she stated, instantly stealing the pleasantness he felt.

It deflated him enough that his mist spread out and lost the layer it’d created against her. Although he could control his mist, it required he spend much mana to do so. He felt as though he’d wasted it by her reaction.

The pressure in his face deepened, but with no true face to pull on, he merely felt it as a stroke across his consciousness.

Her lips pursed as her eyes trailed down in a zigzag pattern. “Where’s the rest of you?”

Weldir knew what he must look like to her then. He could see himself perfectly, but also saw where his flesh was darker in some spots. Like inky stripes that moved across the body of his soul, they were the parts of him he perceived the most pressure. The rest just felt light, rather than dense. Outward, rather than surrounding a body. Everywhere, except for those spots.

His mist was thick, like it was supposed to surround his body like flesh, but he was too weak, broken, and ill-formed to do so.

That which was physical was like oil moving across water, and the rest of him would appear as nothing more than a puff of black mist. That oil moved across him constantly, and sometimes dispersed to reappear elsewhere, but it never covered the entirety of the surface.

He could controlwherehis physical manifestation collected to, congealing where he needed it to, but he preferred to let it move over him like oil on water freely. Except just now – for her.

He chose to do it again. Not reveal himself, but his vexation.

Weldir grunted and drew his mist tighter so he could fold his arms to show his annoyance – an action he’d never had to do before. But he knew it was human nature to move in reaction to one’s emotions.

He was hoping to experiment with this now that he had someone to talk to. To act like an interactive being rather than a floating consciousness.

What else had he seen of humans? Not much. What else did they do in reaction to irritation?

Ah yes. He tapped the fingers of his right hand against his biceps. “I had hoped you would see all of me,” he stated thoughtfully.

And with the power he currently held, barely a tenth of his humanoid form would be visible to her. This was also what his souls saw of him.

Weldir had been hoping, as his mate, that she would truly see who and what he was. He could see the borders of his intangible physical form – although it was rather transparent even to himself – which was actually his soul.

To say he was disappointed was an understatement, but he was also aware it was entirely not her fault. Just the unfortunate state in which he found himself.

Had always found himself.

It brought on a deeper concern, and he gestured his hand out to her. He knew she didn’t see it by the fact that her eyes never tracked to it. So, standing where he was with a few metres separating them, he removed his arm from his body as if the limb didn’t need to be connected – which it did not. Weldir could remove and change his form as much as he pleased.

He’d chosen his form to emulate the Elvish people, his people, but also the demonic side of him that was his reason for being. Pointed ears, hair long enough to tangle around them and the horns over his head. An Elvish face and body – long, lithe limbs – with his fingers tipped with claws to mark the similarities he had to Daekura.

When he attempted to hold her wrist withallof him, it went right through her. Only when the oily streaks of his physical form brushed over her wrist did she gasp and yank her hand away. She frowned, as if she saw nothing.

I can only touch her with my physical self.Which he had very little of, and it would grow thinner with his dwindling power. The rest of him was made up of the cloud of his essence, his malformation. She couldn’t even seem to perceive it when he made it halo her entire body, and that, too, upset him.

“You look like bits of chalk and smoke,” the female stated.

Weldir tilted his head at that.

I don’t know what chalk is.He always thought he looked like oil and mist, even if his physical manifestation wasn’t glistening. It was how he defined himself, but he’d always wondered what a different perspective would be like.

Then again, he’d never seen his own reflection, so it was difficult to ascertain any true identity.

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