The Reaper did not come when the body was buried and the blade was left over tilled earth. There was only the wind, passing through hanging branches and the leaves that broke free; and the sky, and the breeze, and the road left to walk.
It is in the darkest evening of the road well walked that death comes, a presence that puts a weight in the dark of his thoughts. Around him hangs a breeze, yet it passes through him like a spectre's hand - as a stone can lay within your hand, it is with the cut of his sword that he can move the wind to his will. But it is now, where the trees shroud him in darkness, and the sky darkens and drowns the stars in shadow, that it eludes him. Like losing your footing. Like all the grace in your shoulders pulled from you.
It's a pressure on the back of his spine, then a poison in his throat - it is as if the threads of existence split, layers of reality parting from one another to create a realm not of his own, nor any he has heard of. Somewhere, some time before, on the back of farmhand's wagons he pitched rides to -he hears of a realm where beasts swallow you whole and spit out teeth and bone. A horror beyond the veil. But the sky does not give way to fetid beasts. It is an evening of the dead, dancing in the air around him.
A choir.
The Reaper does come, eventually. It is when the traveller finds his path leading through the grounds of a haunting, trees aging in the respite and life extinguishing within the swirling pool of soul, spirit and song. The Reaper - a singer, a bringer of death, a man who drowned and turned his watered lungs to song with one last breath - cares to the remaining wisps of still-there spirits. Like insects that light up in the night, the soft-blue of spirits he did not know of are the only sources of illumination. They glow when they drift towards the wraith, and dim when they drift. In the north, He has heard before, in the shelter of villages, of songs that are played through golden chimes and sing about a celestial upon a mountain. The glow of the dead remind him of such tales.
The choir lingers - sits in his head and presses its weight inside. Hymns born from a distant land of killers who cut through Ionia, transformed in their pilgrimage to islands that don't exist. But it is peaceful. The one who guides them does not sing himself - only guides his hand through the mist and shadow, conducting with his slow movements. Beyond him, above him, Yasuo can see his body enter the respite. The exhaustion of death pulls upon him. Still does he wander. Still does he seek.
What do you seek, traveller?
It is a voice of many - the voices of a thousand dead souls coalesced into one single entity, woven together in such a way he can imagine the ridges of where their forms touch and hold together. He imagines a long, braided rope. Yasuo makes eye contact with the lich. The weight of a coffin presses down upon him. There is a breeze that tastes like ash - he must kneel.
The spectre offers him enough dignity to not treat his rest like an act of submission. It is then that Yasuo can see it does not touch the earth - a mist that trails from old red cloth, the shape of limbs barely visible through half-lidded exhaustion. His hand rests upon the blade he has sworn himself a life beside, the hilt of its saya pressed into the dead earth.
( In a direction he does not know - )
What do you long for?
( - tales upon tales heard in the distance, in another land, on the horizon he just cannot reach - )
Just looking for a road home. What else?
( - they say nothing can exist upon the Shadow Isles. )
He can tell a hand is extended without seeing it. A compulsion inside him tells him to lift his head, and the drain of death catches him once more upon seeing the lich. There is a smile upon its face, twisted dead flesh backlit by the curse inside of it. His bones grow heavy, like the promise of a long day's conclusion. When Yasuo breathes in, he notes he breathes some of the fog, and it tastes foul.
Kneeling in the mist of a thousand dead souls. Yasuo steadies his thoughts, looks past the size of his mind and into the figure he has dropped before. Hand outstretched, body bending - it does not dare touch him, does it? Death would surely come with its cold brush.
The land is old, child. Let yourself be liberated.
Cold ground presses into the fabric covering his knees, dusting them in dark filth. His vision is but grey and sea-green; all that he holds within himself is his resolve. To be carried forth would have him on his feet, breathing easy, with the fabric of his reality mended and the wind at his back - it hardens in his core as his body remains tired, the illusion of being broken and shackled cursing him. So close to death. So close to Death. There stays the choir, deep in his mind.
Tell me, he wishes, as the hymn turns to words he understands, ancient and eternal - a language that exists in texts he has not read, will never read, lost to a history he thought a myth. It sings a canticle that soothes the pain in his knees and the new poison in his lungs, searing then cold, cutting deep and then retreating. He does not know the language of the dead, but when his heart has been touched so physically by the power of it, it is then that he learns, in his single moment, the moment of his existence - what it is you hear when you die.
Yasuo stares at the lich.
Sing, Deathsinger.
Tell me the hymns that carried him into the afterlife.
The stir of the choir - it does not halt, but there is a breath that drags, a smile that splits, a moon that shines. The creature's hand retreats from the fading warmth of Yasuo's face, its touch never coming, spared in a moment of clarity. The lulling of Yasuo's heart does not yet stop, but the breath - even as he breathes in rot, and decay, and sharp, sharp ash, it continues. This creature of foul death leans itself back, and he hears the swell of choir.
A memory is swept from the air, a clawed hand outstretched about the dying man's head and catching the light, physically. Like a hand held in flowing, rushing water. A light so soft it can rival the moon's ethereal glow, Yasuo hears a note from an instrument that does not exist. If he could assume it a shape - it would be a flute.
The song, in its seconds of reprisal, shift to that language - a tongue that he can hear through the feathered deafness that finds him. There will his heart lull, his last breath drawn without a sword to fall upon - but it does not, a surge then catching him and he hears it, it is there, the song of mourning. Yasuo is within his mind, and then he is not - his thoughts grow large and stretch beyond him as the song does sing, spirits casting themselves in light circles around his person.
He sees himself collapse. He sees himself still breathe. Perhaps it is not him watching at all, and is instead the brother he had to bury. A soul that has found him in the cross between death and the journey. A final goodbye, a wish with no atonement. As he falls, he feels himself be thrown back into his body, and he hears the song of mourning conclude itself.
Already, he knows he is alive. The grass that cradles his exhausted body is not alive, and its dry, brittle shape tickles his face. His blade has collapsed beside him, and he feels the wood in his hand still. But he will not open his eyes. The song fades. Yasuo remains upon the earth.
Death did not yet need him. Is a dishonored man capable of being honoured?
Eventually, he opens his eyes. There are wisps in the air of wind he won't catch. He breathes in the earth, and it is clean. The lich has left. The song is gone, but its verse remains in his thoughts. The pain ebbs from him, like bloodletting.
His broken heart he does not lament; to destiny, he bows.