Oh spirits who guide the dead.

Alex clasped his hands together in front of the corpse like a priest at a funeral who knew full well the collection plate was about to come around. His expression was grave, though one could argue he was enjoying the performance a little too much.

"I ask for none but a moment," he intoned, with the solemnity of a man who had absolutely no intention of keeping it to just a moment. "Allow me to converse with the soul… the soul of the deceased whom I marked."

The corpse didn't argue, which was very polite of it.

The air above the body began to warp, shivering like badly tuned glass. Alex, unbothered by the physics having a minor meltdown, calmly tucked away a little bottle from his sleeve.

Inside, a grey liquid swirled with white flecks, like a snow globe designed by someone with a morbid sense of humor. He snapped the stopper shut and muttered something under his breath, probably a prayer, possibly a complaint about the smell.

No time wasted, he pulled out a silver cube. It looked deceptively simple, like the sort of thing you might use as a fancy paperweight. He dropped it toward the dirt. Except it didn't touch.

With a complacent defiance of gravity, the cube shot upward, spinning clockwise in place with all the enthusiasm of a drunk dancer at a wedding. The spin grew faster, humming with a metallic resonance until the air cracked and a shimmering barrier erupted outward. A dome of force sealed the space, an invisible cage that no soul, however petty, vengeful, or just plain nosy, could slip past.

Satisfied, Alex reached for the pièce de résistance: a thin incense stick. He set its tip aflame with a lick of blue fire. Smoke spilled out, curling in strange colors, violets, greens, the occasional shade of "what on earth is that", until the barrier itself looked less like a solemn ritual space and more like a festival booth that had been run by an alchemist who never learned moderation.

When the air was suitably dramatic, Alex finally straightened and looked.

There it was: the pale, half-formed silhouette of a figure, white and grey, rising above the deer mask's body. The soul drifted in a lazy sort of way, like it hadn't quite gotten the memo that death was supposed to be dramatic.

Alex studied it with the kind of calm focus only a man who'd done this too often could muster. Then, very softly, almost reverently, he said what anyone in his position would surely be thinking:

"…Well, you're uglier than I expected."

The spirit, like any sensible enemy after being called names in the first thirty seconds of its afterlife interview, stood silent. Hovering, vaguely insulted.

Alex didn't flinch. He didn't prod nor did he coax, he didn't even arch a brow. He just stood there in a stillness that was either intimidating or infuriating, depending on how much patience you had.

The truth was, he had expected this silence. He always knew what to expect... at least a bit. Spirits rarely opened with "Yes, thank you, I'll spill all my secrets." No, they preferred the part where they floated in awkward defiance, as if sulking might reverse their death.

Unfortunately for them, Alex had the patience of a glacier and the creativity of a tax auditor.

See, conversing with the dead wasn't about waving a few fancy bottles, throwing colored fog around, and mumbling like a half-assed priest trying to impress a congregation he secretly despised. The showmanship was just garnish. A distraction. The real trick was psychology.

The soul had to want to speak. That was the part people never understood. Threats only got you so far. Bribery didn't work — souls had no wallets, if one didn't know.

Pleas fell flat, because pity was a luxury of the living. But if you could manipulate that little wisp of ego, the lingering fears, the regrets, and insecurities carried beyond the grave… well, then you had yourself a very chatty ghost.

This was why Alex occasionally murdered people in spectacularly creative ways. It wasn't sadism — well, let us say it was not just sadism. It was more of a strategy that disguised itself as sadistic. The memory of how one had died clung to the spirit like perfume. Brutal deaths left an impression, and impressions left leverage.

Tear a man apart in front of his comrades, and the spirit remembered what it felt like. The fear, the humiliation, the desperate wish that someone, anyone, would stop it. Later, when Alex stood there with his fog and his spinning cubes, he only had to tilt his head slightly, and the spirit would twitch as if expecting the knife again.

Fear was the perfect interrogation tool for both the living and the dead. It survived death. It outlived reason. And it never stopped whispering in the ghost's ear.

As his father and ancestors always used to say, even gods can feel fear, you just have to let them experience it once. This was something he began to be skeptical about after he began to mingle more with the other races, but his father's prowess he had seen far surpassed his imaginative powers of the gods whom most humans prayed

So Alex remained standing, perfectly still, exuding that casual menace of a man who had all the time in the world and absolutely no problem making eternity feel longer. He let the silence stretch. Let the soul stew in it. He even gave a tiny sigh, as though bored. Because nothing got under a spirit's skin quite like realizing the living weren't impressed by their "mysterious" floating routine.

In the end, Alex knew the game. The dead always cracked eventually; he just needed enough time for the soul to stabilize. Harming it in this form would just shatter it, and he would have to pay a huge price for shattering souls.

It was just a matter of whether its form was complete — afterward, if they chose silence, he had to remind them, with a smile, that he had invented worse fates than death.