Do you believe in ghosts?

Not in the sense of a ectoplasmic monster screaming in your face per say, but the presence of someone gone? We make so many bonds in our lives, meet people that change with us fundamentally. And yet, one of the only things that is universal about people is that they’ll leave us in the end. We all die alone don’t we?

But they don’t make books about what to do when the presence haunts our actions. Where someone’s impression can be felt long after their light was blown away. It carves into your soul, the missing moments, the expectations of a face and a smile that won’t ever be there again. And for those like us left behind, it looms overhead constantly.

The question then is, what do you do with these ghosts in your life?

For some like you, it’s not something you just give up. You fully embrace the ghost, motivated constantly by those that are long since gone and long past caring. The phantoms push you, motivate you to do things in their name. At least, that’s what it feels like right? But they aren’t there Night. They died, and they moved on to the world of the dead.

No, your actions of stalking, harrasing, and haunting the world of the living are the choices you made. You chose to live in the shadows of the past, black as the ruins of the Red District. A King of Bones, moved to inflict harm on the whims of the dead that whisper in his ear. Someone trapped by the past, bound by the shackles of revenge and pain.

But have you asked yourself what happens when you get to the end? When you break the one that broke you and you get your revenge? Who are you beneath it all?

When I was haunted by the ghosts of my brothers, revenge struck it’s way deep into my heart. I tried to embrace the mantle of the Python, their whispers drove my heart mad with stopping the man that had slain them, to hunt down the Zookeeper with everything that I had.

But finding out the truth, that I was working for and everything I had done was because of the monster I had trusted, I made a choice. I wouldn’t just work for the ghosts of the past, but for the people around me. For Arcadia as a whole. I chose to live for those around for me, not for the ghosts that haunted me from the past.

And that’s where we differ. Ghosts have to haunt the shadows to have power, and in the ring the shadows are drowned by the light. When it shines through the ghost you’ve become, it’ll show the one who’s here. The one that stands to win, and live for something than the one haunted by the past and left throwing bugs and screaming at nothing.

For what do the living have to fear from the dead?