I drift through endless space, watching time flow like sand. I've seen countless stars born and die as the universe grows ever larger. What began after Fathers, Zeros great sacrifice has become galaxies full of life, each carrying a tiny piece of the being who saved everything.
I move between stars like a thought without a home. I'm not solid, but not completely see-through either, something in between. I don't remember where I came from, only that I've always been watching, always been apart from everything else. Always alone.
They call me Blook. I don't recall who gave me that name or when I started wearing this fedora hat that sits tilted on my ghostly head. My hat stays put even though the rest of me seems to fade in and out depending on who's looking and how the light hits me.
I travel through space with nowhere to be and all of time to get there. I've seen worlds begin and end, watched life grow from nothing and return to dust. I'm always watching, never joining in - truly a ghost.
"Another galaxy," I whisper as I float into a spiral of stars that somehow feels both new and familiar. My voice sounds hollow, like wind blowing through old ruins. "More lives that will never know I'm here."
Loneliness follows me everywhere, more real than I am. Long ago, I tried to talk to the living beings I found. It always ended badly - with fear, confusion, or worst of all, with blank stares from those who couldn't see me at all. I gave up and accepted my role as the watcher, the audience to a play where no one knows I'm in the theater.
But something keeps me going, stops me from fading away like everything else does eventually. Some purpose buried deep inside that I can't explain. So I keep moving, carried by space winds and my own curiosity.
"I am the witness," I sometimes tell the emptiness between stars. "I am the memory. I am the ghost who watches."
Space never answers back.
I stopped expecting it to long ago.
In what living beings would later call year 3X - a name that makes me smile because it tries to measure endless time - I find myself near a small blue-green planet circling an ordinary yellow sun.
"Earth," I say, feeling the word as I get closer to this world buzzing with life. Something about this planet pulls at me, touches some forgotten memory. It calls to me unlike any place before.
I sink through the sky, my ghostly form passing easily through the layers of air that would burn up solid things. Below me spreads the planet - vast waters, lands shaped by time, swirling weather patterns. And everywhere, life - growing and thriving in every corner of this world.
What amazes me most as I float lower isn't the land itself, but the harmony between two different kinds of thinking beings living here. Humans, with their soft bodies and strong wills, have built homes that work with the land - clusters of stone temples and wooden houses arranged to match the flow of natural energy. Though simple, their buildings show deep wisdom, with stone towers that track stars and open spaces where they share stories.
Living alongside humans are beings of a completely different kind - monsters of every shape and form. Some look like animals that can think like people, others like living elements with minds and personalities. Fire creatures work huge forges inside mountains; giant snake-like beings with jewel-like scales guard rivers; walking skeletons with glowing eyes keep libraries carved into cliffs.
"Amazing," I murmur as I watch humans and monsters trading goods and ideas with equal excitement in a busy marketplace. "Two completely different kinds of beings sharing one world without fighting."
In one village built near a spring, a human child plays beautiful music on a flute while a monster made of flickering flame dances perfectly in time, creating light patterns that tell stories on stone walls. Nearby, a water monster helps human farmers water their fields, the monster's body becoming the very channels that feed the crops.
These people haven't built a world of machines and technology. Instead, they've grown in spirit and magic. Humans, with their knack for change and adaptation, have created rich systems of leadership and art. Monsters, naturally connected to magic and each with unique skills, have deep knowledge of how the world truly works. Together, they've made a society that values both thinking and feeling, strength and kindness.
"They've done what so many worlds never manage," I say to myself as I glide unseen through a temple where humans and monsters sit quietly together before a carved altar showing the soul. "Balance."
As I always do, I watch without stepping in. I see seasonal celebrations where humans and monsters honor the turning of great cosmic wheels. I observe elders teaching children, tribes forming and changing, and individual lives playing out their small dramas against bigger events. I pass through rooms where both human and monster midwives welcome babies with ancient songs, and through sacred groves where they bury their dead with equal respect no matter what kind of being they were.
For the first time in my endless life, I don't want to leave. This world, with its simple wisdom and harmony between different beings, has become something dangerous to me - something like home.
"Maybe," I tell the setting sun after seven hundred days on Earth, "I could stay a bit longer. Just to see what becomes of them."
Years pass. I remain, my fedora-topped form moving between continents and cultures, soaking in the endless variety this dual civilization offers. Most can't see me - I'm as invisible to them as stars slowly moving or continents gradually shifting. But sometimes, a human child with special awareness will look right at me with wide, wondering eyes, or a monster naturally tuned to spirit energy will follow my movements with curious acceptance.
These brief connections keep me going through the loneliness that never truly leaves me.
Stories begin to spread about me in some places - whispered tales of the ghost with the fedora who appears during important moments. Some elders call me a messenger from the stars, others a guardian of balance, others just a curious watcher of key events. Monster scholars include me in their books of spirits, noting how I don't follow the usual rules for ghostly beings. I find these stories amusing, if not quite right. I'm no messenger or protector - just a witness to the endless, fascinating show of life.
Or so I believe, until darkness comes to Earth.
It starts subtly - light growing thin in certain sacred places, shadows staying too long after sunset. Soon it becomes something you can see: a mist creeping along the ground like searching fingers, swallowing light instead of reflecting it. Humans notice it first in their dreams, sharing nightmares of emptiness and being cut off from others. Monsters sense it through their natural connection to the magic flowing through the world - a flow now carrying notes of discord and decay.
I, with my broader view than any Earth dweller, recognize it for what it is: a basic disturbance in reality itself. This is no natural event, but a corruption - a hungry force feeding on the very essence of life.
"Despair made real," I murmur as I watch the mist surround a small village, leaving both humans and monsters empty-eyed in its wake. "It finds the dark places in the heart and makes them grow until nothing else remains."
For the first time since arriving on Earth, I feel something beyond curiosity or distant caring. I feel worried - deeply worried about the fate of this world and its people. These beings, with their brief, bright lives and remarkable harmony, have become more than just subjects of my watching. They've become something I can't bear to lose.
But what can a ghost do against a force that eats away at the living from within?