Revenant

A revenant is someone who died and did not stay dead. They come back in the body they had, of whatever people they were born to, and the body is plainly a corpse: the skin grey and cold, the eyes ringed dark, the wound or sickness that killed them still there to be seen. Whoever they were before, they are that person still, with the same memories and the same name, and the same face wearing the fact of its death.

Every soul goes to the Crucible to be weighed. This is taught across the Vale from childhood, and a revenant is what the teaching does not cover. They did not rise by necromancy; no one called them. They are held to be souls that reached the Crucible with a purpose so unfinished that they turned back at its door, and the Vale has not agreed on what that means. Priests of Cavall hold that judgement was postponed, not escaped, and treat a revenant as a case not yet heard. Cyrvis's hidden worshippers claim the return as his work. A death is the plainest thing fate appoints, and a soul turned back from it is fate defied; to Cyrvis that is reason enough, and his followers say he does it for the pleasure of the interference as much as for any use the returned dead might be to him. They point out that a revenant's purpose is very often revenge, which is his to give. Country folk say prayers against the undead and bar the door. All three are belief. What is known is that revenants are few, and that each one came back for a particular purpose, and a purpose strong enough to turn a soul from the Crucible is seldom a gentle one.

The body they came back in keeps only what it needs. A revenant does not breathe, eat, or drink, and cold and poison pass through them without effect. Fire is the exception, the one thing that ends a revenant, and they know it; every other hurt, however grave, only stills them for a night, and by morning the body has gathered itself and stands again.

What brought them back is the centre of their lives. It may be a debt, a person, a wrong, a thing left half made, and a revenant will name it if asked. A revenant who completes their purpose is not seen again. It is generally held that they go, at last, where they were going.

Revenants are rare, and small places fear them. A village that has never seen one will hurry its children indoors, and a revenant learns to arrive by daylight and to say early what they want. Many keep to the roads for that reason. Others go to Crownhold, where a dozen peoples share every street and one more grey face draws little notice. There are enough of them in the city that a few temples keep a bench for them, near the door.

They have the patience of someone who has already died once. The things that hurry the living, hunger, weather, the passing of years, do not hurry a revenant, which makes them steady company and difficult to argue with. What the living cannot easily forgive is the reminder: that the Crucible can be turned from, and that the grave is not as final as the prayers say.