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Real, living, human mortals. The older he’d gotten, the more he’d learned about the history of the world--the history of how oppressed normal human beings had been by forces beyond their control.

Or more accurately, by reapers.

Which was perhaps a strange point of focus to make, considering he was beholden to one himself, but he knew that Marlizia felt even more strongly on this subject than he did. She was the one who’d convinced him of the truth of it, after all.

Eleg was under a stranglehold. For thousands of years. It was the battleground and plaything of those whose time should have long since passed.

‘We are thieves of the youth,’ was how Malizia had put it. ‘We have all the time in the world, and yet it’s not enough. We have to steal away what little time mortals get by shaping the world to our will. Not just in petty and pointless wars, but also in the organization of society. I thought the Vanguard would be different with their rule of non-interference in mortal governments, but that has proved to be just another placating lie. Each new generation of human beings should have the chance to remold and reforge civilization anew. But they can’t do that when they’re stuck under the countless quiet tyrannies of superpowered immortals.’

Which was why, above all else, Daro Bright felt that his work--his true work--was too important to gamble with. Marlizia was obviously not like the rest of her kind. If they discovered what he was trying to accomplish...

It didn’t even bear thinking about. There would be no chance of survival. Not for him, Marlizia, or anyone near them.

But the actual task of excising reapers from the world was certainly no easy feat. Cancerous though they were, they still served an important function in the ferrying of souls into the afterlife.

In the prevention of feldeaths from being born, more specifically. Without an alternate solution to that little problem, removing reapers from the world was the same as dooming it. In Daro’s estimate, feldeaths would overrun the world and annihilate all of humanity within five hundred years.

He knew the stakes. The fire that he was playing with.

But he was also prepared to abandon the project entirely if a workable replacement for reapers could not be found.