No! I don't want to be a Super Necromancer!

Damien smiled faintly.

Rage Monkey flopped sideways in the sand, groaning. "I hate both of you."

Damien waved his hand slightly, and Rage Monkey's banana grew back, but it was half its usual size.

"Thank you Master! You're the best, you're like the father I neve… WHAT?! It wasn't this small previously!!" Rage Monkey wailed.

Blackie was doubled over now, her usually regal composure shattered.

She was half-hysterical, half-choking on her own laughter, her breath coming in short wheezing gasps as she leaned against a boulder for support.

"I…can't…" she managed. "You…you actually gave him a fun-size version…"

"It's not funny!" Rage Monkey bellowed. "This is a violation of dimensional monkey rights!"

Damien shrugged. "Symbolic resurrection. You asked for meaning. Now you get to reflect on impermanence."

"I can't go into battle like this!" Rage Monkey moaned, clutching his sides. "My opponents will think I'm still in magical puberty! This isn't king-tier anatomy!"

Damien gave him a thoughtful look. "Honestly, it matches your maturity level."

Blackie fell backward, laughing so hard tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. "Oh stars, this is the best journey I've ever taken." she wheezed.

"I hate this family." Rage Monkey grumbled. "I'm filing a complaint with the Pantheon of Primal Humor. There's got to be a god out there who respects bananas."

Blackie chuckled, her laughter quieter now, tinged with faint regret. "Pity. The fun-sized version had a certain poetic charm."

They continued walking, the playful energy slowly fading into something more reflective. The terrain stretched out ahead of them, cracked and dry. The temple was still distant, a dark smudge on the horizon, and the world around them remained eerily still.

For a while, they said nothing. The silence wasn't awkward, it felt natural, like a breath taken before a plunge into deep waters.

Then, without warning, Blackie spoke.

"Life is a pattern of organized entropy. Temporarily stable. Always degrading."

Damien turned his head slightly, eyeing her with interest. It was surprisingly deep.

"That's just a fancy way of saying everything's breaking." Rage Monkey replied, his tone more thoughtful than dismissive. "Which is fair… but depressing."

Blackie smirked faintly. "It's still true. Life is structured instability. A brief, flickering act of resistance against collapse."

Rage Monkey scratched his head. "So all of us are just… fighting the inevitable?"

Blackie spoke again quietly. "That's what makes it mean something. Meaning only exists when time is short. When endings are real."

There was a pause.

Rage Monkey let out a breath, unusually quiet. "So if you live forever… there's no meaning?"

Blackie was silent for a moment, then shook her head. "No. But you have to make your own. Again. And again. Without ever forgetting the ones you lost."

Rage Monkey glanced at her, and for a moment, even he looked contemplative.

"That was the longest you've ever spoken to me about anything." He muttered.

Blackie merely shrugged at his words. There was nothing to say to that.

In front of them, Damien had fallen into a contemplative silence.

Even though he was the Sovereign of Death, he had never really thought about what life and death really meant to him.

Death was his friend, yes. But what is it? And what is life?

The wind picked up around them, tugging at cloaks and fur, rustling dust across their path. Still no movement. No mana. No sound of life.

"Fine." Rage Monkey continued. "So in that case… What is death?"

"It is… a returning. From dust… To dust… " Blackie replied slowly. "Death isn't destruction. It's reversion. Everything borrowed must be returned, energy, will, even memory. Death reclaims the formatting."

Rage Monkey tilted his head. "So, you're saying death is like… the universe pressing 'reset' on a character file?"

Blackie glanced toward him and nodded lightly. "In a way. Death doesn't destroy energy. It just breaks the structure that holds it together. The energy returns to the pool."

"And death energy?" Rage Monkey asked, his tone dropping into something more serious. "What is that? Residual chaos?"

Blackie fell silent at that point. There was definitely someone more qualified than her to talk about what death energy was.

Damien could feel both their attentions fall upon him.

Damien thought for a moment. "Death energy… is the noise made when a soul lets go."

That earned him a look from both of them. Not fear. But curiosity.

"It's… Beautiful." Blackie murmured and sighed.

Rage Monkey folded his arms. "Pretty words. I need more than just poetry, Monkey Boss."

Damien didn't respond.

They walked further, the silence now laced with something sharper. Not suspicion. Not quite reverence. But wonder.

"So." Rage Monkey pressed on, "If energy can't be created or destroyed, and death just frees it… then technically death is a form of energy redistribution?"

"Exactly." Damien nodded, surprised that the dumb and dead brute actually got it.

"But death energy is rare because it's transitional. It doesn't linger. Unless someone…" his voice paused, just slightly, "...knows how to trap it."

Blackie gave him a slow, sidelong glance. "And someone like that wouldn't be an ordinary necromancer."

"No," Damien replied, eyes still forward. "They wouldn't."

Rage Monkey snorted. "Alright, I take it back. Life's not about bananas and revenge. It's about managing energy transfer with maximum emotional drama."

"Now you're getting it." Damien said, half-smiling.

Blackie, bound to the will of the Sovereign of Death, carried it like a scar woven into her bones. Rage Monkey, born of chaos and fire, had witnessed it too often in war, tasted its finality in every failed transformation. And Damien…

Damien walked with death inside him.

At first, it was just energy. A force. A system mechanic. Something he could shape and weaponize.

But now, as he walked through a land devoid of life, of sound, of movement, he began to feel something deeper. Blackie's words struck him the hardest.

Death was not destruction. It was not a flame, or a sword, or an end.

It was a return.

Everything borrowed was eventually paid back. Flesh. Memory. Emotion. What lived was always on loan. And what he carried inside him was not some crude tool for killing, it was the quiet hand of reclamation.

And something within him responded.