Linus, The everfallen

The everfallen Linus was once known to be be a renowned and devouted man. He helped to develop countless countries and formed bonds with the elite of the antic world to stabilize the peace he loved so much. He cared for his fellow men, gave everything and even more of himself and his energy to his people. Linus was chosen to be the leader of the combined nations he helped to build and to establish. He ruled with great care and let the people decide, what they want. They wanted him to be their leader for all eternity and believed, that god sent this saint to them, as help. At first he laughed it off and said, humble as he was, that he will be the leader of the people for all eternity. A quiet powerful answer to the will of his people. As they screamed in joy, an impactful blessing was casted. With the combined will of his folk, he was blessed with eternal youth and immortality. He ruled for more than a hundred years and everyone in his country was happy and joyful. But all of that were put in vain. As the great shattering occured all his friends, family and people died. In an instant he lost all he build, all he loved and all he cared about. The world he was trying to protect ripped itself into shreds and pieces, so that it would be unrecongnizable from its former glory. Years gone by and Linus lived in fear. Be it the animals, that leach on him and wait until he dies or his own mind slowly decaying and succumb to madness in pure lonliness. Hiding in a cave from the monsters he never saw he felled down and broke his ribcage, shattering his lungs in the process. With the looks of a man in his 30's and the mind of a man that lived more than a hundred years he died and laid his eternal rest in a dark cave, where no his accomplishments would be recognized or remembered.

But the blessing of his people saved him from dying. He lived and didn't felt any pain. In awe and relief Linus tried to stand up, but nothing happend. It was as his body doesn't want to listen to him and then, after a few hours of trying, he understood his situation. His body died, but his mind lived on. His body only was ever youthful, but not immortal, his mind was. Slowly he twisted is own ideals. He didn't recieved a blessing from his people, but a everlasting curse. His perception failed and he could only hear his voice in his consciousness. After a few years he tought himself to perceive things with telepathy. He could feel his surroundings through magic. A thing, that didn't exist in his time, when he still was a leader and thought, that he invented. Linus suddenly felt pain again and panicked. What did he do? HE overdid himself in the invention of perception magic and felt his body again, but couldn't control it. His consciousness was once again connected with his body, but the only thing he felt was the pain of his everlasting decaying flesh and he began to hear how every fiber of his mortal body ripped and fall apart. He saw his own corpse all the time as his perception magic only has a few meters of range. He was tortured to watch and feel his own body decay and slowly fall apart. It was okay, he thought, it will only last a few months, until nothing is left. But as the pain grew and drove him more and more insane, he noticed, that even after something, that felt like another hundred years, his body never fully decayed.

Tales of the everfallen Linus tell about a conscious corpse, laying somewhere in a cave with the knowledge of the antic world. Some new nations want to use him to rebuild the powerful weapons of the past and other want to prevent this from happening. In the search for him, they want to throw him in the abyss and let his body be never be discovered again, but the only thing Linus wants is to be set free of his curse and truly die, so that he never has to feel and see over and over, how his body decays and relive the memories of the past, where all he knew fell apart and was destroyed. Slowly succumbing to insanity and his primal instincts he does not notice, that this curse of him was put on him by his people and himself and in order to break a curse, either the people that put it on must reverse it or die.