Phaet

Fun Facts!

• Phaet was unintentionally created by an angel attempting to "play God", so to speak. He doesn't possess a soul of his own since he was never supposed to exist to begin with, so to thrive in the material world, he needs to regularly acquire the souls of others.
• Phaet moves and acts like a phantom, able to pass through walls and drift afloat as if swimming through most forms of mass. His body is hollow but built like a spiritual prison, and he acquires the power to drift and ghost through things by seeking out the souls of other living things while they're asleep and then trapping them within his cage-like chest. The souls he traps inside him are slowly stripped of their purpose and identity over time, and if one stays trapped for too long, the soul will eventually lose all individuality and burn out completely. What is lost usually cannot be returned even after they've escaped, if possible, and this often results in a dulling of the personality, loss of memories, inability to express emotions, and slowed thought process. The severity of these effects depends on how long the victim's soul has been trapped. When he breathes in, the light shining from the souls trapped in his chest glows bright like thousands of candles, and he can even expel that heat like a flamethrower of 'soul' fire. These souls are also responsible for the way his body's pale fins pulse and glow like candle flames.
• Phaet isn't inherently evil; what he seeks is actually just a particular "warmth" that only souls can give him, and as such, he's insatiable. However, he only shows up during the nights through the winter season. He can be evaded by placing a candle in one's bedroom window, and the light of the candle will block his view of one's soul while its warmth emulates the feeling of having eaten a soul. If one wakes up to a snuffed out candle, it means that Phaet came to visit and ate the candle's flame instead of their soul. The flame burns inside him during the night but is gone by sunrise, leaving him empty and hungering for souls during the next cold night, and so his search will continue.