No one sees Lumen Black arrive.
He does not step into rooms. He does not drift through walls. He does not descend from shadow.
He is simply there, as though the space between heartbeats briefly forgot to remain empty.
The first documented sighting occurred in 1793, though Professor Ravenwood insists such things are rarely first occurrences, merely first recordings.
A physician in York wrote of him in a trembling script:
“I saw a man in a black hood standing at the foot of the bed. I blinked and there were three.”
The physician died the following winter.
His patient did not.
This is the first misunderstanding about Lumen Black.
He is not drawn to the dying.
He is drawn to the uncertain.
There is a moment, delicate and fragile, when a soul detaches from the body but does not yet understand that it has done so. A moment when it hesitates. When it drifts. When it refuses.
That is when Lumen Black appears.
He stands at first as one figure. Cloaked. Hooded. The long beaked mask pointed slightly downward, as though listening to something no one else can hear.
His eyes, dark, glass-like, reflective, do not glow. They do not blaze. They simply watch.
If the soul moves willingly, he remains singular.
If it resists…
He divides.
The replication is silent.
There is no tearing sound. No smoke. No theatrical fracture. One moment he stands alone; the next, two more figures have stepped outward from him as though they were always concealed inside his silhouette.
They are not illusions.
They cast shadows.
They disturb dust.
They move independently.
One may step to the left. Another may tilt its head. A third may circle.
Each projection carries a fragment of his awareness, autonomous enough to adapt, but tethered invisibly to the whole.
They do not speak to one another.
They do not need to.
In 1848, during a fever outbreak in Marseille, a woman claimed to have seen “five black doctors” surrounding her husband’s bed.
“They stood in the corners,” she whispered to a priest. “And when I blinked, there was only one.”
Her husband survived.
Again, a misunderstanding.
Lumen Black does not take the living.
He gathers the lost.
The soul that resists leaving is not malicious. It is afraid. It clings to rooms it once knew. To hands it once held. To unfinished sentences.
But souls cannot remain fractured forever.
If left to drift, they decay.
Lumen Black prevents that.
He does not chase.
He closes options.
When the projections bloom outward, they do not attack the wandering spirit. They simply reposition. One blocks a doorway. Another lingers at a window. A third stands behind.
The soul finds fewer places to move.
Fewer directions to drift.
It is not hunted.
It is guided.
Inevitably, it turns toward him, toward the original.
And that is when the merging begins.
The projections collapse inward without stepping.
They do not walk back to him. They dissolve into him, folding into the black of his cloak as though absorbed by ink.
When the last projection vanishes, he stands once more as one.
And the soul is gone.
Not destroyed.
Not consumed.
Collected.
He does not carry lanterns. He does not carry jars. He does not carry scrolls of names.
The weight is inside him.
That is the second misunderstanding.
He is not hollow.
He is full.
Each soul he gathers does not scream. Does not echo. Does not rattle chains.
They settle.
He is a vessel, not a prison, but a passage.
Where he takes them, no one has recorded.
In 1912, a dockworker in Liverpool swore he saw “a ring of black-cloaked men” standing around a man who had fallen from scaffolding.
“There were four of them,” the dockworker said. “And when I shouted, there was only one. And he was gone before I reached the body.”
The fallen man’s spirit was said to have been seen wandering the docks days later, confused, disoriented.
Until one evening, when no fewer than seven hooded figures were witnessed standing along the pier.
After that, no more sightings of the wandering spirit were reported.
Seven.
The number is not fixed.
He divides according to resistance.
Three for confusion.
Five for denial.
Seven for rage.
Once, during the London Blitz, an air raid warden described seeing “dozens” on a bombed street, black silhouettes standing amid smoke and firelight.
The dead were many that night.
And many souls did not wish to leave.
Lumen Black expanded.
He does not multiply endlessly. Each projection costs him something.
After significant gatherings, witnesses often describe him as slower. Slightly bowed. His cloak heavier, as though soaked in rain no one else can see.
Professor Ravenwood encountered him once.
It was not dramatic.
There were no candles guttering, no sudden chills.
Ravenwood had been called to investigate reports of a “shadow ring” appearing in an abandoned infirmary.
By the time he arrived, the building was silent.
Dust thick.
Windows broken.
He walked through corridors that smelled of damp stone and old disinfectant.
And there, in a ward where beds lay rusted and skeletal, he saw him.
One hooded figure standing near the far wall.
Ravenwood did not speak immediately. He observed.
The air felt… crowded.
Not with noise. Not with presence.
But with completion.
“You are not a plague spirit,” Ravenwood said eventually.
The figure did not move.
“You are not a demon.”
Silence.
“You are a collector.”
The head tilted.
And then, without sound, two more figures stepped outward from the original.
Ravenwood did not startle. He rarely does.
He counted.
Three.
The projections did not approach him.
They simply shifted positions, one near a doorway, another beside a collapsed bed frame.
“Fascinating,” Ravenwood murmured. “Independent motion.”
He stepped forward.
The nearest projection turned its head slightly, tracking him.
There was intelligence there.
Not cruelty.
Not kindness.
Awareness.
“You are not here for me,” Ravenwood said quietly.
The original figure faced him directly.
For a moment, a long, thin moment, Ravenwood felt something brush the edge of his thoughts. Not a voice. Not words.
A sensation.
Completion.
“You gather what hesitates,” Ravenwood whispered.
The projections began to fade.
One dissolved first, thinning like smoke pulled into a draft. The second followed.
And then there was only one again.
Ravenwood blinked.
The room was empty.
On the floor where the original had stood lay nothing.
But Ravenwood felt i, the unmistakable sense that something had concluded.
Since that night, reports of Lumen Black have continued, scattered through centuries and continents.
A hospital nurse in Edinburgh saw “three shadows” around a patient who had been clinically dead for several minutes before resuscitation. The patient later described dreaming of “men in black who waited but did not force me.”
A hospice volunteer in Prague described seeing “four hooded doctors” standing in a corridor, gone when she turned her head.
A photographer in New Orleans captured a strange image: one figure in black at the edge of a cemetery… but in the reflection of a polished headstone, three.
Always the same pattern.
One becomes many.
Many become one.
He is neither benevolent nor malevolent.
He does not hurry the dying.
He does not delay the inevitable.
He intervenes only when a soul fractures itself by refusing transition.
There are darker rumours, of course.
Some believe he hunts intentionally.
That he seeks strong souls to add to his weight.
But no credible account suggests aggression without cause.
He appears only when something is already broken.
Perhaps the most unsettling truth about Lumen Black is this:
The projections are independent.
For the duration of their manifestation, each thinks.
Each perceives.
Each adjusts its position with subtle autonomy.
And yet when they merge, nothing is lost.
Experience is retained.
Awareness is unified.
He does not create copies.
He expands his perspective.
To face a resistant soul, he becomes circumference.
And when the task is done, he becomes singular once more.
There are rare accounts of individuals seeing him not at the moment of death… but in the days before.
Standing across the street.
Watching from a doorway.
Reflected faintly in windows.
Always one.
Until the moment comes.
Then the street holds three.
The doorway, five.
The reflection, seven.
And when the morning arrives, he is gone.
But lighter souls do not linger in those places.
Only quiet.
If you ever see him, you will not feel threatened.
You will feel observed.
Measured.
Not by morality.
Not by worth.
But by readiness.
And if you see him divide
If one becomes three in the corner of your vision It is not you he seeks.
It is something near you that refuses to move on.
When his work is complete, he will fold back into himself.
And the world will feel slightly less crowded.