Happy birthday. :) Beautiful art!

Thank you! ^^

Happy birthday, beautiful work! :)

Thank you! :)

What do you mean by "Formally, after his death Lumen never left Ash. At least what was left of him."?

To simplify nature of things, Red Ash is a complex vessel for enormous amount of energy. As energy I mean living force, soul, call it whatever, as long it conveys the idea. Whenever she devours anyone's energy - none of it can escape outside of her vessel free willingly anymore.
Lumen was tragically devoured, and despite him not being alive anymore - his energy is still inside of Red Ash somewhere, but in form of scraps and pieces, since everything inside a vessel slowly blends into one uniformed nature, bleeding into each other and losing individuality. Simply becoming everything and nothing all at once.

So formally speaking, Lumen is still with Red Ash, but since she can't control her energy nor just "dig out" whomever she devoured - Lumen is gone for good. I pictured him as a ghost as an interpretation of the situation, but in reality it would be unlikely for him to travel outside of Red Ash's body like on the artwork.

Half of the time that won't bother Red Ash tho, since her sick delusional mind will keep feeding her lies of Lumen being alive and beside her, until the swings will pull her back into the awful reality.

So even if she did die, his soul wouldn't be in the afterlife with her. Is there an afterlife in this setting?

Why did she eat his soul, then? Is it because some (much-)less-than-rational part of her wanted them to be together forever, in spite of the consequences?

I appreciate your questions, truly :)

The energy's nature in the setting, that it can't disappear into nothing, it will always join the nature's energy cycle and become something else, even if it's something as simple as wind, or heat. This way nothing truly "dies", it's just energy recycling from one thing into another thing, loosing individuality in the process.

I don't believe in an existence of gods, neither in afterlife, but I find the thought of them fascinating. That's why I manually created something similar in the setting, building it on my own terms and still the same rules of the energy.
Any "afterlife" in the setting is built manually as a separate pocket dimension, that serves purpose to preserve anything in it for as long it's possible. These realms have owners, who one may call deities, since it's really simpler to give a rank to the massive amounts of energy, that has conciousness, will and desires, without being a mindless star or a cloud of gas in space. These deities are called Reapers, although their true nature is being preservers. When a mortal dies, Reaper can yank its energy out from the world and time (this is very important, since sense of time is obsolete for these massive beings) the mortal lived in, this way it won't join the nature's energy cycle, but instead being preserved almost in tact in the pocket dimension.
A Reaper can preserve anyone for decades, even centuries, while slowly feeding of their energy, as a price for being preserved. Basically anyone can get a second long life, as they slowly wither away, loosing their energy, until they finally disappear into Reaper. I think it's a very good deal, especially for someone, who might die too early :)
Here is actually one of the Reapers, who is being pissed at Red Ash for causing a havoc in Reaper's realm.

Red Ash doesn't fall under category of mortals, she is a dormant diety of another kind, so to answer the question if she can die - it will take awfully long time of whithering into nature's cycle of energy, or someone will have to devour her completely, for her being gone. Her vessel is filled with energy of many other's, and with the more years pass - the more her individuality is being blended, since all of the energy inside a vessel tries to unify. So, technically, her death won't be "her', since one can't really yank her individuality out of all that mess of energy. A deity can try, I suppose. But in current state Red Ash doesn't fall under the same death parameters, as any mortal.

But since "afterlife" dimensions are a manually built thing, and considering chaotic nature of the setting (world always in motion, opening portals here in there, connecting both different spaces and different times) - any other deity or mortal can fall into the "afterlife" realm, and they will face exactly the same preservation and slowly withering ourcome, as anyone else there, unless they find a way back outside the realm. It's actually what happened to the Red Ash, she first met Lumen in the Reaper's realm, after accidentally falling into it. So, yes, they were in the "afterlife" together for a while :D But, as you see, it's soo much more complicated, than just "they died and found each other in the afterlife".


Oh god, I will have to tell it all, if I want to explain, I will try to be shorter now:

So Red Ash fell into "afterlife" realm, being very badly emotionally wounded. Meeting the Lumen there was not a coincidence, they're dragged towards each other, since their future is kinda established, it's a cycle of sorts. As you understood by now, since Lumen is in the "afterlife" - he is dead. He was yanked into the realm the moment Red Ash killed him in the future. But concidering chaotic nature of realms, who needs timelines, honestly, a young bersion of Red Ash meets him, that's how she falls in love, that's how Lumen becomes her everything, healing each other. As I mentioned above, anyone, who is undergoing preservation, have a loong nice life inside the Reaper's realm, so Lumen had in front of centuries of slowly withering, before he dissolves into Reaper. But at one point he just disappeared. Like as if Thanos snapped his fingers, Lumen is just gone without a trace mid conversation, which became an emotinal trauma for Red Ash. Her will to find him was so strong, that she opened first concious portal of hers, that led her into mortal world, where whe found.. a young Lumen. A kid. Fuck timelines, am I right? XD

This is where her second life with Lumen begins and what made Lumen in the "afterlife" dimension be so interested in Red Ash - because he already knew her, he lived his mortal life with her, before she eventually killed him. A cycle.
I will skip straight to the part of his death, although Red Ash might have uncouscious desires to suck all the living energy into her, Lumen was the most important thing for her, that she didn't wan't to harm. But her witness of Lumen's disappearance in "afterlife" realm made her so paranod, that, eventually, she fell for her own delusions and killed him. Her obsession destroyed both of them.

But how Lumen can be inside of her, if he is in Reaper's realm? Well, at some point he disappeared from there, right? Sense of time can be stretched to an awful long period, that's what happened - for a mere moment in time Lumen was yanked out of mortal world into Reaper's realm, where sense of time is different, allowing him to live up to additional ~40 years there, before he was yanked back by Red Ash into her vessel, since it's her kill and her devour.

But can she find Lumen again in the "afterlife", if portals allows her to travel wherever and whenever? It's actually something, that she tried, but unsuccesfully. Portals are not something precise, even after getting back to the "afterlife" dimention, Lumen wasn't already there. This completely broke Red Ash, what lead to the desctruction of Reaper's realm, that can be seen on the first art I linked in this awfully long commentary XD

I am so sorry, but there was no sinole way to explain all of this. I hope, you enjoyed a wide explanation :) This whole thing is actually one of the favorite and most detailed (and damn tragic) part of the story, so I enjoyed explaining it

So time travel (in a way) is involved? All this gloominess, tragedy, and apparently futile efforts to fight fate make me think of the Netflix series Dark. A very, aptly named show. One of the characters tries to prevent her father's death, only to end up being the cause of it. And pretty much everyone's family is dysfunctional.

Oooh, I've seen "Dark", some of the episodes were so tragic, that I barely could watch them. Ending was pretty good too in my opinion, making all their struggles and war kinda pointless and very very sad.

Yes, there is time travel in the setting, but it's never the main point of the story, it's used here in there just because that's how portals and time in general works in the setting. That's why deities, who are able to open portals to anywhere, are so rare and so priceless, since they can do whatever they want, but also help mortals - around these types of deities creates large cities and economic rises, since portals allow to trade with different parts of the world, and not just with materials and resources, but also knowledge, traditions and nations. Portals allow them to contact with each other, which is pretty neat :)

I'm a bit confused as to the order of events. What lead to Lumen's first death / ending up in the afterlife the first time?

Also, what happens if a living person ends up in an afterlife realm, body and soul?

It's basically a loop due to the different time behavior in different worlds. Lumen lives his mortal life with Red Ash - Red Ash kills him - right in that moment Reaper yanks Lumen's energy out and into her realm - time stretches and for Lumen it passes about 30+ years in the realm of the dead, where he meets young Red Ash - then time is finally runs out and initial kill caughts up, making Red Ash (technically from the future) to claim his energy - young Red Ash in grief falls back to the mortal world, where she finds Lumen as a child, they live his mortal life together, until Red Ash kills him - loop continues.

Well, I call it a loop, but technically events happened just once and story carried on. But from timeline perspective events form a loop due to time differences.

If a living person falls into Reaper's realms, well, they will be preserved the same way, as anybody else. It's not like only "ghosts" can live there, Reaper provides a physical world and physical appearance for everybody, as well as physical pleasures, all for the cost of who lives there. One can't really harm anybody there, nor they feel need to sleep or eat, but they can, if they want, of course.
The only difference between mortal and dead there, that mortals will have longer time to wither, since their life and body still in tact. Basically the fact of them still being alive - just adds extra years of withering, that's all.

What delusion led her to kill him?

Since she was utterly paranoid and unstable, her mind made her see an intruder in the house, that carried bloody knife and came from the room, where Lumen was. She thought, that intruder harmed him, so she went fully furious, trusting her mind, instead of her other senses. Sadly, there was no intruder, but Lumen himself, that came from the kitchen just to get his throat ripped out by her. Horrible way to go from the hands of the one he loves