Hrana T'sarat [literally Road Unreturning, most commonly referred to nowadays as The Road] were a group that believed, as many others in their society did, that God lay sleeping under the Earth's crust. Not much is known about them, owed to the fact that they were active over six thousand years ago - and to the fact that they were either exiled from their communities, or incredibly secretive (or perhaps both).
What differed between the uninitiated and members of the cult (not that they called themselves that) was that The Road not only believed their God to be the centre of the world, but also that She should be woken.
It was pretty much universally agreed that doing this would shatter the planet into pieces (they had stumbled upon the idea that the Earth is not flat almost by complete accident as part of their belief system long before the ancient Greeks did, but imagined it more of an egg shape than a sphere). The Road knew this, but believed it was the right thing to do; that humanity had yet to hatch, and those who assisted in the process would be greatly rewarded in the next life.
Turns out they were wrong about that, but sort of right about other things. The Road never succeeded in their endeavours, likely because they never found a worthy sacrifice to aid the process - or maybe because a sacrifice wasn't needed. There is evidence of The Road having multiple champions, but the role of these champions is not clear; whether they're high servants to the Goddess, or prophets, or even a mortal vessel possessed by her.
Their Goddess, Ekt [literally Silent Land, could also just mean Void; nowadays referred to as The Chasm] does sleep, but not inside the Earth. She is instead her own plane of existence, a limbo between this world and the next, and the dead pass along her spine on their way to their next destination.
The Road remained dormant for millennia, but were resurrected in the 1990's in Northern Europe (of all places, when their predecessors lived and died in Ancient Mesopotamia). Even more reclusive, they only really became known to the world when they just...started kidnapping archaeologists and anthropologists because how else are you going to get your information I guess. (Ironically, this sparks the series of events that will eventually bring about their downfall; Pieter would have had no interest in them if it hadn't been for his tutor's disappearance).
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐞𝐫.
Sarat Ilqum [literally Return - Nothing Else] referred to in some texts as Cihenim Lis'ekt [literally One Who Walks The Voidspine] was made to be partially divine, Ekt's blood running through their veins. They were said to be chosen either by Ekt Herself or one of Her children, and there are mentions of them being undying, but not immortal.
The cult only had one person in this role at once, sometimes leaving it vacant for years at a time - and not only was the process of becoming Sarat Ilqum a terrible one, they were thought to be kept in small prison chambers, deprived and frequently tortured. This was how The Road sought to wake their deity, by causing such a state of suffering in Her champion that she would no longer be able to sleep.
In wider society, there were two groups. Those who believed the initiation of Sarat Ilqum to be an act of heresy, and those who didn't; but who believed that subjecting what amounted to an extension of their Goddess' body to this kind of torment was the greatest sin a person could commit. It is due to this dissent that The Road was eventually overwhelmed and dispersed, likely by force.
In 1999, archaeologists discovered what they thought to be a sealed tomb, but what eventually transpired to be some kind of ritual chamber. At the centre, a stone font, with evidence of having been immaculately embellished with gems and bones and painted tiles - but more notably, with traces of having once held a substance that science has still been unable to identify.
Only two years following their discovery, all samples of this substance went missing from the biorepository in which they had been stored, and have yet to be found.
It’s a process Jesper knows well, and he’s almost upsettingly routine about it when he sees it coming. If you’re close enough to him that not only does he think you’ll have to experience it first-hand, but also would like to avoid subjecting you to unnecessary stress, he’ll probably make some effort to prepare you for what's to come.
You're familiar with dead bodies, at least on paper. I’ll be cold, I’ll have no pulse, I won’t be breathing. If rigor mortis never sets in, that’s a good thing. If it does set in, uh - I don't know what happened, but you might want to start planning a funeral. Lay me down somewhere that the cops can’t find me and wait. Hide me in the wheelie bin if you have to. I’m usually out for two or three days; if it’s longer, don’t panic. Be patient. Defying nature can take time.
When I wake up, I’ll be confused. I might be scared. I’ll probably be bleeding, depending on what offed me. Don’t get too handsy, uh- actually, try to keep your distance. I won’t be capable of much, but I don’t want to hurt you, and if I'm scared enough, I'll probably try. If I start hurting myself, let it happen. Let me come down. I’ll remember who I was and where I am and things will be peachy again.
It’s simple enough, assuming you don’t want to know any more than that. He dies, he enters stasis, his body regenerates as much as it needs to in order to sustain life, and he returns. Jesper would prefer that you avoid asking many questions about it, even if you have no intention of asking them out loud. But, for the sake of science, let’s go against his wishes.
𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐃𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐆𝐎 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐑𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃?
Ekt; the Chasm herself. Cihnem Lis'ekt, Spinewalker, is in some ways a very literal title - except the Chasm doesn't really have a spine. Dormant as she is (with no solid evidence that she's ever been awake) she's less of a deity and more of a plane of existence. A living, ever-growing, ever-shifting purgatory. She guides the dead to the next life as you might guide a bug onto a leaf.
Cihnem Lis'ekt are to her like the opposite of a vaccine. An intruder inoculated with an inert dose of her own blood, enough to make them unrecognisable. If the other dead are insects being ferried back outside, then Spinewalkers crawl unseen under her skin; are parasites. The relationship between goddess and champion is not a conscious one, or even a consenting one.
Jesper refers to the act of returning to Earth as being rejected, but the truth is the Chasm never knows he's there. In fact, the Chasm lets him stay there forever.
Each death is infinite and mind-breaking. An average of two days in the real world equates to something without end in the Chasm. It feels like an impossibility for him to wake up somewhere else at all, having spent an eternity walking across her back, and an eternity isn't supposed to have a finish line.
The time there is spent walking. There isn't much else to do, but something about the landscape consumes him with both a compulsion to move forward and a dread of what his destination might be. The landscape is both constantly shifting, and completely unchanging. It's completely white, with a black sky, but at the same time it's brilliant with red and blue and yellow that make your brain bleed to look at. The ground is flat. The ravines are bottomless. The mountains break the sky open.
𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐄𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐒?
Jesper would say no, and he’d be anywhere between lying and mistaken, depending on the point in time at which you ask him.
There are lasting effects. In every way, there are lasting effects. His body suffers for it, his mind suffers for it, there’s every possibility that his soul suffers for it*, depending on your belief in souls. Beyond the lethal injuries themselves, the act of dying and coming back has a deteriorative effect, especially on his brain, notably the limbic system & anterior cingulate cortex.
This isn’t because of actual injury; rather due to the Chasm being a pretty extreme cognitohazard. As time spent in the Chasm accumulates, behavioural and emotional conduct deteriorate, among other things (empathy, self preservation, fear & pain processing, memory, etc.). The penalty from a single death is small, but there's no way of reversing the damage once it's been done.
Comparatively, the strain on his body is slight. When he was first inoculated, Ekt's blood caused so much damage to his blood vessels and heart that it killed him in a matter of hours - most tributes would not have come back from this kind of reaction, but Jesper was fortunate (or unfortunate) to have been kept alive for long enough that by the time he died, he was already part of the Chasm.
His assumption is that every time he visits the Chasm, this circulatory damage gets worse, and this is why his body gets worse at keeping itself warm. What he doesn't know is that he's not really that much more susceptible to dying of hypothermia than a regular person would be, and that this chill is less about physical damage and more about his connection to Ekt, and his closeness to her frozen expanse. It boils down to this; how much of her blood is in his?
There are the expected things on top of this; wear and tear, lethal wounds, nonlethal wounds, result in scar tissue, chronic pain, missing pieces. Though Jesper's body is a little more adept at healing some things, he's far from invulnerable. The only reasons he'd be harder to kill than a human not affiliated with Ekt is because it's near impossible for him to die from exsanguination (a gift from Ekt) and because he's horribly, horribly determined (completely unrelated to Ekt).
Something that can only be observed when comparing one reality's version of a Cihnem Lis'ekt to another's is what it is that has an effect on their brain. The hidden truth is that it's the pace at which they cross the Chasm's back. The further you travel, the more she reaches into you; the more she is part of you. The worse the dread gets.
Every time Jesper dies, he gets closer to something. And it's scraping away at the things that make him human.
*Author note; some characters have noted that there is damage done to Jesper's soul with every death. I say it like that because in his setting there aren't really souls as a separate thing from someone's mind and consciousness, and as such there's no canon to the effects on his soul, or what it looks like, or how it copes. Jesper doesn't know, Jesper doesn't want to know, and I think it's more fun for the characters who are able to see/sense souls to have their own interpretation. The same goes for his aura, or magical signature, etc, etc, etc.
𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐃𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐃?
The rules, as Jesper knows them, are as follows: he can be hurt, he can get sick (though most pathogens and parasites struggle to survive in his body), and he can die. He ages - or at least he thinks he does.
His healing factor is abnormal, especially after death, prioritising small-scale, widespread damage. Injury and abnormality on a cellular and chromosomal level are healed almost instantly; lesser injuries such as bruises, small wounds and sprains heal at a noticeably quicker rate; severe wounds and broken bones heal at a more-or-less normal one. Cancers stand even less of a chance than pathogens and parasites.
Mortal wounds, however, will heal at an accelerated rate while Jesper ’s body is still dead, up to (and, for security, a little past) the point required for it to sustain life again. Long-term mechanical damage is usually at least limited, if not negated entirely; though old wounds can still hurt, can still scar, and missing parts do not grow back.
In the event that his body is destroyed rather than just killed, life finds a way. It's not quite as gnarly as being stitched together from the exact ashes, or atoms, that once comprised his body. After anywhere between a few minutes to a few weeks, he wakes up, in an intact, uninjured, naked body.
And he always wakes up in the same place; on the dusty stone altar near which the traces of Ekt's blood were found, hidden in a cave near Mardin, Turkey. Beyond being existentially upsetting (what was he formed from? how did his life know which body to return to? how does he know he's still the same person?) it's, as you can imagine, a bit inconvenient. He tries to avoid this scenario if he can help it, but it's happened a couple of times in the last 15 years.
𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐂𝐀𝐍'𝐓 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋?
This is the part Jesper doesn’t like to think about, if he can help it. It's not, however, something he tries especially hard to avoid, partially because it's an entirely theoretical outcome. To him.
There are stories and even some depictions of Cihnem Lis'ekt reanimating with their ribcages wrapped around spears and axes and swords, like a tree growing around a fence or a sign or a gravestone. Stories of champions whose bodies simply didn't have it in them to close a wound and so tore holes elsewhere in order to patch themselves up, breaking down and sloughing off and rebuilding in an agonising and seemingly never-ending cycle.
Champions whose problem wasn't that they didn't heal enough, but that they healed too much; who rejected all medical treatment, and for whom a broken bone meant the bone growing out, through, and over the skin in order to prevent being broken again. Eldritch forms of stone man syndrome. Bodies twisting around and over themselves to guard their soft stomachs.
The reasons for these consequences, as with a lot of things related to Ekt and her champions, are unknown. Many Cihnem Lis'ekt could break bones and be impaled and contain foreign bodies without suffering any effects not seen in normal humans (Jesper, for instance, in one reality, spent 50 years trapped in a cave-in, dying over and over with a pike in his side, and only got a nasty scar for his trouble).
It's suggested that these champions, though cursed to live out the rest of their days in some kind of agony, were Ekt's favourites. Not only did they survive the trials required to become her champion, but were believed to have been somehow actively chosen by the sleeping god; not only accepted, but picked out. The twisting cage that became of their skeletons, or the ever-shifting landscape of rifts and ravines that became of their flesh, was a power bestowed unto them, a mark of pride, a blessing.
Because they looked like Her.
Evidently, the Chasm, simultaneously asleep and inanimate and incomprehensibly non-human, doesn't know what a privilege is supposed to look like, probably doesn't know what causes living things pain; and rewards her chosen ones in ways that amount to horrific, lifelong torture. It's not known if she's able to love her chosen, but if she does, her way of feeling love is something that humans can never hope to comprehend.
𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐈𝐍?
It's known that ancient Cehim Lis'ekt had a different experience than the modern one does. The definite is that ancient champions, after making it through their gruelling trials, were revered and worshipped, despite the suffering their role necessitated, while Jesper was killed a few times for science and then used as an attack dog for several years, locked in a white room, barely eating or sleeping.
A bigger difference is that, judging by his reaction to Ekt's blood, he was never supposed to walk her spine to begin with. It's only by virtue of modern medicine that he stayed alive for long enough for her blood to take root in him. The Chasm doesn't seem to know the difference. Pieter, at least, didn't observe any great change in Jesper versus his predecessors from millennia ago.
...Due to Jesper not being a very reliable narrator, or test subject, and struggling to properly convey the things that Pieter couldn't figure out by observation alone. Ancient Cihnem Lis'ekt, while not all were chosen by Ekt, were at least accepted, or acknowledged, by her. They would die, and be turned away.
Jesper, with only a few hours of life support, managed to sneak through her defences. She doesn't know he exists. He dies, and goes unseen. He trespasses. He wanders infinitely. Worse, still; the fact that he wasn't the one who forced his way in, but that someone else did it on his behalf.
