When I touched the soldier for the first time, his death changed. I had never seen anything like it before. He was already dying, coughing up blood from the wound in his chest. I didn't bother confirming it, I just waited for his soul. But in his final moments he seemed to see me, and he reached out. We touched hands, and his death changed.

His death changed from bleeding out on the battlefield that day to drowning in a river three years later. Right before my eyes, he pulled his soul back and clung to it. I didn't know what to do. My master would not be happy, but I couldn't take his soul if his death had changed. So instead, I touched a healer and she came to save him. Her death would be at the hands of her lover, three months later.

After that I followed him. I admit, I was curious. I'd been reaping souls for millennia, and I'd never seen anyone like him. Most people's deaths were straightforward. They died on the battlefield, or from an accident. Sometimes, they died from old age. One time, I spent a whole decade floating through a city, touching everyone I saw. Only one person had an interesting death, and that was because I killed her. Everyone else had a regular death, and I claimed their souls when their time came.

So I followed the soldier back to his home, where he greeted his wife and infant child. I touched them and saw both of their deaths, from the same factory accident twenty years later. I watched as they wept with joy for his survival, and I watched each time he went down to the river for water. I didn't follow him constantly, but I could never quite leave him alone. Sometimes I would lose track of him for months at a time, only to find myself back there again when the season turned.

Then one winter his death changed again. I came back to find him lost in the woods, starving, bleeding, and slowly freezing to death. When I touched him he was icy, and he had hours before he would die. That made me angry. His death wasn't for another year, when he should have drowned in the river. I already gave up his soul once, and I expected him to die properly the second time. So I touched a wolf, who came and licked his wounds and kept him warm. The wolf's death would be the next winter, defending her pups from a starving bear.

After that, instead of drowning, his death changed to poison. This time I was so angry that I didn't come to reap his soul at all. I could feel it leaving his body, but I was across the world, watching the death of the oldest living tree. It, too, was dying of poison. After hours of suffering, the tree died and the soldier recovered, the poison leaving him weakened but alive.

For as long as I could, I resisted returning to him. If I couldn't see his death, then I couldn't be angered by it. But in the end my curiosity got the best of me, and I went looking for him again. He wasn't in his home, which was empty and broken-down. He also wasn't in his town, which was deserted and overgrown. When I finally found him, he was in a mountain cabin, alone. He had become an old man while I was away.

When I floated into his cabin, he looked right at me. He was bent and wrinkled and blind with old age, but he stood up to greet me. Then he reached inside himself and pulled out his own soul. He held it in his shaking fingers, and it was as young and perfect as the first time I saw it. With a smile, he held it out to me. I reached for it, but I didn't touch him. I couldn't risk watching his death change again. He seemed to understand, so he turned his hand over and gave it to me. Thus I reaped his soul, and he died.