Reverent

Reverent are a rare sub-species of Spiritus born when a human dies a wrongful death at the hands of another person or group of people. The intense emotions they feel in their final moments seeps into their soul, corrupting it. With an unquenchable thirst for vengeance, they come back to life as a Reverent just a few days later.

Reverent have existed for almost as long Spiritus have, since the dawn of humanity. Tales of man-eating ghouls and revenge-seeking spirits throughout human history are believed by parapsychologists to really be describing Reverent.

Like all regular Spiritus, all Reverent start out at Mega-level. By devouring the souls of their prey, they can partially absorb their abilities and become stronger, increasing their Threat Level. Pactmakers can form pacts with Reverent like any other Spiritus. But due to their corrupted souls, Reverent are unable to form Unions with their Pactmaker and vice versa. Attempting to do so often results in a Malformed Union, in which both parties merge together wrong and are unable to split apart naturally, resulting in them becoming a shambling, undying amalgamation.

Reverent can disguise themselves to look almost exactly like their human selves before they died, but they can only maintain this appearance for up to 12 hours at a time. If they use up those 12 hours, the disguise fails and they immediately turn back into a Spiritus, losing the ability to turn back into a human for a while.

Nobody has been able to figure out why Reverent in their Spiritus form look the way that they do. It could be because they still have a grip on their humanity unlike regular Spiritus, or because their corrupted souls prevent them from becoming "true" Spiritus.

Burst Reverent

Sometime in the 2020s, Whitewoods developed an experimental technology that allowed living humans to temporarily become Reverent by momentarily stopping the heart and injecting the soul with extreme emotions until it "burst". Due to the unstable and potentially dangerous nature of Burst Reverent technology, only high ranking members of Whitewoods have access to it.

Dignitas of the Whitewoods High Order was the first person to utilize the Burst Reverent technology, becoming the Brain Cell Burst Reverent upon activating it. His head detacted itself from his body and immediately went on a rampage, forcing the Whitewoods Containment Team to subdue him with laser snares. After this, Dignitas was sent to the infirmary until he returned to being human and the technology has not been used since. Further study will need to be done.

Turned Reverent

Some Reverent are able to turn mortal humans into what are called Turned Reverent by corrupting their souls with the emotions they felt at the time of their death. This is done through various means, including but not limited to biting, injection or viral/fungal infection. The victim may either be controlled by the Reverent that turned them or left to their own devices.

Controlling the spread of Turned Reverent and Reverent capable of turning humans into them is critical. Because if left unchecked, entire populations could be transformed into Turned Reverent, resulting in anything from mass panic all the way up to total societal collapse.

Turned Reverent are unstable compared to regular Reverent. They are prone to violent mutations. Some Turned become stuck in their Spiritus forms and never change back. Some Turned become stuck in in between forms, turning into shambling Spiritus/Human hybrids.

Eyes

Reverent are easily distinguishable from regular Spiritus by their eyes. They appear to be human eyes at first, but when the Reverent is about to shift into Spiritus form, they mutate and become brightly colored. Like this:

Below is a table of all recorded Reverent eye colors:

Parapsychologists have not been able to find out why Reverent eyes only have these colors.

List of known Reverent

Trivia

• The exact number of Reverent in existence is not known.