Let us address the dead elephant in the room. For millennia, the Grim Reaper has enjoyed a near-monopoly on existential dread. A towering shadow, a menacing black shroud, and a classic, no-nonsense agricultural implement to sweep souls into the great beyond. It was an iconic personal brand built on sheer, unadulterated terror. But as any modern corporate survivalist will tell you, disruption comes for us all—even the primordial embodiment of mortality.

Season 1 Episode 1

Introducing Desedoma, AKA the Grim Reaper

Celeste 23rd Sep 2026 3:40

• Desedoma Guest
• Celeste Yates Writer

I recently sat down with Death herself—or, as she corrected me, De-sed-o-mo-na—to discuss her mid-eternity rebrand, her ongoing battle with Temu logistics, and why her job security is hanging by a thread.

“I just feel like I’m not relevant anymore,” Desedomona sighed, adjusting an outfit that leans heavily into her pragmatic philosophy: black hides the stains of an inherently messy profession. “I’ve been around since yonks. Yes, there have been some good pop culture moments for me over the years, but they always show me with the scythe.”

And speaking of the scythe? Gone. Thanks to a series of administrative nightmares and broken budget-buys, she is currently “in between scythes,” making do with a few experimental items she picked up online.

It is all part of a frantic pivot toward modernization. In the year 2026, the traditional reaper cannot survive on dark moods and ominous hovering alone. Desedomona has taken to the digital aether with a vengeance, trading cold efficiency for online relatability under the hashtag #DeathHasVibrancy.

“I have pizzazz,” she insists, detailing her sudden pivot into the trenches of internet content creation. “I am super popular on the TikTok clock. I do makeup tutorials where you have to contour and pluck eyebrows. I have some mean skills in that. Sometimes I do a DIY project, maybe some interior decorating.”

Yet, behind the ring-lights and lifestyle vlogs, a darker corporate anxiety looms. During our interview, her automated assistant, Skeleta (a Siri-esque entity with a penchant for unsolicited productivity metrics), piped up to remind her that the global population has “skyrocketed through the roof.”

The culprit? According to Desedomona, it is entirely a lifestyle crisis.

“It’s not my fault, though, that people are choosing to sit on couches and eat pudding, be pudding and be ‘one with the pudding’,” she notes bitterly, pointing out that centuries of human risk-aversion have completely bottlenecked her workflow. Upstairs management is reportedly displeased, and rumors swirl that soul-collection quotas are being outsourced to an aggressive third-party corporate entity.

Faced with impending redundancy, Desedomona’s pivot has reached its logical conclusion: cross-promotion. In an effort to keep her resume glowing, she has officially announced a series of guest appearances inside the web serial The Story Compass.

Does appearing in a web fiction project help clear the massive backlog of human souls? “Oh, it doesn’t,” she admits cheerfully. “But I wouldn’t worry about that.”

Catch her while you can. Because if corporate upstairs has its way, the next time you see a dark cloak, it might just be an automated efficiency algorithm.

Desedomona can currently be found dodging career ruin, practicing her duck-face poses, and making unscheduled guest appearances over at The Story Compass. It’s going to be, in her own words, “da bomb.” (Which, for the record, is not how you use that term.)

Characters of this World has been updated to include Desedoma. Please welcome her to our World! She’ll be featuring in new thriller story, coming out soon. In the meantime, read the last book.