The town was once well known and recognized, but now it is known as the columbarium of souls, for those that died there come back as ghosts and undead who now, if anything, want to kill the mortal races. Those that spawn there is medium level compared to other places, but most don't want to deal with the monsters that spawn there, they require special treatment to kill after all.

you may wonder who may have lived there before the town became a home of the undead, I don't blame you, everyone's got to wonder at least once.

Honestly, it was all caused by a dragon, who seemed to have a grudge with a hero who had once lived there, which she honestly had every right to be angry with the guy, who leaves during the middle of a date?

but we'll avoid that topic, for the problem that most believed to be the cause were that they had released a great evil...

That isn't wrong, but most believed they had summoned a demon or something that immediately slaughtered and burned down the town, which is possible but is highly unlikely, most demons are pretty chill.

Sorry, getting off-topic again, back onto what is important to this story, like how the town looks like, like how most of it has a layer of ash, or how the town has a mostly intact house every 10 houses, although they're dungeons now, which isn't important, but gives the place a haunted house feel, which is pretty cool.

Inside one of the houses, was a pile of ashes...

Well actually, that doesn't narrow it down at all, Let's just say it's pretty important ash, like it isn't that important, but it's pretty important.

Now imagine, that some clumsy adventurer on a quest to get some awesome loot, loot that gives them a billowing cloak in the nonexistent wind, which might not be useful, but it's "awesome", spilled a mana potion onto that ash.

Now the mana potion didn't do anything on its own but it started stealing mana from people who went through the dungeon, although not enough for them to notice, well there was one who noticed. He booked it after noticing, it felt like he was touched by the dark presence of an angered demon spirit, which was a extremely rare loot guardian, and his mana was so low that he couldn't tell the difference.

He did not come back, I don't blame him, that shit is scary.

But that little pile of ash got some notice from a god, who decided to give it the ability, as a gift of sorts.

They gave the pile of ashes the ability to snatch souls from the air, similar to a frog but instead it snatches through walls and only stops when it catches souls.

The pile of ashes was interested with it's new toy and decided to catch things, but after catching a average sized soul and finding that it was more that it could chew, it started catching small fragments of souls. If you had half the mind to wonder why there are fragments of souls, you may realize there isn't any mention of souls that aren't trying to kill people, which might be part of the reason that there are so many fragments laying around...

oh, it's eating the soul fragments you may ask? Well what else would it think to do with it, 

Most of them actually went to heaven or hell actually, but I don't really  care about the specifics of their death, which I don't think you do either.

The pile of ashes, because that was all it could really do, got really good at spear fishing soul fragments, so exceptionally well that it had actually changed the dungeon difficulty into the easiest in the entire town, and over time it became the easiest in the entire world. This resulted in it getting more people to steal mana from and created a surplus of extra mana

Though the pile of ashes lacked a soul, everything, and I mean everything, has a speckle of curiosity, so it had to wonder why all the people who came in had a big full puzzle, inside them.

The pile of ashes then decided to do something entirely unique, it started to collect soul fragments, something that it had never done before.

The adventurers that once came to loot the dungeon now stopped entering as they felt the presence of a greater being, imagine what their reaction would be if they knew all it was is a pile of ashes. They called the S rank team known as the Figments (name pending) to investigate the monster presence.

The small pile of ash simply collected soul fragments, it didn't care about their difference in power, it just wanted to know why those people had a big munchy inside them that they weren't eating. It also wanted to know why they didn't just cut the angry spirits when they first saw them, instead of letting them go towards them and get a hit in.

The house, because it is only a common house after all, isn't a very large dungeon, so they got to the reward room after a few minutes.

But the 10 adventurers would not be fast enough to stop this pile of ash, as it had already started on it's experiment, called smashing soul fragments against each other until something happens.

Having an intelligence of 0 doesn't make your idea's very smart, don't judge the pile of ash for it's lack of good ideas, although all that smashing together did indeed create results.

Well...

not ones you can see, the wizard of the group found nothing, mostly because he was near sighted, and put it in the report.

I will say, though, that the ash spirit did see something, it took in the view of every warrior and mage, taking in their details as if they were something it had never seen before.

It accidentally created a soul for itself, albeit not a strong one, a single spell would destroy the threads that held it together almost permanently, the soul was almost like the houses of town dotted around the columbarium of souls.

It didn't have a form though, so it just watched curiously, the adventurers felt the presence of the pile of ash, but couldn't locate it before a hand broke out of a pile of ash, before pointing at the group of adventurers.

They blinked at the arm sticking out of the ash before the arm grabbed onto the ground and started pulling itself out, the figments readied their weapons in preparation.

Before a great feeling of fear as the childish face that slightly resembled all of the members popped it's head out, it shimmied it's body to get it's legs out and lifted itself up into a standing position.

The Figments scrambled over each other to get away from it as it stood proudly, whatever that thing was, it was out of their league. The figments scrambled over each other as they climbed up the stairs, but they heard one last chilling monotone line before they left.

"I want food!"

After that they scrambled through the house before busting out of the front door out of the house.

The little ash soul tilted it's head, weren't they supposed to feed it? That's what that statement requests?