As the cat picked up its catch, maybe to eat somewhere more sheltered, a lone soul was watching. Pritr looked at its killer momentarily, before turning its gaze away.
'Well, that wasn't a very interesting life. Let's see if I can find something better...'
Pritr was a special kind of soul, a reincarnating soul. It could live outside of a physical body and find a new host after death.
Usually, souls couldn't sense other souls around them and had no physical vision. But Pritr had existed for a long time, since the beginning of life on Earth, and had developed to a high degree. Souls grew along with the body they possessed, and Pritr had lived many lives. This allowed him to sense a large area around him through sheer brute force.
Pritr flew around the earth at physically impossible speeds, looking for something worth investigating. It couldn't see that large of an area of the physical world around it, but it had no problem seeing souls. But even though it should've seen souls far beyond Earth, it hadn't found any.
In the beginning, Pritr had thought maybe aliens were just very far away. But as it grew more and more powerful, it became more and more convinced there were none.
Just as Pritr was about to possess a certain wolf cub living near a volcano, it noticed something strange.
'That star looks odd...'
Having existed for a long time, Pritr remembered all stars in the night sky and their locations. But this one was new.
As Pritr looked closer, it noticed the "star" was something else: the light that indicated there was a soul. Earth was filled with such lights, one for each living creature, haunted object, reincarnating soul, etc.
'There's more, beyond Earth?'
The light was so faint Pritr was surprised it had spotted it. The farther away a soul was, the fainter it would be. And that Pritr hadn't been able to spot it until now meant it was extremely far away.
Deciding exploring that light would be more interesting than starting a new life on earth, Pritr began the journey. Earth quickly disappeared behind Pritr. Not long after, Pritr left the solar system. Then the galaxy.
Pritr's speed was increasing exponentially. Due to not being physical, Pritr wasn't limited at all by the speed of light. It could travel as fast as its power could support.
Pritr flew past countless galaxies, not bothering to explore them. Time passed by as the light slowly, but surely, appeared to increase in brightness. Eventually, Pritr stumbled upon something strange.
In front of Pritr, there was nothing. An endless expanse of nothingness, not even space. Behind Pritr, there was the incredibly large universe. Pritr had come to a wall, seemingly the end of the universe. It appeared that no physical matter could pass through it.
Luckily, a soul wasn't physical, and Pritr floated through without a problem.
'I guess my universe isn't infinite, after all.'
Looking out toward the empty expanse far greater than the universe Pritr had come from. It noticed the mysterious light indicating a soul, or souls, still quite faint.
'It appears there's still more...'
Picking up speed, Pritr continued on its journey.
Now that there was no matter around, it seemed much more lonely. But Pritr had no problems with that. After Pritr's first death, it was forced to wait millions of years before finding a new host. And at that time, Pritr had no vision at all.
Now some may think: Why doesn't Pritr feel as wise as someone who has lived through countless lives should be? The reason for that is that souls are quite limited by the intelligence of the creature they possess, even for one with Pritr's power. And Pritr hasn't lived through that many human lives, maybe around the hundreds.
One other important thing is that without a physical body, a soul's intelligence is approximately the intelligence of the most intelligent creature it has possessed. So Pritr had about the intelligence of a smart human.
Ok, now back to Pritr's journey:
The light was much brighter now, brighter than the light that emanated from Earth's position. Just as Pritr had started thinking about one particularly interesting life it had lived around fifty million years ago, another wall appeared before it.
'Would you look at that, another universe!'
Entering it, Pritr once again saw galaxies much like those in Pritr's universe. Looking around in wonder, Pritr flew around for a while and just explored nearby galaxies, their solar system, and interesting planets.
Though it didn't take long for Pritr to grow bored, it was just like Pritr's universe.
Speeding past galaxies, Pritr could now see the light much more clearly. And soon, Pritr was facing the galaxy containing that light. Entering it, Pritr found its target.
In front of Pritr was a solar system containing a star slightly bigger than the sun Pritr was used to. Around the sun orbited five planets, of which three were gas giants. The second planet from the sun was the one containing that light.
Floating closer, Pritr noticed it wasn't just one light, but the whole planet was covered in souls. It was quite similar to Earth, though slightly larger. It had oceans, and mountains, and was partly covered in green. Clouds drifted around above ground, and it was seemingly covered in life.
'It appears aliens exist, though not in my universe.'
Flying down to land on the planet's surface, Pritr started exploring eagerly.
It found both plants and animals were quite similar to Earth, though perhaps a bit more extreme. One thing that confused Pritr was how some things from Earth existed, even things that Pritr had only heard of in myths. He even found western style dragons. The older dragons had surprisingly strong souls for not being capable of reincarnation, much stronger than anything on Earth.
But the one thing that surprised Pritr the most, was the humans. Pritr had never thought that it would find humans beyond Earth, but here they were. And some of the humans also had abnormally strong souls. They were building civilizations. Though they were not that technologically advanced. It was similar to humanity from the middle ages, just on a much larger scale.
The creatures there also appeared to use the power in their souls to do things beyond sensing, growing stronger, and becoming more resilient. Pritr spotted one human creating fire from seemingly nothing, and using that fire to burn down enemies.
But no matter how much Pritr searched, it found no reincarnating souls at all. It appeared there were none. This made Pritr more excited. When Pritr had just found the planet, it had been worried that there would be reincarnating souls having lived longer than it, but it appeared that wasn't the case.
Deciding it had explored enough, Pritr started looking for a suitable host. It had to be something special since it was Pritr's first life in this new world.
It took some time, but Pritr eventually found the perfect target.