Who are Darkners that aren't objects?
I used to think Ralsei was the red horns that Kris lost, and resembled Asriel because Kris was adopted at such a small age they believed they were also a goat and expected to grow up to be like Asriel but I don't know about that anymore. Darkners tend to not stray very far from how their real world object looks, and yet nothing about Ralsei feels like the 'demonic red horns'!
So, what if instead of literally being the red horns, Ralsei manifests as a memory and feelings associated with those red horns? He just doesn't look like the horns assuming a form of a creature, but rather like what Kris wished to look like when they were little. I really started to wonder about the types of Darkners at this rate!
From the color theory standpoint, Humans and Monsters are indeed Lightners! Human SOULs meet all spectrum of visible colors (the rainbow), whereas Monster SOULs are all visible colors at once (this is what the white color is). However, Human SOULs are so potent they quite literally only require a vessel, whereas Monster SOULs are incredibly frail and dissipate shortly after death.
I assume Monster SOULs are feeble because their magic is stretched very thin to create the Monsters' very bodies, but magic of Human SOULs is well-preserved since they simply find a physical vessel. However, Ghost Monsters do the same, that leads me to believe they really might have been the result of a SOUL of a dead human left unclaimed/unburied for far too long. Exactly what you would expect from a ghost as a concept, lol.
But what if Darkners also similarly have two "types"? There are regular ones, who draw their forms from the toys and other objects of the Light world, and then there are... ones like Ralsei? So what if he is not either object in the real world but rather a memory or the object, as if he already wasn't a bit suspicious able to travel between different Dark Worlds without the timer ticking before his petrification?
For some reason, Ralsei also reflects teenager version of Asriel, since real Asriel is college age now in Deltarune. So, did something happen at that timeframe specifically?
The only similar case of a Darkner that is neither object I can think of is FRIEND_IMAGE. Likewise present in different Dark Worlds without bonds, too.
And this one might have been the Demon that Catti and Kris summoned?
Conceptually it fits; the God of this setting is a white dog, and FRIEND is a black cat. And it does seem to have inherently demonic ties otherwise. Like, Spamton assumes the appearance to resemble it with wearing black clothes and shades colored the same yellow and pink combo after he gets obsessed with the idea to be "freed". And this idea includes stealing Kris' SOUL (super demonic activity also). His shades are also literally called Dealmaker and they reduce the damage received from enemies with Cat affinity! It's other very prevalent appearance is during helping Eram in a battle, and Eram itself is absolutely demonic!
Granted, unlike Ralsei, FRIEND_IMAGE seems to have breached the containment of the Dark World since it appeared in the game Noelle played? But maybe it is only her copy of the game and it became a bit of a localised urban legend? She is also connected with Spamton who is very connected with FRIEND...
But yeah! At this rate I am fully convinced that not ALL Darkners are the objects in real life, but some are something unique entirely! And both cases we can deduce are a bit pagan/demonic; the red horns that inspired Ralsei had to be a decoration of demon horns for Halloween, and FRIEND is altogether a demon! This seems to be the only set "rule" we've got so far but well. It is some prompt for very peculiar Darkner OCs for you. x) Ralsei might really be closer to the Titans than what meets the eye, too. I hope we will meet more examples in the next chapters!
However, I also do wonder if only a human of the Red SOUL is capable of creating "demonic" Darkners, intentionally or not? It feels rather coincidental that both examples we are aware of trace back to Kris, and their Red SOUL is all guidance of the 'Angel'! I dunno if Titans count as Darkners themselves as they are pure Darkness without relying on anything, but they are inherently angelic.
