Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 74: The Truth of Reincarnation

Toren Daen

My bond did not respond. A silence as quiet as death settled over the room, a strange mirror of everything I knew from my previous life. I had felt the decaying mana of the Vritra clan biting into my flesh, breaking down my mana and body into base components, then nothing at all. But the stillness that spread from our bond was more potent than the most powerful spell.

I turned slowly, taking my eyes away from the ancient mage with a broken mind. I felt our tether go dark, Lady Dawn receding into herself as she had before the attack on the Joans. Her simmering eyes were dim as coals, giving her face a hollow look.

She didn't meet my eyes. She kept her gaze trained on the decrepit djinn.

"How am I here?" I asked again, the headache in my skull demanding an answer. "What did this djinn mean? He called me Twinsoul. He said... said 'she took everything from me to bring me here.'" I swallowed, staring at the phoenix's face. It traced the graceful contours of her immaculate expression, the hardness from our first meeting returning in force. "What did he mean?"

The asura didn't answer. Instead, she walked toward one of the plush seats, sinking down into the leather as if it would swallow her whole. Her phantasmal body made no indentation, no pressure indicating that the chair was occupied.

"Do you want to ask this now?" the phoenix said. Her jaw was tight. "You're angry. Struggling to find direction after... after Mardeth. Are you–"

"Don't patronize me," I said, cutting her words off. "I've... I've had guesses for a long time. But I could ignore those. They were just that. Guesses. A leaf on the wind."

The ghostly breeze that always rustled Lady Dawn's feathered hair stilled, her locks falling across her face and covering her eyes.

I'd always known, on some deep, instinctual level, that the answer to my question would hurt me. It would open a wound I wouldn't know how to close. It was why I avoided the answer for so long. But I couldn't pretend anymore.

"You will not like the answer you seek," Lady Dawn said softly. I heard her words aloud only. Our link was an empty void, nothing transmitting over. "It will hurt you. It will bring you only rage and pain."

I swallowed. "I have a right to know."

Lady Dawn shifted in her seat uncomfortably. For the first time in this life, I felt distinctly above the asura. She had done something, and she knew it.

"Reincarnation... reincarnation is difficult to understand. You need... Anchors. Points to tie a soul to their new body. In essence, you fool a dead soul into believing it should still live. Repeating events create a symmetry, so the spirit can fit into a metaphysical... gap in the puzzle," the asura said. Her words were measured, yet I could feel the stone in them. "And between worlds, there are sometimes ties. Bleedover. The ideas and beliefs of one meld into another. And sometimes something more."

I thought of the word asura. Indra and Vritra were the names of Hindu gods in my previous life. We had words for mana and aether despite having no true concept of either. The languages between entire worlds were nearly identical.

"And sometimes, there are more significant parallels," the phoenix continued. "Reflections in the Edicts. Long have the phoenixes delved into the mysteries of the soul, trying to divine their Truths. And yet sometimes, there is a cosmic mirror."

The words came to me, bubbling up unbidden. Some part of me understood this. Knew it intrinsically, as a child knows to cry when facing the world for the first time. "Parallel souls," I said, drawing on a truth distilled in my blood. "Alternate selves. Soulmates." I paused, struggling to speak. "Twinsoul."