One night, I awoke with a start.
Not from a nightmare, but from a… sensation. A profound and sudden completeness. I sat up in our bed of soft, woven moss, my hand pressed to my chest. My soul—the fractured, aching thing that had been my constant companion—felt different. It was no longer a wound held together by peace and pretty lies. It was a scar. Stronger than it had ever been. Whole.
It was the final piece clicking into place. The healing was done.
A shadow detached itself from the corner of the moonlit room. Raphael, the groundskeeper, stepped forward. His face, my face, was solemn in the silvery light.
"It is time," he said, his voice low but clear. "You can go now."
I stared at him, my mind still fogged with sleep and a century of conditioning.
"W-what?! Go? Go where? This is my home."
He simply looked at me, his eyes holding a depth of understanding that shook me to my core. He wasn't asking. He was stating a fact. My tenure was over.
Before I could protest, before I could even shout for my wife, the world didn't just fade—it shattered.
The room, the moonlight, Raphael… it all fractured like glass. I wasn't pulled; I was yanked backwards through a screaming, cold void.
I felt a familiar, terrifying sensation—chains of ethereal energy wrapping around my now-whole soul, not to restrain, but to reel.
And a voice, furious and triumphant, echoed in the chaos, not through my ears, but through the newly forged connection in my soul:
"GOT YOU."
---
My eyes snapped open.
I was staring at a stained ceiling I knew all too well. The smell of old takeout and dust filled my nose. The comfortable weight of a cheap knitted blanket was over me.
I was on Dao's sofa.
I shot upright, my heart trying to batter its way out of my ribs. I looked at my hands. They were young again. Thin. My hands. Soft. My hands.
"Yo! He's up! Dude, that spell worked!"
Niran's voice, loud and blessedly familiar, cut through the ringing in my ears.
I turned my head, my movements jerky, disoriented. They were all there. Dao, Preecha, Julia. And standing near the window, looking immensely pleased with himself, was Kephriel. His chains were whole, glowing with a faint, satisfied blue light.
He glanced over at me, a smirk playing on his lips.
"Mhm, took a while to find his soul."
Dao rushed over, hugging me and pressing me close to her chest, her face a mask of concern and relief.
"Raf! Are you okay? You've been out for a day! We thought we lost you!"
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. A day.
'It was just a dream.'
part of my brain screamed, desperate for sanity. But it wasn't. I could still feel the ghost of my wife's head on my shoulder. I could still smell the night-blooming flowers. The peace, the wholeness—it had been real. I had lived a lifetime.
I had lived a lifetime in a single day, in the void.
Kephriel's smirk widened, as if he could hear the shattering of my mind.
"Took a bit of doing,"
he repeated casually, examining his claws.
"Breaking free from that librarian's tedious little bindings. But I felt it. A little tug on our contract. Your soul finally got its act together and became a proper anchor. It's like... it went from broken, to repaired. Made you much easier to find in all that… nothingness."
He had felt my soul become whole. And he had used that completed connection, that anchor, to drag me back.
I looked from his smug face to my friends' worried ones. I had just lived a century of peace. I had been whole.
And I had been dragged back to hell.
The words finally left my lips, a hoarse, broken whisper that held the weight of a hundred years.
"...I-its been 100 years..."
The room went silent, and Julia's face stiffened.
"Uh...?
Its barely been a day."