I fell again.
My sword sang on the rocks, jumping a couple of inches before coming to rest in the grass. My chest tightened. My legs would not stir. The sky above spun dreamily, as if hands had grasped the clouds and set the world spinning on its rim
Eighth time.
This was the eighth time this year alone.
There were footsteps. Rushed and light. There was silence. My eyes misted as the world receded.
---
The sun was low in the sky when I awoke, bathing everything in gold. My head rested on something warm. Gentle fingers brushed through my hair in a manner that always reminded me that I was still someone's child, even if I didn't always feel that way.
"Lucifer, you're awake," my grandmother said to me.
Her lap was a pillow to me. Her voice was tired, gentle, tinged with concern. She always smiled at me, but I heard cracks in it now.
"You scared me again," she said, though not accusing.
I didn't speak. I couldn't. I lacked strength. My body was useless once more. Weak. Collapsing, repeatedly.
"You don't have to fight like that, kid," she panted. "You don't have to shine. Stay safe here. I'll always defend you."
But I wasn't so much of a kid.
Not like she fantasized.
Not even like this world pretended to be.
Because I was more than Lucifer Ashenford.
I am Lucifer, the assassin of Night Veil.
The one who died first. The one who had a bargain in shadow ; in worlds' dusk where the soul roamed like dust in stale air.
And that god, He shouldn't be cruel. He didn't lie.
He gave me an option.
He said to me, "Your soul still smolders in this place with rage. Do you have a desire to be reborn again to do it right? Not for you but for someone else?"
And I said, "Yes."
I said it because I had so much still to accomplish. So much that I had yet to accomplish. I was nobody to anybody there. Just a low-key, average dude who passed on before he ever made a mark.
But this time, I'd be different.
That was what the promise had bequeathed.
So why… was I still weak?
Why was I fainting as if my soul was still breaking?
Why did everything feel familiar?
---
I slept that night in our wooden hut in the fortress. My sword lay against the wall, immovable since my fall. The candle capered beside me, shadow on the ceiling.
My grandmother would be sleeping comfortably already, her breathing barely there in the next room. I could hear the wind howling at the windows, voices from another lifetime.
I looked at my hand. My fingers, my wrist and chest.
Everything was the same. I was still this frail version of a child. Still the boy who was always "too sick" to trust.
But I knew somewhere within me, I was not born here. I did not come into the world with empty hands, with nothing carried through the veil.
The reality of this memory. The sign of a gift between a god and mortal.
And the god who had given it to me.
Was this flesh too feeble to hold it?
Or was something still imprisoned?
I remembered it every now and then; flickers and flashes of that between-worlds world. A blackness without stars. A voice speaking in a non-verbal way. That is where I found him.
He had gazed at me and said, "I don't request worship. Do me a favor for granting you another life."
And I had had more than I could bear.
So why am I so weak?
What do I lack?
Has there been some sort of price unknown to me?
Did I miss something?
Or is the god waiting for something I don't see?
---
I shut my eyes, the hand on my heart, it seared. Maybe it only seemed to feel.
"I'm not Lucifer Ashenford," I told the darkness. "Not precisely."
"But so too am I the Night Veil's assassin. And I have not forgotten our bargain."
The air was calm, but somewhere outside the stars, I wished he would listen.
For I wasn't finished.