Toren Daen
I slowly sat up, blinking warily. For some reason, I expected everything to hurt, aching with the pains of a dozen battles. Yet instead, I felt light as a feather. Lighter, even. I couldn't remember when the last time I'd felt so… unweighted was.
I slowly rose to my feet, turning around to observe my surroundings. I exhaled, my eyes widening at the sight that greeted me. I was standing atop a reflective lake, the water as still as time. Somehow, I was able to stand on the water without sinking in. Each of my movements, however, created tiny, wavelike ripples across the surface of the water.
At the edge of the water was a massive sun, peeking above the lake like a cautious child. It cast the sky in a collage of purples and oranges.
Is that Dusk, I thought absently, Or Dawn?
I remembered this place. It echoed back to that strange fever dream I'd experienced when Toren's soul merged with mine. I remembered what it had been like to course underneath this water as bits and pieces slowly filled themselves in. If I concentrated hard enough, I could remember the paintings, violin, and various items that made me me.
Except Toren hadn't really been apart from me in the first place, had he? We were two sides of the same coin, reflected across dimensions.
Twin souls.
I looked down at the water below me. For all that I could tell, it was simply reflective glass. There was no way to see underneath.
I drew a hand over my face, feeling a calm from the sensation. My mirror self looked strangely unworried by this experience. My emotions felt somewhat distant; like I was watching someone else control my body.
I turned my back on the sun, the warmth lighting up my spine. Where one side of this lake was covered in clouds and sky, the other faded to utter blackness. Where the lake ended, an infinite expanse of darkness stretched further than I could fathom.
But there was someone sitting on the edge of the lake, staring out into that void. I felt my feet carrying me, an undefinable purpose pulling me toward the waiting young man.
The person had short, scruffy brown hair. Their body was toned from hours upon hours of rigorous training, a veritable statement of their skill. Their features were sharp, and though I couldn't see their face, I knew that eyes of hazel stared out. The young man was slouched slightly, something that drew a curve to my lips.
"I always told you that slouching like that was bad for your image," I said lightly. "It seems you still haven't changed."
The young man turned slightly, looking up at me with a raised brow. "And I always told you that presenting yourself like that was an empty gesture," he said. "It's pointless to posture."
I stopped a few feet from the young man, looking at the reflectionless black beyond us.
"Not going to argue, Toren?" he asked, eliciting a chuckle from me.
"We both know I'll lose any verbal spar we have," I replied with an amiable grin. "You were always the better logician. Even if I'm right. "
"You want to try this?" the young man asked. "I'll give you half a dozen reasons why I should be allowed to slouch."
I scoffed. "Not falling for that this time," I said. The only way to win that kind of game was not to play.
"Your loss," the young man said, turning back to the void.
I slowly sat down, easing over the water. Miraculously, my pants didn't get damp at all as I settled, letting my legs dangle over the edge of the lake. At this point, it became a waterfall stretching down into the abyss. I squinted, leaning forward and trying to see if there was ever an end to the flow.
"Careful," the teen beside me said as I peered over the edge. "If you fall, there's no coming back. The Beyond will claim you."
I turned to the side, looking at the figure to my left up and down again. He was still slouched, his hands held close to his knees. A wrinkled shirt bespoke his utter disregard for fashion. That much was familiar. Yet there was a quiet, noble confidence to him. He had the air of someone who didn't care what others thought of him. His surety in himself came from within, not from without.
But there were details here and there in Norgan's posture, mannerisms, and appearance that had slipped my mind in the months since his death. There was a scar along his arm that I'd forgotten about, only remembering it now that I saw it again. His hair was shorter than I thought it should be, and his posture had a calm to it I'd never seen. Norgan had always been ready to fight. Even in his laid-back slouch, there was a tenseness and readiness for action that simply wasn't there anymore.
"Am I not dead already?" I asked after a moment, thinking of my last memories before reaching this place. I had activated my Will, and the inevitable clash between my Blood and Bond had ensued. The carnage had ripped me apart inside, even as I struggled to fight that monstrous leviathan in the deep. The last thing I remembered was slamming my telekinesis into the water one last time.
And yet some part of me knew, on a deep, fundamental level, that I would only see Norgan once I was dead again. And here he was before me.
"In a sense, you are," my brother replied. "Your body is broken right now. It is only a matter of time before you don't have a choice but to drop from this edge."
I pondered this for a minute, swinging my legs through the falling water. I was going to die again, wasn't I? This was the end of the road.
My failure should have crushed me. At any other time, it probably would have. Yet in this tranquil, peaceful expanse, it was difficult to muster that despair. At that moment, I thought I understood how the tense readiness to strike had drained from Norgan's body.
"Another life is gone, then," I said, a strange timber to my voice as it echoed into the darkness. "I don't think I accomplished anything I set out to do."
Norgan chuckled, earning a glare from me. "That's your problem, Toren." He leaned back resting on his elbows and forearms. He seemed to see something in the blackness that escaped my perception. "You call it 'another life.' That's the wrong way to think."
I worked my jaw. I knew my brother well enough to see this for what it was. His words were bait to draw me into a debate, one I would surely lose. Yet it had been so long since we even had these talks.
"What is wrong about it?" I asked, taking the hook. "I died in one life, then woke in another body. That seems like a pretty clear delineation. Plus, Toren and I… we had entirely different experiences beforehand."
"When you go to sleep at night," Norgan replied, seeming to have expected my words, "You wake up the next morning. You brush your teeth, drink your coffee, and continue with your day."
"I think that proves my point," I interjected. "Day and night are separate times. There is a beginning and an ending."
Norgan smirked. "That's what it seems on the surface, isn't it? Yet what are day and night but human concepts applied to the rotation of the planet? There is no objective 'day' and 'night,' Toren, only celestial bodies turning one-eighty degrees." Norgan gestured to the expanse around us, a lazy smile on his face. "Your primitive, monkey mind thinks something has changed overall between day and night, yet it is just a continuation of a cycle that has existed for countless millennia. On that little speck of dirt, however, your perspective is too narrow to perceive the truth."
I found a spark of irritation simmering in my gut. "But how does this correlate to my lives?" I asked, wanting to reach the heart of this conversation.
Norgan turned to face me fully. "Your mindset thinks there is a Beginning After the End where there is none. It's just another rotation of the world, pulling you into the next day." He paused. "Your lives aren't as separate as you think they are, brother," he said. "So you should stop treating them as such."
I opened my mouth to argue, the response ingrained in me for years when Norgan and I had these little debates.
Then I closed it, realizing the truth of my brother's words. I shut my eyes, trying to block out that realization. It was irritating how often my brother was right about something.
"I worried constantly that you wouldn't have viewed me as your brother," I said suddenly, not knowing where these words came from. "And these past few days in that Relictombs zone… I thought I was going mad. All the reminders of something gone."
Norgan made circles with his finger, miming the spinning of a sphere. "Not an ending, Toren," he said jovially. "And not gone; just changed. You had this talk with your bond, didn't you? About cycles of life and death?"
"I did," I acknowledged. "Though that was about the differences between basilisks and phoenixes."
We were quiet for a few minutes. I closed my eyes, drinking in the stillness. There was a serenity to this place that was hard to put into words. I thought at that moment that if I let myself drift for too long, I might lose myself entirely to the peace of it all.
"She's good for you," Norgan said.
I frowned. "What do you mean?" I said, opening my eyes to look at him again.
"Lady Dawn," my brother clarified. "Your Bond."
I felt a bit of nausea pierce my quiet reverie. "She killed me," I said, clenching my fists. "That seems very, very bad for my health, Norgan," I said bitterly.
"You were bound for death anyway," he said, cutting through my words. "After that car crash, your best chance was living on a gurney for the rest of your life, if you even survived."
I stood up, feeling the need to work my legs. I began to pace, yet Norgan was unphased. He still stayed on the edge of the lake, staring out into the distance. "So I should be, what?" I said, clenching my fists. "Grateful that she took that choice away from me?"
"I can't decide what you feel," Norgan said, unperturbed by my restlessness. "But I will tell you how to think, brother. That's my job. Lady Dawn may have ended your life on Earth, but she gave you another chapter here. There is always another side to things. Another perspective you can take, if you would just pull yourself back a ways."
I felt some of that energy fade from me. "Just need my monkey brain to zoom out and see the celestial bodies for what they are then, hmm? It's not day and night, just another rotation of the planet?" I asked a bit weakly.
Norgan chuckled. "Now you're thinking like a philosopher." He patted the water by his side, urging me to sit down again. "Come on."
I eventually sat down again. My brother seemed strangely intent on the void, peering into it as if it would answer his secrets.
There were so many things I wanted to say, yet I was having trouble making any noise. "I killed Kaelan Joan," I said after a moment, trying to keep the conversation going. "I paid back the life she took from you. And if I think about it, I also paid back what the Joans did to the Daens a few decades back, too."
Norgan shrugged. "I knew you would," he said. "It's just the kind of problem only you could solve. And now you'll make it through the Relictombs, taking our name back for ourselves."
I furrowed my brow, seeing the flaw in his statement. "I don't think that's going to be possible," I said. "Like you said, I'm dead now. It's kind of hard to do anything when you're dead. "
"I didn't say you were dead, " Norgan replied, surprising me. "I said you were dead in a sense. There's a difference."
I scoffed. "That's just semantics," I argued.
"Semantics are important in every argument," he replied happily. "Just because you can't pick out important details doesn't mean nobody else can."
I crossed my arms. "I can't believe I forgot how much of a pain in the ass you could be," I said. "I can't afford to say anything stupid around you, can I?"
"Ignorance is not a crime," Norgan replied sagely. "But continuing your foolish misuse of grammar after being corrected is. "
I felt tempted to try and kick my brother, but the yawning abyss in front of us dissuaded me from that idea.
"You are on the edge of death," Norgan said, this time more somberly. "But when I said your bond is good for you, I meant that in nearly every sense of the word."
My mind flashed back to the last words Lady Dawn had said to me right before I'd lost consciousness.
"I can't lose another son."
"What is she doing?" I asked. Norgan seemed to have an understanding that surpassed my own. And the wisdom in his eyes was beyond what had been there in his time in Alacrya. "You're implying she's trying to save me, somehow."
Yet as I said the words, they trailed off as a measure of horror suffused my soul. What had Sylvie done for Arthur when he had nearly destroyed himself by overtaxing the Third Phase of his Dragon Will?
She'd gifted her body to Arthur, allowing him to just barely survive. But that came at the cost of reducing her to a simple egg.
What would happen to my bond if she tried to do anything similar? She didn't have a body to give me. What would remain if she did the same?
Panic began to suffuse me as I jumped to my feet once more, trying to think if there was anything I could do.
I had never hated Lady Dawn, even after the revelation of my reincarnation. She had grown too close to my heart; too intertwined with my being. To despise her would mean despising myself. And the revelation had only hurt because I cared for the wistful old bird.
I didn't want her to die for me.
"It's not what you're thinking," Norgan said, his words cracking across my thoughts like a whip. "She's making a deal with Sevren Denoir. Your bond will live through what she's about to try, at least if it works. Though she won't be as… whole."
"What do you–" I started to say, before pain radiated from my chest like a knife. I stumbled backward, momentarily overcome by a searing fire that scorched through my muscles.
A deep, penetrating wound had opened over where my heart should be. Yet instead of blood, it leaked an orange-purple light that seemed almost blinding. I grasped at the wound, grunting as I fell to my knees. The light streamed through my fingers, burning them, too.
I felt the pain scorch through my flesh, making me scream. It traveled along my nerves and muscles like a tide, overwhelming every sense I had. Norgan watched on with a forlorn look, though he made no moves.
"Lady Dawn told you of the First Sculpting, did she not?" he said, kneeling down beside me and resting a sympathetic hand on my agony-ridden form. "How the phoenixes build themselves back from the brink?" He paused. "Though this is quite the chance she's taking. No asura has ever tried to morph a 'lesser's' body to their own tastes. It's akin to working with wood when you've forged metal all your life. And all at once, too, not in bits and pieces over years as she's accustomed to."
I didn't have the wherewithal to respond or even process what my brother was saying. Everything burned. Fire scoured my soul, licking at its edges and tearing its way through every crevice of my being.
"You'll see me again eventually," Norgan said as I writhed on the reflective water, leaking light like a sieve. "And I'm sorry you ever had to feel doubt about it, Toren. But you should know something."
For what must have been the hundredth time since I reawakened in this world, I felt my consciousness receding under the pressure. Even through the agony, I expected darkness to overcome my vision.
Yet it was a blinding, brilliant light that slowly engulfed my senses instead, burning just as hot as my heart.
I could just barely make out the next words Norgan spoke, audible over the virulent hum of power. "You always have been–always will be –my brother."