As Rick turned to leave, a soft, melodious voice drifted through the chamber. It carried with it the lulling cadence of waves and the tranquility of the deep sea. Intrigued, he turned to find himself face-to-face with a woman unlike any he'd encountered across his lifetimes.
Her beauty was ethereal and almost otherworldly, like a silver-blue cascade of hair streaming like water over her shoulders, the subtle shimmer of skin, and eyes that would glimmer with the deep mysterious colors of the sea. She moved with such fluid elegance, each step so deliberate and elegant as if she were an actualization of the sea itself. She looked at Rick for a moment, and curiosity about her stirred within his soul.
The older Myrid sat beside him, taking note of his expression. In an undertone, she spoke, "She is Ailith, our princess and most precious beauty of the race of Myrid. The gifts she possesses are grand and her wisdom. unmatched. Many who seek her hand do so not only because of her beauty but the power that her lineage holds.".
Rick nodded, his face masked with politeness. There was something about her that felt old and familiar, like half-forgotten music from another lifetime. He felt the pull of her strongly and began to wonder if she might have been his in one of countless past lives.
Rick couldn't resist moving closer to Ailith. Some inner relaxing of his habitual reserve of caution had occurred in him. He bowed, "Princess Ailith, I had an impression that I must have known you somewhere; yet how that can be impossible, I don't know.
Ailith looked at him, her face soft but inscrutable. "Maybe in another lifetime we have passed by each other, traveler. The sea remembers everything forgotten," she said, her voice as smooth and soothing as water. Her words seemed to strike a chord in Rick, speaking of things lost in his many reincarnations.
The System Spirit whispered within his mind, curious and amused, "Interesting, isn't it? Out of billions of lives, someone finally stirs your memory—and not as a foe. What will you do?"
Rick's face hardened slightly, steeling himself. He had left many lives and emotions buried for a reason. He couldn't afford to be distracted, even if Ailith's presence made him question pieces of himself he thought he'd discarded.
He forced himself to tear his eyes away, nodded a little stiffly and said, "If we've met before, maybe it is fate that will have us crossing paths again." Not hearing a word, he walked away, feeling her eyes on him until he rounded the corner of the halls past Myrid. The secrets of his past and the feel of her presence would plague him, but for now, everything inside him was needed to complete the journey.
Ailith watched the stranger recede, a man dressed in some sort of heavy and potent aura, but whose eyes held an unbearable weight with silent despair that almost defied limits. There was something drawing at her as if she were trying to recall a memory of a dream that had awakened from deep slumber. The entire place felt somehow eerily familiar, like some reminder of an unwritten tale.
She asked quietly to the Myrid elder, "Who is that? There's something over him.".
The elder regarded her for a moment with his face shadowed over by a knowing look. "That man is no one to trifle with, Princess Ailith. He's a wanderer of unknown origins, but I can assure you he has wielded powers beyond our realm, and even before his time. He bears the Dragon Arts, an art nearly lost to our world and to most others as well.
Ailith's eyes widened in shock. Dragon Arts were the stuff of old legends and sacred texts. Few people alive knew their true mastery, and yet here was a stranger who was mysterious and forlorn, wielding those elusive powers. Her pulse quickened with the revelation, but she quieted herself, calming her mind and heart.
What would such a person want with our humble kingdom? she asked, straining to keep her curiosity in check.
The elder's eyes shifted, thinking, yet uncertain. "Perhaps he seeks what all seekers seek: to fill the hollows of previous lives or gain that which was lost to him in the process. Or perhaps he runs from something more substantial than he can possibly face.".
Ailith moved aside, her gaze lost to the crashing waves as they hammered the shore beyond the lip of the hall. This stranger had been almost painful to see, with power that had been so considerable it was hard to perceive he was even human; he had seemed opaque as regards his purposes. An inexplicable wish filled her to unknot the mystery around him, to understand the darkness of the storm raging inside his soul. And yet it gave her an odd sense of foreboding at the task.
She stood before the stranger slowly, bowed her head and said, "Thank you, elder." As she was about to leave, she had a strange feeling that her life had somehow got connected with his. The stranger, who whatever he was, had already made a ripple in the still water of her world—a ripple that would soon grow into a wave.
Rick strode across the surface of the sea, creating gentle ripples in the vast, glassy expanse. Above him, night stretched open like an endless tapestry of stars so alive it seemed each one pulsed with life. Colors that he could not name swirled faintly around constellations, forming delicate wisps across the heavens and seeming to move with waves beneath him. It was stunning and gorgeous beyond anything he'd permitted himself to actually look, yet an odd space in his chest.
He sat on the water's surface, his eyes upward at the stars, struggling to come to terms with all those other lives that he had experienced. He remembered so many things that he could enumerate them by stars, yet in everything that he had experienced, nothing, absolutely nothing, came even close to what a person would call love. What was wrong with that? Had he gotten so focused on power, on the need to have control over things, that he overlooked the one thing which might lend meaning to his life?
Deep in thought, Rick's senses were heightened by a soft presence approaching him. Without turning, he knew it was she—the Myrid princess. Her steps were light, smooth, as if she moved with the same ebb and flow as the sea itself.
Then for an instant, Ailith remained standing behind him; however, her attention returned toward the stars before going still and sitting down right by his side close enough so he could sense the mere presence of her even when keeping a little respectual space apart. She, also with a soft smile curled about her lips, stretched back to look at the heavens.
"Beautiful," she whispered, the word carrying softly into the night. Her voice was full of reverence, as if she saw something precious in the universe spread out before them, too.
Rick said nothing; his eyes tracked the heavens while his thoughts trekked toward her words. There was something inside him, stirred up by her presence—a quietness, an awareness that felt almost. peaceful. Peace, in its lack, was something he'd avoided for lifetimes.
"Do you come here often?" he asked at last, his voice low, warmed by a softness that caught him by surprise.
She nodded, looking up at the stars still. "Yes. As long as I can remember. One of the only places where I feel…. Connected, I guess. There's something about sea and sky. They are eternally changing yet stay the same, like all of us.".
He studied her profile, silver hair glistening in starlight that might as well have lit upon it to make it glow. She seemed so there, so completely in the moment, admiring the universe with a serenity he wished he could muster within himself. Was this what it was like, this simple being?
"I think I've never made time to notice things like this before," he said almost without thinking to himself.
Ailith looked at him, her thoughtful eyes warm. "Perhaps that is why you have come now," she said quietly. "It is never too late to see beauty. or to let one's self love."
He allowed the words of her sink into his soul; the weight of the truth crushed him. He sat there, a man who had lived across worlds and had powers that most would call impossible, yet these simple truths escaped him.
They were wordless. They looked at the sky, silent with new understandings between them. Indeed, as if the stars watched over them, lighting not only the heavens but also those questions deep in their hearts.
As Rick sat there, watching the stars mirror themselves on the sea surface, memories from so many past lives began to awaken him—flickering, faint embers that painfully reminded him of mistakes he used to dismiss. But here now, in this silence and with Ailith by his side, those memories were like weights, their consequences made sense. Faces, places, and broken promises etched themselves into his soul, like a deep scar which he could no longer run away from.
To his own surprise, warmth welled in his eyes. He did not feel that way, did not experience that sensation ever. His eyes grew moist, and he blinked. One tear escaped down his cheek. The pressure of all the wrongs, the weight of all those centuries, coiled tight in his chest. The strangest thing: him, who had crushed worlds and wielded unimaginable power, who had never once allowed himself to feel the weight of these lives, now felt vulnerable.
Taking slow, deep breaths through his nostrils, forcing himself to remain calm and hold fast to his will, yet the quiet intensity that seemed to emanate from the pools of her gaze made him want to hide. Her head came around to seek out his vision, a soft questioning in the eyes, which softened in concern as her gaze latched onto wet cheeks.
"Why. are you crying?" she asked gently, the words laced with true care, as if she saw deeper into his pain.
Rick swallowed. For a moment, he couldn't speak. It felt like vulnerability, something he wasn't used to. But he didn't want to hide it, not from her, not now. "Past life mistakes," he managed, his voice low, raw. He nodded slowly, unable to explain more but hoping she understood the weight of those three words.
Ailith sat in silence as she scanned his face; then her hand lightly smoothed over the top of his. "We all drag around loads from our lives. Even those that seem greater than we could possibly carry," she murmured, gave his hand a gentle squeeze so he wouldn't float any further away from her. "But perhaps … you're here now because this is an opportunity to make peace with them."
It was in the warmth of her touch, the quiet acceptance that thawed him where he couldn't guard his way. It was as if her words gave him permission, to feel, face the shadows he had been trying so hard to leave behind, or maybe, just maybe, find a way to make things right.
For the first time in years, Rick felt something other than ambition, something other than the pursuit of power. It was this strange mixture of guilt and hope and a desire for better. Maybe it marked a beginning to redemption, not at all that he understood then, but he knew it was better.