Leopold looked at us with his usual calm expression, but his eyes carried a mixture of regret and cold pragmatism. He took a deep breath before answering, clearly choosing his words carefully.
"No, young lady," he said gently to Midori, dismissing her assumption. "Your souls are intact, but the bond that connected them to your bodies was severed at the moment of your deaths. What we've done is forcibly reestablish that bond by summoning you here."
Elizabeth, ever sharp, wasted no time asking the next question. "So that bond is temporary, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is." Leopold's answer was blunt, leaving no room for ambiguity.
Rubbing my dark hair in frustration, I locked eyes with Leopold, searching for something more concrete in his words—anything that might offer a shred of reassurance.
"But you have a solution for this, don't you?" I asked, my voice firm. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have bothered to summon us. This process must have something to do with reconnecting our souls to our physical bodies, right?"
Leopold hesitated, his expression thoughtful, as if weighing every word he was about to speak. He sighed deeply, and for the first time, the exhaustion of his burden was evident—his shoulders slightly slumped, his usually composed demeanor faltering under the weight of responsibility. When he finally spoke, his deep voice carried the gravity of the situation.
"Yes," he admitted with a slight nod. "The bond is temporary, but there's more to it than that. What we've done is incredibly complex. Imagine a mountain that, over time, splits into two due to natural forces, creating a massive chasm. That chasm cannot be closed naturally or through normal means. Now, if we were to forcibly push the two halves of the mountain back together… would it hold permanently?"
Carlos, quick to catch on, pondered aloud. "No. Eventually, the forces that split the mountain would act again and tear it apart. It's just a matter of time."
I frowned, trying to grasp the full implications, when Carlos's face lit up in realization, his voice rising as the pieces clicked together in his mind.
"Wait a second!" he exclaimed. "So… basically, because we've already died, there's no way for our souls to permanently return to our bodies. It's a one-way street. There's no going back."
"Exactly." Leopold confirmed, the word leaving his mouth like a weight being dropped. "What we've done is temporarily turn that one-way road into a two-way path. But either the body or the soul—we still don't know which—will eventually reject the other. Once separated, the bond becomes unsustainable."
The room seemed to grow colder as the implications of his words settled over us. He continued, his voice slower now, as if weighing each syllable carefully.
"We have recreated the link between body and soul and reinforced it, but this is only temporary. In four hours, the bond will sever again. Your souls will follow their destined paths—whether to Nirvana, the High Heavens, Hell, the Demon Realm, or even Elysium—while your bodies will decay. In essence, you have two choices: remain here and live with us, or return to your eternal rest."
The silence that followed was heavy. Leopold's words hung in the air like a cruel verdict, a stark reminder of our mortality and its unyielding consequences.
His explanation struck us like a sentence handed down by an indifferent judge. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing mind, which was spinning with too many questions. Finally, in a calmer tone, I spoke. "Can you give us some time alone to think this over?"
Leopold didn't seem surprised by the request. He simply gestured with his hand, his expression unchanging. "I thought you might need it," he said with a brief, curt smile.
"Don't worry, we won't hear a thing. You have up to one hour."
With a snap of his fingers, the magical circle around us flared brightly. Before we could react, an invisible barrier rose, creating an isolated space where we were left alone with our thoughts. We couldn't see or hear anything outside the circle, and anyone outside was equally cut off from us.
Inside the circle, the tension was thick, almost suffocating. Each of us was lost in thought, trying to process Leopold's words. The air felt heavy, as if death itself was watching us, silently waiting for our decision.
"No one bathes in the same river twice," Elizabeth said suddenly, breaking the silence. Her voice was soft but carried a resigned sadness.
"Heraclitus, if he saw us, would be turning in his grave," she added, her gaze unfocused, fixed on a distant point as though speaking more to herself than to anyone else.
Midori, her expression distant and filled with a deep longing, murmured something in Japanese, as if whispering to herself. "死は終わりではなく,次の段階への扉である." (Death is not the end, but a door to the next stage.)
Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, but it was laden with melancholy, echoing the weight of the moment.
Luca, his gaze thoughtful, stared at the floor before speaking, his expression marked by resignation. "La morte è l'unico vero momento di libertà per un uomo." (Death is the only true moment of freedom for a man.)
He looked up at us, a bitter smile flickering across his lips. "Giovanni Verga said that, but for us, it seems we're trapped in an illusion of freedom. Death is the only real release, but the price of our freedom is the pain of loss." His tone carried a bitter acceptance, as though he had already made peace with the end, yet found no solace in the words he spoke.
Nicole, her arms crossed and her gaze fixed on the ground, seemed to wrestle with an inner storm. "La mort n'est rien, mais vivre en silence c'est vivre dans l'enfer." (Death is nothing, but to live in silence is to live in hell.)
The words of Honoré de Balzac hung in the air as she finally lifted her eyes, her green gaze heavy with sorrow. "I don't want to live without purpose, without the ones I love… that would be hell. Even in death, I would rather be with them." The anger in her voice was unmistakable, spilling over as she spoke.
Carlos, introspective, spoke softly but firmly. "Death is not a matter of time, but a matter of timing." He quoted Kafka with clarity, the words fitting perfectly with our predicament.
"It doesn't matter when, but rather how and why it happens. The moment death arrives may be beyond our choice, but how we face it—that's our true battle."
Finally, I felt the weight of everything we had been discussing, the gravity of our shared reality pressing down on me. I thought of something I had read long ago, a reflection that now seemed to encapsulate our situation perfectly. "Death is the great equalizer, and all must inevitably face it. But we are not all equal when we do."
Tolstoy's words, which I had once considered a mere philosophical musing, now resonated with a profound truth. Our paths had intersected here; our deaths had brought us to this moment. But how we would face this choice, this crossroads—that would be our true test.