Rayna hated going to the therapist. She was mature and intelligent for her age, and she already knew that a child of seven years should have no business needing to have her head examined. But she understood why she had to go, and at least Dr. Leanne was friendly.

  “Your parents have told me that you’re doing much better now,” Dr. Leanne said and made a scribble on her clipboard.

  “I guess so…” Rayna replied from the large red chair as she picked at the dust on her khaki shorts and tried to straighten her blond hair.

  “Well, that’s really an understatement, isn’t it? They say you’ve never been so calm for so long. Not since you were four.”

  “I… do feel better, I guess.”

  “Three years, though, Rayna. I’ve never seen a child your age act out for as long as you had. And then you come to me today in a way that I’ve never seen you. I was beginning to worry.”

  “I’ve only been coming here for a year…”

  “But I feel as if I’ve only played a small part in your improvement. I don’t know why, but I think that you found a way out. Did you finally… come to terms with what happened three years ago?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, have you let go? Have you forgiven yourself even though you knew you weren’t to blame?”

  “I don’t know… I don’t really think about that anymore,” she said quietly and gave the shell on her neck a small tug.

  The “necklace” was little more than a small seashell and fishing line. She had never told anyone where it came from, but she never took it off. It was the one thing that belonged to her that she considered precious.

  “But I know you do think about it.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about that anymore…” she said dourly.

  “Okay. Okay, Rayna—I’m going to talk to your father now, and then you can go home. It’ll probably be a month before our next visit, and if you’re just like you are now or even better, it may be our last.”

  Rayna smiled. Dr. Leanne was delighted to see her so happy. It was an amazing, sudden recovery—something she’d never seen in a patient.

  Rayna Carthy was the youngest child Dr. Leanne had worked with, and she had brought to her one of her career’s oddest cases. For three years, the once spirited girl had been tormented every night by bad dreams that she couldn’t even translate into proper words.

  Dreams of flying into dark storm clouds, of ghosts and other worlds. Sometimes, there would be dreams of hurting people whom she had never met. And yet, the only time Rayna was ever at peace was during sleep—if her dreams didn’t become bad enough to awaken her. During certain parts of the day, she was reclusive and silent, almost as if she weren’t there at all.

  But what her parents had reported shook even the veteran child therapist, and she had only ever seen a glimpse of what Rayna was capable of in her office. Uncontrollable screaming and rage, sometimes paired with a silent, tense fit of tears and attacks on objects—but rarely other people. She would squirm violently to free herself from her parents’ grasp, and then continue her uproar. They could last for hours, or only a few minutes. But she almost never showed any sign of how a child her age should behave.

  There were all sorts of labeled symptoms which Leanne had studied, but she could never pair just one with Rayna, who had a different attitude and behavioral outcries every visit. She could do nothing else but make a record of the child’s conduct for that week and try and find a pattern.

  Leanne knew well of the mystery surrounding little Rayna. She was found in central Maine as a newborn, alongside an old dirt road that maybe ten or so cars traversed each day. She made state headlines for a week, but nothing conclusive was ever found concerning her origins. Eventually, she was adopted by a Westbrook couple unable to have children of their own.

  For the first years of her life, she was monitored for any physical problems, but was found to be perfectly healthy in every way. For the first four years of her life, she lived like any other child her age would have. On her fourth birthday, her parents told her about her adoption, but she didn’t change a bit. She was known around her neighborhood for her cheerful attitude and positive look on life in her early years.

  A few months later, something triggered her downward spiral. The incident began her journey into a place no child should go. The first two years weren’t as bad as the last, but her behavior deteriorated, and Rayna’s worrying parents became desperate. The doctors couldn’t identify any single disorder, and the few times she was prescribed medicine, nothing changed.

  Leanne had worked with her for a year, and her parents told her that if she couldn’t help her within that time span, they’d have to look nationally for assistance—even if they couldn’t afford it.

  Leanne liked her family, and did everything she could to help. And when she talked to Rayna’s father that day, she got the details she had been waiting for—although they did little to shed any light on Rayna’s previous wild tantrums and the reclusive, cold child she had become.

  A few days prior, she awoke in the early morning and had the worst attack yet. Her parents rushed in and tried their best—as they always did—to calm her. After nearly twenty minutes, she suddenly became very still, let out a deep, almost unworldly sigh, and peacefully went back to sleep. When she finally truly awoke hours later, she was again as they had remembered, as if the last three years had never affected her.

  Her parents were not religious, but had almost been at the point where they would have tried anything in desperation to bring back the daughter they used to recognize, including bringing in a priest. But their hopes were realized on that early morning, and almost as quickly as Rayna had become someone else, the personality she had developed had gone.

  “So, she says you’re doing much better now,” Rayna’s father said as the two got into the car to leave. “Maybe you can’t tell, but I’m really happy, sweetie. I know your mom will be, too.”

  “Dad… It’s been a long time since I’ve been normal…”

  “Is that what you call it? Being normal?”

  “I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know why I was like that for so long. I can’t remember a whole lot of things that happened… And I know I’ve caused a lot of pain to you and Mom, too.”

  “It’s not your fault. Maybe we won’t be able to explain what you went through… but we never stopped loving you.”

  “I tried as hard as I could to behave at school. Mostly by just being quiet and trying to get my work done. But sometimes the kids would make fun of me… Say things like I was brain damaged as a baby—”

  “That’s not true at all. And I know you’re smarter than them—you don’t have to listen to what they said to you.”

  “I know, Dad. But… sometimes I just wish I knew what I was.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “You mean who you are, sweetheart.”

  “But I know I’m not normal.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I was found in the woods as a baby… what’s normal about that?”

  “Maybe things happen for a reason. No one knows why someone would leave a beautiful child out in a forest, but you did end up with us. Don’t be concerned about your past, Rayna. Watch where you’re going.”

  “Grandpa says that, but it’s kind of a tired old saying, isn’t it?”

  Her father smirked. It seemed that Rayna’s true personality had somehow survived her ordeal, growing beneath the surface.

  “Things can get better for all of us now,” he said assuredly.

  Rayna tucked her hands into her red jacket and peered out at the small town where she had grown up. She had yet to leave Maine, so this was her world. It always felt big enough, a place of safety and familiarity.

  Snow had begun to flutter over the past few days, bringing a later winter than usual to the neighborhood. She avoided the patches of white as she traversed up the driveway and went inside the family’s two-story house.

  Her mother was already finishing making dinner, but Rayna headed upstairs first to change out of her school uniform—making sure that the fishing wire and shell around her neck didn’t slip off even an inch.

  She looked around her room and realized how plain it was. She had little interest in anything at all for three years, so it had stayed mostly bare aside from the old stuffed animals and shelf lined with preschool books.

  Exhausted, she collapsed onto her bed and watched the sunset through her window. Her parents truly believed that everything would now go along as they always hoped. And while they might have been right, there was someone who had been left behind. No matter how much better things became, there was someone she still needed to say goodbye to.

  But she had a curious thought. What if they were still out there, somewhere? For a child, the universe seemed to hold many secrets and possibilities. Now she had the chance to explore them for herself.

  She was called down for dinner moments before she could drift off into the kind of pleasant sleep she had forgotten. Before she headed down, she held the trinket around her neck tightly and scoured her memories for the day it was made for her. She could still feel the presence of that special someone who had been lost to her for three years. She couldn’t explain the feeling, and yet, she was sure of it.

  The one she cared about so much was right at her side.

  “Is that what you believe?” the voice inside her head hissed.

  She tried to ignore it at first, but the voice grew louder and sharper.

  “Let me find you. I will show you the other world. Then we will be one. We can conquer that world, you and I. We can destroy even death.”

  “Go away…” Rayna murmured. “I saw those two in my dreams… Those twins—they killed you. They cut you in half.”

  “No, no, no. That meant nothing. I will come back. I will never leave you, Rayna, precious child who gives me life. But your mind is innocent and you are na?ve. You must come to my world, child. Come to the world I’ve shown you in your dreams. Come, understand all that exists to know.”

  “Leave me alone! I’m done thinking about you—you’re not real!”

  “I am real to you, and you can never stop thinking about me. I am part of you, child. Now give life to me! I want to be alive again!”

  “So you can kill more people?”

  “What does that matter to you? Those who get in my way must be dealt with, and it is all needed for my dream, my quest to destroy death. And you and I share a permanent bond that can never be broken. Rayna…”

  “I don’t want to be a part of it. I’m not going to listen to you anymore, monster. You can speak to me all I want, but I won’t listen.”

  “Rayna!” her mother called out from downstairs. “Hurry up and get down here before it gets cold!”

  “C-coming…” she just barely shouted back.

  The monster was suddenly again out of her mind, and she realized that she had been grasping the shell so tightly that it now had a small crack.

  “Please… don’t come back again. Never come back…”

  “Rain, you okay?” her mother asked as she opened the door. “I said that your dinner will get cold if you stay up here any longer.”

  “I’m fine… I really am. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “You really do seem better… If you’re ever scared or unsure about something, just remember that we’re both here for you.”

  “I know, Mom. What happened will never happen again. Promise.”

  “I believe you. You’re a brave, strong girl. You always have been.”

  “Mom… Um… where do you think we go when we die?”

  “That’s a big question,” she replied patiently. “Everyone has their beliefs, but they’re just beliefs. No one truly knows for sure, but if we all go to the same place, then it can’t be bad, right? Why do you ask?”

  “Um… no reason. It’s just something children ask, isn’t it?”

  “Live the life you have to the fullest, honey. Because now you really have the chance to,” she added with a compassionate smile.

  “I will, Mom.”

  Her mother looked at her for a moment longer, and then left to return to the dining room. Rayna stood up from her bed to join her parents, but before she left her room, she caught something in the corner of her eye.

  By the time she looked at her shadow on the wall, there was nothing wrong with it. But she could have sworn that for just a split second, it took on the shape of the monster still alive within her, despite how silent it had become recently. She had made an indirect promise to not let it return.

  She wanted it to disappear forever, that demonic serpent which in her dreams sailed over fantastical worlds that she could not recognize, made of tall towers, endless orange fog, and bright bursts of magic.

  She wanted it to disappear forever, to never think of it again, to forget it existed at all. But she didn’t know if she could do it alone.

  Reference Guide

  Academy

  The Aurrian school system, teaching both new and old souls in many fields.

  Architect

  A creator that uses synthids to plan and generate public infrastructure.

  Alchemagi

  Amplified mental manipulation of the elements that make up both Earth and Aurra, learned by all Aurrians. There are 10 known alignments.

  Alchemagist

  An adept alchemagi wielder with exceptional power and control.

  Animal Farm

  Designated areas in and out of Cities where animals from Earth are reborn.

  Aurra

  A world opposite of and connected to Earth, where its recently deceased arrive after judgment to live the second half of their full lives.

  Aurrian Military

  A police and public aide force that operates independently of the Guard.

  City

  An Aurrian metropolis of varying condition, 26 in all, named A through Z.

  Claws

  Produced by the demon, a pair can open a tear to the opposite world.

  Datastone

  A solid block that contains a complex blueprint for creation via synthid.

  Demirriage

  Ancient scroll-based light transportation that is generated through light. It can transport the operator to anyplace they can remember well.

  Demon

  An engineered flying serpent able to survive the haze and traverse worlds.

  Fibrocator

  A device that uses a teleportation network via the fiber between the worlds.

  Fragmented Dimension

  A realm between Aurra and Earth where spacetime only partially functions.

  Full Life

  To live both an Earth and Aurrian life, before being reborn on Earth again.

  Guard

  The central ruling military force of Aurra, with varying presence in Cities.

  Half Life

  One half of what is considered a soul’s full life cycle, on Earth or Aurra.

  Haze

  A caustic global atmospheric particulate that destroys organic matter.

  Hold

  An abyss where souls await judgment or pass through to return to Earth. It also has a hidden kingdom that operates outside of the Guard’s control.

  Judge

  Staff in Hold who looks at a recent Earth life and assigns a soul to a City.

  Knight

  An Aurrian with mid-level sword combat and alchemagi capability.

  Paradigm

  Someone with incredible, but exclusive ability in one alchemagi alignment.

  Portal

  One of very few gateways that grant access to Earth from Aurra.

  Pretorian

  Six elite alchemagists that protect royalty and execute their orders.

  Providence

  The ability of the Guard and other political figures to assert power over the masses while remaining immune to any possible retaliation.

  Newsoul

  A new Aurrian that has no prior full lives, only their first Earth half-life.

  Rairer

  A bio-engineered five-legged large beast of burden also capable of being trained for combat. Highly intelligent, they primarily remain beneath Cities.

  Recollection (Recalling)

  A meditative state in which Aurrians can remember past lives in great detail.

  Spirital Injection

  The final step in an Aurrian birth, in which the hospital staff will implant a waiting soul from Hold into the body of a newborn baby.

  Sunlamp

  A handheld lantern that produces a small protective sphere against the haze.

  Sunsphere

  A much larger sunlamp that keeps an entire City in a protective dome.

  Synthid

  A small block that allows the creation of food or matter via the mind.

  Universal Age

  The total amount of lives, or estimated years, in which a soul has existed.