Keibrayith Eless'hara

I held my breath with my back against the wall, my hand clutched around the necklace I always wore, the cold metal biting into my palm. It had been close, far too close for my comfort. I hadn't expected the child to look when he did, but he almost caught me. 

Although my lungs complained, and I had to listen past a pounding heart, I waited. 

"Rueln," his father called to him, "this way, son. That’s off-limits. You heard the guard at the doors."

Rueln. So that is his name. He's so young. My eyes drifted down to my necklace; the golden ten-pointed star was pointing up the hall, back to the boy. The small crystal chamber at the star's center glistened, urging me to follow the arrow, but I had come as close as I was willing. 

It's him. 

I closed my fingers around the star and slipped it back into my tunic. Now was not the time to be sentimental. I couldn't allow him to see me. Even if I did, neither he nor his family would understand why I trekked across the empire to find him. I would just do as I have always done and keep my distance. 

"But—" he murmured, but his father had lost patience with him and didn't let him continue. 

"No," he said firmly. "We're not allowed. Now that's enough, Rueln."

Yes. Take him away, I mouthed silently, my eyes locked on the opposite wall. I couldn't believe I was hiding from a five-year-old, but here I was, waiting around a corner for the pair to leave. I didn't have to wait long, for after his father had chastised him, I could hear their voices no more. Cautiously, I peeked around the corner but saw only other parents and children walk by on their quest to find relics of their pasts. 

What a crude and impractical system. The likelihood of anyone finding something that belonged to a past life was negligible. There were far more precise ways, but humans seemed too nearsighted and powerless to see it. In the centuries, I have spent trekking back and forth across the continent; the evidence of that was abundantly clear. It was a pointless matter. As a short-lived race, the only thing they had to rely on was their inaccurate histories and their own life experiences. 

 It was no wonder my people thought of them as an inferior species. Why wouldn't they, when their own bodies could reject their soul’s magical signature? It was primitive, and none of them had ever bothered to develop remedies for such occasions. Instead, they blamed it on the sins of past lives accumulating their punishment. Ignorant fools, all of them, to blame a child for something that was not their fault. 

My iridescent orange eyes shifted under the hood of my cloak as I remembered the expression I had seen on Rueln's face when I dared get a closer look at him. His honey-brown gaze had shone with unshed tears as he clutched at his shirt in what could only be fear. It had almost moved me to go to him, to break my word and speak to the boy, but I didn't. He had his father, as blind as the human was to the boy's emotions. 

Rueln had no need for me. 

Sighing, I finally allowed myself to move back into the main hall, slipping under the rope and into the crowd without bringing attention to myself. I just needed to get out of this accursed building. The boy would be fine. It wasn't as if there was anything here that he could touch to trigger a reca—

Shouts on the floor above jerked me from my thoughts. I couldn't hear what they were saying. Too many voices rising at once, but I needed to find out. Whatever it was, it was where the boy had just gone with his father. 

I hit the stairs, forcefully keeping myself back with the crowd as everyone went to look. As we climbed the spiraling rise, I listened, focusing not on the ignorant people dragging their children along with me, but those ahead of us. As the voices became clearer, however, my concern grew. 

"I can't believe it!"

"A blessing! The gods have blessed us!"

"Our empire will flourish!"

"Praise be!"

"A new age will surely come from this!"

I shoved my way through the people blocking the hall, teeth clenched in irritation at the gawking humans. All the while, I searched for the boy and his father, wondering if I had been wrong. Maybe he had found a relic of his past life among the hoard of junk the humans had collected. As the murmurs and praises grew, so too did my sense of urgency until, at last, I was in a place I could see for myself. 

There he was. The boy and his father were at the edge of the crowd, his father holding him to avoid someone hurting the child. They were staring across the small space at a little girl clutching a silver dagger's hilt with black engravings down its blade. She was unconscious, her father hovering over her with a staff member of the Hall. They were preparing the girl to be transported to one of the infirmary rooms so she could integrate with her memories without the oppressing crowd gawking at her.

"The empress Vhal Aairith has been found…" a woman beside me whispered in awe. 

"The empress…"

"Praise be…"

More murmurs filled my ears, but I ignored them all, my eyes unable to look away. "That's… impossible," I whispered, then shifted my gaze to the boy only for my breath to freeze as I met his honey-brown eyes, staring at me in curiosity. 

I instinctively reached for my pendant again, clutching at the star underneath my tunic, and turned away. The empress Vhal Aairith, reincarnated into that little girl? No. I shook my head. It made little sense. 

My hand tightened around my treasure, and I paused for a moment to pull it back out and stare down at the glowing arrow telling me to turn back. I lost myself in the little trinket, tempted, if only for a heartbeat, to obey. Closing my eyes, I slipped it back into my shirt and kept walking. I would not break. I've come too far to allow myself to be that weak. Even as I tried to reassure myself, I knew I would find the boy again soon. There were too many questions now that needed to be answered.

"Be safe, Rueln," I whispered as I pushed open the doors of the building. I needed to leave, blending into the crowd before the word could spread about the empress's return. Whatever was happening, I knew the boy would find himself at the center. It seemed like in this lifetime, fate was twisting itself around him, determined to have its way. "Not again," I promised him. I would not let the cycle repeat.