Everything was dark.
He looked around and the darkness was everywhere, but not dark like a shade of color it was like empty darkness, it was definitely a confusing description; No matter how many times Leander have been there he never managed to find the right selection of words to describe, he even wondered if there were words capable of describing such a place.
It was a strange sensation, he didn't feel like he was just in the middle of the darkness, it was more like being enveloped by it, like a blanket, a cold, dense blanket, yet even the sense of being enveloped by darkness was only an illusion since Leander no longer had a physical body; no, Not here in the void.
The void, an undescribable place, detached from time and space, not a single type of matter could get in there just souls, a place where souls could finally rest after their death.
'Rest?'
Leander thought, this may be felt like a rest for him but what about other people, getting stuck in a place where time didn't exist must feel like torture for them, he laughed realizing that maybe he had already asked himself the same question in the other times he had been there.
Then he realized something.
"How did I die?".
The question kept echoing in his mind for some time until he decided that it didn't matter, His mind felt light and he wanted to enjoy this feeling.
But this question lingered in his mind even though he tried to not think about it, this was different from the other times after all this was not the first time he reincarnated.
Leander was a reincarnate.
Someone who was bound to die and reincarnate on an endless and miserable cycle, that was the best sentence he could come up with to describe his own existence.
This made him recall memories.
Reincarnating in another world was the dream of many backs on Earth, Leander was also one of them, he used to read about it, or at least he thought he used to read books about it; he couldn't remember much of his first life.
But he remembered dreaming about the possibility of finally being able to escape from his boring life.
Then he died and was reborn for the first time, for some reason, his wish was fulfilled; In a different world where magic existed, he quickly became a hero there; Leander had a wonderful life, being admired by a whole kingdom after winning several wars after living a long life he died of old age; to his surprise, he was reincarnated again.
And then again...
Again.
Again.
Again.
He lost count of how many times he died and reincarnated.
There were other reincarnates like him brought from different worlds; some of them were like Leander, who had been reincarnated for an unknown reason; and others had been brought to this world by some sort of secret spell that was rarely used by kingdoms when they needed to face a calamity.
Reincarnates were more like a weapon than living beings; they could learn and become stronger more quickly but of course, being a reincarnate also had disadvantages; one of the biggest disadvantages of Leander as a reincarnate was his own memories.
Leander started to forget his first life, and even though he could reincarnate his memory had limits, He discovered that the human mind was much more complex than he have thought, What the mind considered useless was erased to make room for something more useful.
Right now he couldn't even remember his own name in his first life so he choose to use Leander; as a method to maintain his sense of self.
As his memories started to crumble his eagerness to be a hero for the kingdom disapeard as well, being trapped inside the loop, he saw multiple times how the kingdom he fought for would crumble due to its leader's incompetence, and being reborn as both noble and peasant he had realized how unfair and meanless fighting for them was.
Normal life was out of the question as well, his relationships seemed to lose meaning since he knew his companions and friends would all die and he would be the only one who was kept inside the reincarnation cycle.
What he believed was a blessing became a curse.
Suddenly he felt something pushing his conscience, this was a familiar feeling for him.
The cycle of reincarnation was starting again.
When he opened his eyes, the darkness finally vanished, being replaced by a landscape composed of fields of green grass with mountains in the distance, the weak breeze gave the place a calm and peaceful ambiance.
"Wait".
But the stunning scenery didn't matter to him.
"Wait...what is happening?".
Leander stretched out his arms and realized that he was in the body of a seven-year-old child.
The hot but comfortable sunlight wasn't enough to warm his cold skin frozen by his surprise, the calm silence just made his thoughts reverberate louder in his mind.
"Why I'm a child, I was supposed to be reborn, being in that body...is this a possession?". He was supposed to be reincarnated in a baby's body and not of a child making him suspect he possessed someone else's body.
While his confusion only kept growing his mind was suddenly pierced by a storm of memories making him fall to the ground.
He felt his mind and body getting heavier.
The memories showed him a kid, the previous soul on this body, apparently, his name was Ferran, it was strange the kid had a personality close to Leander's personality it was as if he was watching himself when he was a kid.
There was also an odd feeling in those memories; it was akin to the sensation of being barely awake when you don't feel completely conscious.
Completely conscious...
He had heard something like that before, during past lives he had researched reincarnation for a long period, but he never managed to learn why he had been reborn, even though he never managed to discover why, among all the mages in the other world, he was one of the few who had a great knowledge on souls and reincarnation.
This stuck in Leander's mind he had heard of something like that in his other lives.
He leaned against a tree and started to rack his brain until the memory of a conversation he had with another reincarnate came into his mind.
Unlike Leander, he was reborn by some kind of spell, but something went wrong with the spell, resulting in his soul being damaged.
'Souls are the pure essence of every being things like memories, personality, tastes everything that made us who we are... but" He reached everything he had learned about souls and reincarnation.
The results of having a damaged soul can be unpredictable; in the case of that reincarnation, he lost part of his memories and his personality was slightly altered; he described it as if he was half awake and half asleep during this period, and when his memories returned, he claimed he felt awake again.
Leander felt exactly like this now.
He finally realized that the kid on the memories was himself, he had truly reincarnated but something must have happened causing him to lose his memories.
"Was my soul damaged?".
He tried to search for memories of when he was born in this life but all of them were messed up, leaving him with no clues as to what must have happened.
"But How?".
Before he could think about it, another rush of memories flooded his mind. The pain in his brain felt like he had been kicked in the head several times, his mind finally gave up and he passed out.
***
"Ferran..."
"Hey, Ferran did you really **** outside again?"
Leander heard a woman's voice, when he opened his eyes her figure almost shined in front of him, she was a tall and lean woman, her blue eyes shined bright contrasting with her blonde hair some locks of her hair ended in dark brown complementing her looks.
"How many ***** do I have to tell you that falling asleep ***** the house is dangerous" she had a concerned tone but Leander's mind was already overloaded thinking to care about the woman's rumbling.
Having his memories restored all at once had put a great burden on his mind at least the pain he felt had stopped, yet part of his memories was still messed up
He assumed she was his mother since she appeared in most of his infant memories in this body, her name was Lydia she seemed to be around twenty-two years old at most.
His mother started scolding him but he only could partially understand what she was saying some of her words sounded like gibberish.
'My partially conscious self must have learned part of the language... but even so, it sounds so different from all the other languages I learned through my other lives'.
Having multiple lives also meant learning different languages, depending on how much time passed from his death until his reincarnation the language could change drastically, they always shared some kind of similarity, keywords, accents, and pronunciations; But for some reason, her language was completely different.
'It must have been a long time after my death for the language to have changed that much'.
"Ferran are you hearing me?".
"Yes mom" He did his best child impression.
"Let's get inside it's getting dark already".
"Okay".
Leander followed her to a house nearby, it was a simple home that could be seen in any small village but they were in a completely isolated located location, no other houses or villages were visible
Inside the house, there was a girl that looked barely sixteen, she had short dark brown hair with a single blonde streak contrasting with her reddish-brown eyes, and her clothes were stained with sauce and burn marks.
She was doing something that was supposed to look like food in the kitchen, the smell of burnt meat shuffled with some strange spices filled Leander's sense of smell, whatever she had done there would kill whoever ate it, the kitchen also was a complete mess.
"Hey, Lydia I think I finally got this," She said with a bright enthusiastic smile while a dark smoke started to come out of one of the pans.
"No you don't, Celine I already said that I do the cooking" Lydia was stunned by the complete mess that had happened after she left the kitchen for a few minutes.
"Common looks better than my last attempt, don't you think Ferran" Celine looked at Leander with eyes full of expectation.
Leander boldly shook his head; the stuff she had prepared didn't even appear edible.
"Ferran you have to support your aunt".
"Celine You should stay away from that kitchen before something bad happens".
Celine left the kitchen with a depressed look on her face while Lydia started to organize things there to fix whatever Celine had done in the kitchen.
The memories showed him that the dynamics in the house had always been this way, with his mother Lydia in charge of the home and his aunt Celine, who was older than him but still a teenager; it was as if Lydia was parenting two children.
The family lived in an isolated house on a farm, despite the lack of information he was sure that there must be merchants who sold supplies to Lydia, he had lived in such places in the past being reincarnated as the son of a family of ordinary farmers, it seemed like the beginning of a new life.
At least until Lydia used magic to lit up the furnace.
It was common practice to utilize magic to do household tasks, but what surprised him was that he couldn't feel the fire-type mana that formed on her fingers.
The realization struck him like a lightning bolt since he had Wake up here, he didn't feel any mana at all, with his experience using magic was akin to breathing to Leander.
'Wait this should be impossible everything in this world has mana even rocks'.
In a panicked state, Leander decided to ask his mother.
"Mom why I can't feel your magic?".
"We already talked about this Ferran, because your natural affinity is not with sölrien magic".
'Sölrien magic what is this woman talking about?' He had never heard about this type of magic before.
His brain started to connect the dots little by little.
'Totally different language, totally different magic'
These two facts stayed in his mind for some time, even if the language changed magically it was something that would never change... unless
'I am in another world?'.
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