Ah, reincarnation. Everyone's thought of it, right? What comes after death, would you be reborn in some new form? But Anton felt that was all a bit off the point, see there's one thing nobody even thinks about.

What if reincarnation... took a really really long time?

Sure, the start of it had been exciting, the whole dying and then having a sudden chat with a Goddess bit, but the Goddess had said exactly two words before flicking Anton’s soul on its way, and then it had been a whole bunch of waiting. Waiting, and thinking about those two words.

“You’ll do.”

Anton really wasn’t sure what to think about that. He wished he could have asked a question, a clarification—or anything to settle his unease, but he hadn’t had a mouth to ask questions with. His mortal body was dead, lying at the bottom of a deep, dark, underwater chasm back on planet Earth.

It had been a worthwhile death and Anton didn’t feel many regrets about it. Death had come, and there was no reversing it, so why should he waste his time in reincarnation fretting about it? Instead, he mostly settled back to relax and enjoy the experience. Because the first thing Anton had noticed about reincarnation?

It was beautiful.

His soul was a clear purple marble, floating in a sea of starlight. It was a churning, sparkling sea, full of fierce currents that whisked him onward, ever onward, through a cosmos he could glimpse far below the surface. The light of nebulas refracted through the sea, then turned into glowing steam once it pierced the surface, forming a rolling veil of fog. Shooting stars raced with Anton for speed, jaunting past an endless array of worlds, each brimming with life.

Anton couldn’t see the life itself, the worlds were too far below the surface for that, only vague outlines of planets and moons, but he knew they were not barren. After all, he wasn’t traveling alone. Other souls floated with him, rising up from the depths of the sea and then eventually descending back down to waiting planets, ready to be reborn.

But even if he was content to relax, Anton’s turn to exit the sea never seemed to come. Was that normal? He couldn’t tell the time, but he could tell that other souls seemed to pass through the cycle much faster than him. Many times he observed a soul rise up from the depths, travel with him for a time, and then descend back down. They all seemed to have a predetermined destination. None of them had an intervention from a Goddess.

Come to think of it, why had that Goddess stepped down for Anton? Where had he been sent?

He had no answers, so he could only wait and enjoy the view. And as he waited, he started to remember. First vague flickers of memory, like half-remembered dreams, which slowly but surely solidified into stronger impressions. Alien peoples and alien civilizations. Sometimes primitive, sometimes reaching for the stars. An endless array of past lives, for this was not Anton’s first time in the cycle.

It was fascinating to see all the alternate paths his lives had taken, so different, but so similar in many ways. It was hard to hold on to the memories and to truly understand them, but there was a common feeling in the background of every life—Anton’s past selves never seemed satisfied.

That unquenchable hunger he had felt so often on earth too was ever-present. He was often the explorer, searching for uncharted lands that nobody had touched before. But even when he did manage to reach those furthest reaches, in his heart he had known it was an illusion.

Because in some memories he could glimpse them. Shining figures towering over mortals. Those who could throw away the bindings of time and space, and traverse the stars. The word for those people almost came to him, after a long time drifting in the sea of stars and memories, and then—

And then…

There was the hook.

***

Ravel the Crystal Witch was fishing, as usual. There was little else to do on her lonely island, so she often spent entire days crouched over the astral sea with a fishing rod in hand, hoping to catch a useful soul fragment.

Her crystalline hair did not blow in the wind, for there was no wind here. She did not heave long sighs, for there was no air to sigh with here, and she had long forgotten what breathing felt like. In fact, there wasn’t much to do at all, other than stare at the rippling surface of the sea as waves of vitae crashed into the rocky shore.

Sometimes Ravel took breaks from fishing to walk the paths around her little island, read her books, or ponder on her cultivation, but most of her time was spent fishing for souls and crafting anything usable with the scant resources she had. But fishing was the most tranquil. She would cast the hook off into the Vitae, and then it felt as if seconds merged together, until that one moment of time would stretch on forever and ever, until—

Ravel felt a tug on her rod.

Instantly, her mind snapped out of stasis, and with a gentle but firm touch, she yanked the rod backward and pulled. There was less resistance than usual to this catch, so the surface of the vitae broke soon, splashing as a soul like a purple marble was pulled up.

Ravel caught the soul in her palm, stared, then frowned.

“What in the world are you?”

It was a fascinatingly strange soul. It was a mortal soul, as evidenced by its perfect, naturalborn form, but the witch could sense something wrapped around it in an infinitely thin layer.

A shadow.

It should have been impossible for a mortal soul to keep its shadow in the astral sea. A shadow was what held a mortal’s lifetime, and it should have been lost with death. Only upon reincarnation would a new shadow be formed. But this soul had somehow retained it.

Ravel debated trying to dissect it, cutting off the shadow and investigating what had made it hold together so well, but that had too much risk of failure. Instead, an idea began to form in her mind. If she prepared a proper vessel, could the shadow be resurrected?

Feeling hope for the first time in eons, Ravel began walking to her workshop.

***

Anton was no longer in the sea of stars, but he held onto the memory of beauty, even though he felt it slipping. He was somewhere else, first in pitch darkness, then suddenly thrust into the center of some strange, soft material. It called to him, asking to be shaped into a form.

He pictured his old, human body, and the material began to answer to him. He felt it form hands, feet, a torso, a head, a replica of his old body. But it wasn’t complete yet. It was like wet clay, waiting to be hardened. He pushed, until a signal passed through the material, answering to his will.

Like an electric charge advancing, a jolt went through the material, forming connections to his core. He could feel a beating start, a heart pumping life into the material. He began to feel. Then, with a final shock, with a final pulse of energy, he felt the form harden—complete.

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Anton opened his eyes, and gasped. Air did not move into his lungs, but the illusion was there. He felt as if he were breathing. It was dark, and he couldn’t see his surroundings, but he could feel wet mud all around him. Shaking, he rose to his feet, only to fall to his knees again.

His head felt like it was being split in half. There were too many memories, too many lifetimes. A mortal wasn’t supposed to remember what reincarnation felt like, and Anton felt the memories begin to fade.

Desperately, he held on to them. He wanted to remember that beautiful vision, the path across the starry sky he had travelled. Somehow, he managed to hold onto it, and begin walking forward. He could see a light ahead. Anton realized he was in a cave, and the exit was right there.

Stabilizing, he walked, mind singularly focused on holding that memory in place. He felt his legs leave the mud and hit hard rock. Anton passed through the cave’s opening and the light from a purple sky blinded him.

It took him a moment to gather his bearings. But gradually, his eyes adjusted, and Anton saw an obsidian landscape of harsh, barren rock and odd crystalline trees. A purple vortex spun in the sky, and an eerie mist hung in the air, fogging up his sight so he could only see a few feet ahead.

Then he noticed his body for the first time. First he stared, then he hesitantly touched, and his finger sunk into a soft material, only giving a vague sensation of touch. Anton wanted to laugh, but he wasn’t sure how. His skin was formed of ash-grey clay. Clay molded into an approximate mimicry of his old human form. A clay man I've become! Clay!

“Ah, you have finally arisen,” A crystal clear voice from ahead said.

Anton turned, and saw the witch. She had to be a witch. She was a woman made from marble, with crystalline, blue hair that chimed softly as her head turned. She was seated on a stark black rock, a fishing rod in her hand. And she had an enormous, pointy hat. A shade of blue just a tad lighter than her hair. Has to be a witch.

Two eyes like diamonds focused on him. “I was wondering whether your sould had enough will to use the birthing pit. Do you remember yourself? I am Ravel the Crystal Witch, and I offer you a pact.”

The word remember hit Anton like a truck, and he realized the memory had begun slipping from him again. He focused on it, on that galactic pathway, trying to remember its beauty. But there was also a witch in front of him, speaking of pacts. Mind flunk two ways, he only managed a confused grunt. “What?” He asked, surprised he had managed to speak.

Those eyes did not blink. “I require your help, so I am offering you a choice. Know that as a witch, I am soulbound to the truth. Let any lies spoken shatter my core into dust.” Ravel said, in a tone like she was giving off the final judgement.

Anton felt an energy in the air, as if her words were charged with electricity. But he couldn't focus on the moment. “What is this? I was… floating. It was beautiful.”

“You were dead, and I have interrupted your cycle of reincarnation. I forged a heart to hold your soul, and left you in a birthing pit to form anew. Your current existence is fragile, so don’t waste it. Do you understand?”

Somehow, Anton found himself nodding. He was growing used to holding on to the memories with one half of his mind, and conversing with the other. Her words matched with what he had felt, and he still had enough memories to understand it all. Anton took a shaky step forward, then finally saw the pond the witch was fishing from. He gasped.

A stark-black pool with dancing golden lights within. A soft, orange mist emerging from it. Stars danced in its depths. His memory resonated—his astral path lay in there. “What is that?”

Ravel saw his gaze and stood up, putting away her fishing rod. “That is the Astral Sea, the path through which mortal souls reincarnate, and through which cultivators travel.”

The word cultivator resonated in Anton’s memories. In his endless past lifetimes, he had sometimes seen them. Glorious and terrible immortals. Danger flashed in his mind, and Anton focused back to the witch. It was so hard to focus! “You said something about a deal?”

She nodded. “It is a simple deal, an exchange, but not one without dire consequences for you. It is quite simple. I will help you become a cultivator and throw off the shackles of mortality, and in exchange, you will help me travel to a destination.”

“What is the other option?” Anton asked, remembering she had mentioned two.

“The vessel I have given you will not last. The other choice is for you to return into the astral sea as a mortal soul, once more entering the cycle of reincarnation. Be warned though—it is likely you will lose the shadow of your most recent life. You will stop being you.”

In a way, Anton longed to return to that beautiful, harmonious cycle. But what the witch had said after frightened him. He did not want to stop being Anton. And did he really want to reincarnate? His next life would be just like all the others—it would leave him hungering.

She had given two staggering options that would decide his future, but Anton still found himself oddly tranquil. Half his mind focused on preserving his fading memories of reincarnation, it was as if he’d reached inner peace. He felt no nervousness. The witch had said she was bound to the truth, and somehow, Anton believed it.

“Can you tell me about cultivation?”

***

Ravel heard his question and knew she had him. A hunger was in the man's eye. But still, her word was binding. She would tell him the full extent of it all, for her pact needed to be made in perfect sincerity.

The witch reached into her robes, and pulled out a blue marble that shone with a dim glow. Ravel gingerly held in in her hands. Even now she felt the same awe she had felt since birth, wonder at the perfect craftsmanship of nature. “This is a mortal soul, formed by nature. It is in its way perfect—it is said not even the most powerful beings can shatter it. However, it will forever be stuck in the cycle of reincarnation, never to escape.”

Then she reached into her chest—deep inside—and pulled out a diamond that shone with red, green and blue. “A cultivator shatters their own soul, then begins to reforge it anew. They are free of mortality’s shackles, able to ascend to greater and greater power. However, even if they can use the Astral Sea, they are forever barred from truly entering it. No more reincarnation. If a cultivator’s soul shatters, it is the end.”

The man was staring at Ravel’s soul, entranced. Ravel found it amusing. Her soul had many more imperfections than the mortal soul she had shown before, a consequence of her lacking skill, but the diamond construct was certainly more flashy. And it also held a thrumming power that far eclisped anything a mortal could dream of. Does he understand the significance of this choice?

It was either stepping back into a forever of reincarnation, or making a gamble for eternity. But the man's decision seemed set already. Ravel could feel it from his threads, the subtle whispers of fate. But she was a witch. One more warning I must give him.

Anton began to speak, but Ravel stopped him, raising a marble-white finger. “One more thing. The heart I have made for you is temporary, and will shatter eventually. You will have to make haste, and forge yourself a new one to store your soul, lest it shatter along with it.”

Then the man finally looked at her, really looked at her. A flash of emotion. So he's not all calm after all.

“Why didn’t you make one that would last?”

Ravel’s eyes gleamed, and her voice bit like frost.

"Do you want to be my slave?”

The words had a physical force which knocked the man back. He staggered, then looked at her with fear. “No—I do not.”

Ravel softened her gaze back to its neutral coolness, and nodded. “Good, I have no use for a slave.”

A slave's bonds were too tight, they would interlock with hers far too closely. She needed someone seperate, distinct enough from her own connections.

The man thought for a long time then, staring off into blankness. What were those eyes looking at? Finally, he seemed to focus again and looked to Ravel. “One more thing. You said you needed my help to travel somewhere. Explain, please. I want to know what I am agreeing to.”

Ah, that.

For the first time, Ravel’s calm façade cracked. For just an instant, she betrayed a shred of embaressment. I really hate to admit this, to a mortal of all things too. She gazed down and shuffled her feet, then finally spoke. She had to give the full extent of it. “I am… lost. My memories are not complete. I know not how I came to this lonely island, but I want to leave and return to my family. However—”

She gazed into the pond longingly. “At my current strength, it isn’t possible to traverse the Astral Sea alone. The abyssal winds would rip my existence to shreds, until I forget and lose everything. But, two souls together—”

Her gaze fell to the man. “The bonds strengthen each other. It must be two individuals, you see. That is why you cannot be my slave. I apologize.”

The man's eyes were focused now, calculating. Being her slave would have been esier for him, the path of a lone cultivator was not without its troubles. Finally, he closed his eyes, and spoke longingly. "If I become a cultivator, can I traverse the stars?"

He was looking at something she could not see, something far away. It was an odd question, not at all what she had been expecting. But it had a simple answer.

Ravel nodded. "Yes, that is the least of what you will be able to do."

The man met her in the eye for a moment that seemed to stretch forever, then finally nodded. "Fine. I accept your pact."

Her magic activated, and a contract bound their two souls together. A distinctly seperate, but very strong bond. Exactly what she needed. A nervousness she didn't realize she had been holding faded, replaced with relief.

“Good. We will start immediately. The first step is focusing your soul into aspects. key concepts or memories that will become your foundation. Do you have any one memory that defines you above all else, that you want to hold on to? It will become the basis of your strength.”

For some reason, the man started smiling. Smiling very wide indeed.