“You are different now than you were before,” she said as she stepped outside her door.

“I journeyed for weeks across the endless sand,” I answered as my legs struggled to stand.

But Bellaina shook her head and stepped closer. I felt a cold sweat cover my skin as she reached for the sword I kept hidden in my holster. She unsheathed it just slightly and peered into the blade which shimmered in the streetlight. Even with only inches of its metal exposed, she could tell by its battle scars that it was not the same sword with which she had left me. She could hear the steel whisper its stories with a steady stare.

“The man to whom I gave a sword was one too weak to see the power it could give him over other men. This is not the same sword, and you are not the same man. The mysterious man I met was too weak to take what he wanted from this world, but that isn’t true anymore. In just the time you were gone, you changed. I can see it in your eyes; I can breathe it from your soul. It’s almost a shame that your only use now is to serve as a cog in the machine that orchestrates the darkness that drives this city.”

Though I was unnerved, I managed to say, “I owe you a debt I intend to repay.”

Bellaina chuckled before she finally said, “I will have you serve as a courier, but for the dead. Just as Donovan drags desperate clients and commodities across this city, I will charge you with burying the refuse. Our disciples depend on us to dispose of the dead, and our last gravedigger in the end suffered the same fate as those he once buried. This will be your task from now and on, but rest assured that you will be paid properly. Mateo, please prepare the wagon for our newest associate.”

“If that is my task, then that is my role,” I said to the woman whose eyes pierced my soul. She merely chuckled to herself without another word to say; she walked into her house, and then she walked away. Before long, her henchman hoisted a heavy wagon outside. As he set it down and left, he smirked with pride.

Donovan faced me and said with a smile, “Just bury the bodies somewhere safe for a while. As long as they’re bones by the time they’re found, no one can trace it back to her. It’s hard to make a cemetery inside the city, but I know you can do it. I’ve really got to run, but there should be some places by the north edge of the city.”

I nodded and thanked Donovan for his time. Though I was charged to scour the streets of the city and find a suitable cemetery for the victims of the dark, I decided instead to search for the space where my next life would begin. I carried the heavy wagon behind me, straining my muscles to overcome the force that fought to keep the dead at peace. As if destiny itself taunted me in a cruel twist of irony, I saw several spaces on the way which could have served as burial grounds for the bodies I carried. I found favorable fields without wandering witnesses anywhere in sight. I found old buildings which had not seen a soul in decades. I mentally noted these locations, but I trekked instead toward the ocean. My heartbeat accelerated when I saw the starlight shimmer on the steaming sea. Even when I stepped onto the sand of Ember Bay, I could tell that this was the place where we were destined to reunite; this was the place where my next life would begin.

Ember Bay was far from the markets and the factories. Ships would sometimes set sail from the pier, but the waves were turbulent and rarely allowed passage. Moored boats waited in the waves like wingless birds. There wasn’t a soul anywhere in sight. Large clusters of rocks glistened in the water just offshore, discouraging beachgoers from choosing this as their venue. I couldn’t see or hear anyone in any direction, so I unlocked the container in the wagon which concealed the corpses. I saw three men inside, all covered in facial hair and timeworn scars. They looked to lament the lives they lived long ago, as if their misery stained their face in the same way that a spring stretched too far can never unstretch. Their bodies showed no signs of injury or poison, so I checked for a heartbeat or any sign of breathing. Every vital sign confirmed their death, so I suspected that they were somehow asphyxiated. They suffered a terrible death at the end of their hopeless lives, almost as if the stars had cursed their souls to an eternal anguish.

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I slashed through the sand at the water’s edge and dug a deep hole. Like a child building a sandcastle by the water, I protected the hole from the steaming sea with the very sand I upended from the ground. A part of me wished I had chosen somewhere else to bury these broken bodies; it felt like I was defiling hallowed ground by sinking corpses in the sand. I convinced myself that it was too late for fate to change its mind, and if I used this place as my own private cemetery, then I could continuously come to Ember Bay. I could continuously inspect the beach for the woman with whom I would walk into eternity. In that way, the bodies I buried were like little steppingstones leading to the place where our paths would cross and conjoin forever. It was only fitting that our eternal convergence would literally take place on the backs of the dead as a testament to the reality that I would sacrifice anything for her. There was no price too expensive to pay. There was no line I would not cross. I could kill my conscience and burn the world to cinders if it meant she would somehow emerge from the ashes on blazing wings of reborn love.

So with a dirt-stained sword in my hand, this became my routine. Almost like a loop or a life left in limbo, I went through the motions, waiting for the day we would meet again. I found a letter on my door each morning in the starlit mist. It gave me the location of a place where Bellaina needed bodies removed. I would wallow and wander through the streets of Bones City as workers shuffled through the markets. Though I was not the only person pushing a wagon on the way to work, I received perplexed glances from others in the crowd. I wondered if perhaps they knew that my soul was stained by the badlands and the underworld, or perhaps they could sense that I was meant for an eternal love which transcended the mortal binds of their ephemeral lives. It made no difference to me. Sometimes I would purchase some fruit using the money with which Bellaina had paid me, and the merchants seemed friendly enough. Sometimes I would wander wearily through the artist markets, watching with wasted wonder as painters and musicians strived to share their craft with the world.

Each morning, I would arrive at another one of Bellaina’s dens where the underworld discarded the dead. Each afternoon, I would wheel the wagon through the shadows of the city in its quieter streets. Sometimes there were only two bodies, but sometimes I had to push as many as five. Sometimes I would inspect the corpses, although they were almost always the same. Their skin was stained with the scars of a long life lush with lost light. But no matter how many faded lacerations marked their bodies, I never saw any sign of the killing blow. The curiosity tempted me, almost like dying embers licking at my heels, but it made no difference in the end. So each day in the early evening, I would wheel the wagon onto the starlit shore and bury the bodies beneath the sand. The waves would wash away all evidence of my crimes. I would scour the sand and the sea one more time for her, and then I would retire to my bed and dance in my head with the girl I’ve never met. I did not know what Alyssa would look like in her next incarnation, so even in my fantasies, she remained a blank slate.

This cycle repeated itself so many times that I eventually lost count. I envisioned our first meeting on that starlit shore so many times that I discredited the reality when I first found her standing in the shallows. I convinced myself that it was a vivid prayer in the form of a daydream—a rewritten reality but only in reverie. She stood in the shallows with skin stained by scars of sandstorms from a life long lost, but her hazel eyes ignited in the moment her gaze met mine. I did not know anything about her in that moment; I knew nothing of the life she lived or the actions and consequences that led to our convergence. I did not even know her name in this incarnation. All I knew was that our souls were destined to dance as twin flames in an endless spiral, unconstrained by the mortal chains of time and death. She stumbled toward me on bloodied feet, but she nearly collapsed when a weak wave washed by. I caught her in my arms and embraced her in the steaming sea. Saltwater shimmered in the starlight as it fell from her hair like rain. Her clothes were plastered to her skin.

I said to her as I transcended my abyss, “I buried old memories just to clear room for this.”

She whispered as she set my right hand on her scars, “Our trials in this life are written in the stars. I always thought they had condemned me, but something unspoken drew me to the city. It was like a spark in my heart or an ember in my soul.”

“It was a light like the stars which dance around us now.”