Cold air hit my skin. For some reason, I was covered in a watery substance. I could hear the sounds of celebration filling the air around me; cheering and crying that echoed around the room. I tried to look around, but all I could see was soft yellow light shimmering through my closed eyelids.
I couldn’t open my eyes. I tried to move, but my arms felt like jelly. I started to panic, and something inside made me cry out. Nothing in my body seemed to work at all. All I could do was hear the countless noises around me, feel a soft blanket being wrapped around me, and breathe cool air into my lungs. My arms were now pinned to my sides as I began screaming out, trying to form the words to cry out for help. For some reason, my mouth and vocal cords couldn’t seem to make any noise aside from a high-pitched scream that cut through the air. I felt a pair of arms carefully lift me up from where I lay. The person slowly rocked me back and forth, perhaps in an attempt to calm me down.
Slowly, I began to put the pieces together. I remembered a few fuzzy details about my past life—childhood memories of playing, my dad leaving, the fights and horrid things I did. Getting sober, seeing my wife and kids playing together, my kids moving out for college, and finally, my wife’s funeral. At last, my mind landed on the encounter with the demon and our conversation
. I must have been reborn, and now I was a new-born fresh out of the womb. I tried to take a few shaky breaths and gradually started calming down as someone cradled me in their arms and whispered, “Dalleon, – —–-— —- —,” The person paused. “—-–- – — –—.”
I once again attempted to open my eyes, and to my surprise, they flicked open. A blurry face looked down at me. I tried to squint, but all I could make out were two dark eyes and a scraggly beard. Four other blurry outlines were littered throughout the room. Two of them rushed about, moving throughout the room and bringing things to a figure who sat laying on what I assumed to be a bed.
Soon, exhaustion overcame my body as I tried to do something, anything. The world slowly faded out as I drifted off into an endless expanse of dreams.
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***
Azareth laid back, content with the job he’d just finished.
You see, right before the old man had been reborn into the body of Dalleon Baldorbain, Azareth had made him pass out. There was a short latency period where Azareth had separated the old man’s soul and mind from his old. Azareth had sculpted a body for him, as different dimensional beings often rejected the matter that made up other universes. He needed to craft this body with interdimensional matter, something any soul could adapt to.
He had shaped the body to one resembling the man’s in his previous life, but added a few touches so that he resembled his parents. That wasn’t the hardest part though. Azareth had had to carefully shape each and every organ, artery, nerve, and hair. It was no easy task, not to mention connecting his body to his Mana store. That and the Soul he and only he possessed.
Of course, he had done this a million times before, and he soon had crafted the perfect body for the old man to inhabit. It had several special abilities such as: speaking in mana, the language of demons, and the extra magical container for Soul.
As soon as Azareth had inspected the new body, he sent it down to Aci and merged the old man’s soul with the new body. He watched from the shadows to make sure nothing went wrong with the birth, and then retreated back to the world of demons.
Satisfied with the successful rebirth, he finished his day's work—managing his workers, looking over soul appeals, and sending the next delivery to Heaven. He returned to his home, a gigantic mansion only fitting of the head of the souls department. There, he did his usual nightly routine, but although he had done a million rebirths before, he couldn’t get one of them off his mind. One of them was different. One of them was more powerful than the others. One of them would make a change.
He just couldn’t seem to get Dalleon Baldorbain off his mind.