The abbey was nearly silent. The knights were stunned at the open display of scorn from their beloved Saintess-apparent.

“You’re only making yourself look worse,” Ailn said, trying to calm her down. “Renea—”

“I told you never to say my name!” Renea shouted. Bolting upright, she stormed down towards the pews, glaring at the knights who'd brought her under inquisition. “Of all the asinine, witless things, you accuse ME of being disgraceful?”

The acting bailiff, Sir Kylian, winced at the sight, wondering if it had truly all been a facade.

To the long-suffering people of the duchy, Renea eum-Creid had always been the promise of a brighter future. She was its greatest hope, heir apparent to the noble family that protected the empire, and she was poised to surpass even her mother, the late Saintess Celine eum-Creid.

A star of unbound potential, her mastery at sixteen matched her mother’s at twenty: none had ever seen a Saintess so effortlessly heal the sick, eradicate the shadows, or maintain the holy barrier that surrounded the entire city of Varant. And the people dared to hope that she would be the one to finally dispel the darkness.

Today, however, the eum-Creid’s shining jewel was not standing at the pulpit preaching mercy. Instead, she was stomping about the abbey's chancel, screaming into the void.

“All of you faithless, treacherous knights act like you know everything! To hell with all of you!” Renea snarled. “Not a single one of you knows what loyalty is!”

On this day, Renea eum-Creid stood trial for the attempted murder of her brother.

----------------------------------------

This story’s true beginning lies in the void between our worlds, where a soul that once walked among us was drawn away from its journey beyond, and instead coaxed to the gate of the world next door. A seemingly teenaged boy stood waiting to receive the wayward soul, and once it arrived before him, the soul slowly transfigured into something resembling a human body.

It belonged to a detective who’d met a rather bitter end.

“…I’m alive.” The detective, currently an errant soul, looked around. “Or not? Hm.”

Taking in his surroundings, it seemed like he was in the afterlife. But the detective was skeptical.

The last thing he remembered doing was dying, and there was a good chance this was just a flight of fancy before true and utter death—a hallucination caused by the chemicals flooding his brain before all activity ceased.

If this really was his final dream, though, it was a little…

“Random.” The detective paced around the teenage boy in front of him. He was a whole head taller than the boy. “You definitely look real. You’re fully detailed and everything. If I were hallucinating, I’d expect everything to look a little more… Impressionist.”

Then again, the detective thought, if he were hallucinating he wouldn’t be able to assess his own lucidity. It was a real conundrum.

The boy clasped his hands together and smiled nervously. “Welcome, Mr. Detective. You must be… quite confused right now!”

“I wouldn’t say ‘confused’ is the right word. On the fence, maybe,” the detective said, glancing past the boy. A gigantic doorway loomed behind him, slowly seeping fog, its frame somehow etched into the air itself.

And through the fog, the detective could barely make out a castle covered in snow…

“Well,” the boy said, “I’m real! I’m a real god.”

“A god? I assumed you were some kind of cherubim. You know, those fat little things in togas?”

“…But I’m dressed in regular clothing?” The boy’s smile started to strain “This is neither Heaven, nor Hell. You're in the afterlife, yes. But I’ve brought you to the gate of another world, Mr. Detective. My world.”

“Are you really gonna keep calling me Mr. Detective?”

The boy scratched his cheek and glanced away. “I don’t really have anything else to call you. You see, I took away your name and most of your memories.”

The detective stopped in his tracks and attempted to recall his actual name. Try as he might to reach back through the doors of memory, they were locked tight. But past those doors—

“It’s for your benefit, Mr. Detective.“ The young god’s nervous scratch had progressed to his ear. “Some endings are too bitter. At least, too bitter to take in all at once. And I can’t have you walking out of the theater glum and useless—I need you for something.”

The detective sighed, finally taking the kid at his word: he really must be some kind of deity. The detective looked the young god straight in the eye. “So you took my memories away from me and expect me to do you a favor?”

“Taking your memories away was my favor.”

…It was the truth. The detective could tell.

Even now, cut off from his life and memory, standing here in the void—he could feel a morass of resentment threatening to pull him in and drown him. Yet there was also a palpable sense of detachment.

It was like he was two people at once. There was his true self, left behind in its anger. And there was the phantom he was right now, whose emotions seemed to clip if they rose too high or fell too low.

Everything smoothed, like he was on spiritual painkillers. The detective sighed.

“Alright,” he said, apparently still able to experience subtle melancholy. “You got me. I’d rather be half of me than suffer. What exactly do you need me for?”

“So…uh, I’ve got a problem. Big problem,” the young god said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And this problem… could utterly ruin my world.”

“As in?”

“Um, it could be completely destroyed.”

"I hope you were smart enough to get the warranty.”

"Hah. Ahaha. No. No, that's not funny. I'm really in big trouble."

“I’m not sure how my particular skill set applies,” the detective said. “Unless you need me to solve a divine murder… or find some sort of artifact that keeps the world running.”

The young god snapped his fingers. “You’re close. I need you to find somebody. A number of some-bodies, actually. I need you to find reincarnators, for me.”

“Who?”

“Reincarnators.” The young god pointed at the detective. “People who’ve died in your world and been reincarnated into my world, like you’re about to be.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“And why do you need someone else to find them?” the detective asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

“…Okay, then. How many of them are there?”

“I can’t tell you that, either.”

“You know, you’re really stretching the word ‘god’ thin here.”

“I know that more than anyone in the world, Mr. Detective. Both our worlds. But that’s why this is such a dire situation. You could say I used up all my divinity to bring you here.”

The young god clasped his hands together, and made a full bow: “...Because if you can’t figure out who these reincarnators are, then my world and everyone who lives within it will perish. So, please. I’m begging you.”

At this point, even the detective was starting to feel embarrassed. Few things unnerve the flippant and uncaring more than straightforward sincerity.

Masks can be seen through, and lies unraveled. Cards kept close to the vest can be figured out. But a plea from the heart can only be accepted or rejected.

“That’s a lot more responsibility than I’ve ever had,” the detective said. “A whole world? That could be billions of people. I’m the best you could come up with?”

“You’re the best I could come up with, because you’re the best,” the young god replied.

“...I’ll have to respectfully disagree.”

“You, more than anyone in any universe, are suited to solve this case. No one else can do it. You’re the genius detective we need.”

“Genius, huh?” A bitter pang rose in the detective’s chest, and the smallest flash of his life cut short slipped past the locks which held his memories. “I guess it takes a lot of talent to be a has-been before thirty.”

The detective closed his eyes, and a deep wincing frown set across his face.

His left hand tried to fiddle with a watch that wasn’t actually there anymore, and he found himself missing it.

The truth was, he didn’t want to do it.

His soul had been moments away from moving on, its worldly attachments already crumbling away. The pain and misery of his final moments still lingered as a dull, numb ache in his chest, despite any divine palliative, and he wanted to sleep it off in eternity just like any other tired soul.

A new mission, especially one this important, seemed out of the question. He couldn’t remember it, but he could feel it: he’d just given up on his last one.

Yet…

Looking at the young god bowing before him, he felt his heart stir. There was something in his adolescent and ruddy face, something that reminded him of someone important that he couldn’t even bring to mind, anymore.

“Alright. I’ll do it. You remind me of someone I like... I think.” The detective sighed.

It wasn’t much of a reason. Just enough to give a good person an excuse to do good.

The young god sighed himself, but with relief. All the tension in his body left while he was still mid-bow, and he looked like he might keel over. Where the detective’s heart had been stilled, an engine that needed a spark to start again, the god’s heart had been a stuttering, anxious mess.

And when he finally pulled out of his exaggerated slump to face the detective again, he gave the detective his first genuine, relaxed smile—and like a pebble thrown into a cave, it sent the soft echo of memory through the detective’s soul once more.

“Just help me understand what I’m doing, exactly.” The detective spoke pointedly. Even a bit accusingly. “I’ve got a feeling you know who these reincarnators are already. So, you must need more than a list.”

“What you’re actually looking for are… jewels.” The young god opened his palm and manifested a perfect, glimmering emerald. “This emerald holds a part of the world soul. It’s the only one I have. Those reincarnators also hold part of the world soul. I need you to gather them for me.”

“I didn’t think worlds could have souls,” the detective muttered.

The detective wasn’t particularly enamored with jewelry or gemstones, but the emerald glittering in the young god’s palm was enchanting. He was currently a soul errant, a spirit looking for its place like a knight in want of a master.

The emerald resonated with him.

“It’s important,” the young god said. He had a very cautious tone. “I’m going to share as much of the emerald with you as you can handle.”

The jewel disappeared from the young god’s palm.

“Look into my eyes,” the young god said. “And… try not to panic.”

Then, the young god’s eyes started to glow softly, manifesting themselves into emeralds. The detective had seen green eyes before, but nothing like this. They looked like genuine precious stones, carved lovingly and meticulously to fit into the irises of his eye.

“Panic…?” the detective said. The young god’s emerald eyes were more than just drawing him in.

It felt like whatever jeweler had sculpted those eyes were starting to carve into his. The detective clutched at them.

He didn’t feel pain. But something was being etched into his soul, and his eyes were the medium. His vision disappeared, and then all of his senses.

His soul was soaring through the verdant labyrinth that was the emerald itself. It wasn’t that he was receiving the emerald—it was that he was uniting with it, a soul grander than his.

The detective woke back in the void with a start. The young god staring at him still had eyes of emerald, but they were marginally less brilliant than before.

Blinking, the detective realized that right now he had emerald eyes too.

“Ugh…” the detective rubbed one of his eyes, and intuitively realized he could manifest—and unmanifest—them at will.

“You’ll be something like my avatar in the world,” the young god continued, without missing a beat. “The reincarnators will all have jeweled eyes like you. And your emerald eyes will let you retrieve theirs.”

“Do I just need to look in their eyes for a split second like you just did?” the detective asked. He felt a bit irritated at just how little prior warning he got for such a profound experience.

Were the other reincarnators going to go through that when he took their jeweled eyes?

“The amount of eye contact you’ll need depends on a few factors,” the young god said, notably averting his own eyes.

“You're not making this … whatever. I think I get the gist of it. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“No,” the young god said, as he started shoving the detective in the direction of the gate. There was a hint of evasiveness evident in his tone. “I think that just about covers it.”

By now the two of them were standing right in front of the gate.

“It sounds like you’re hiding something from me.” The detective stopped before he actually entered.

“Am I? Oh, you might have to work out a few kinks and snags once I send you down. But that’s why you’re the best person for the job, right?” The young god placed fist in palm, and smiled like a lawyer that just screwed their client over. “Well, no time like the present. Let’s get you on your way.”

“Wait, hold on—“

“By the way, if you manifest your eyes on someone who isn't reincarnated, you'll pollute your jewel. Be careful not to shatter it!”

“What? What happens if—”

The detective felt a light push from behind, into the gate, and stumbled through. He heard a loud creak, then the sound of the gate slamming shut, before he was enveloped by the dark.

And suddenly, he felt his consciousness fading once again. It was almost like falling asleep, right in his own bed.

But the more his consciousness waned, the more his body seemed to be tipping precariously forward. And when he finally dozed off, he fell right through, starting his free-fall into the abyss.

----------------------------------------

Outside the castle courtyard, there was a floating and flashing white light. It was a simple use of holy aura often employed by the knights to keep people out of a crime scene. Routine, but grim, the flashing white on dirty snow gave a sordid impression.

Inside the courtyard was a corpse that belonged to someone of only nominal importance.

He was the useless second son of the eum-Creid dukedom, the young master Ailn, and his death had caused more gossip than alarm. Today, the snow fell heavily, as if the weather itself wished to hide the murder.

At exactly midnight, the snow came to a halt in mid-air, the rapid flicker of snowflakes slowing down until their movement had ceased entirely.

The world stopped. The corpse’s rot halted. The castle so often buried by ice was now caught in time. And in that frozen moment, something divine whispered into the corpse’s ear.

The snow’s fast drift started up once again, and dead eyes shot open.

"....Aaarghh! That hurts!" The former victim cradled his head violently and moaned. "Huh? What the hell?"

Blood on his hand, from pressing it against the open wound at the back of his head. Even gentle pressure caused a sharp pain that shot through the area, and he cursed violently.

There was more: little cuts all over him which stung against the wind, and the skin on his neck itched and peeled to the touch.

“Dammit!”

When he tried to stand up, he was struck by the bizarre sensation of his skin being waterlogged; concentrated between his shoulder blades, down to the small of his back.

He looked under his arm and tried to glance at his own back. There was a purple tint. It looked like the very beginnings of livor mortis. Panicking, he put a finger to his wrist—there was a pulse, thankfully.

Then he finally saw it: the chalk outline that had been drawn around his body.

The detective, now housed in the body of a certain Ailn eum-Creid, groaned. "Seriously? He threw me into a murder victim?”