Epilogue II
THRAX
Chezir Montgomery.
A legacy heiress infamous for her attitude.
I had been going through the year’s history student applications the moment they landed on my desk, praying to the gods that she would be among them. I had promised myself that if, after three years, she didn’t apply, I would finally quit.
And she was here.
For the first time, standing in my class, in my school, I felt a staggering joy I hadn’t known in twenty-one years.
Chezir Montgomery had the same look she’d had in her past life—the same height, the same body, the same face. I had stared at her profile photo in the student record for hours, unable to look away.
Twenty-one years ago, Sanora had been reincarnated at the very moment her soul found me, and the scar on my chest had sealed into smooth skin.
She had been reborn, but with a new soul. Her soul. This was her life—her real life—beginning again after fulfilling the prophecy. And I too had been reborn, in my own way.
I was dead to the world.
Everyone believed the Soulless Man had died beside The Crater twenty-one years ago, thanks to the twins.
The home Sanora and I once shared had become a tourist attraction, as had the cave.
It was no longer dangerous to anyone. I’d seen countless videos online of people walking inside, laughing, taking pictures, oblivious to what that place had taken from me.
All of it was the twins’ doing. They appeared on television too much, basking in the fame and becoming sensations among historians as they tried to add to the history they’d watched happen those years ago.
The Soulless Man’s curse has been broken, and he died beside The Crater.
That was what they claimed, amongst other things, on every channel for twenty-one years, convincing the world they knew the truth.
But I had woken three days later at The Crater, my scar gone. My powers gone. I felt like my real self again, free of the curse. But for what? I had a soul once more, my time was counting again…but she was not with me.
I had gone back to the cave, hoping to find her body. But she wasn’t there. The barrier had fallen and the shimmer had dimmed, but Sanora was gone.
All that remained was a message.
A promise that fate would bring us back together when the time was right.
That single message had stopped me from ending it right there like I’d planned.
Hope.
Hope that she would return. Hope that reincarnation would bend just for us. Hope that I would see her again.
I knew there was no point searching for her; I wouldn’t find her until the universe allowed it. So I did what mortals do.
I blended back into their world, the memory of her forcing me to stand each day. By blending, I meant working. And what better way than to lecture the story of my own life to a room of students?
Even if it was my own school.
Twenty years ago, I didn’t know how fate would make our paths cross again, but staying here, right here in this school felt like the answer. I knew it was the place to wait the moment I stepped foot inside the university.
And now, she had walked right into my class.
I wouldn’t lie and pretend I hadn’t arrived an hour early just in case she was the type to show up first. Her grades marked her as someone who might.
But she came in when the hall was nearly full, and I felt the shift in the current before I even looked up.
She stood on the upper level, looking the same yet so different. Her straight hair was jet black, matching her black leather trousers. She carried a black handbag. Her long nails were painted black, and she had this dead look in her honey brown eyes—as written in her record.
She was back—different, yes—but in a way that would still have me on my knees.
No matter what shape she took, no matter what form, she had carved me into the core of her existence, and there was no lifetime in which she wasn’t my centre.
The last thing she’d said to me was that she’d be back in a blink.
And gods, by blink, I hadn’t known she meant decades of breaking over and over again, yearning for the moment she’d return.
And now, she is here.
Right in front of me.
Finally.