Asunder

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MY LIFE WAS a mistake.

As long as I’d been alive, I’d wanted to know why I’d been born. Why, after five thousand years of the same souls being reincarnated, my soul had slipped through the cracks of existence and burdened the people of Heart with such newness.

No one could tell me how I happened, not until the night I’d found my way into the temple with no door, trapping myself with the entity called Janan.

“Mistake,” he’d said. “You are a mistake of no consequence.”

I knew, as I’d always known, that I was a soul asunder.

Outside the temple, the night had spiraled into chaos. Sylph burned, and dragons rained acid from the thunder-torn sky. The numinous light of the temple had vanished. The father I’d never known appeared and told me the same as Janan: I was an experiment gone wrong.

My life might have begun as a mistake, but I wouldn’t let it end as one.

Spring slipped across Range, a verdant blanket stitched with new life. Trees blossomed and young animals peeked from the forest, and the people of Heart cleared a stretch of land north of the city, just beyond the geysers and mud pits that steamed and bubbled as winter eased its grip on the world.

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