I knocked back another lemon-lime vodka, downing my 4th tonight and trying to drown the buzzing in my head. Every fiber in my being urged me not to share with my sister. I was hoping to quiet those thoughts. With alcohol.

The lyrics to the song humming off the speakers in the bar sounded like nonsense to me. And the entire bar smelled like smoke. Our booth was recessed into the ground, pressed into the back corner of the underground building so that I could face the entrance. I could see people having their own conversations in their own booths. Laughing. Smiling.

Warm hues filled the bar. Stained wood tabletops and walls, the heat keeping it warm despite the cold outside. The window seemed to open out into shadow, the towering mega-structures of the Awakened district a stark contrast to the humans walking the streets.

I had just faced down a demon almost 3 realms higher than me, yet my hands were still shaking, thinking about talking to my sister. The bar was a low buzz of conversations. Kim shifted uncomfortably any time Willow so much as looked her way.

“Does he have to be here?” I asked, looking at Xavier. His eyes were glowing blue. Xavier opened his mouth to talk. Willow was faster.

“He’s saved my life multiple times, Rain. You can trust him. Everyone here.” Willow said, leaning across the table. “He’s an expert mage. Skilled at mana. If you have something going on… he can probably help.”

I didn’t miss that Willow’s eyes flicked to Kim for a second. Had Kim told her about the blood corruption? I took another look at Willow. It was the first time I had seen her not wearing armor. For once, she was serious. My eyes searched hers, and I swallowed, turning to Kim. She offered a smile.

My throat felt dRy.

“I…” I started, then stopped. I swallowed again, looking up at the ceiling. “It all started 500 years ago.”

“500 years ago?” Xavier asked. “But you’re only…” He trailed off, looking at Willow.

“23.” She finished, tapping the table.

“500 years and a few months ago.” I said, before taking a deep breath to steady myself, still staring at the table. “I woke up in another world entirely."

I looked up to scan their faces. Everyone stared at me seriously. There was skepticism. But no one called me crazy.

“What was it like?” Willow asked.

“What?” I replied.

“Your life. What was it like living again? Did you… have a family there?”

None of those were the questions I expected. They were questions that came from absolute belief in what I was saying. I knew it was crazy, though. She had to know it was crazy, too. I stared at her for a moment. Then I continued.

***

There wasn’t any dirt. Maybe a leaf or 2, having fallen from the trees. But we swept the grounds every day. It made little sense to me. A large yard of stone bricks laid to formed a flat lot attached to the orphanage. I swept the grounds. Only 7 years old. The broom I held was taller than I was; they gave us enough food to survive. But every day I performed my chores.

The best children got extra food.

My first memory from my second early childhood had been here. Powerless. Reborn as a baby, unable to walk. I could only listen. Dozens of other children were here too. They cried through the night. But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was hearing them stop, soft cries slowly turning to sickness and gasps and then ending entirely.

Dozens of children were abandoned here, year after year. They found their way to this building nestled in the shadow of the city’s towering walls.

By the time I finished sweeping the grounds, sweat clung to my skin. I leaned against the cool iron fence that surrounded the grounds, letting the metal drain the heat from my body, listening.

Today was the day they came.

I waited in the shadow of a tree for them to arrive.

August arrived first, along with a half dozen other kids ferrying buckets of water from the well at the town center. Every day, the director of the orphanage made them haul water back and forth. After the baths and the drinking water and the garden, they made the older children bring them around the city, to people who needed water and couldn’t fetch it themselves, or just to people who paid to have it delivered.

August huddled beside me, wrapping his legs around his knees. We sat in silence.

I had known the boy since I could speak. He was almost like an older brother, in this life, a rock and a source of comfort here.

“Will you come back?” I asked him.

His hair was long and unkempt, falling down around his shoulders, bright green eyes burning with intensity as he stared out at the street.

“Of course I’ll be back.” He turned to me with a smile. “13 years here. I’ll have to come back to see my brothers and sisters. At least until you can all join me.”

I smiled back at him.

The wagon arrived with little fanfare, the gigantic hairy animal pulling an ornate wagon behind it. A man stepped down from the wagon.

His hair was glossy and pitch black. His clothes flowed down his body like they were liquid, stunning robes in white with a golden trim and filigree in the patterns of flowers. He kept his arms crossed behind his back, and the look in his eyes made me flinch. He stared right at me. I wasn’t anything more than an insect in his eyes.

He walked with such grace he might as well have floated over the earth. Everything was beneath him, even the ground. He entered the orphanage silently.

Every year these men came, dressed in finery. Children left with them. They never returned.

***

“And the orphanage taught you… magic? Were the people in this world Awakened?” Xavier asked. “Do you have any evidence? Anything you brought with you from that world to this one?”

“Xavier!” Rose said, pushing him.

“Just… take your time. Rain.”

“No, it’s a fair point. It sounds crazy. I know that.” I said, licking my lips. Could I show them proof? Awakened had magic. I wasn’t at a high enough realm to bring the pagoda from out of my soul space, so I couldn’t show them that. “You’re an expert on mana?”

“People say that.” Xavier said, staring at me unerringly. I don’t think he had blinked once throughout my story. “There’s always something more to learn.”

I presented a palm to him, face up. He tilted a head to the side, reaching out and pulling my hand closer from across the booth. He turned my arm over, looking down at it like I was nothing more than a specimen.

I sent qi down my arm, feeling it dance in my meridians as I formed the Moonlight Crescent. Xavier flinched the moment the qi got near him, but then the blade popped into existence.

It hummed. Xavier’s eyes quested, searching it.

“Fascinating.” Xavier said, reaching out to touch it.

“It’s sharp.” I warned him.

“You’re Awakened!?” Willow asked.

Xavier touched the blade with either of his fingers. There was a flash of blue.

I felt the technique dissipate, forcibly disassembled like another cultivator had injected their qi into it. But it remained in one piece. I flinched.

Xavier pulled the floating technique away from my arm.

“No, it’s — it’s not mana.” Xavier turned it over in his hands. He breathed out in excitement. “What is this?”

“Qi.” I said.

“I can keep this, yes?” Xavier spun it in his hands. Then he set it on the table like it was a common utensil.

“Sure.”

“So you’re not Awakened?” Willow asked.

“No.”

“So this is… learned magic?” Xavier asked. “And you can do this?” He swiveled on to Kim, who blinked like a deer caught in headlights.

“No — yes, but, not that — the closest I’ve done like to that is probably cheating at bowling?” Kim replied.

“I’ve been teaching her.” I said.

“You told her before me?” Willow asked, offended.

I opened my mouth to reply.

“Athena — Willow — you are a little… intimidating?” Kim said before I could. “I mean, what if you had thought it was just an alien pretending to be your brother or something?”

“So you already knew all of this?” Willow relaxed, tapping her fingers on the table and leaning back. She stared Kim down.

I licked my lips again.

“And the orphanage taught you magic?” Xavier asked, looking up at me again. It looked like his eyes were staring right through me.

Judging by the fact that he detected qi in Kim after looking at a single technique, maybe he was.

“The orphanage never taught me anything.”

“What happened to August?” Willow asked, leaning forward again.

***

August didn’t come back.

No one came back.

Year after year.

The orphanage’s staff didn’t explain why. They said the money from doing chores for people around the city was to fund the orphanage. But it didn’t add up. Every year I got older, they became more intensive. Harder. Faster. Crossing the city, sprinting through the alleys.

They didn’t have us steal or break into homes or anything. But it was almost like they were giving us work out routines. Almost.

For what? To sell us off as laborers?

No one ever came back. And the orphanage director wouldn’t tell me where they went. Just ‘a better place.’

I knew what that meant. They were dead or enslaved. I was going to run away. And find out where they went. Then I could… I don’t know, rescue them?

It was my last year here, the day before they would come to pick us up.

I raided the orphanage. Quietly. I stole layers of clothes, a blanket, as much food as I could carry in a bindle, candles, and a lantern. It was raining. Pitch black under storm clouds, the sun having long since set. You don’t realize how bright cities are until you experience real darkness. There were no streetlights here. The rain turned the dirt on the cobble roads to mud, squelching under my feet as I fled the city.

I packed everything I could and ran. No one stopped me. No one even looked twice at the street rat running through the street. And anyone who looked at me knew I had nothing worth stealing. I made my way by the lights of candles and lanterns shining through building windows or off the top of the wall, afraid to light the lantern I had stolen from the orphanage. This late, only one of the city’s gates was open.

I walked through the night, over muddy roads carved into the world.

When the sun rose, I climbed a tree, sleeping on the branches, freezing cold, but sleep eventually took me. Months and years of exercise left me well prepared, even in the body of a child. When I woke, I waited in the branches, peering down along the road for anyone looking for me, anyone following me.

After an hour, no one came. The rain turned my tracks to soft mud. And everyone else’s. There was no one on the road.

So I continued walking, hoping my legs would carry me beyond the search radius of the orphanage, if they even bothered to come look for me.

TV shows romanticize traveling. I packed too little food and carried too much. When I arrived at the next village, it was already late in the morning. At least it hadn’t rained.

I didn’t know if it was more than a day’s journey, or if my legs were so short it took me a day and a half to reach it. But when I got to the city, exhaustion racked my body.

I passed into a village of squat huts. Here, the farmers stared where I walked by. But the buildings were expansive, cramped together. The entire village smelled like animals, and the noises they made were constant. There was no one walking down the street without business to do. Except me.

Which made the man I met leaning in an alley stand out even more. He had a cane leaned against himself.

And 1 arm.

I paled, looking at him, stopping dead in my tracks. Was he dead? A corpse left outside?

One of his eyes cracked open.

“What do you want, kid?”