Before time had a name, before stars took their place in the heavens, there was only movement. Energy flowed like breath, unbound by gravity or form. In that ancient silence, far from the bound planets, a crystalline island floated between realms. Pillars of white stone shimmered in the starlight, holding a delicate roof over a marble table where scrolls lay, untouched by dust or wind. At the center of this island, a being drifted, never touching the ground.
She was like a goddess. Slender and graceful, her skin soft like morning clouds. Her long, light-brown hair danced without wind, and her dress flowed in soft greens and peach hues. She was beauty, untouched by pain or time. The universe called her by no name, but if it had, it would've whispered it with reverence.
Her fingers played with the vibrant crystals that floated around her like stars orbiting a sun. These weren't ordinary gems; they were soul fragments—beings who had completed their cycles and ascended, now held safely in her care. But she did not yet know the depth of their meaning. To her, they were shimmering playthings.
She didn't understand. She hadn't lived among pain, hunger, longing, or loss. Her master, once a stern and kind teacher, had left her with a single task—to care for the souls and the eternal flower on the marble table. She danced, and she waited. But the flower never changed, and her master never returned.
One day, laughing in playful delight, she tossed the crystals into the air, spinning them in radiant arcs. And in a flash—a mistake.
A vortex opened beneath her, purple and deep as unspoken truths. Several of the crystals slipped through her fingers and fell into it. A gasp, a scream—and then a voice, not her own, boomed through the realm:
GO. Bring them back.
A flash of light struck her body, and she fell. The vortex swallowed her, and the goddess who had never walked fell through space and pain and darkness, crying out, "Please, I didn't mean to!" But her cries echoed into silence.
And then came the choice—if she was to retrieve them, she would have to live as they did. No powers. No memory. Only pain, flesh, and time. She had to become one of them to understand them.
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She was born into water.
Her first breath wasn't breath at all—it was the slow awakening of awareness in a deep, cold ocean. A dark world with scarce light, filled with creatures whose bodies shimmered only in brief pulses. She didn't remember who she was, only that she was alive.
Her body was long and scaled, a siren of the deep. She swam without direction, surrounded by shadows and hunger. Her mind, stripped of its divine clarity, now pulsed with instinct and strange longing.
She wasn't alone. Other sirens glided through the water—some with bright fins, others with cruel eyes and jagged claws. She kept close to the rocks and kelp forests, feeding on whatever she could find. Yet inside her, there was always this flicker, this longing for something more—something she couldn't name.
One day, a siren approached her, its movements graceful but hesitant. It offered her something—a crown made of bone and coral. Confused, she accepted, and the other siren gestured toward the body of a fallen one nearby, as if granting her dominion.
It was strange. Power didn't feel like power. It felt like loneliness in a crown.
Still, she had companionship for a time. The two hunted together, shared the little warmth the ocean allowed. But the ocean is cruel. Hunger drives madness.
The betrayal was sudden—claws in her side, teeth at her throat. Her friend's eyes no longer recognized her. She felt the pain, the confusion, and then a strange peace as her body drifted upward toward the fading light.
And then she saw it—a flicker of blue light rising from her, wrapping her in calm. She didn't know it, but a piece of her goddess self, long buried, stirred in that moment.
---
She awoke in another life.
Each life that followed brought new forms, new pain, new lessons. Sometimes she was human, sometimes not. Sometimes she lived long lives, sometimes only hours. But always, the lessons deepened. And always, something stirred beneath the surface—a memory, a glimmer.
And now, she lived once again.
In a quiet mountain cottage, with dirt under her nails from gardening and beads hanging from her wrists, she was named Asiolla. A woman like any other. And yet not. Her dreams were vivid. Her meditations deep. And though she couldn't explain it, she often felt like someone watching the world through borrowed eyes.
Lately, visions had returned—shards of a memory not quite hers. A voice calling her. A flash of wings. A temple made of light. A marble table with a flower that never withers.
She no longer dismissed these things.
Her story, it seemed, was only just beginning to awaken.
As the shards of memories fluttered at the edges of her mind, Asiolla felt a quiet pull—like a soft thread weaving her from the vastness of stars back into the soil beneath her feet. Somewhere, far away from the temple of light and the swirling vortex, a small cottage awaited, nestled beside fields of lavender and a spring of cold, clear water. It was a place both ordinary and sacred—a place where her journey truly began. She was becoming someone else now, someone who would carry those fragments deep within her, waiting for the day they would fully awaken.