When believers of Garnet claimed souls never die and only pass on to new bodies decades or centuries after their previous body lost its capabilities to live, everyone believed it.
It had been engraved into the consciousness of every soul once they awakened in their new forms. They wake up completely aware they inhabited a different body and walked countless lives in the past. But to know exactly who they were, was impossible.
Memories, connections, and emotions fade over time in the soul before they occupy a new form. No traces of their previous lives would stay. None.
But for the traces of pale yellow hovering over the trees in a dark forest, its previous life pulled on its remains, persistently scratching on its bare existence. As if its past life never died in its memories and roots.
The trace of a soul invisible to human sight moved across the canopies, its mind circling back to the first time it woke. It woke in the spotlight of dawn, peeking through the leaves of trees. Without a body.
It had tried to speak, and a faint sound came out of it, but whether it was audible to anyone, it wouldn't know. For decades of wandering, no human ever saw it as it was a lost, bodiless soul.
"Dawn is upon again. Garnet is waking up, it seems." A gargling, shaky voice whispered as he gazed at the rising sun from the porch of his dumped and abandoned-looking cottage.
The man's grip on his staff tightened, his other hand pushing the hood of his dark cloak to the back of his hairless head. Wide eyes nearly popping from his sullen, wrinkled face shot to the trace of soft yellow in the distance.
"Garnet, what is that...?"
His pale, almost silver skin tone folded the more he tried to identify the unusual trace of light jumping from one tree branch to the next, occasionally encircling the body of the old trees before going over the next branch.
The man stepped onto the lifeless ground where his home stood. The trace of light enclosed, and he waited.
It stopped as it reached the nearest tree, only a few meters away from the cloaked man.
A vibration came from the soul for a couple of moments between the two staring at one another. A faint noise.
"Hm?" The man raised a brow. The light must be speaking to him.
He walked on forward, supported by his wooden staff. He stopped once his figure was face to face with the trace of light slowly pouring down from the tree branch to the man's eye level.
Again, a faint vibration echoed in the space where the trace was, but the distance made its message clear this time.
"You see me?" Was the message that came through the man's sense of hearing.
His mouth opened, revealing his crooked teeth. Another vibration came from the light, and its clearly an inaudible sound. But somehow, perhaps due to the proximity, its words became understandable.
"You must be surprised, I understand." It said.
The man breathed in and pursed his dried lips. "You... what are you?"
The yellow trace excitedly circled the man, with space vibrations echoing wherever it went.
"I am a soul. A soul with no body. A lost soul. I'm so happy I found someone who could see me! Communicate with me! I'm so happy!"
"A soul?" The man mumbled.
The soul danced in front of the man as if nodding. "Yes, yes. I have no body. I woke up with no body. It's been so long; I trust it's been decades since I've awakened. Every human I see in the forest does not see or hear me. Now, for a long time, I wandered this forest, and I found you. I'm glad I found you!"
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Lightless Twin Souls | ONC 2023 ✔
FantasyBook 1 of the Twin Souls Series Vagrant former spy JD had always felt a part of his soul was missing or that there was a vacant seat beside his core. After wandering in search of an answer, he found solace amidst the aching feeling in a small town. ...
