The Last Beacon

XLIII

Renata beamed as Sascha acknowledged that she recognised her.

"I've missed you so much," she said, smiling sadly at her daughter, "I would have loved to have been there to watch you grow up."

"How are you here? You're dead," Sascha said, still in disbelief.

"The spirits have decided to allow me to speak with you, just as they allowed my father, your grandfather, to speak with you. Our bodies may be gone, but our souls still live on, forever waiting to pass on our wisdom and experience," Renata explained.

"I've never heard of souls being sent to talk to the living until this journey. There's never been any stories about it, so why is it happening to me all of a sudden?" Sascha asked.

Renata shook her head, "it tends to be very rare, and only in special circumstances. However, those with an association to more significant people, like you, get precedence over others. It also helps if the souls hold power like ours; the beacon's powers are capable of many things."

"If the spirits have sent you, what is it that you want to tell me?" Sascha questioned.

"I wish I could have come sooner. Your powers are strong, Sascha, stronger than mine ever could be, and I would not be surprised if you were stronger than your brother. As you are the end of the beacon bloodline, the powers of the past have been passed down through to you. You are carrying the legacy of our entire history," Renata elucidated, "and since you have lived a lot of your life without the exposure to this knowledge, I understand that it is all very overwhelming."

"Overwhelming is one way to put it," Sascha responded coldly.

"You are not the only one that has had to endure the discovery of their power. After my father left, I had to learn about it on my own, and had to face my own consequences. In fact, so did Decius. He didn't know it at the time, but I was well aware of his developing powers. He thought I would be ashamed, so he ran away, and he hated himself for leaving. This hatred overtook him, and shaped his actions, and formed the person you know today."

"Am I going to turn out like him? It's like I can feel myself going bad, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't want to be a bad person, but I can't see a way off the path I'm on," Sascha admitted.

"We have all done bad things, Sascha," Renata said soothingly, "I know it feels like it's you against the world, but you can still shift your outlook on things, because it's never too late. Your actions, they're in the past now, and what you need to do is accept that you've made mistakes, and learn from them, and acknowledge what you can do to be better. I know that it can be hard to accept the consequences and move on, but I know you can do it. You just have to remember that everything you've done up until now is in the past. Like when you just threw my necklace away, that's in the past."

Sascha had been listening intently, but her trance was broken out of surprise when Renata mentioned the necklace, "hold on, your necklace? I thought it belonged to my mother— no, sorry, the woman who looked after me."

Renata chuckled softly, "no, dear. You were wearing it the day I died. I assume the woman who you went to live with must have taken it from you initially. It was never hers to give."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know! I'm sure I can go find it—"

"No," Renata interrupted, "it's in the past. You must learn this. You must learn that your past does not define you, it's what you choose to do in the present that matters."

"How will I know what the right choice is?"

"Nobody can tell you what your decisions should be. Instead, reflect on the parts of your life that you have cherished, and think about what you can do to feel like that again. Your journey has been vast, Sascha. You have seen so many places, learned new things, and even made friends," Renata said. After she spoke, there was a slight shift in the air, and then something happened that Sascha was not anticipating.