“Here, hold this.”

  A figure standing beside her held out a tome, and she grabbed it without taking her eyes off the large pile of leaves and wood on the ground far in front of her.

  “You have to do it.”

  Not saying anything, she looked down to her side. A hooded figure sat on the ground, face resting on their knees. Shoulders hunched and shaking. Sobbing.

  “You should do it,” the figure to her right repeated.

  So, she recited words she couldn’t make out, words she had memorized, and watched the pile of wood and foliage burst into flames.

  She wanted to stop. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t the normal way of things. Nothing about this was right. Why did she have to do it? It was her fault. It was her burden.

  Over the sound of the flames, the words tumbling out of her mouth against her will, she still heard the sobbing beside her.

  “It’s better than leaving a corpse in the ground in the middle of nowhere.”

  Yes, I know, she didn’t say.

  As she finally finished the spell and the smokeless, blue flames died down, the sobbing intensified.

  It was loud, soul-piercing sobs. Sobs that wracked her being, that made her want to double down, kneel on the ground and hit her head against it. Beg her classmate, beg the world for forgiveness, beg the Earth Mother to forgive her for not being able to bring a child of hers back. This was not the natural way of things. None of this should have ever happened.

  Though she could feel her arms and legs trembling under the weight of all the deaths she had caused, she walked toward the pile of ashes. There was still some blue in the gray. Heat still emanated from it.

  “Do you want me to do this part?”

  She did not trust herself to speak, so she shook her head and passed the tome to her classmate before getting down on her knees.

  Her pain infinitesimal compared to that of her crying classmate’s, she bit her bottom lip and let the smoldering fire scald her fingers as she shoved her hand into the center of the ashes, where she retrieved the only remaining remnants of her other classmate’s existence, two glimmering and unscathed objects: a silver pin and a golden ring.

  * * *

  Thunk.

  “Okay, I’m done.”

  Ty lifted her head up, nudging the book that had fallen on her head while she was asleep, thankfully catching it before it tumbled over across her side of the desk, which now had a small reading candle coming out from the round tin from earlier. A small warmth in a cold room.

  “Did you read it?” he asked without giving her a chance to speak, moving his textbook and notebook onto a stack of books beside him before getting up to stretch.

  “I did.” She checked her timepiece and rubbed her eyes as if it could rid her of the dream. An hour had passed—it certainly didn’t feel like it.

  “Based on the book, I think the assumption about what MATS wants to do is correct, at least.” He flipped to a page in his notebook. “Em sometimes spoke about auras, but never to me. I’d overhear some of his conversations…I didn’t remember until Darius mentioned it.” Flip. “There’s definitely something MATS-related in there, and I think anyone could guess that it’s not all that ethical. That book you’re holding was written by one of Em’s teachers.” Eyes scanning a page in his notebook, he continued, quieter now. “He was really broken up when they died. Tossed most of their books. That was one of the few volumes I managed to recover.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “They don’t like to talk about it because they find it shameful, even though it’s a product of the Earth Mother,” mumbled Ty, oblivious to the melancholy in Theo’s voice. “Because…She’s meant to be all-loving.”

  Theo nodded. “And they’re there from the start. They only appear when they get older.”

  “Mm.” Ty traced the last page with her fingers. Shame. Why didn’t she feel more uneasy reading this? There was usually a feeling in her chest, or in her gut. Not today.

  “Something is going to happen.”

  Ty looked up at Theo, feeling her hair stand on end as she watched his pale candlelit face gaze at her steadily.

  “If the elder is right, if Darius is right, then you are, too. Something either happened to me before, or something’s going to happen to me.”

  I don’t believe in fate, said a voice in her memory.

  “Fate,” murmured Theo, tapping his notebook with his pen. He looked down. “I hate to offer it up as a possible option, but if it was reincarnation, then I may just be forever tied to tragedy by an awful Earth Mother I don’t believe in.”

  The look on his face at that very moment—contemplative, distant—she had no idea what he was thinking.

  Grumbling, resting his chin on the table, Theo flipped through his notes. “Reincarnation would explain your memories. They shouldn’t be of us, though. That’s what I don’t get.”

  “M-maybe,” she offered hesitantly, “Maybe…it’s not reincarnation.”

  “Then we’re back at the future theory. You’re going to foretell our deaths, and something life-changing is going to happen to me.”

  The way he was so nonchalant about it made Ty feel a bit dumb as she scanned the words again. “What else is there?”

  Theo’s voice this time was even more casual, borderline sarcastic. “Maybe once every ten thousand years, life repeats itself exactly, and your memory has retained all that information from once before.”

  …did auras break after an instance in time…

  “Why do you think they used ‘instance in time’?” she interrupted absently, completely moving past his comment and tilting her head. “What does it mean?”

  Theo’s look was blank. “Maybe they meant like…how if it breaks once, then they’ll keep that for all other reincarnations instead of the pre-break?” He also tilted his head, and then scribbled something in his notebook. “Life is created from one point, right? Like mixing and matching. If it’s allowed to be continuous, then we’d just be old people in babies’ bodies, and that doesn’t make sense. So, they take an instance of the aura and…impose that upon a child who’s none the wiser?”

  For some reason, she felt like something was still missing. “I…I suppose that’s possible. So, the soul continues living as if normal—as if no trauma had occurred, like your situation—but the aura is perpetually scarred.” She sat upright, finally figuring out what was bothering her. “But then the trauma can be from ages ago. There’s no guarantee that it’ll happen…in this life if it’s just an instance. And there’s also the question of how it could benefit Ancients, the only ones who can actually identify auras. Why…why would the Earth Mother deliberately let Ancients see the break?”

  Theo sighed and closed his notebook. “I…I don’t know. Maybe the Earth Mother wants them dead. Wants…me dead. I…I don’t know….” He trailed off and groaned, letting his arms fall to the side as he rested his cheek on the table.

  Instead of calling the idea ridiculous, she sighed as well. “You should sleep. It’s almost midnight.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Theo complained childishly. “You napped.”

  Also putting down the book, Ty retorted, “It’s because you didn’t hear me when I called your name several times.”

  Slightly less emphatic groaning left his lips this time.

  After thinking of a proper response to him as the class leader and as a voice of authority rather than as a friend, she turned to see that his breathing was steady, and his eyes were closed.

  Slowly, doing her best not to wake him or move the table, she slid off the stool and gathered her belongings, looking around for something to cover him with. The blanket on his crate was squished between him and the wall, and she couldn’t get the cloak as it was on the other side of the table, so she noiselessly walked up to his desk.

  Fully aware that inspecting his desk was a gross breach of privacy, she did her best not to focus too hard on anything. All she needed was something soft.

  And as her eyes scanned the light wood, her eyes fell upon a small, framed painting of fruit tarts. Near the middle of his desk, where he’d be able to see it.

  Ty tore her eyes away from it, a wave of relief washing over her as she spotted a small basket of folded linen under his desk, one of which was a shawl-looking item.

  Draping the sleeping Theo with it, making sure to get his shoulders, she put out the candle, put her stool back where he had gotten it, and tiptoed out of his room so quietly that he did not stir, and not a soul would have been able to tell that she had once been there.