Chương 28: Wake Up Anadis

Drip… drip… drip… Anadis groaned, then opened his eyes as small trickles of water landed on his forehead. He blinked rapidly, his vision adjusting to the darkness around him, which was pierced by a single beam of light that descended like a giant sword through the ancient hall from the small crevice above. He breathed in deeply through his mouth, finding his breathing calmer than expected. The air was clean and easy to take in, almost sweet on the tongue.

It carried the scent of fall and damp wilderness, not the cold, sharp winter chill trapped in his old orphanage room. Pressing a hand to his chest, he found his heartbeat to also be steadier than he'd expected. His eyes darted around, taking in the decayed grandeur of what once was, or perhaps still was, Eljudnir. This was not Earth anymore. This was Gaelora. He was back on his birth planet. Or his reincarnated birth planet. Well, now he didn't even know which story to believe.

What he knew was that he wasn't Leander anymore, but he wasn't just Anadis either. Who was he, both? Either?

"What the actual…?" His voice cracked.

"How could I have forgotten who I was?" Sitting up, he wiped the water from his face and shook his head hard. His hair was completely damp from the trickling water falling from above. It was raining hard outside. He still couldn't understand exactly how Eljudnir worked. It was a different realm, yet the weather from outside still seemed to affect it. He shook his head. What the heck? That isn't important right now.

Removing the thorn crown from his head, its silver thorns pricking at his fingertips as if eager to pierce skin and taste blood, he set it down on the stone slab. His eyes wandered across the eerie scenery of Eljudnir. Then he pressed his palms against his face, his head throbbing as a flood of new thoughts rushed in, trying to settle. No, not new thoughts. These were old ones, forgotten ones—the memories from his past life. Questions erupted in his head like fireworks. Where to even start? He had no idea.

Well, for starters, it felt incredible to have his body back instead of being an intangible ghost or whatever he had been. Still, it was almost too much to bear, forgetting who he was, who he had been. He died, then traveled to this planet? How was that even possible? For how long? Decades, maybe even a century. It was all so confusing, so surreal, yet it was real. He'd lived as Leander for seventeen years and died. Then he spent what felt like at least a hundred years drifting through space as a soul.

So what did that make him? Seventeen years as Leander, a hundred or more years as a space-drifting… soul? Then thirteen years as Anadis. He was technically… what, a hundred and thirty years old? But he was also thirteen.

"Oh man, this sucks so much," he muttered, his head still throbbing.

"Just how old am I? Who the hell am I?" The answer should have been simple, but it wasn't.

"I'm Anadis, but I'm also Leander. Or was Leander?" He grunted, never imagining he'd face such an existential dilemma. It could've been so much easier if he'd just gotten isekai'd into a new body with all his memories intact. Wasn't that how it worked in every anime? A brief chuckle slipped out. He knew the word "isekai," which was something the old Anadis definitely hadn't known. Then, just out of curiosity, he had to check.

"Black hair," he murmured, pulling a strand of wet hair down and looking at it. Wavy, thick raven hair, not the ginger-brown hair Leander had. Turning his arm, it was tanned and sinewy, not skinny and pale. He wore a tunic, not jeans and a hoodie. Then he lifted the tunic to reveal lean abs, slight but there. Not the skinny-fat belly Leander had lived with. Physically, he was one hundred percent Anadis. Mentally… He pressed his palms against his face again. His mind was in shambles.

Leander on one side, Anadis on the other, yet they couldn't see each other—like two sides of the same coin. He could never hope to be rid of the other. To erase one would be to erase oneself.

"Hmm…" he mulled.

"I know back on Earth there were cases of people with different personalities, but this is not the same." Of course it wasn't. He was Anadis, one hundred percent. But he was also Leander. There was no denying that, right? Oh, gods, was he going insane? He shook his head harder this time. No, no, no. This is real. I've lived it. Then his mind drifted to a different thought: Rosie and everyone from that life, Marie, the kids, even Dante, they were all gone.

His fingernails dug into his palm as he curled his hand into a fist. They had been gone for over a century now. Dead, buried, and long turned to dust. He would never see them again.

"Rosie probably got married and had kids," he said quietly, the corner of his mouth curling up.

"Knowing her, she probably opened her own orphanage. A big one. Of course she did. That was her dream." She had lived a whole life, one he wasn't a part of. He was fine with that. As long as she had been happy… right? Right. Then another thought struck him.

"Ilaria," he whispered. Her name echoed through the soul-filled abyss of Eljudnir.

"I never got to meet my little sister again." Just like the rest, she had probably lived her whole life without ever knowing she had a big brother. Still, that was better than the alternative, her searching for a brother she would never find. Then he thought about the nightmares; they finally made sense. All those times as a kid, waking up screaming about blood in the snow, a hole in his chest, a strange place he didn't know, a girl's face he didn't recognize. They had been about the night Leander died.

The other nightmares, about a family—a father, a mother—faces he hadn't known then, but did now. They were Leander's parents. His first parents. But he pushed that thought aside. He couldn't think about them. He didn't want to. That was a door he wasn't ready to open. Not today. Nevertheless, they hadn't been nightmares at all, but fragmented memories of Leander's life trying to surface. The visions he had experienced as Leander weren't from his life as Anadis, but glimpses of a future that hadn't happened yet.

A violet moon turned crimson. Shrouded silhouettes. People who had been dying in droves. He took a shuddering breath and propped his head on one hand.

"Why did I forget my whole life as Leander, though?" The first and most obvious reason that came to mind was the isolation of traveling through space for decades, perhaps even centuries. That alone could twist anyone's mind to the point of madness. Now he remembered clearly how his memory began to twist toward the end of his journey. And that was without mentioning the whole reincarnation process, transferring a soul from one body to another, or perhaps creating an entirely new one.

Even the Thirteenth Goddess, Helphrena, had admitted it was something difficult for even her to achieve. So it felt as though someone had deliberately planted those visions in Leander's head, in his head, and then dragged his soul across the galaxy into Gaelora to fulfill some unknown purpose. But who? That radiant goddess. Everything she had said sounded as if she were warning him about something. All that mumbo jumbo about needing him, about him needing to accept someone, and what that someone carried.

Who had she been referring to? Hel!? His breath caught in his throat. Was she okay? The last thing he remembered was her weakly drifting into his body, inside his soul. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Hel? Are you there?" He reached through their bond, pushing his existential crisis away and waiting, but she didn't respond.

"I'm back. I did it. I unlocked my memories." Silence. But he could feel something inside his Divine Core, a faint presence. She was alive, but weak. Perhaps she still needed rest. Well, guess it's just me now. Still, he was certain that the radiant goddess had to be the culprit. But then again, who was she? Was she one of the Thirteen Gods? She didn't feel like it, but that was the only explanation. Who else, if not one of the omnipotent Thirteen, could do something like that? He needed to talk to Hel about this.

She had the answers, unless her memory loss had taken that knowledge from her as well. Whatever questions he had, he'd have to save them for his insufferably proud soul resident once she woke up. For now, he needed to focus on what he could control. He grabbed the satchel still hanging from his shoulder and rummaged through it, finding only the remaining potion, a roll of bandages, the beetle's Grullshard, his waterskin, and no food at all. At least Hel had been wrong—the bonding hadn't been as bad as she'd warned.

He hadn't even needed the potion afterward. The Grullshard turned slowly in his palm as he examined it like a jeweler inspecting a rare diamond. Should he absorb it? He certainly wanted to, but he had no idea how. That was one thing the magisters had never touched upon in the Blessed Trial Readiness course. They had only covered the basics of survival and what to expect. He would have to ask Father or Hel later. As he packed the Grullshard into his satchel, he hit the Thorn Crown slightly with it.

He grabbed it before it fell off the stone slab and called upon the Divine Voice to hear its description. [Thorn Crown] ✧ Boon: A crown of black and silver thorns made to rest upon the brow of Helphrena, Goddess of Souls and Sovereign of Helheim. Though its thorns pierce flesh without fail, no blood has ever stained it. Type: Utility Rarity:??? Effect:??? The Divine Voice read out its full description, confirming that the Boon had completely bonded with him.

Although the most important part, its effect, was still a mystery to him, he now knew for certain that he was the proud owner of a Divine Boon. A huff of disbelief escaped him. Just how many other people currently alive could boast about possessing such an artifact? He had a good inkling that the number was zero. Then with a single thought of dismissal, golden light shimmered around the edges of the Boon before it vanished. Curiosity then prompted him to check his Soulblessed abilities through the Voice.

✦ · ✦ Blessen Abilities Soul Sight Allows Blessen to see the cores of every living being, Divine Cores for Blessens, Cursed Cores for Grulls, and Dormant Cores for mundane individuals. Soul Drain Physical contact allows Blessen to vacuum a limited amount of soul essence from a target. The drain restores a minimum amount of strength and purges tainted effects from Blessen's body, though with limits. Soul Sever Allows Blessen to physically grasp and cut soul threads.

Severing the dominant thread destabilizes the target's core and temporarily suppresses its abilities. ✦ · ✦ A little deflated breath escaped him. He had hoped that after unlocking his memories, a new Soul ability might have awakened. Hel had told him he needed to become whole in order to grow stronger, but alas, there was nothing. Before leaving, there was one last thing he had to do. He summoned his newest Boon—the one that had almost cost him his life.

No, not the Thorn Crown, the other one that had nearly cost him his life. Two small anchors appeared in his palm with a bluish shimmer. Anadis placed the red anchor on the stone slab of Eljudnir and quickly pulled its silver chain twice. The chain snapped under the force.

"Crap!" he hissed.

"Did I break it?" But then the red anchor vanished in a swirl of reddish, shimmering specks of light, and so did the blue anchor from his other hand.

"I think… it worked." He had an inkling he would be returning to Eljudnir someday. The Twin Anchors only worked twice per day and required a return point; he had decided to set this location as home and would set his actual home as the return. With that, he spun on his heel and headed toward the exit, twisting his head once to give a final look at the eerie, foggy depths of Eljudnir.

The many souls were still drifting aimlessly; he could barely see them with his naked eye—they were little more than faint wisps, floating without a purpose. He activated Soul Sight, and the souls took shape. Not like the individual form of a person, but ethereal outlines that resembled what they had once been. They still paid him no mind. As he kept walking, he could already see the creek outside Eljudnir. It was swollen from the rain but still just a creek, nothing to worry about.

Then he wondered just how long it had been since he had fainted after bonding with the Thorn Crown. He truly had no frame of reference. Had it been a day? Weeks? Months? No, he'd be starving if it had been that long.

"Just how long was I out?"

"It has only been five hours," a voice echoed in his head, surprisingly bringing him comfort.

"Hel?! Is that you? Are you alright?" he asked, relieved to hear her as he continued toward the exit.

"I have so many questions to ask—""I can imagine, but I'm still recuperating, so you'll have to wait." Her voice sounded raspy, like someone who had been coughing for a long time.

"As I said, the suns are still out, so you still have time to make it home before dark. Just let me make sure it is safe outside. Do not step out yet—" But Anadis had already been in motion, taking long strides, and by the time she finished her sentence, he was already outside Eljudnir.

"You absolute fool!" Hel snapped through their bond.

"I told you to wait! That Luminous is most definitely still out here!"