Interlude – Soul Realm


    <span style="font-weight:400">Death. Colette has seen it a lot in their earlier days, buttely, it felt as if she already forgot how it felt like. Then Hafiz died.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why, Hafiz? Why do that for us?” Colette asked. The heroes were gathered all in the main tree on Branchhold, in a special part. A really thick vine wrapped each of their bodies.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Hafiz was a glowing ball of light. A soul, and the space around them was filled with stars.


    <span style="font-weight:400">[Soul realm].


    <span style="font-weight:400">Colette remembereding here once. Long ago- so long that she didn’t even remember the time. But this felt familiar. Stars. Flickers. Lights.


    <span style="font-weight:400">All the other souls. It felt bigger now. Wider. And she could see there were strands of light that illuminated the paths that went into other ces. Worlds. Each seemingly a link. She struggled to make sense of the space, it felt like the space bent into itself.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Because what else is there to do?” Hafiz said, “Don’t make it sound so noble. I already epted that our lives in this world were just temporary, it was time. It was damned time.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You nned to do it?” Prabu asked.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes. If it ever came to sacrificing one of us, I decided it would be me. I have the least to lose. I don’t care about anything. I’m losing the ability to care about anything at all.” Hafiz said, his frustration palpable. Colette had never seen him so animated in years.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Colette looked across their magical-soul space. At Prabu. At Chung. She stopped, and then looked at Hafiz again.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hafiz. How do you feel? As a soul?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Hafiz was quiet, his glowing soul hovered and moved a little. Only the five of them were here. Four heroes of Treehome, and one former hero. Ken. Khefri was never that close to Hafiz. Adrian and Kelly were Mountainworld heroes and their rtionship was fairly cordial. In the end, everyone went back to do their own thing.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Even Hafiz. He drifted away a bit. They would meet up once every month or so, he’d teleport over to Freshka or one of the suburban cities and they’d hang out. But the drift was there.


    <span style="font-weight:400">If there was doubt about the long term sess of Ken’s League of Heroes, theck of personal rapport was one of them.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Honestly, do you guys really want the answer?” Hafiz asked.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Chung didn’t say a thing.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Ken nodded. “Yes.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Colette always thought it was just a sign of maturity. A sign of age. The weight of experience. They were aging, and she thought it was natural that they all began to quiet down. They were not young, and it would tone down their drive. Even Ken calmed down over the years.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I feel light.” The dead hero answered. “I feel liberated. I feel like I suddenly can remember all the things that I wasn’t supposed to.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Ken was the only one that nodded. For him, he always remembered.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I- I feel like I really want to see my family again.” Hafiz said.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Will you?” Colette asked. She tried to remember her own family, before all of this. But it’s been so long, and it felt hazy. She could remember snippets, but she forgot what her mother’s voice was like.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I don’t know. I could feel a power calling me. One that’s not Aeon. It’s waiting for the time. I can linger here, maybe a few months.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Six.” Ken answered. “Aeon said the waiting time is six months from your death.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Colette tried to remember her parents. She could hardly remember. Ste once said she took up painting, in her earlier days in this world, to paint her own memories before they fade away. There was no photo here, and the only way she could preserve her memories was to draw them. Paint them.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She wished she did. She wished shemissioned someone to paint a portrait of her family when she could still find the words to describe them. Now, she wasn’t sure she could even link the image if someone showed her a simr photo.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Prabu sounded confident when they spoke one night about this. That they would certainly know. But she felt from the depth of her guts that they’ve already lost it.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Hafiz continued, “Six months. I see. Then I must’ve used up a month. How long has it been? The sense of time in this ce is- wonky.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“One and a half.” Ken answered.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I remember our lives back home vividly. Images and things I thought I forgot, now clear to me. I’m afraid some of you will want to remember this. Remember the past.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Chung abruptly interjected. “Ken. You knew this? Do you remember?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes.” Colette wondered briefly whether Ken’s memory of tropes was vivid, because he didn’t have the hero ss trying to suppress his past. No, she was now sure it’s linked. Not just that, it even felt like Ken talked about this before.


    <span style="font-weight:400">But somehow it never stuck in her mind. As if-


    <span style="font-weight:400">As if-


    <span style="font-weight:400">As if-


    <span style="font-weight:400">The connection should have been clear. Yet what was she trying to link? She looked at Ken, and Hafiz’s floating soul.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hafiz. Repeat it again.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Everything in the journal?” Hafiz said. “It’s true.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Colette paused, and remembered her daughter. Unlike Khefri who bore many children with her toyboys, and ignored them afterward, she couldn’t do that to Rohana. There was no one she could pass her to. No one she would pass her to.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Why? Why couldn’t she think like Khefri?


    <span style="font-weight:400">Was a child made with half the blood of natives worth less? No. That shouldn’t be the case. Was it because of pain? Suffering?


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rohana was hers. Her child. She was a mother. A mother’s duty. Suffering. Sacrifice.


    <span style="font-weight:400">A mother’s duty is first to her-


    <span style="font-weight:400">A hero’s duty is to y the Demon King.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Colette felt her connection to the [Soul Realm] waver.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Demon Kings.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What-” She whispered it, as if her mind was splitting apart. As if the words seem to lose meaning. As if all was pointless.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Sacrifice? What sacrifice?


    <span style="font-weight:400">She raised her head, her spirit transported, Aeon’s bridge to the soul realm. She looked at Hafiz and she saw death, at Ken and she saw age, at Chung and she saw anger, at Prabu and she saw her new family.


    <span style="font-weight:400">What did she lose to get here?


    <span style="font-weight:400">They’ve done their share. Served their time. Now that she wanted to look back, why did it seem like its’ so hard to remember things before all of this?


    <span style="font-weight:400">She looked at Ken.


    <span style="font-weight:400">He seemed to be the only one actually getting what Hafiz was saying.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She felt jealous.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Envy.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She wanted to know, and she felt her soul cracking.