０１
Stella’s heart pounded as she headed towards the familiar summoning ceremony. She had no idea if she would summon anything at all, due to the memories she held from her past life. Consequently, she might not actually possess any power to do so.
There was nothing she could do about it now, and all she could do was press on, whether she wanted to or not. Finally, she reached the place, in full view of others, strangers and her beloved family. She looked fearfully at the large, transparent sphere she was about to touch with her hand.
Initially, she wanted to run away, but in the end, she would have to go through with the ceremony anyway. She sighed quietly for a moment, closing her eyes to count to ten before opening them again. No matter how much she wanted to, she had no other choice.
„It’ll be alright, you’ll see...,” Stella told herself, trying to lift her spirits, which, as we all know, was almost ineffective.
Anyway, after being urged not to delay any longer, she carefully placed her hand on the sphere and felt her consciousness being sucked into it. Eventually, she completely lost what she called consciousness and could no longer see anything. At first, she thought the darkness had lasted forever, but it wasn’t.
When Stella opened her eyes again, she slowly began to look around the empty room she was currently in. It wasn’t very large, but she couldn’t tell it was small either. This irritated her a bit, but, as we all know, there was nothing she could do about it.
Especially since, from what she’d heard, she shouldn’t be experiencing something like this right now. Unless it depended on the individual, and each of them experienced this moment differently. No matter which way she looked at it, there was no turning back. It was no wonder her mind went completely blank and she couldn’t remember anything.
No matter how hard she tried, nothing worked. She slowly rose from the so-called floor, though she wouldn’t call it a floor. She was, so to speak, suspended in a void, which wasn’t the right word. If she were in space, she would surely have been dead long ago.
And yet she was alive and well... But was she really?! She couldn’t figure that out at the moment, and it was starting to irritate her a bit. She sighed heavily and continued her rather strange journey through the eerie whiteness. For a long moment, Stella felt as if she would never reach the end.
Shortly after she thought this, she reached the end of the rectangle she was currently in. Although she couldn’t really be sure if it was a rectangle or something else. She had more questions than answers, which made her even more frustrated.
She had no idea how she’d gotten here. Which irritated her greatly, but it irritated her as much as the fact that she couldn’t remember anything other than the word „Stella.” Although she couldn’t be sure it was her own name. She sighed heavily and carefully placed her hand on what looked like a wall.
She had no idea if it would do any good at all, but her hand met a smooth surface, slightly cold to the touch. Which meant it was real, and not, as she’d thought, unreal. So now all she had to do was focus on where she was.
And it was probably a rather strange place, the purpose of which, for the moment, she couldn’t quite figure out. Until she began to notice a change in the room she was in. Although these changes were so subtle at first that it was no wonder she only began to notice them after a while, as they began to increase.
„What the…,” was all that escaped Stella’s lips, just after she noticed the white wall begin to lose its color.
As if by the touch of a magic wand, she slowly revealed what lay beyond the wall. She didn’t even notice when the rectangle transformed into a square, too focused on what she was beginning to see through the wall. For a moment, she saw nothing but darkness before it began to take on various colors.
And so, she began to feel as if she were in space, but that couldn’t be true! So, where was she? She couldn’t figure that out at the moment, and that was what was bothering her. Slowly, memories began to return, and she began to realize that she had just begun the ceremony to summon her guardian.
And she was in a world called Utera, where magic was commonplace. For a moment, she had to close her eyes as the final moments of her previous life appeared. Tears streamed down her cheeks, unable to understand how this had happened. She remembered leaving the house, as usual, to go shopping.
While returning from the store, she felt the ground slipping beneath her feet. The next thing she remembered was finding herself in complete darkness, unable to see up or down. Even then, she felt there was no way she could return to the world where she had been given to live. Yet, she clung with every ounce of strength, determined to return to it.
Over time, however, she changed her mind and slowly accepted the fact that she would never return. Now all she could do was be grateful for the gift, to be reborn in a new world. She was very sad about it, but she knew she had to finally change her mind and slowly begin to be happy.
„Don’t tell me I died again?!,” „Stella whispered softly, watching the darkness transform into something like a starry sky, which wasn’t quite the right word.
She couldn’t quite place what she was seeing, for it looked like a galaxy. Consequently, she couldn’t tear her gaze away. It was no wonder her soul was so much older than the body she currently possessed. Like yesterday, she remembered the conversation she’d had with Beltix, who oversaw the world in which she’d been reborn.
Not to mention the man who’d rescued her from the clutches of creatures that devoured the souls of travelers from other worlds. Souls that fell between dimensions and, like her, couldn’t return to where they came from. Just the memory of those creatures made her feel sick, and it took her a while to get over it.
But that didn’t mean she’d completely forgotten them! They were so deeply etched in her soul that she couldn’t just forget them. They were so awful that she felt faint just remembering them. Which, in a way, made sense that she felt that way at that moment.
„You can be sure you didn’t die! I didn’t expect we’d meet again so soon!,” she heard a male voice in her head after a moment, a voice that, for some reason, was very familiar to her.
She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice how close a gigantic face had approached the square she was currently in. A pair of golden eyes, adorned with navy-gold lashes tinged with silver, stared back at her. They appeared so suddenly that she wasn’t mentally prepared for them, and she almost lost consciousness again.
Everything would have been fine if they weren’t gigantic, which was an understatement! Stella couldn’t even describe how huge they were. Let alone their owner, who must have been so immense that words failed her to describe it. It was no wonder she reacted the way she did to the astonishing sight unfolding before her. And that was only the beginning of what was yet to come.
„Kyach!,” Stella uttered as her gaze met his staring eyes and the outline of his nose.
Here and there, she could also glimpse silver, gold, and navy blue hair flowing down his face. She couldn’t see his mouth, but she sensed he didn’t need to use it to speak to her. She sat down on the so-called floor, stunned, to notice the porcelain-bright hand that must have been holding the square she was in.
Now she could more or less gauge how gigantic he must have been, and how small she was compared to him. Her petite body trembled with fear, unsure of his intentions towards her. Therefore, she preferred to be safe than sorry rather than face even more problems later.
That’s why it took her a moment to fully gather her thoughts and finally say something to him. It was because he was clearly waiting for her to ask him something. Which was understandable, if you really thought about it, because anyone in her position would have reacted the same way.
„W-what did you mean, ‘you didn’t expect us to meet so soon’?,” Stella asked after a moment, not quite understanding what he meant.
Although for some reason, she felt as if they were connected by an invisible bond, one that wasn’t visible to the naked eye. As if they were meant to be together, and neither of them could exist without the other. She knew it was pretty absurd, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t believe him at all, but there had to be something to it.
And that was because if it were as he said, she would have known from the start, right? Then again, maybe she did know, but why had she forgotten? Anything could have happened at that moment, and it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know.
Or maybe it was done to protect her, and that’s why she didn’t remember anything? In either case, she returned to the conversation she’d just had, watching his sad expression until she felt sorry for him. Which, because in that respect, it was understandable that she reacted that way.
„Do you really not remember what the Goddess Beltix told you before you were reincarnated?,” he asked, a slight sadness evident in his tone of voice as he heard her words.
At that moment, Stella froze, frozen in place as she remembered what she’d told her. Especially the fact that he’d almost lost his life saving her soul from being devoured and had to merge with it to stabilize it. Which meant he’d become her guardian, something his council had found unthinkable. Only now did she realize it was a good thing she hadn’t remembered it from the start.
Because then she wouldn’t have taken it well, and it could have had a negative impact on her psyche and future development. And then no one would have been laughing anymore, not even herself. Not to mention that then she’d have started telling her parents things she shouldn’t have, because they wouldn’t have believed her anyway, she was one hundred percent sure of that! No wonder she was secretly happy, like a fool, that these memories were only now coming back to her. And as a result, she was becoming increasingly confused.
