The silence in my second-floor bedroom felt far heavier this morning. Niskala’s pale sunlight struggled to pass through the stained-glass window, casting rigid gray shadows across the wooden walls. My body ached horribly, as if every joint and muscle had been battered by a massive stone all night long.
My gaze drifted to my right palm. There, beneath my light brown skin, the thin, glowing golden symbol shaped like a circle with eight branching points was still there. Its warm pulse throbbed faintly in time with my heartbeat. Every time I saw it, memories of last night’s horrifying events in the town square—the exploding supernatural rift and the thorn-covered monsters I had destroyed—made my chest tighten.
“It’s just a coincidence,” I whispered to myself, tightening the fingers of my right hand into a fist. I rejected the reality with every ounce of denial I had. “I’m Nirwana. I’m not Evara, I’m not a supernatural Guardian, and I have nothing to do with this rotten town’s past.”
I let out a harsh breath, forcing myself out of bed and straightening the long-sleeved shirt I was wearing. But the images from the dream I’d had all night still lingered with perfect clarity in my memory, refusing to fade.
It hadn’t felt like an ordinary dream. It had been too real, too vivid, with a scent and a coldness I could feel directly against my skin.
In the dream, I stood in the middle of Niskala hundreds of years ago. There were no neatly paved stone roads or Dutch colonial buildings. All that existed was a massive black-stone fortress, a vast expanse of burning ancient pine forest, and a night sky streaked with a towering black aura.
Amid the sea of fire and billowing sulfur, a girl stood tall. She wore light, classic-style protective armor decorated with gold and a white dress that whipped in the powerful wind. In her hands, she held a sword covered in pure golden light. The girl fought alone, striking at wave after wave of dark monsters crawling out of the massive stone gate. Her movements were fast and graceful, but filled with utter desperation and exhaustion.
And at the peak of the dream, when the girl managed to drive her sword into the ground to seal the gate, she spun around and stared straight at where I was standing.
Fire blazed behind her, clearly illuminating her face. My heart seemed to stop when I saw it. Her nose, the shape of her lips, even the bright brown eyes shining through her wavy black hair ... the face of the Guardian named Evara was exactly the same as the face I saw in my bedroom mirror every morning. My own face.
“No ... that’s impossible,” I muttered as I walked down the hallway toward the lower floor. I shook my head hard, trying to stamp out the seed of fear that kept growing stronger. “There are plenty of people in this world who look alike. Reincarnation is just a ridiculous myth!”
“Nirwana? Why are you daydreaming on the stairs, honey?” Mom’s voice broke through my inner turmoil.
Mom stood beside the wooden dining table in the living room, arranging two cups of hot tea with wisps of steam rising from them. Her face looked a little brighter this morning, though the worried lines at the corners of her eyes hadn’t completely disappeared.
I hurriedly rearranged my expression, flashing a wide smile as I leaped over the last two steps with my usual mischievous flair. “Oh, it’s nothing, Mom! I was just counting how many stairs there are in this house. Who knows? Maybe they multiply on their own at night.”
Mom shook her head with a quiet chuckle and held out a cup of tea to me. “There you go, saying weird things again. Come on, drink your tea. You slept so soundly last night that you didn’t even wake up when I called you for dinner.”
I accepted the cup and slowly sipped the hot liquid. Slept soundly? I felt a pang of bitterness inside. I hadn’t slept soundly at all; my soul had been dragged through bloody memories from hundreds of years ago.
“Mom,” I said softly, trying to keep my voice neutral and make it sound normal. “Did ... did our family have any ancestors or older relatives from Niskala?”
Mom’s hand, which had been cutting a slice of white bread, suddenly stopped. Her warm eyes glanced at me, bright with surprise. “Niskala? No, honey. Our ancestors came from the southern coast. Why are you asking?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I replied quickly, forcing a small laugh. “I was just wondering if we might secretly be descended from the nobility of this old city and have a hidden castle somewhere.”
“You and your imagination,” Mom replied with a sweet smile, gently stroking the ends of my wavy hair. “Now hurry up and finish your bread. I want to ask you to buy some wood paint at the grocery store out front this afternoon.”
“Yes, boss!” I chirped cheerfully.
But the manufactured calm didn’t last long. From noon until late afternoon, every time I grew drowsy or closed my eyes for a moment in the porch chair, that fleeting dream attacked me again. Images of Evara fighting, the monsters’ screams, and the whisper of that same name spun over and over behind my eyelids.
The dreams no longer felt like passive memories. They felt like a forced summons trying to break down the door of a memory I had deliberately locked deep inside my soul.
That night, after helping Mom tidy up the kitchen, I returned to my bedroom with an unbearable weight pressing down on me. I sat in front of the old wooden study desk and switched on the tarnished brass desk lamp, which cast a dim glow.
On the desk lay a thick, quarto-sized brown leather notebook—my personal journal, which I always used to write down jokes, rough sketches, or my daily complaints.
I opened the notebook to a blank page and gripped my black pen tightly.
“My name is Nirwana,” I whispered to the white sheet of paper before me, trying to reinforce my own identity. “I was born twenty years ago. My mother’s name is Sarah. I’m not Evara. I have nothing to do with the Guardian of Niskala.”
I kept writing those denials over and over across the page, hoping my handwriting could serve as an anchor holding me in the real world. But a sharp chill suddenly seeped in through the gap in my bedroom window. The temperature plummeted. My breath misted and froze in the air again, and my eyelids abruptly grew impossibly heavy—as if some invisible force were forcibly crushing my consciousness.
“No ... not again ...” I rasped. The pen slipped from my fingers. My head gave in and rested against the wooden desk, and the darkness of the dream swallowed me whole once more.
Claaang ... claaang ...
The chiming of an old clock from downstairs jolted me awake. I shot upright, my bright brown eyes flying open as I wiped the cold sweat soaking my forehead. Bright morning sunlight streamed through the window, signaling that night had given way to day.
I was breathing hard. I sat stiffly in the study chair. My back ached horribly from sleeping hunched over all night.
“That ridiculous dream again ...” I whispered, clutching my throbbing temple.
But when my gaze fell on the study desk, all the blood in my body seemed to freeze at once.
The brown leather notebook was still lying open before me. But the blank page where I had written those denials last night had completely changed.
On the white paper, rendered in thick, pitch-black ink with astonishingly neat lines—as if drawn by the hand of a master with perfect precision—was a symbol. A circle with eight branches, etched with intricate lines and an imposing dignity.
The symbol unconsciously drawn in my notebook was exactly the same as the ancient emblem carved into Niskala’s gate, the same as the symbol that had exploded in my dream, and exactly the same as the glowing symbol engraved deep in my right palm.