The light faded, and Nicholas found himself standing—if standing was the right word for a fragment of consciousness hidden within a dead child's soul—in a place that defied everything he had ever known about the afterlife.
Above him, the sky was not a sky.
It was a wheel.
A circle so vast that it filled the entirety of his vision, its circumference stretching beyond the horizon, its center a point so distant that it might as well have been a star. It turned slowly, inexorably, with a rhythm that seemed to pulse with the heartbeat of existence itself. And from it, rain fell upward.
He watched, his fragment-senses straining to comprehend, as countless points of light—souls, he realized, thousands upon thousands of souls—rose from the ground below and streamed toward the wheel like rain falling in reverse. They were drawn upward, pulled into the wheel's orbit, and as they approached, they began to separate, to divide, to flow toward six different openings that gaped in the wheel's face like mouths waiting to be fed.
Six holes. Six realms. Six destinations for the souls of the dead.
Nicholas forced his perception closer, studying the images that decorated each opening. They were not merely carvings—they were alive, moving, showing scenes that played out in eternal cycles, each one a window into a different mode of existence.
The first realm was adorned with images of immortals riding clouds through skies of pure gold. Celestial palaces floated among the stars, their walls made of jade and crystal, their gardens heavy with fruits that glowed with inner light. Beings of radiant beauty sat in meditation, their forms surrounded by halos of rainbow fire, their faces serene with a peace that transcended understanding. This was the Deva Realm—the realm of the gods, of beings so saturated with merit that suffering had become a distant memory. But even here, Nicholas could see the shadow at the edge of the image: a figure falling, its light dimming, its radiance fading as it plummeted toward the realms below. The gods, too, were not eternal.
The second realm showed a world of toil and joy, of birth and death, of the endless cycle of human existence. Farmers worked fields of golden rice. Merchants argued in bustling markets. Lovers embraced beneath flowering trees. Children laughed and wept and grew and aged. It was beautiful and terrible in equal measure, a realm of possibility where every soul had the chance to rise or fall, to learn or to waste, to ascend toward the gods or descend toward something darker. This was the Human Realm, and Nicholas recognized it instantly. It was the world he had left behind, the world of struggle and striving, of hope and despair, of the long, slow climb toward something better.
The third realm was darker. Its images showed figures with twisted faces and misshapen bodies, their forms hunched, their eyes burning with a hunger that could never be satisfied. They fought over scraps of food that turned to ash in their mouths. They drank from rivers that turned to fire in their throats. They clawed at the air, grasping for something they could never reach, their suffering eternal, their torment endless. This was the Asura Realm—the realm of the hungry ghosts, of those consumed by desire, of souls so blinded by craving that they could see nothing else.
It was the fourth realm that confused Nicholas the most. Its images showed various mythical creatures, of dragons and phenixes, of turtles and qilin. The reason this confused Nicholas was that it was a well known fact among the deities that animals had no souls, though it appeared that this realm was a contradiction to what he knew. Though he supposed mythical beasts could behave different to what he knew.
The fifth realm was a landscape of fire and ice. Beings with skin like burnt paper and eyes like dying coals stumbled through flames that did not consume them but never stopped burning. Others lay frozen in fields of black ice, their limbs locked, their breath stopped, their consciousness preserved in an agony of cold. This was the Hell Realm—not the Hell of Christian tradition, with its devils and punishments. Instead it was a realm of pure suffering, where souls paid for their cruelties not through the judgment of any god, but through the simple, inexorable working of cause and effect.
And the sixth realm—Nicholas could not see it clearly. The images there were blurred, shifting, as if the realm itself was still being formed, still being decided. He caught glimpses of palaces and prisons, of chains and crowns, of beings who were neither gods nor men, neither beasts nor ghosts. This was the Realm of the Asuras—locked in eternal violence never to rest, a punishment for those who hurt others through their rage in life.
The wheel turned, and the souls fell upward, streaming toward the six openings, each one drawn to its destined realm by the weight of its own actions, its own merits, its own failures. There was no judgment here. No god sitting on a throne weighing souls against feathers. There was only the wheel, turning, and the souls, falling, and the eternal, inexorable working of a created by the immortals or even purely shaped by human belief itself.
He forced his attention away from the wheel, down to the ground beneath him, and found something almost anticlimactically normal.
He was standing—still hidden within the boy's soul, still watching through eyes that were not quite eyes—on a plain of red grass. The blades were the color of dried blood, rustling in a wind that carried no sound, stretching toward a horizon that never seemed to get closer. Rivers of yellow water cut through the landscape, their currents slow, their banks lined with trees whose leaves were the same crimson as the grass.
It was beautiful, in a terrible way. A landscape of mourning, of memory, of the long, patient work of waiting. This was not a realm of punishment or reward. It was a realm of transition, of souls pausing before their next birth, of those who were not yet ready to reincarnate finding a place to rest.
The boy's soul—young, confused, still clinging to the memory of a life that had ended too soon—stirred within its envelope of fading consciousness. And Nicholas felt it: a choice, presented to the child's psyche with a clarity that could only have come from some higher power. The choice was not spoken, not written, but it was there, as undeniable as gravity.
Reincarnate. Return to the wheel. Be born again into a new body, a new life, a new chance. But the cost was the self—the memories, the experiences, the hard-won wisdom of a life cut short. All of it would be stripped away, washed clean in the waters of forgetting, leaving only the karmic residue of actions taken and choices made.
Or stay. Remain in this place, in this realm of red grass and yellow rivers, until the soul was ready. Until it had processed what it had learned, until it had come to terms with what it had lost, until it was prepared to take up the burden of a new life with eyes open and will intact.
Though Nicholas thought that this process was only for the innocent, if there had been a person burdened by karma and violence their experience he suspected would have been much more different.
The boy was ten years old. He had been playing in the street when a car lost control and struck him. He had not finished his life. He had not said goodbye. He was not ready.
The choice was made.
The boy's soul settled onto the plain of red grass, its light dimming from the bright spark of the newly dead to the softer glow of a soul at rest. It would wait here, Nicholas knew, until it was ready. Until the memories of its too-short life had faded enough to be let go. Until the wheel called it again, and it answered.
And as the boy's soul settled, something moved in the shadows at the edge of the plain.
A figure emerged from the red grass, rising from the ground like a shadow given form. It was tall—twice the height of a mortal man—with skin the color of a stormy sky. Its eyes were red as burning coals, and tusks curved upward from its jaw, white as bone against the blue of its face. It was dressed in the robes of an ancient Chinese official, the silk embroidered with characters that Nicholas could not read, the sleeves long and flowing, the hat tall and square.
The figure approached the boy's soul, and though it said nothing, Nicholas understood. This was a guide. A warden. A being whose purpose was to shepherd the newly dead through this realm of waiting, to ensure that they found their place, to answer the questions that every soul carried with them from the world of the living.
The boy's soul flickered, and Nicholas felt the first stirrings of curiosity, of fear, of the endless questions that a child would have about death, about what came next, about whether he would ever see his mother again.
The figure knelt beside the soul, its red eyes gentle, its tusked face arranged in an expression that might have been kindness. It raised one blue hand, and the boy's soul calmed, its light steadying, its fear fading.
Nicholas watched, hidden, waiting. The wheel turned above them, and the souls fell upward, and the red grass rustled in the windless air.
To be continued...
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