Greta Evans remembers dying.
She remembers the impact—violent, abrupt—and then the sudden quiet that followed.
What she does not remember asking for is a second childhood.
When she opens her eyes, she is five years old again, small hands, shallow breath, and a woman she does not recognize crying as she pulls her into a hug, whispering "Greta, sweetheart, you scared us."
Astrid Walley does not cry back.
She understands immediately, with the calm clarity of someone who has already lived once, that she is no longer in her original world.
The rules are different here.
Not dramatically. Technology still exists. Society still functions. But woven into the fabric of everyday life is a certainty Astrid did not grow up with.
Soulmates are real.
She learns this the way children in this world always do—casually, inevitably.
Her parents—Greta's parents—wear matching silver bands engraved with names and dates. Framed photographs line the hallway wall: two teenagers on their eighteenth birthdays, forearms turned outward, identical expressions of shock and wonder on their faces.
They are soulmates.
Everyone knows it.
One in ten people receive a soulmark when they turn eighteen. A full name. A year of birth. No riddles. No interpretation. Either it appears, or it does not.
Greta's parents consider themselves fortunate.
Astrid considers this all very... informational.
In her first life, love had been chosen, built slowly, sometimes lost. Permanence was something you worked toward, not something you were guaranteed. Here, it arrives without asking whether you are prepared for it.
It is a rule she did not study for.
And Greta does not assume it will ever apply to her.
---
She grows into a quiet child.
Not withdrawn. Not strange. Just observant.
She listens carefully. Watches patterns form. Finishes assignments early and waits without complaint. She prefers routines, structure, and the edges of rooms where she can see without being seen.
She does not form deep friendships. She has already lived a life where she wanted something permanent and learned not to expect guarantees.
Animals, however, ignore that boundary entirely.
Cats settle near her backpack at school. Dogs calm immediately when she kneels to greet them. On a class trip to a small petting zoo, a goat presses its forehead into her stomach and refuses to move until a handler intervenes.
Adults smile and say she has a gift.
Astrid recognizes a familiar pattern.
Some things have followed her across worlds.
---
By now, the conversations have begun.
About the future. About who might get a soulmark. About how exciting it would be, or how disappointing it might be not to.
Some children hope.
Some worry.
Greta listens and says nothing.
Teachers describe her as "old-souled," as if that explains the way she seems to be waiting for something they cannot see. They comment that she's patient in a way children rarely are.
They are not wrong.
Greta does not picture herself falling in love the way her friends do. When they giggle about crushes and soulmates they haven't met yet, she feels neither envy nor longing.
She feels caution.
Not because she rejects the idea of fate—but because she knows better than to assume fate will choose her.
But at night, the dreams come.
Stone corridors.
Walls thick enough to hold secrets.
The sound of breathing, steady and deliberate, just beyond reach.
She wakes calm, heart steady, as though some part of her has already found what the rest of her is still waiting to meet.