The transition between lives was never a clean break. It was a jagged, rusted edge that sawed through Elias’s mind. As he grew in this new life—this fourth iteration—the memories of his previous deaths sat in his stomach like lead weights.
By age five, he could speak three languages he had never been taught. By age seven, he was drawing maps of cities that had burned to the ground a century ago. His parents in this life, the Millers, were kind, simple people who looked at their son with a mixture of awe and absolute terror. They saw him talking to the corners of the room. They saw him flinching at shadows that didn’t move.
“Who are you talking to, Elias?” his mother, Sarah, would ask, her voice trembling.
“The man with the silver needles,” Elias would whisper. “He says my skin is almost ready.”
The horror of reincarnation wasn’t just the memory; it was the anticipation. Elias knew that in every life, he was allowed to reach the age of twenty-one before The Carver came to collect. It was a harvest. The soul had to be “ripe” with experiences, joys, and fears to be truly delicious.
He spent his childhood trying to remain “unripe.” He refused to love. He refused to learn. He tried to be a vacuum of a human being. But the soul is a stubborn thing. Despite his best efforts, he found himself falling in love with the way sunlight hit the dust motes in the library, or the way the neighbor’s daughter, Clara, laughed. Every time he felt a spark of humanity, he felt the cold needle of The Carver prick the back of his neck.
One night, as a teenager, Elias sat in front of a mirror and tried to cut the memories out. He took a shard of glass to his temple, hoping to bleed out the images of the guillotine, the bayonet, and the fire. But as the blood dripped down his face, the reflection changed. It wasn’t Elias staring back. It was a composite of all his past faces—the baker, the soldier, the girl—all of them screaming in unison.
“You cannot hide,” the reflection hissed. “The thread is long, but it always leads back to the needle.”
