You, the Whisper Across Lifetime

Chapter 15: The Bones That Carried Me

It started with pain. As usual.

Like most past-life visions, mine begin near the end. I don't know why—it just always does. Maybe death holds the strongest memory. Maybe the soul remembers agony louder than anything else.

This time, it wasn't a scene or a face. It was the feeling of a body—mine, but not this one. Older. Or maybe younger. Torn, aching, on the edge of collapse. My breath came sharp, like it had to fight its way in.

At first, I couldn't see much. Just dust. Cold air. A sense of movement. Hoofbeats. The creaking of something wooden. The sting of wind against raw skin. Then it went dark again.

The next day, it came back. Another piece.

I was lying down. On rough cloth. Something soft padded beneath me, maybe hay or fur. But every bump on the road rattled through my bones. My limbs were bound close, not by rope, but by sheer exhaustion. My ribs felt cracked. I couldn't lift my arms. I don't know how I was still alive.

And still… I wasn't afraid. Just tired. Past the point of fear.

I saw flashes. A small caravan, not more than two or three people with me now. Someone rode close beside the cart, head turned often to check if I was still breathing. A familiar figure. A man with a quiet kind of strength. I knew him. I always knew him. Even then.

The journey had started in Rome, though I only understood that later.

In my waking life, the vision kept returning in batches. Every day brought a new layer. They didn't come within dreams. They just came. One night I vaguely saw the dry open road. Another night of being lifted, barely conscious, into a stone-walled room with a fire pit. Then came the sound of the sea. Then the wind. Then the domes.

It took nearly a week before the picture formed fully.

We had crossed mountains and valleys. Walked, rode, crawled. At times I was conscious, gripping onto pain like it was the only thing keeping me tethered. At other times, I drifted—half in spirit, half still clinging to the boy I was.

I remember looking up from the cart one morning. The cold had finally eased, and light filtered through a canopy of olive trees. I remember thinking, I've seen this sky before. But I hadn't—not in that life.

We arrived at the outskirts of Constantinople. The city was nothing like the dirt paths we'd known. It loomed, majestic and loud with silence. Its gates high. Its domes glowing like copper in the sun.

I remember being carried—again—this time more gently. Someone pressed a wet cloth to my lips. The cool wet clothes taped on my face, it kept me conscious. I felt refreshed a little.

And then… the floor.

Cool granite. Polished smooth by centuries of footsteps. A giant door opened. The sound of hinges echoing through stone. Pillars of mismatched marble towered like frozen trees, each one different in color and veins but all beautifully arranged. And above it all, light.

Blue. Not sky blue. Not paint. But a hue that didn't belong to any one surface. A feeling. A tone of spirit.

That was Hagia Sophia.

We had made it.

But I hadn't died yet.

And that's what unsettled me most.

For once, the vision hadn't ended in a flash of departure. I was still alive when the memory stopped. Still breathing, broken but whole enough to feel. Still looking up, eyes fixed on the dome that caught the sun in such a way it felt holy.

I didn't know what happened next.

And maybe that's what kept the ache with me even after the vision ended.

I didn't die at Hagia Sophia.

That was the strange part. The vision ended not with silence, not with light, not with release—but with stillness. I was there. Alive. Broken, yes. But breathing. I don't know who brought me, or why they chose that place. I only know it mattered.

The next night, the vision came again. But this time, I wasn't on the cart.

I was lying on a low bed near a window. I could smell something herbal—lavender maybe, or sage. A man and a woman moved gently around the room. Not healers exactly. Just… kind. She brought a warm cloth to my chest. He lifted a bowl of water to my lips. I could barely move, but I wasn't afraid.

It felt like sanctuary.

The room was carved out of stone or maybe built beside something older. I couldn't tell. But there was a sense of safety, like the house itself knew how to cradle the broken.

They didn't speak much. Or maybe I was too far gone to hear. But I felt the intention behind every gesture. The quiet way she sat beside me in the evenings. The steady way he readjusted my blankets when I shook from cold.

Still, no names. No full faces. Just moments.

I couldn't place the time or geography. Maybe still Byzantium. Maybe somewhere between. My waking mind kept trying to decode it, trace it to something I'd seen in a history book—but it didn't match anything clear. The symbols were different. The air felt older than Europe, warmer than Rome.

I was sure of only one thing: the journey had nearly killed me.

But the vision wasn't about death this time. Not yet. It was about something else.

It was about endurance.

And the night skies.

Even when my body felt like it would give out, I remember looking up—those nights in the desert before we reached the city. The stars were massive. Closer than they are in this life. Like someone had spilled diamonds across a black cloth. The Milky Way didn't look like a streak. It looked like a kingdom. Thick. Luminous. Endless.

One night, I remember whispering something under my breath—not a prayer exactly, but something close. A name maybe. Or a vow. I couldn't hear the word. But I remembered the feeling it left.

Something was still holding me.

I kept waiting for Kaelen to appear in the vision. But he didn't. No familiar voice. No presence that felt like his soul. Just me. My pain. And the memory of being carried through fire, dust, and starlight.

When I woke the next morning, I didn't feel relieved. I felt heavy. Not scared. Just full. Like I was carrying something ancient I didn't yet understand.

I wrote it all down. Every piece. More to what the other past-life-me felt during that string of vision.

But still, I had no idea which past life it belonged to.

No clue who I was.

Just the ache of the body I once had… and the stars that refused to let me go.