Victor had died, and his cycle had ended. In a way, he was free. He no longer had to follow the same routine for decades. Death is indeed a form of freedom, of freeing himself from all responsibility, from everything you're forced to do from birth, of escaping the cycle.
Victor had killed a human being, and another human being had killed him. Perhaps that's why he felt justified in not feeling guilty. Perhaps it simply wasn't convenient for him to feel guilty and torment himself with such feelings. Or perhaps he's not the kind of person who feels guilt. Maybe it didn't matter to him. He's not the kind of person who lets guilt torment him.
He was in total darkness; there was no trace of light, or so he thought.
"Is this what there is after death?" she wondered curiously.
Victor soon realized something.
«I have no senses, or I have no body, or both» he thought, astonished.
All his life, he had lived accustomed to his senses, and now he had neither. Victor thought he had no body because: he didn't feel, he didn't hear, he couldn't see anything, he couldn't taste anything, he couldn't smell anything, he couldn't feel his own body.
«I have to know where I am somehow, or at least know what I am» but he did nothing, because now he had nothing, only his consciousness.
And what could he possibly do with only consciousness? Just think, but that's what he'd been doing from the beginning, and nothing happened. Victor kept trying to imagine his physical body, his senses, believing that perhaps a body would magically be born that way, but still nothing happened.
Victor had already imagined what it was like.
«I am a soul, and a soul is energy. Since my body died, my bone energy, my soul, leaves my physical body, and now I am in this state» he thought.
That was Victor's theory. He was in his soul state. Perhaps there was something around him, but since he had no senses now, he couldn't know.
«But what will happen now?» He thought and thought.
And then something changed. Victor began to feel his soul dissolving, his being separating, and his "self" ceasing to exist. He felt like he was turning into nothing, into energy. If before he was an energy with consciousness, now he was becoming nothing, merging with nothingness, without even putting up any resistance. Everything he had lived, dreamed, and thought about his entire life no longer mattered, because it would cease to exist.
Until he heard a voice...
—Do you want to be reborn?— the voice asked.
As soon as he heard the voice, Victor's fusion with nothingness paused. The voice sounded feminine to Victor's ears, which he didn't have now. That left only the possibility that it was speaking to his conscience, so he had to be careful with what he thought, because everything he thought would be transmitted to the voice. That was Victor's theory.
—Are you speaking to my conscience?— he asked curiously, trying to reaffirm his theory.
The voice didn't respond, so Victor thought it assumed he didn't have to answer the question the voice asked him. He couldn't, or it was simply a hallucination of his. The latter was ruled out since as soon as he spoke, his fusion with nothingness paused, which leaves the other two.
Victor didn't have a body, so he answered the only way he knew how: thinking.
—Yes, I want to be reborn— he replied in his thoughts.
The voice said again.
—Understood, you will go to a new world— the voice said.
It didn't seem to have responded to Victor's answers; it seemed more like a predetermined response, one that only responded when told "yes" or "no," so Victor was right to say "yes" rather than "no."
Saying "no" could have meant the end.
Victor didn't respond; there was no point in talking to a machine that only responded to "yes" or "no."
The next moment, he lost consciousness. By the time he regained consciousness, he couldn't say how long he had been unconscious, but if there was one thing he could say, his senses had returned. He had once again felt, smelled, heard, tasted his own saliva, and seen.
Among the things he saw was a woman, dressed as a maid, holding him in her arms, cleaning him with a towel and then wrapping him in a white sheet, leaving only room for the newborn to breathe. The baby had black eyes and a pale complexion. The baby was indeed Victor.
Victor quickly accepted his situation; just as the voice had said, he was reborn.
Victor looked around, trying to analyze the situation.
«The furniture seems a bit old-fashioned, not at all minimalist. That means I'm in a technologically underdeveloped era, or that the family I was born into is poor» Victor thought, looking around. He simply looked like a baby curious about his new surroundings.
That was the image he wanted to convey, that of a normal baby. He hadn't yet discovered this world, and he didn't know if he had been reincarnated in a time in Earth's past or if he had transmigrated to another world.
A woman was lying on a bed, covered in white sheets.Bloodied from childbirth, it was his mother, then leaned forward slightly, as if trying to sit up. The mother had black eyes and hair, she was beautiful, but she had a sharp gaze that screamed how dangerous she was.
Victor paid attention. After all, he had died at the hands of a sadistic killer.
—Give me the baby— said the woman lying on the bed, his mother.
—Yes, ma'am, it's a boy— said the woman dressed as a maid, as she carefully offered the baby into the mother's arms.
The mother held him, looking at him calmly while seeming to think about something. Victor also looked back at her, wondering what name they were going to give him.
«I hope she's creative with names» Victor thought, waiting patiently.
After a while of waiting, his mother finally spoke.
—His name will be Kael, Kael Faulkner— the mother said, looking at the maid.
Her mother handed the baby to the maid. The maid left the room, holding the baby in both arms.
«So it will be Kael, and my family will be Faulkner, huh?» Kael thought. Kael didn't understand the language, but she did understand his name.
She wasn't very excited because she felt something strange about this family. Both her mother and the maid didn't speak much. The tension was palpable, and the atmosphere wasn't lively at all.
Upon exiting, Kael saw a fairly long hallway with several doors on the left. To the right, there was a wall with furniture, vases, decorations, and more.
On the right wall in the center of the hallway was a painting of a man, posing. He was wearing deep gray armor, resting his right hand on the hilt of a sword in its sheath. The man wasn't wearing a helmet, and his gaze emanated a certain aura of danger, just like his mother's. He was around forty years old.
The maid stopped, right in front of a door directly across from the painting. She opened it, and inside was a room with a crib in the center, a shelf of books on the left, and a very comfortable-looking armchair at the end of the room.
The maid carefully placed him in the crib. She approached the shelf, and after hesitating for a moment, she chose a book and approached the crib to sing a song.
Kael didn't understand anything she was singing; it was completely unfamiliar to him, but he knew that in the long run, this would be what would help him understand the language.
«Children have a greater learning capacity because their brains are still developing, so I have to take advantage and learn everything I can. That could be the key to my survival in this world»Kael thought.