I could see everything.

All the paths every soul would take - who would be reborn when, what gender they'd be…all of the oldsouls were going to be what they originally were - the gender they'd been when they first bound themselves to Janan. One last rebirth for each of them, even those still alive now - the fire was enough to give them that, but no more. Because Janan wasn't putting oldsouls in the place of newsouls, newsouls and oldsouls would coexist for several generations, being birthed at near-equal rates. Oddly enough, Meuric would get another lifetime, too, even though his skeleton was gone.

And me. There was enough fire for everyone plus me.

Sam.

One lifetime with him, with music - not an eternity, but more than I could have dared hope for.

I was about to put myself a few years after the last birth he'd have, when I noticed that Tera and Ash were both going to be female. I thought of how they used to kill each other when they were born the same gender…but this would be their last lifetime…

I nudged Ash's birth into a different spot on the timeline, switching her place with a newsoul so she'd be male. He and Tera would be five years apart - not a terrible gap, all things considered. Maybe it wasn't fair to the newsoul, but I couldn't let love like what Tera and Ash had be ruined for the last lifetime they'd live.

Then, I refocused on the new place I'd picked, and plunged into new life. No pain, no waiting - just a new place in time.

~o~

The first flash of blinding light on my new eyes was agony. I screamed involuntarily, squeezing my eyes shut. An infant's wail screeched in my sensitive ears. It took a minute for me to realize the scream was mine.

Reborn.

I forced my eyes open, trying to fight the agony. Something closed over my entire forearm, and my hand pressed against something smooth and cold. Voices surrounded me, but I couldn't focus enough to decipher any of them.

Shapes came into focus. A woman's face. Not looking at me, at someone to her side. A question on her face.

Oldsoul or newsoul?

Soul scanning was still in practice - the Soul Tellers now had the extra job of keeping track of the oldsouls that were reborn, to know how many were still left to live again.

Sounds. Words I didn't catch. I realized my soul wasn't in the database, so I'd register as a newsoul. Who had birthed me? What would she think? Would she be like Lidea, or would she be like Li? For a moment, I wished Li hadn't been a Darksoul - I wished she could know how wrong she'd been.

The face twisted with shock, outrage, something else…whoever my new mother was, she didn't want a newsoul.

She'd probably be even angrier when she found out it was me.

It was going to be a long quindec.

~o~

My mother and her partner didn't bother to name me. They didn't know what to call me; maybe they hoped I'd name myself when I was old enough. Just as well.

Getting my new body to obey me wasn't easy. I cried often, as much as a true newsoul would have, mainly out of frustration. My new parents didn't suspect a thing.

It wasn't until a month after I'd been reborn that I noticed what my parents and the Soul Tellers hadn't. Late at night, in the dark of my room, trying and failing to sleep, I saw a glow flash in front of my eyes. I flailed for a while, trying to see it again; it crossed my vision wildly. I struggled and focused, then suddenly realized it was my hands. My hands were glowing.

I struggled a bit more, trying to get a better look. No, it wasn't my hands, it was just my palms. Images of chains glowed across both.

The chains. They'd burned into my soul somehow. From the fire?

~o~

Wend was my mother.

When I finally figured that out, I realized what that other thing in her expression had been when she heard I was a newsoul: shame. Because of Anid. But because of how wrong s/he'd been? Or because s/he had now brought two newsouls into the world?

My father, like Menehem, was never around, leaving Wend to take care of me on her own; maybe Menehem was my father again. Wend did a better job than Li had, but she still wasn't the most attentive or loving mother - and this time, there were no sylph to help me in the extreme temperatures of summer and winter. Fortunately, I got to stay in Heart while I grew back up, so there were automated temperature-regulating machines to take care of me instead.

Words failed me for the longest time, but I tried to show Wend my palms whenever I saw her. She didn't notice. I struggled against my infant body to speak - the sooner I cleared things up, the sooner I'd get a more oldsoul-based treatment, and I didn't like making Wend waste her time, no matter how poor a job she did. After all, she only had one lifetime left.

At last, something in my body shifted, and I was able to force words out. It was exhausting, but I pushed through and finally spoke to my new mother:

"I'm Ana. Not…new. Ana."

My words were unclear, infantile, but I was able to make them. Wend's eyes widened. "Ana?" she gasped.

"Yes," I managed. "I've…been…reborn." The effort of speaking made my vision swim, but I fought to stay conscious. I needed to be conscious for this.

But I shouldn't have bothered. A thousand things flashed through Wend's eyes, and then she ran from the room, dialing a number on her SED. I knew I should have worried about who she was calling and what she was going to tell them, but I couldn't stay awake.

I passed out.

~o~

Meuric was my father.

I found out later that Meuric was grateful to Wend for staying loyal to the oldsouls and turning on Anid and me, and Genealogy said they could have a child. There were oldsoul-only communities and newsoul-focused communities - a waste, I thought, since everyone was in the same boat with only one life left to live, but some of the oldsouls, like Meuric, were very bitter - and Meuric and Wend shared a home in an oldsoul-only community. A lot of oldsouls were still being reborn, so they had figured they'd probably have one.

Instead, they got me.

Meuric probably would have killed me, but he wasn't the first person Wend told. The council was informed first, and while Meuric was still on the council, he was no longer the Speaker - the Speaker was an oldsoul named Nima. The issue of what I'd done in overthrowing Janan was a debate, and of course Meuric strongly advocated my imprisonment - which was now a far more serious offense, given that we all only had one lifetime left, and to waste all of it in jail would be the worst fate that could befall anyone - but in the end, I was deemed not guilty of any crime, and Meuric was ordered to leave me be, with the threat of imprisonment if he harmed me. So, for my second lifetime, I grew up without a father.

It wasn't until I was ten years old that Wend confided in me that she'd joined the oldsoul-only community because seeing newsouls made her feel terrible shame for betraying me and her son on the grounds of newsouls being 'unnatural'. I told her I forgave her, since s/he had been under Janan's control at the time. She was a much better mother than Li had been, especially after that.

While my old body had been short, my new body was tall and slender, with long dark hair and blue eyes like sapphires. Every time I saw my eyes in the mirror, I remembered staring into the huge blue eyes of a dragon. It was strange to look in the mirror and see a different face than I was used to, but I became accustomed to it as years went on. The glowing scars on my palms grew with my hands to retain their pattern as my hands got bigger, reinforcing my idea that the scars were on my soul, not my physical hands.

I knew Sam was somewhere in Heart, just a couple of years older than me, but I didn't go looking for him until I was old enough - a new law had been instated, forbidding intimate partnerships between oldsouls and newsouls unless the newsouls were old enough to fully understand what such a partnership entailed and mature enough to make a sensible decision on the matter. What exactly qualified as 'old enough' was a subject of debate, but 18 years old was the generally accepted figure. I technically wasn't a newsoul, but I technically wasn't an oldsoul either, so to be safe, I stayed with Wend until I'd passed my first quindec.

Finally, on my fifteenth birthday, I left home to explore the other areas of Heart, and maybe claim a house of my own. The white walls of the city no longer had a heartbeat, and were no longer indestructible, either - where the walls had broken, black obsidian had been used to repair the cracks. It was almost funny; now that Janan was gone, I was able to lament the fact that the walls of the houses in Heart could be broken.

Where the temple itself had been, there stood a huge memorial of what people called Phoenix Night: An enormous statue of a phoenix, carved from obsidian, wreathed with flowers of every color. I hadn't seen it before; it was beautiful. Just looking at it reminded me of the bottomless black of a live phoenix's eyes…and my song.

I sat down and took my flute out of my backpack. The flute Sam had made for me didn't fit my new body, but while the piano was an amazing instrument, the flute was my favorite, so Wend had given me a new one for my quindec. A gift from my mother was no less precious to me than a gift from Sam, if for different reasons.

I sat down in front of the memorial, positioned my flute, and played my four notes. The rest of the waltz flowed naturally from them, almost playing itself.

Ana Incarnate: A Variant on the Phoenix Song.

The new, full name was a bit less personal to me, but it was more accurate, and people still called it 'Ana Incarnate' for short.

Lost in the music, my eyes wandered. Some people passing by turned to look at me as I played - some with smiles, some with frowns. I couldn't tell if the frowns were because I was playing it badly and the smiles were for what it meant, or if the smiles were because I was playing it well and the frowns were for what it meant.

But towards the end, a man with white-blond hair and fair skin reddened from the sun caught my attention, walking straight towards the memorial, a wild look in his eyes. He looked at me, and I knew.

I smiled even as I played. I hadn't even had to look for him; he had come to me.

I didn't stop playing as he climbed the steps to meet me. I played the four notes, and only then did I set my flute aside and stand up. We looked into each other's eyes for a minute. His expression was what I imagined mine had been the first time I'd heard him play the piano, afraid to ask what I already knew: his name. Dossam.

"Is it really you?" he asked breathlessly.

I met his eyes, but I didn't say a word. I'd known right away; surely he had, too.

A strangled cry escaped him, and he grabbed me in a tight hug all at once. "I've been too afraid to hope," he told me in a pained whisper. "I've missed you so much."

I hugged him back. I'd missed him, too. When we finally let go, I smiled and showed him my palms. The phoenix statue behind me cast enough shadow to show their glow.

We both had a whole lifetime ahead of us, together.

I leaned in close and whispered, "I've been reborn."