Inside, the soul fragment strained. It had dreamed long enough. It had ached long enough. Like a seed under spring soil, it pushed upward, toward life. In an explosion of silent resolve, the fragment of soul poured itself into the metal that had been its cage. The god-forged sword remnant, as if answering the soul's urge, cracked further. Fissures of light snaking along the iron. There was no thunderous sound; the breaking happened quietly, a jagged piece splitting off. From that fracture spilled a pale radiance, ghostly and liquid, pooling onto the moss. The radiance did not disperse; it curled and rose, taking shape in the foggy air. If any mortal eyes had been there to witness, they would have beheld a wraithlike silhouette coalescing. The outline of a human form, glowing softly in the dim gloom.
The soul fragment floated free of the sword at last, shackled no longer to cold iron. But freedom was not yet true life, it was merely a different kind of half-existence, fragile and incomplete. The silhouette flickered, hardly able to remain cohesive. The faint figure collapsed to its knees (or would have, had it solid legs) and nearly dispersed back into the night. The effort of consciousness, of holding itself together in form, was immense. It felt a thundering ache, like a voiceless scream, reverberate through its being. But as it wavered, nearly scattering with the next gust of wind, the soul fragment once more saw that face in its mind. The girl. The moon. Gentle eyes. Waiting.
Waiting for whom? For what?
Perhaps for him... The thought was small but enough. Longing flooded in and with longing came strength.
The spectral figure raised its head to the sky. High above, the clouds parted just enough for a sliver of moonlight to touch the clearing. The pale light kissed the wraith, and where it touched, specter turned to flesh. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the soul fragment reshaped itself into a body. Mist and moonlight intertwined with the coiling radiance of the soul, forming muscle and bone, blood and skin. The broken sword's essence, infused with divine craftsmanship, bled into the soul as well, giving unnatural hardness to this newborn flesh. In that quiet hour before dawn, beneath the ancient tree in the ruined shrine, a man was born of yearning and memory.
He lay there naked and silent upon a bed of moss and shattered metal, gasping a first breath that was centuries overdue. His eyes opened to see darkness and the faint glow of starlight peeking through pine boughs. For a long moment, he did not move. The night held its breath with him. In the distance, a lone wolf howled, a haunting sound carried on the wind. The new man's heart, unaccustomed to beating, stuttered in fear at the sound and the alien sensation of having a heart at all. He curled fingers into the moss, feeling the dampness and the life in it. Every sensation was overwhelming. The cold sting of night air on his skin, the soft prickle of plant fibers beneath him, the myriad scents of earth and wood flooding his mind.
I am alive... The thought formed slowly, uncertainly, in the quiet language of the soul. Alive. The word itself was strange and profound.
Above him, the stars seemed to wheel, and for an instant he felt dizzy, as though the sky were pressing down. He shut his eyes and in the darkness behind his eyelids swirled images: a face of radiant light, a flash of a blade, and a deep voice commanding,
"Seal it away!" He flinched, his brand-new muscles clenching as terror and anger rippled through his being. The images vanished, leaving only a fading echo of that voice and a searing pain in his chest. Slowly, he brought a hand to his sternum, where he felt an odd warmth. Beneath his trembling fingers, just under the skin, lay a small jagged piece of metal, embedded in the flesh directly over his heart. It was all that remained of the god-forged sword, now bound into his living body. It was warm to the touch, pulsing faintly with the same light that now flowed in his veins. The shard and the soul were one.
In the darkness of the forest, the newborn man curled around himself and wept soundlessly, though he did not know why. Tears came as an instinct, born of sorrow without name, grief without memory. The wind gently picked up, humming a low mournful tune as it danced through the ruins. The world, in its own way, welcomed him with silence and solitude. Thus, the fragment of a soul once torn from the cycle of rebirth took its first step back into life. Alone, afraid, and filled with a hollow longing that would not cease.