Chapter One

The sand in the hourglass continued to drip down, constant and unrelenting. When the last grain fell through the funnel a mechanism tilted the hourglass over so that the whole of it might start over, marking time for the woman who least desired that it be marked.

The people who set the hourglass before her did not care though. In fact, they delighted in the misery the tracking of time gave her. They knew that even though she did not wish to know how many hours had passed, her eyes and ears would be drawn to the shush of the sand, and the knock of its turn.

The hourglass turned once more, and the pained eyes of the bedroom's occupant fell on it once again. After noting the movement she closed her eyes once more, her energy drained from the small effort to look at it.

Death was upon her.

She wished for it, and waited for it. She dreaded it, and hoped for it. If she had her choice of course, she would rather live. She would jump up and run out of the room, and give her greatest effort to turn over the house and its occupants. Run across the fields with great health and valiantly crush her enemies, restoring her beloved monarchy to their throne.

However, her health had been poor for many years, almost two decades. She'd had three children very young in close succession, the consecutive pregnancies and births had ruined her health, since she'd been given no time to recover from the first or second before being forced to conceive the second and third.

Her children were far away from her, no doubt warring on a neighboring kingdom or on a resisting Lindsein lord. Her husband, as far as she knew, was sitting upon the usurped throne in the capital of Lindsein, probably not giving her or her imminent death a thought. Her in-laws were within the manor, but the wing her bedroom was in was as far from the main section of the house as possible so that they would not be bothered with her existence.

Every one of them would be glad for her death. Her children she hardly knew, and they despised her for her gentleness and weakness. Her husband had used her and discarded her. Her in-laws detested her for being low-born and a human.

Her breath became more shallow, at the same time the sound of it for once overpowered the sound of the falling sand. At the last moments her regrets overpowered her placid acceptance of death, and her breath fought in her throat.

If only… If only she had never married Ian Mosely! If only she had never let herself and her family get swept up in the whirlwind of his courtship!

Before she had even realized how she had felt about him, before her family could discover what kind of person he was, she had been whisked away into his manor as his wife. She had never seen her family again, and from her sick bed she had been gleefully regaled by her in-laws about the devastation her children had wrought across her peaceful country, about the war her husband had instigated. Her mother-in-law had taken great delight in regaling her on the details of her family's death in the war her husband waged.

Her agitated breath gasped in her throat, and then the shush of the sand was the only sound in the room.

After darkness came light, a warm light that should have been blinding but was somehow gentle in its brightness.

"Welcome, Cassandra." The voice rolled across Cassandra like thunder, disrupting her stupor of finding herself in an unexpected location.

She was sure she had died, and had been expecting to find herself in the usual expectations of the afterlife: either a gathering location for all spirits, or perhaps simply oblivion. Instead she was floating (or something like that) in pure light.

She 'blinked' and before her was a figure of blurred lines. Its face was bright as if covered with flames, and it wore something like armour - the style of which she had never seen. The pressure she felt from it was intense, although she also felt that it meant no harm to her.

"Welcome, Cassandra," it repeated. Its voice was powerful yet gentle, and strangely genderless.

"Y-yes?" she hesitated. Wasn't she dead? What was going on? A tremor of fear ran through her.

"No need to be afraid, Cassandra. You are here as you are being given a choice."

"A choice?"

"A choice to continue on to the afterlife, or to choose to return to your past and relive your adulthood once again."

Cassandra recoiled in repugnance that she might have to live through her marriage again.

It held up its hand. "You would be sent to a time before your meeting with Ian Mosely. You would also retain your memories of your first run through life."

"Why?" Cassandra finally breathed out.

"God made the people of your world with free-will. Everything that occurs in your world from free-will, regardless of the consequences, is how that world should be. However, outside forces infiltrated your world and manipulated your life into joining with Ian Mosely."

Cassandra felt cold at its words. Indeed, she'd made no decision to marry Ian Mosely yet had found herself going along with him, almost as if she was a puppet on strings. She knew she should have been afraid at the time, but had been calm on the surface with simmering confusion deep down.

"God has made the decision to give you a choice, as the person at the center of the manipulation, to return and use your free-will to change the present. Of course, you do not need to if you do not wish to. You may decline and continue on to the afterlife."

"My-my family?"

"If you choose to decline, all souls will remain as they are. If you choose to return, all souls who were affected by the manipulation will also be returned to their lives – except with no memory."

"Won't, wouldn't the same thing happen again?"

"No, God has ensured that the stripping of free-will will not occur again. That isn't to say those outside forces will not use temptation to try to manipulate the world in the direction they want, but free-will will never be removed again."

Cassandra pondered deeply.

Her siblings who had perished young could have a chance to live a full life. All of the lives that had been lost to war could be recovered, and have a chance to flourish. She could do her best to stop Ian and protect her beloved country from devastation.

"I'll go back with all of my memories?" she whispered.

"Yes."

Cassandra paused. "Could you tell me why?" she asked quietly. "Why was I used?"

It bowed its head slightly for a moment. "Yes," it finally said. "Cassandra, you were born with a very special physique. Children who are borne to you will be superior both physically, mentally, and intellectually. In other words, possible genius in most anything.

"The outside force, knowing of Ian's ambitions, told him of this and assisted him in using you. The children you bore to Ian were used by him to fulfill his ambitions. Unfortunately they were instilled with his beliefs and most resembled his family. They were happy to do his bidding."

"I see," Cassandra whispered. Then...

"I will return," Cassandra said quietly.