1 Prologue – River of Souls

River of Souls, the Forgetful Waterfalls

An innumerable number of souls float endlessly at the River of Souls. Some souls were powerful and as bright as the stars, while most are just flickering lights, seemingly about to go out at any second. The river was so gigantic that just by taking a drop of the river would be bigger than the average planet. The sheer amount of living things across all the multiverse adds up into this river of souls.

All living things that cease to live, whether human, animal, plant, bacteria, or even artificial intelligence come here. Contrary to what a lot of the sentient species believe, there's no guardian of this place, no hell, no heaven, and no purgatory. There's no one to judge the souls whether you did something evil or saint like. In the face of death, everyone is equal.

Why do souls all go here at this mysterious place? And why are the souls grouped in the form of a flowing river? No one knows for sure. Even the powerful beings that manage to reach this place and see the river's glory have no idea. In the end, they just believe that it's simply a part of nature's laws that all souls and their soul energy would naturally come here at one point.

Following the flow of the river, if you manage to patiently travel through the gazillions of gazillions of light years the River of Souls span, you would find the end of destination of the souls – The Forgetful Waterfalls. At the Forgetful Waterfalls, the soul's memories are removed, purified and reused again for reincarnation. It is no one's will that the memories are removed, for yet again, it is simply just part of in nature, the effects of the laws of the world. Souls are basically just soul energy that is being transformed, just like how nuclear energy is transformed to electric energy to be used for appliances. It is a similar concept, from the 'used' form of the soul, to a 'pure' form where it can be reused for reincarnation.

Of course, the river isn't perfect. Just like nature, surprises out of the ordinary happen. In some cases, some souls doesn't get purified and manage to retain their memories in their cycle of reincarnation.

Some would think that this is a fortunate event! But in truth, most of the time it is a curse. Imagine a human soul being reincarnated into the body of a plant. Being in a plant with human memories, you would remember the sensations of eating, touching, seeing, smelling, moving around. But being the plant you are, you would be stuck there, not being able to do any of that. You can't even kill yourself. In fact, being a plant is lucky! Imagine being reborn as bacteria which is more likely to happen due to the sheer numbers of bacteria.

Of course, sometimes good things happen from these events. If you were once a human and managed to luckily be reborn as a human again with your memories intact, this would be a great asset for you. With your previous knowledge, you could quickly become a powerful figure as you grow up.

There are other out of the ordinary happenings in the cycle of reincarnation, such as the soul being sent to an already used body, or maybe having your soul bonded with another, making that person your soul mate. These events are already very rare, but one unassuming soul heading to the forgetful waterfalls and is about to be reincarnated will have a peculiar and most unlikely of all destinies. The chances of the events that would unfold to this soul were 1 in a nearly infinite amount of chances. Of course, there is no such thing as being near infinite, for that would be a paradox. But this event was so unlikely that it could be such a thing. But as is Murphy's Law, "Anything that could go wrong, would go wrong. And anything that could happen will happen."

***

As the soul fell on the waterfall and is about to be purified of its memories, just like other fortunate, or rather unfortunate souls, he managed to avoid being purged of its memories. It wasn't completely successful however. Some of its memories were still stripped from it. It could vaguely remember who it was and what it was, but its name, hobbies, and other specifics of its life were lost.

The peculiarity of its destiny does not end there, for the soul crashed into another more powerful soul entity. This event is not rare, for souls crash into each other all the time. Normally, in the case of a bigger, more powerful soul hitting a weaker one, it destroys the weaker one into pieces. The weaker soul disperses, becoming the most raw and primal of all soul energy, in the end being absorbed by the River of Souls to form new souls.

When our peculiar soul hit the stronger soul entity, it really did smash into pieces. It couldn't take the impact and was split. However the truly peculiar thing that happened was that it was split into three completely equal and even amounts of partitions. It was so perfectly cut into three that instead of dispersing, the three partitions of the soul managed to hold itself together, making three perfectly same souls. The three souls still functioned as one, but could move in different places.

The three souls continued to fall, about to enter a new universe. There were endless amounts of portals that lead to different universes and different worlds. It shuddered to think what would happen to it if its three partitions were separated into different universes. Would it die? It doesn't know, so it definitely won't take chances. It wanted to at least be sent into the same world and wanted a humanoid body similar to its old one, so it was being careful in going through the portals and was hesitating.

Perhaps because it still hasn't chosen a universe despite going through numerous portals, some force was urging the soul to choose a world now. It was even forcing the souls apart so that it would be reincarnated immediately. It panicked, so it immediately jumped to the next world with humanoids! As it went through the portal, the force urging them to separate was even stronger. It desperately held into its souls. If it allowed the force to do what it wanted to, his three souls would be separated into different faraway worlds and probably won't see them again.

At long last! It could see the world it would be reincarnated to. It was a lush green with lots of trees and plants of all kinds. More than half of the world was covered in land, but a still sizable amount of waters and oceans comparable to the land masses was there. The world was many times larger than any planet the soul previously lived at, about as big as a regular star. It would be impossible for the soul's previous world, but this is a different universe with slightly different laws governing it.

The moment the souls entered the atmosphere, the force urging them to separate was too great for the soul, and so it was separated into three different directions. It was satisfied however, for it managed to bring them to the same world. It could control its direction slightly, so it could choose its body a bit. At least, it could bring it to a village or a city to increase its chances of being born humanoid.

It flew over the waters, the forests, choosing a body. Finally, all three partitions of souls finished their decisions. Inwardly, it wished good luck to its other selves, hoping to have a good life.

The first one fell into an extremely ancient and bloody battlefield. It was filled with billions of corpses, all once powerful warriors that inhabited the earth. The first soul was attracted by the extremely dense energy accumulating at this place so it chose to reincarnate at the only life that was brewing here.

The second soul fell into the snowy mountains. It was attracted by the powerful being that slumbered within the mountain, and so it chose to live another life there.

The third soul, determined to be a humanoid again, chose to fall into the groups of humanoids living in an underground settlement within the mountains.

The three souls finally rested, happy with their decisions. They weren't sure they would be reborn what they wanted to be, but they did their best. At this point in the process of being reborn, they could only hope for the best.