We rode for some time before the corpse finally started talking. "What is my name?" It asked. It jostled and rattled in its armor as we bore down the crest of a barren hill, the barding on our horses snapping in a breeze, revealing skeletal remains beneath.

"Laurence," I say. As a Psychopomp it is my duty to always be truthful with the recently Returned. Per the King of the Wheel's proclamation, all souls in procession are to be treated like royalty. Like the divine, practically.

"How did I die?" Another typical answer. Most Returned start off asking for their names. Then their curiosity usually gets the better of them and they ask the second one.

"You were slain in battle. The King of the Well struck you down in combat." The Returned gives me a look, a subtle lilt of the brow I've come to recognize as peaked curiosity. "He is our enemy." I clear my throat. "Well, he is mine, anyway. You no longer have need for enemies."

The Returned nods. I know what the third question will be. Often they turn to the future and wonder what will happen now. I mentally recite the words in my head. I will take you back to your birthplace and return you to the wheel, so that the next soul may pass on. Same as the last one. Same as the last one before.

"What is your name?" I blink twice. The Returned stares at me, green eyes flecked with gold, shimmering in the half light of the false sun. A gust of wind tugs a red curl loose from its helmet. It takes me a second to remember my own name.

"Karu," I say. For once I am unable to remain aloof, separated from the Returned's feelings as one would a corpse. This one makes it difficult.

The Returned...no...Laurence smiles. "That is a lovely name." Its voice is as smooth as velvet, calm and low and grateful. "So Karu, what happens now?"

I clear my throat and slip back into my emotionless mask. "Now I have to take you back to your birthplace. So that you may rejoin the wheel and a new soul may enter this land. That is the true way."

"A new soul?"

I held a hand out before the barren landscape. "The war between Wheel and Well has disrupted the natural cycle. Under the oath between kings, the cycle of souls must continue for existence to be maintained. Your soul must pass on so that another may be reborn. Lest the Wheel stop turning." I begrudgingly look into Laurence's beautiful eyes. "Lest the Well run dry."

We rode past the barren hilltops, following a path that fed us into a deep valley, bones littering the landscape in great, towering heaps. A battle had been fought here once. Homunculi rising and falling like ivory tidal waves, slamming into each other under the orchestrations of two powerful Raisers. A battle between two and ten thousand more.

The air still crackles with residual magic, giving the air a greasy shimmer. Laurence doesn't seem to notice, but he wasn't touched by the same glamor that affects me. Not everyone has the gift of Pompancy.

The boon and bane of unlife is that the weaknesses of the body no longer affects you. Breathing was a luxury now, as were the pangs of hunger and thirst. Even before the King of the Wheel's return, I shirked away sleep like a dismissive lover, desiring the freedom of consciousness. Now it was gone as well, the long night taking its place.

We rode non-stop for several days before Laurence spoke up again. "What was I like?" He asks. It takes me a moment to churn up an answer. What was there to say? "You were very kind to the people around you." I start off with. "And very brave when it mattered. Your death saved thousands that day."

Laurence sits there stunned for a moment, green eyes wide and glittering. He pushes out his bottom lip for a moment. "I wish I could believe you. I want to believe you, but for some strange reason your words sound foreign. Like they belong to someone else."

I feel my chest tighten. "It is a hard concept to process as a Returned. When you die, your soul is stripped of its...personality. The stuff that made you, you." I let Laurence process things for a minute, his down turned face like a gray cloud over a sunny day. After a while I continue. "But that is why I am here. As your psychopomp I have been assigned to aid you in your transition back to the Wheel."

"Oh." Laurence physically sinks into his saddle. "I keep forgetting what my purpose is in all this. A sacrifice to keep the Wheel turning. I suppose my true self died on the battlefield. I'm just his walking, talking carcass."

I felt a stirring in my chest. Seeing Laurence like this made me want to reach out, slip a hand beneath his chin and tell him the brighter future. But what was the point when everything he'd said was true? His true self had died on the battlefield. I was merely guiding his corpse back to the proper place of burial.

"How much longer until I am laid to rest?" Laurence asks after an hour of silent riding.

"A week," I told him. "Maybe more depending on where we're traveling." A simple glance is all it takes to keep me talking. "After the King of the Well broke Kassidan's Bridge, it has made traveling between lands all but impossible. We'll have to cross through the Wastes instead."

"I take it that place is dangerous?" Laurence asks.

"Depends on the Foul's mood most days. So long as they're not too agitated we may be able to traverse without problems."

"Well, all right then." Laurence stares up at the false sun, shielding his eyes from the worst of its pale glare. "Seems more or less a week is all I have in this world. I suppose I should make the most of it." He glances at me and there's a glimmer in his eyes I hadn't seen before. It makes me want to look away.

"At the very least I have you to keep me company," Laurence says. If my heart still worked it would have been beating like mad at the prospect. An entire week alone with him sounded like paradise.

The best part of the trip passed on behind us. The valley spat us out past a dead forest lined with petrified trees. Their limbs clattered together in a ghoulish symphony as the wind whipped past, filling the air with their haunting song. Laurence continued to ask his questions, and I answered them truthfully. That he was the only son of a powerful man, meant to be the next scion of his household. That he was gifted in both swift of hand and swift of mind, raised to be clever and brave and charming.

"Charming?" Laurence pauses me to ask.

"Or so I've been told." I force myself not to smile back at him. My ability to stay aloof had waned the past couple of days, each new dawn like a heavy rock added to my already overburdened pile. But one does not simply say no to the King of the Wheel. No matter the soul.

"How do you know so much about me?" Laurence leans in with an easy smile. I've noticed bits and pieces of his old personality returning. As if every day a small fraction of his soul was slowly coming back. I wondered how this was even possible.

"You could say I'm a very good friend," I told him, shaking away my dour thoughts. "Psychopomps are chosen amongst those closest to the Returned. In some cases they are specifically trained for such an occasion." I turn to look at him, keeping his focus on me despite how badly I want to look away. "But for others it can come naturally."

We make camp at the edge of the Wastes. The last time we'll be able to relax before facing the dangers ahead. Even if I despised sleep, Laurence still held on to the small things that used to make him living. And so we retired for the night.

I found myself sneaking glances at him as we made camp. He attended to the tent poles as I set the fire, lithe muscles rippling beneath his pale flesh. It was hard not to remember what those powerful arms used to do to me.

We decided to eat for old time's sake. With most of the wild life killed off to feed the King's war, we ate rations of smoked mushrooms I'd brought with me for the battle. An old habit, I supposed, but I was grateful nonetheless. The meat was dry and chewy, and we masticated in silence until the fire died low.

"Why is it that whenever I see you, I feel an aching need to touch you?" Laurence asked after he'd finished his meal.

I stopped mid bite. His face shimmered behind the flames as he sat opposite of me. "I don't know." I told him.

He narrowed his eyes. "I think you do."

"You're Returned. You don't know anything about me." I snapped at him, anger and regret swelling inside of me all at once. "Not anymore."

Laurence winces as he stands up, plodding over to me in slow, even footfalls. He towers over me, face hidden in the shadows of the fire. "I know if I still had a heart it would be beating like mad right now."

I gasp involuntarily as he kneels down, thigh pressing against mine, slipping a hand into my own as he leans in. "I know this feels right for some reason. Like I'd been doing it all my life." I tremble at the truth in his words, my body shaking with emotions I'd held back for far too long.

"I know that this is not what good friends do. I can see it in your eyes, Karu." Hearing him say my name sends a rush of nerves prickling up my backside. A feeling I'd thought impossible till now.

He presses his thumb and forefinger against my chin, tilting my head up as he pulls me towards him, guiding my lips against his with a gentle press. I could do nothing but close my eyes, burying myself in the sensation of our kiss. It feels like an eternity before he releases me.

"I have regrets," Laurence says. A pang of guilt runs through me.

"Because I forced you to remember what you lost?"

"No." He shakes his head. "Because only now do I realize how much you mean to me."

We slept in each other's arms that night, a cold longing burning through my core, desire and envy tearing at each other like rabid wolves. When the King of the Wheel had asked me to take Laurence's soul back to the kingdom it had felt like a punishment at the time, but now I didn't know what to think. I fell into a dreamless sleep in Laurence's arms, never quite finding the answer.

The King of the Wheel holds little regard for fanciful titles, and so it was simply known as the Wastes. An endless track of finely sieved bone meal, bodies of countless warriors ground into dust from an eon of war. Only the Foul lived there now, wandering ghouls and other failed creations.

The first day went by soundlessly. The false sun held its place as we cut through the endless dunes. Heat and cold meant little for a body that felt neither, and we rode through blazing day and freezing night without issue. We stopped after awhile, making camp under a cleft of rock jutting out of the dunes. We sprawled out atop the butte, watching the stars as we talked about the past. Occasionally our hands would find one another in the dark, dry fingers tickling each other's palms. It felt like our first time again when we were still young, shirking our headmasters in order to hide and play our own games. A shooting start twinkled past and I wished the false sun would burn out for good and give us this night eternal.

But wishes are for children and dawn came whether I desired it or not. We rode on, the second day much like the first. I began to grow fearful as we talked, realizing that more and more of Laurence's old personality was slowly returning. I tried to deny it, but with each new glance I saw the familiar glow in his eyes I hadn't seen before.

Maybe the old Laurence was coming back after all. Maybe the King of the Wheel was wrong. Perhaps the dead could come back, given time. The implication left me shivering in my saddle. By day three we were forced to hide in a crevice until a large pack of Fouls shuffled past off in the distance. They moved in shambling dozens, stumbling over the swirling dunes, a chorus of rattling bones, dry, wispy flesh, the baleful moans of the eternal undead.

"What are they?" Laurence asks me the night after we set up camp. "The Foul, I mean."

"A soul that has sat idle in one place for far too long," I tell him. "Before the Returned were given pilgrimage, they were Raised without question. In the early days of the war, the Kings of the Wheel and the Well would continuously bring back their soldiers to fight once more, never realizing the devastation it caused. The remnants of those who remain disconnected from the cycle are what we call the Foul today."

"Why do the Kings not come back to stop this?"

I shrug. "Because they simply do not care. They are too busy fighting each other to notice. They may live as long as gods, but I fear they are still just as human as they were eons ago."

"It does not seem fair," Laurence says.

"Life is not fair," I tell him. "Or at the very least, this life isn't. Not so long as the two King's will it."

"I could stop them."

Laurence's statement shocks me. I eye him suspiciously. "You have neither the right nor the power to do so."

He flexes out a hand, arm muscle rippling beneath his chainmail. "Power I do not question. By what right, though, must I carry?"

I cannot fathom what he is asking. "The two Kings are simply that. Lords of the last Forgotten Dynasty. The King of the Wheel even proclaims his reincarnated soul to be the first of the Forgotten. The first in line for the throne."

"And the King of the Well disagrees with this?"

I nod. "The way of the Well does not believe in reincarnation. They believe that souls return to the great pool beneath the earth. Featureless. Memoryless. Given back to the endless pale. But the Wheel says otherwise. The way of the Wheel promises a soul the chance for another life." I reach out and place my hand against Laurence's cheek. He nuzzles into it, and despite the lack of warmth I can still feel him glow. "Or perhaps a chance to continue an old one."

Laurence's smile spreads across his face. "How long have you been my Psychopomp, Karu?"

I draw him in close, his breath steaming against my neck under the cold blanket of night. "I have been yours for a very, long, long time."

"Have I always been the same through every cycle? Or am I different each time?"

The question catches me off guard. "Sometimes you are. Different colored eyes. Different colored hair. Different colored skin, but the core of you remains the same."

"Clever, handsome and charming?"

I snort, fighting off the urge to trace the grooves of his muscles with my finger tips. "Exactly. Although I must admit it is only now that I've finally warmed up to you."

He laughs at my joke and runs a hand through his perfect locks. "I must be pretty important to have my very own Psychopomp."

A heaviness takes hold of me as I remember how brief our time will be together. We both were still bound by the duty of our station. "You are important to a lot of people, Laurence."

His smile fades as the love in his eyes devolves into sadness. "And that is why I must return? To keep the Wheel turning? To make you wait until I return once more?" His eyes narrow. "How long do you wait for me?"

"That is not important," I say, trying to assure him. "I am a very patient man."

He does not accept my joke this time, shaking his head in disbelief. "How can you be so nonchalant about this?"

"It is my duty."

"It is your curse."

Being alive for countless eons had long since drained me of any bitterness I might have felt over the truth. All I did was shrug, eyes fixed towards the stars so I could not see the pain in his eyes. "It is all I have ever known."

We are quiet for some time. The wind shifts the bone meal around us. Without a word, Laurence wraps me in his arms, as if I might fly away at any moment. "Why is it until now that I truly appreciate you? To have someone like you in my life. How could I have not been more grateful?"

I give his hand a gentle squeeze. "You were. In your own way."

We stay together like this until dawn. As we rode, the endless dunes solidify into craggy stretches of rocky land and canyons. Deep gouges where the minor souls of rivers and lakes were run dry to feed the King's war. We rode through one of the wider canyons, horse hooves echoing loudly off the rock walls. The false sun blazed overhead, bathing the world in pale, orange hues. There was a loud crack as rocks shifted off one of the canyon walls, tumbling beside us.

"The wind?" Laurence asks.

My grip tightens around the reins. "It is never the wind." They came all at once. Foul of every shape and size poured out into the canyon, lumbering after us on misshapen legs.

"Ride!" I yell, spurring my horse to run. Laurence whips his own into a frenzy, charging close behind me as we take off. The canyon fills with clattering screams as more and more Foul tumble from the rock walls, hitting the dusty ground in a series of crunches that would have made my stomach churn had I not lost my disgust for them ages ago.

"Stay close! I'll protect you!" Laurence draws his sword, serrated bone-iron gleaming in the false sunlight.

"That's my job!" I pull out my own sword as a group of Foul come tumbling towards us. Our blades flash, cutting at limbs, slicing off heads, our fearless horses trampling the remains under hoof. The Foul gain on us, more of them following along the walls or chasing close behind. The end of the canyon draws near, a wedge of rock leading up into the plains beyond.

We hit the slope hard, the faint creak of our horse's bones a sign that we were pushing them too hard. If we continued the way we were, the Foul would outrun us in no time. I turn to Laurence to tell him to keep going, but he's not there. He stands at the bottom of the slope, dismounted from his horse.

I pull my own to a stop. "What are you doing?" I yell.

He does not answer. He merely stands there, weapon at his side as a wave of Foul rush him. Fear surged into my throat as I made to cry out. In a flash, Laurence held up his sword and shouted a command lost in my own screaming.

All at once the Foul stop like dogs heeling before their master. Those closest back away in great, fearful shuffles, as if the ground around him were somehow holy, untouchable. I sat there frozen on my horse as the great horde turned and marched away, back into the cracks and crevices they had crawled out of. Laurence turned to me then, and for once his soft eyes held a hardness that made me wince.

"When were you going to tell me I was a prince?" He asks.

"You...you remember?" I stutter. In the past I had tried to remain aloof. I had tried to remain separated from the corpse. I had even tried to lie to myself, but now I could no longer deny what stood before me.

"I do now, Karu," Prince Laurence said. Second in line to the Forgotten Throne.

The plains quickly break up into hills as we ride, rising up to a shallow plateau that looks over our past journey. The wind cuts quicker here, tugging at our cloaks, making our time together a quiet endeavor against the howling wind. At night we settled into a cave along the rising mountainside, the first fire in a long time crackling healthily between us now that the fear of danger was behind us.

Prince Laurence, my prince Laurence, sits in quiet solemnity. A proud soul worthy of the crown, were the King of the Wheel ever deposed or defeated. I feel shame squirm within me as I remember all the lies I hid with my silence, only ever answering the questions he asked, not the answers he wanted. I never knew the true Laurence would come back and so I gave up the idea of ever seeing him again, but I was wrong. The King of the Wheel was wrong. And if that were the case, could that make the King of the Well just as wrong too?

"I've decided, Karu." Laurence opens his eyes, looking up at me with a seriousness I'd only seen a handful of times before.

"What have you decided?" I ask.

"I'm not going back. I'm not going to pass through the Wheel."

A cold hand grips me. "That is blasphemy! The King of the Wheel forbids it! Your father forbids it!"

"I don't care!" He slashes the air with a gesture of finality. "I've seen now that passing on will do this world little good. My father has drained the lands for his own selfishness. I no longer wish to be a part of his war."

"What will you do then?" I demand, unable to accept his answers. "Where will you go? The King will not recognize you as his true son. Only by passing through the Wheel will you come out reborn. This is madness, Laurence!"

"No! Madness is the way things are now! I will see it brought back into balance. I am ending the war between Wheel and Well. Once and for all."

I shake my head. "You cannot be serious."

His head bows, shadows pitting the sockets of his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks. "I may have my own selfish reason as well." He steps towards me, bending down and taking my hand into his. He flashes his emerald eyes at me and it is hard to look away. The power he possesses as a Forgotten is beyond anything I have ever experienced. Perhaps more powerful than even his father. "I cannot stand the thought of leaving you behind again. My one and only. My Karu."

Those words alone break down what little disbelief I had left that the real Laurence was gone. Even throughout the cycles, there has always been one common occurrence between souls.

"Say it again," I ask him. If I had a heart, it would have fluttered then.

"My Karu, please stay by my side for just a little bit longer. Until I am truly ready to move on." He kisses me as a crack of lightning ushers forth from a virgin thunderhead, untouched by neither well or wheel. A storm given just for us.

"The balance will tip because of this." I warn him as we pull away. "One day it must be restored."

His eyes never leave me as a smile curls up his handsome face. "One day, but not tonight." And together we make new memories under storm and starlight.