I thought I wasn’t supposed to know I was in a trial? I thought, hoping the voice of Hel would hear me.

Trust me, darling girl, the voice replied, and what it said sent shivers down my side. This is the one trial you will remember and wish to forget.

My eyes darted around wildly as I tried to pull myself up, only to fall back down onto the bed in a fit of dizziness. The bed stands grinded against the wood as I fell over and lay there with hazy vision, trying to figure out what the fuck was happening.

It was there, lying on my side, that I realized something. I was … whole. My injuries from Lydian were gone. There was no aching scar tissue, and I gazed in wonder at the smooth skin of my arms and the lack of calluses on my hands. If anything, both of my breasts were a bit swollen, and when I touched my cheek, there were no markings from goblin nails. What? How?

“Ebba!” A voice that sounded so familiar raced up the ladder to the loft. Whoever it was was keeping low as to avoid bumping their head.

Ebba? Ebba was my middle name. My mother had insisted that if I was to have a boy’s name for a first name, she would give me a female middle name and so she had. But no one ever called me it, no one ever referenced it. What was the point? I wasn’t supposed to be a girl anyway.

I stared open-mouthed at the figure coming to lean by my bedside. It was … Soren, but not Soren. Innately, somewhere in my heart, I could feel that he was the same like Lydian had been the same, like my parents had been the same, except for this time … he was the same, but different.

His skin was the color of alabaster, and despite the summer heat, he wore a light, hooded cloak to cover it. His eyes weren’t the color of lilacs, but instead, a pinkish color almost bordering on red. His hair remained white but without the blue undertones that his goblin-self had. But other than that, he was unmistakably human.

What had he said once? The reason he looked like he had as a goblin was due to a genetic mutation. So, if this was a human form of Soren, if this was the same Soren but in a different life—a life where we were both human—it made sense he had the same mutation.

Like all the other versions of my life the roots had shown me, this world was as real as any other, despite it feeling like a dream. This perfect path with no blood or violence and no goblins or other creatures, but still with Soren, human, deeply in love with me.

He leaned forward and kissed my sweaty brow while I was still too shocked to do anything.