Chapter 1: Rebirth
The first thing I noticed when I woke up again was… noise.
Not the hum of fluorescent lights, not the buzz of vending machines or traffic outside a window. Real noise. Voices.
Except I didn’t understand a word.
“Ar ven sil…?” one voice cooed. A woman’s, soft and warm.
“Grath vol ten, grath vol,” another rumbled—a man’s, firm but shaky, like he wasn’t used to sounding gentle.
I blinked. Blurry shapes hovered over me. A woman with silver hair and tired eyes. A man with shoulders like a wall. Both smiling at me.
For a moment, I thought: Huh. Hospital? Foreign language? Did I actually survive the explosion?
Then I tried to answer.
“Wait—hold on. Where is this? Why can’t I underst—”
It came out as a high-pitched, wet squeak.
I froze.
No way. No damn way.
The voices kept babbling nonsense above me, like happy gibberish. My brain scrambled to latch onto a word, anything familiar, but it was all alien.
Panic bubbled up. I tried to shout, to scream, to demand answers. But what left my throat wasn’t words.
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It was crying.
Loud, ugly, baby crying.
The woman’s eyes softened, and she gathered me closer to her chest. The man laughed, awkward but proud, muttering more nonsense.
And me? I cried harder. Because for the first time in two lives, I realized the cruel truth.
I wasn’t just reborn. I was reborn as a baby.
And babies don’t get to argue.
Life as a baby was boring. Sleep, drink milk, cry when something was uncomfortable. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But at least I had company.
My sister visited almost every day, even when her training left her covered in sweat and bruises. She’d lean over my crib, grin like an idiot, and shake a wooden rattle.
“Rooga! Rooga!” she’d chirp again and again, like a chant.
At first, it was just sound. Then rhythm. Then… recognition. I didn’t say it back—I couldn’t—but I understood. That was my name. Rooga.
The way she lit up whenever I reacted, you’d think I was the sun itself. Sometimes she even snuck me scraps of bread under the table, whispering conspiracies like we were partners in crime.
It was… warm. Different from the cold indifference I’d known before.
But the real shock came one quiet evening.
Mother—Selene, I’d learned from the others—was tucking me into my crib. The room was dim, only moonlight filtering through the shutters. She leaned over, muttering softly in that strange language I still couldn’t parse.
Then she lifted her finger.
Snap.
A tiny flame flickered to life at her fingertip. Just like that, the candle beside us caught fire, filling the room with golden light.
My eyes went wide. My tiny baby arms flailed like windmills.
It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t technology. It was—
Magic.
My excitement made Selene laugh, a sound so tender it nearly broke me.
She kissed my forehead, whispering something in that gentle, incomprehensible tongue. Her eyes softened, melting like the wax dripping down the candle.
For the first time in two lives, I wasn’t pretending to smile. I was genuinely smiling.
And Selene saw it.
That was the night my mother’s heart fully claimed me as hers.