Consciousness returned like a drowning man breaking the surface—except Noah had already drowned.
He remembered the truck's grille, the bone-splintering impact, the moment his body ceased to be a vessel and became a scattered collection of parts. He remembered Haruto's smile, the violet sigil glowing on his palm, the way the world had gone white-hot with pain, then black with nothing.
Then this: an endless Void.
Not darkness. Darkness had texture, weight, the memory of light. This was absence. No up, no down, no self—only a disembodied awareness floating in a sea of null. He tried to scream, but he had no lungs. Tried to move, but he had no limbs. He was a thought without a thinker, a memory stripped of its meat.
I'm dead, he realized. This is what comes after.
The thought should have brought peace or terror. Instead, it brought only confusion. Why can I still think? Why do I remember?
He tried to process the cascade of impossibilities: the throne room, the massacre, his mother's haunted face, Haruto's betrayal. The pieces refused to align. They spun in his mind like shrapnel, cutting deeper with each pass. Who was that man? Why did Haruto have his smile? Why kill me?
The Void offered no answers. It simply waited.
Then, without warning, it pulled.
It was like being sucked through a keyhole by a hurricane. His consciousness—if it could be called that—stretched, compressed, twisted into shapes that had no name. He felt heat, then cold, then a sensation so alien it took him several panicked heartbeats to identify it:
Weight.
He had a body again.
But it was wrong. So terribly, fundamentally wrong.
His limbs wouldn't obey. His neck lolled. His vision was blurred, watery, dominated by a pair of giant, swaying shapes that slowly resolved into wooden bars. He was confined, pressed against soft fabric, his fingers—so small, impossibly small—clenching reflexively.
A baby's cry escaped his throat. He hadn't meant to make it, but it came anyway, high and warbling and utterly foreign.
I'm a baby.
The realization hit like a second death. He tried to lift his head; his muscles trembled and failed. He tried to speak; only gurgles emerged. His own body was a prison, an alien machine running on instinct he couldn't control.
What is this? Where am I?
The room beyond the crib bars came into sluggish focus.
It was not a hospital. Not a modern nursery. This was a chamber, heavy with the weight of age and intention. The walls were paneled in dark mahogany, the wood so old it had developed a deep crimson patina, like dried blood polished to a shine. Shelves lined every available space, groaning under leather-bound tomes with titles embossed in a script he couldn't read—angular, aggressive, alive somehow.
A chandelier of black iron hung from the ceiling, its candles unlit but waxy with recent use. The curtains, drawn against what seemed to be late afternoon light, were thick velvet, dyed a deep purple so dark it was almost black. They were tasseled with silver threads that caught the dimness like spider silk.
On a nearby table, a phonograph sat silent, its brass horn aimed toward the crib like a listening ear. Beside it, a globe—not of Earth, but of a world with three continents shaped like screaming faces, their oceans inked in crimson.
The air smelled of old paper, lavender, and underneath it, something metallic and sweet. The scent of the throne room. The scent of blood.
Panic flared, infantile and overwhelming. He wanted to thrash, to scream, to run, but his body only managed a weak flail and a hiccupping sob. Tears—his tears—trickled down chubby cheeks he didn't recognize.
Why? Why am I here? Is this punishment? Is this hell?
The questions spun uselessly. He was trapped in a body that couldn't comprehend them, in a world that felt like a museum for a centuries-old serial killer with a taste for the Gothic.
He thought of his mother, Sophia, her worried face this morning. Don't go to school. Had she known? Had she seen something? The shadow in the window, the faint scent of burning—had she been trying to protect him from this?
And Haruto. Haruto. The boy who'd taught him how to survive bullies, who'd walked him home during thunderstorms, who'd shared his lunch when Noah forgot his. That same face, that same voice, had pushed him into death with a smile and a promise.
I told you I was going to find you.
But who was he? The throne man? The sovereign? Some extension of a will that transcended worlds?
Noah's newborn heart hammered against his ribs. He could feel it—too fast, too fragile. This body could die from fear alone. He tried to force calm through the panic, but the infant brain had no concept of meditation. It only knew need. Fear. Want.
A sound sliced through his spiraling terror.
The softest click of a latch.
The door—heavy, oak, banded with iron—swung inward with agonizing slowness. A sliver of dim hallway light cut across the room. Noah couldn't turn his head, could only stare straight up at the ceiling's plasterwork, where a mural depicted a night sky with stars that formed a spiral, converging on a central eye.
Footsteps. Light. Deliberate.
Someone approached the crib.
Noah's breath caught in his tiny throat. He tried to cry out, to warn, to plead, but all that emerged was a helpless whimper.
A shadow fell over him. In the periphery of his vision, he saw a hand—slender, pale, with nails painted black—reach down toward him.
The fingers stopped an inch from his face.
A voice, female and soft as graveyard dirt, whispered:
"Welcome, my little baby boy."
_______