Bruce thought it was ridiculous—every last part of it.
A baby Godling, half-thunder and half-nap-time whisper, had handed him a mission like a crown and expected him to wear it. Unite humanity. Grow fast. Be kind, but also hurry. As if the universe had looked at Bruce Redford—New York's biggest, ugliest baby mistake with the stutter and the lisp—and said, Yes. That one. He's our chosen hero.
He almost laughed.
Almost.
If he had a mouth.
If he had lungs.
If he had anything resembling dignity in this new half-built body.
Because what could anyone expect from him? He wasn't clever. He wasn't talented. He'd never been good at school, never been good at games, never been good at anything that won applause. Strength had been his only clear contribution—and even that had come with a price.
He'd been born too big, too early, too wrong for a mother's body. The first wound he'd ever caused had been caused just by existing. After that, life in New York had done what New York did: it had chewed him, laughed at him, and told him he was lucky anyone bothered to spit him back out.
Teachers had heard the stutter and the lisp and decided it was easier not to care. Kids had looked at his egg-shaped head and his too-large frame and smelled weakness under the muscles, then pushed until something broke. He'd learned a brutal rule young:
People help beautiful things.
People protect things they're drawn to.
People look away from what makes them uncomfortable.
And Bruce… Bruce had never been anyone's beautiful thing.
So he had found his heroes in trash cans.
Comic books with torn covers. Pages stained with rainwater and soda and old grease. He'd read them like scripture anyway, wide-eyed and hungry. Men who caught bullets. Women who ran up walls. Capes. Masks. Hope. The whole ridiculous lie that a good heart mattered more than how you looked.
He hadn't wanted to be famous.
He hadn't wanted to be rich.
He'd wanted—more than anything—to be useful.
To make someone smile and mean it.
To do one thing that made the world unclench.
But he couldn't even do that right, not alone.
Everything that had ever made his life bearable had arrived wearing Frank Armstrong's face.
Frank had stepped out of the worst night of Bruce's childhood like a hand reaching into a river. Frank had dragged him out. Frank's parents had fed him, housed him, laughed with him. Frank had pushed him through school when he would've drowned. Frank had remembered his birthday when no one else did. Frank had been his anchor in every storm.
And now Frank was not here with him anymore, because Bruce had tried to be a hero.
That truth sat inside him like a stone.
Now the anchor was gone.
And the Godling wanted him to steer a ship.
Bruce felt the sheer absurdity of it all like pressure in his chest.
Strength had been his one reliable tool. Not brains. Not charm. Not talent. Strength—and kindness, which honestly felt like a defect half the time, because he couldn't switch it off. He'd stop for a snail in the road. He'd pick it up and carry it to safety while other people laughed and honked and called him stupid.
He wasn't built to be unkind.
The idea of hurting anyone had always hurt him.
So what did a baby God expect him to do?
Save humanity with gentle feelings?
Negotiate with monsters using bunny stickers?
Bruce drifted in warm dark and let the thought hang there.
Then he made a decision so simple it almost felt embarrassing.
If he didn't know how to be worthy—
he would do the one thing he had always known how to do.
He would train.
Not because training solved everything.
Not because muscles made him smarter.
But because effort was the closest thing Bruce had ever had to faith.
Because when he lifted something heavy, the world made sense for a moment: push, strain, breathe, endure. No riddles. No politics. No cruelty hiding behind smiles. Just a problem you could face and a body that could answer.
So he stopped whining.
And started working.
He wasn't even fully shaped yet—stubby limbs, soft ribs, everything under construction—but he still tried.
He "ran" through the warm water of his mother's body, driving ghost-steps against nothing. He attempted floating baby jumping jacks—an absurd little fluttering routine that would've looked like a dying tadpole if anyone could see him.
He tried to grit his teeth like he did at the gym on a heavy set—
but he had no teeth.
So he made a stubborn fetal pout instead and pushed harder.
Fine, he thought. Fine. If the world wants me to do something impossible, then I'll do what I've always done. I'll get strong. I'll get disciplined. I'll get… something.
This time there would be no room for softness, he told himself.
No place for weakness.
Only steady people made big changes. Only people who didn't quit.
So he would try to be steady.
And maybe—somehow—become a little smart too.
As if the universe were listening, something answered.
A pulse moved through his center.
Not the wet drum of his flesh-heart—
something else.
The light-heart.
It brightened.
Not like a lamp turning on.
Like a little sun waking behind bone and not-yet-bone.
Bruce froze mid-kick, startled by the intimacy of it. The light listened to his will and shifted with it—gathering around a thought, holding at a breath, releasing at a decision. He could feel it learning him, like a muscle learning effort.
For the first time since he died, Bruce felt something that wasn't guilt.
Curiosity.
Wow, he thought, and tried again—carefully this time. Like touching a bruise.
He turned his wanting outward.
Toward the woman who carried him.
Toward Lili.
He couldn't speak. Couldn't reach. Couldn't promise out loud.
So he pushed the message into the light as hard as he could:
You're not alone.
I'm here—right here—okay?
Keep fighting.
The light responded instantly—warm and eager, sparkling like it was happy to be given a job. It ran along his forming veins beside the blood, quick as electricity, soft as sunlight. It rose from the quiet place inside his growing red heart and matched his defiance beat for beat:
Calling—answering—calling again.
When he focused, it tightened.
When he believed, it brightened.
It aligned with intent the way muscle aligned with effort.
Bruce felt his whole tiny world change.
Nothing outside the womb flinched—not yet.
No thunder. No miracle visible to anyone else.
But inside Bruce… everything shifted.
He flexed again, slowly, experimentally, and the light flexed with him.
He wasn't a wizard.
He wasn't a warrior.
He was a half-built baby in a dark warm sea—
and he could still do something.
A laugh bubbled up in him, silent and amazed.
I'm… I'm a magic baby in training.
And maybe—just maybe—he could protect someone again.
Maybe—just maybe—he could help his mother like this. Be useful to her. The thought felt almost shy, like asking permission from the universe. Bruce gathered himself around the quiet center where the light lived—the core the Godling had placed inside him, his soul or whatever name fit a thing that felt both borrowed and earned. He focused, the way Frank had taught him to focus before a lift: breathe, brace, commit.
And he pushed.
Not force. Not fire. Just a small wave of clean, white warmth—pure intention—flowing outward through his forming body and along the thin, living cord that tied him to her. A wordless hug. A you've got this sent the only way he knew how.
Lili, unaware of the quiet weather building in her womb, sat on the edge of the bed and ate in solemn sadness from the tray the maids had left. Meat and eggs, a handful of greens, a wooden mug of milk—she ignored the ale most here drank. Tears slid from eyes too bright for Albion—violet, unheard of in these parts—while her long platinum hair fell forward, the ends brushing the rim of the cup she barely sipped.
Her thoughts were a churned sea.
To save her tribe, she had offered herself as the price of peace. Her father had bargained and reasoned—why sail so far to the Northern Wildlands to trouble a people with nothing to steal, no stone towns to sack, only reindeer and stubborn pride? The Duke had listened with that maddening calm and sailed away with Lili on his deck. He wanted a northern wife, he had said—blood that might bear him an heir with deep ocean coloured eyes, or rarer eyes still. To avert worse, she had gone.
They had returned to this southern island and its blue-roofed banners. By now her people would have moved camp; they would be safe. She had only to make herself safe—leave this place, carry the child inside her back to the tribe, and be free of the smiling certainty of a man who thought the world bent because he wished it to.
She pictured that smile—the confident, winning line of it—and felt heat climb her face. She hated the blush. Stop it, Lili; he's a big, mean fool of a man. Yet when she remembered the gentleness of his large hands, the way his voice softened when he forgot to be Duke, her treacherous cheeks warmed again, and anger followed hard on its heels. Roar or weep? She couldn't decide. He had a wife already. He wanted to set Lili beside the first as if a crest entitled him to a second life.
No.
She would not be a man's side-story to satisfy a fancy for a particular heir. And anyway—she pressed a palm to her flat belly—she was certain the child was a girl. Or perhaps she only wanted it so, to laugh in his stupidly handsome face when the time came.
She bit a strip of bacon with more fury than hunger, chased it with a swallow of milk—and froze.
From low in her middle, warmth rose. Soft at first, then certain. It spread through ribs and throat and face, a steadying tide that made her set the cup down and breathe.
At the same time, Bruce felt it plainly—the light inside him answering. If he focused, it moved the way a muscle obeys a thought. He pushed a little more warmth outward along the cord—nothing fancy, just encouragement, the sort Frank used to give with a clap on the shoulder.
His world stayed the same: water-hush, slow sway, the thrum of two heartbeats—hers a steady drum, his a smaller echo nested inside it. But he could sense her mood shift: breath easing, pulse smoothing.
Good, he thought. Encouraging works.
Lili's tears ebbed; her thoughts cleared like a pond when wind dies. She wiped her cheeks, pressed her palm to her belly, and whispered—hopeful and baffled, as if embarrassed by the hope itself—"Baby… was that you? Are you comforting Mamma?"
Bruce sent another gentle glow.
At that exact moment, a breeze nosed through the slightly open shutter and lifted Lili's hair.
"Oh," she breathed, eyes widening—as if the night itself had nodded. An idea clicked into place. "Right."
Wait, Bruce thought. Not a sign-sign. Just… morale.
She slid the tray aside and crossed to the great oak chest and hanging press. Inside were no silks, no foreign sheen—this was Albion. There were good wools and linens, fine by local measure, dyed in sober colors; a few simple pieces of jewelry—a bronze brooch chased with a lion's head, a string of blue glass beads, a narrow silver torque. Small treasures. To put them on would be to say yes.
Her hand hovered over the brooch, traitorously delighted at the thought of being beautiful. She snatched it back as if from a hot stove.
"No," she told the box. "Not tonight. Not for him."
(She's refusing jewelry? Bruce marveled, catching only the tiny clink of a lid closing. Is that… good? Bad? He listened harder. Her heart raced with fear, then steadied with resolve. He decided that meant good.)
She dressed for shadow, not ceremony: a plain dark wool gown; a deep hooded cloak that swallowed moonlight; a white linen veil to hide the platinum blaze of her hair should the hood slip. Fingerless mitts went into a hidden pocket; soft-soled slippers for silence. She thumbed soot from the hearth and streaked it along cheekbones and brows—war paint in a land that didn't know the word. A narrow leather belt drew tight around a slim waist, the line of it revealing the hourglass truth her loose garments often concealed.
(Clothes? Rustle rustle. Belt tug… Bruce pictured armor buckles and nodded gravely, very much the tactical fetus.)
From the supper tray she took the small knife, looped it to the belt with a twist of linen, and hid it beneath the cloak. She left the jewelry behind—a victory that tasted like defeat and resolve at once.
No maids would come; she'd sent them away. At first light they would fetch the tray. By then she meant to be a rumor on the road.
She dragged a stool to the narrow window. On tiptoes, her fingertips kissed stone; she hooked them over, pulled, and eased the shutter wider. Moonlight washed her face; salt and cool slid in over her skin.
Outside, the world stacked itself in terraces of shadow and silver. Below lay the inner courtyard, pooled dark between torch-islands; the gatehouse clamped shut but yawning toward dawn. Three wagons stood in a row—refuse and broken gear to trundle out at first light, the sort men hate re-stacking, which is why it rarely gets checked on the way out. On the walls, blue-tabarded figures made their rounds—lanterns bobbing, spears ticking merlon by merlon. Beyond the castle: the town, roofs painted Lionheart blue, lanes chalk-pale under the moon. Farther still: the stone bridge, a gray stitch over black water to the mainland, where the forest lay like a sleeping beast.
Also, a long way down.
Lili's stomach turned at the drop. Twenty-odd meters of stone, a courtyard, and a plan stitched mostly from nerve. Her breath hitched.
Sensing her falter, Bruce offered another warm push—the same simple encouragement as before.
The breeze nudged her cheek again.
"Right," she whispered, half-laughing at her own madness, half-praying. "Another sign."
(Not a sign! Bruce protested, scandalized. Coincidence. Motivational coincidence!)
But her heartbeat steadied. Her hands grew precise. Courage—gods or no—did its work.
She set her palm to her belly. "Okay, little one. You're right. Let's do this—for freedom."
Inside, Bruce glowed with pride. Inspiration: achieved. He had no idea what she was doing exactly—he could guess wagons from the creak and the snort of sleepy draught-horses; he could feel watch-steps, catch the gate captain's mutter—but the map was fog and his mother's feelings were his only compass.
Happy. Determined. Heart like a drum.
That sounded like victory.
(Probably not window-related, he reassured himself, and sent one last encouraging hum.)