Time passed.
Again.
Bruce was fairly sure of that part.
The rest was… fuzzy.
Days slid into each other like water over stones. As a baby there wasn't much to do, which was honestly a new and deeply offensive experience for someone who had once believed productivity was a moral virtue. In his old life, standing still for too long meant you were wasting time. Here, standing still was the entire job description.
Some mornings he woke up warm and safe and immediately knew—without looking, without checking—that something terrible had happened in his scratchy little wool pants.
That was always how it started.
He would lie there for a second, frozen in shame, staring up at the ceiling beams, hoping—stupidly—that maybe this time it would fix itself.
It never did.
So eventually he had to do the unthinkable.
Make noise.
"W—eee…"
Then louder.
"WEEE—"
And finally, full surrender.
"WAAAH—"
His mother would appear instantly, concern replacing whatever she'd been doing, and Bruce would endure the humiliation of being cleaned like an object that had failed at its one assigned task.
Every. Single. Time.
This was, without question, the lowest point of his reincarnated existence.
Other mornings he woke up because the rooster decided the universe required announcing.
"COCK-A-DOODLE—"
"WOOO!"
Bruce snapped awake, furious, tiny fists clenching as he pointed at the sound with righteous anger.
That thing.
That thing was a menace.
He would glare in the general direction of the door, vibrating with baby rage, and make accusatory noises.
"Ng! Ng! WOO!"
His mother would shuffle over, hair messy, eyes half-dead with sleep, and murmur soothing nonsense in Norse. She would try to explain—patiently, lovingly—that this was morning, that this was normal, that the rooster was just being a rooster.
Bruce did not accept this explanation.
Some days he trained.
He practiced crawling—face down, butt up, dignity nonexistent. He attempted push-ups, which were really more like aggressive nodding. Sit-ups that turned into rolling. Standing attempts that ended immediately with gravity winning.
Each effort drained him completely.
He would collapse, panting, then black out into sleep like someone had unplugged him.
Other days he tried to use the Light.
That went worse.
He would focus. Concentrate on the second heartbeat. Push toward his hands the way he used to push through a heavy set.
Sometimes—sometimes—he thought he saw it: a faint white glow, barely there, like light through fog.
Then came the exhaustion.
Total, catastrophic exhaustion.
The kind that shut him down so completely he didn't even get to be angry about it before sleep took him.
So eventually he decided to take days off.
Rest days.
Recovery days.
He would lie there and watch the chickens.
That was when he had his first truly brilliant idea in this new life.
The rooster was terrifyingly efficient.
Bugs didn't stand a chance. Silverfish, beetles, worms—things Bruce didn't even want to identify—vanished under sharp beaks and relentless pecking.
The hens weren't much better.
They were machines.
Relentless, methodical, merciless.
Bruce watched them work for hours.
And enlightenment struck.
Mr. Terminator, he decided solemnly, referring to the rooster.
The hens, clearly, were the T-100 series.
Advanced models.
Perfect pest exterminators.
Yes.
That was absolutely what was happening.
As the weather shifted, he noticed changes.
When he'd been born, it had been snowing—real snow, cold and dangerous, the kind that sounded like sand against the roof. But it hadn't lasted. It melted into mud, then snow, then rain and mud again and again, then more rain, then the world changed into a gray misery that soaked everything without snow at all.
Then, slowly, warmth had returned.
And now sunlight lingered longer. The mud dried. Leaves thickened. The world outside the door turned green again, a lasting green.
Bruce—history nerd even as a baby—found this fascinating.
Snow → rain → mud → green.
It reminded him… uncomfortably… of England. A wet place that pretended it didn't know what the sun was.
Except earlier—before birth—he remembered hearing that weird bearded version of English. Not modern. Not clean. Old words with too many extra letters, like the language had arthritis.
Old England?
But his mother spoke Norse.
Actual Norse.
Which made his brain itch, because she didn't look like the Viking stereotypes he knew from movies. She looked unique. She looked—annoyingly—almost exactly like Frank's wife Sarah, at least in that haunting way your mind recognizes shapes of comfort.
Bruce didn't know what it meant.
He only knew he was learning.
Faster than he thought possible.
One day, while his mother was outside working in the garden, he did something new.
He climbed out of bed.
Not gracefully. Not heroically.
But successfully.
He crawled across the floorboards, hauled himself up using the doorframe, and did the hardest thing he'd done since being born.
He spoke.
"L… Lily."
The sound came out broken. Half-formed. Wrong. But it was a word.
Outside, everything stopped.
His mother turned around so fast she nearly dropped what she was holding. Her face lit up like he'd just solved world hunger.
She rushed to him, laughing and crying at the same time, scooped him up, and showered him with praise like he'd personally defeated winter.
But then—gently, patiently—she corrected him.
"Mama," she said, pointing to herself. "Mama."
Bruce froze.
Mama.
That word made sense instantly. Something old and primal in his brain clicked into place.
"M… ma."
Her joy was immediate and overwhelming.
Bruce felt something twist inside his chest.
This—this—was new.
In his old life, he'd done big things, or well he atleast thought they were big things. Dangerous things. He'd saved people. He'd bled. He'd died.
And most of the time, nobody had cared to even thank him.
Now, he said one word—barely a word—and it was like he'd performed a miracle.
From there, it snowballed.
His mother pointed at things. The rooster. The hens. Plants. Trees. Sky. House.
Each time she said a word in Norse.
Each time Bruce tried to copy it.
Each time he succeeded—even a little—she beamed like he'd personally reinvented language.
He learned Norse.
Actual Norse.
Slowly. Clumsily. One word at a time.
And every word earned him praise.
Real praise.
Not "good job, now move."
Not silence.
Not punishment.
Praise.
It was heartwarming.
And unsettling.
Outside, the world was… beautiful.
Two wooden steps led from their door into what could only be described as a backyard the size of a kingdom.
The garden was growing—strawberries, peas, cabbage, some kind of grain, and berries Bruce didn't know the names of. His mother tended it carefully, spacing plants, humming as she worked.
Beyond the garden was the forest.
Real forest.
Thirty meters away, mushrooms grew in clusters. Trees stretched endlessly in every direction. No roads. No people. No noise beyond birds, wind, and water.
And behind the cottage—
the lake.
Clear. Calm. Alive.
Lily pads floated on the surface. Frogs sat on them, croaking proudly. Small fish darted through the water. His mother's stone fish trap worked beautifully—stones in a circle, a quick hand, and suddenly dinner existed.
Bruce watched it all from her arms, heart racing with excitement.
This was… cool.
Really cool.
In his old life, he'd planted flowers on his apartment porch. He'd done guerrilla planting in forgotten patches of forest. He'd donated money to reforestation projects in Greenland and Iceland, dreaming about turning ice into green again.
Now?
All of this was theirs.
The forest. The garden. The lake.
A backyard that never ended.
He could build things here. A little wooden fort. A treehouse. A whole tiny kingdom if he wanted.
The possibilities felt endless.
The weather was warming.
And maybe—just maybe—
this new life didn't have to suck after all.
However, even as the possibilities of what he might one day build in this world filled Bruce's thoughts—treehouses, fences, gardens that actually made sense—he could not stop worrying about his mother.
She looked thin.
Too thin.
Her skin was pale more often than not, and sometimes she coughed—dry, sharp little coughs she tried to hide by turning her head away. She worked from dawn until exhaustion forced her to stop, and then she worked some more. There was no such thing as recovery here. Only survival, repeated every day.
At night, Bruce tried to help in the only way he could.
He focused inward, the way he had learned to do, on the second heartbeat inside him—the core of light. He imagined it the way he imagined muscles once: something you flexed, not violently, but steadily. And when he pushed, he felt it move—waves like the sea rolling outward through his body, down pale, light-colored veins that did not exist to normal eyes, through his hands, and out into his mother.
It always exhausted him.
But it worked.
He could feel it immediately—her breathing easing, her chest loosening, the tension in her muscles softening just enough for real sleep to come. At night she slept deeply, holding Bruce close like a small pillow made of warmth and softness. He noticed—vaguely—that his own body seemed warmer than it should have been, like a tiny heater pressed against her.
Those nights were good.
But the days were merciless.
Each morning she rose tired again, because she never truly recovered. She gathered food for herself, for the chickens, and for Bruce. She breastfed him often, because he was hungry often, and Bruce—much to his ongoing embarrassment—had to admit that the warm milk was… actually nice. It didn't taste bad. It didn't upset his stomach. His body clearly approved of it, regardless of what his dignity thought.
Each day Bruce tried to help.
He crawled around the cottage, smacking at chicken droppings with cloths, pushing them toward the door. He spent time in the garden with her, tugging plants apart where they grew too close together, patting soil, pointing—quite aggressively—at insects so the chickens would understand that those were the enemy and needed to be pecked into nonexistence.
The chickens understood perfectly.
His mother noticed too.
She smiled at him often, calling him blessed in her language, though Bruce could tell she wasn't sure that was the right word. She didn't understand what he was doing. She didn't understand how he was doing it. And Bruce had absolutely no way, in ancient Norse, to explain: Mother, I am a reincarnated two-meter-tall man from the future and I have a magic light-heart.
So he just smiled back and kept helping.
---
Then one day, everything changed.
Bruce was sitting in the garden when it happened—propped awkwardly on a patch of packed earth while his mother worked a few steps away, hands dark with soil, hair tied back against the sun. The cottage loomed behind them, its crooked plank walls breathing softly as the wind moved through the gaps. Beyond the garden, the forest stood dense and green, a wall of trunks and shadow.
The chickens froze.
That was the first sign.
Not a cluck. Not a shuffle. Not even the rooster's usual offended mutter. They simply stopped—heads snapping up in unison, bodies stiff, eyes fixed on the treeline like soldiers who'd heard a sound they didn't like.
Bruce felt it a heartbeat later.
Heavy steps.
Not careless ones. Not the light scuttle of deer or fox. These were deliberate—weighty, paced, accompanied by ragged breathing. Something large was moving through the forest, pushing branches aside rather than slipping between them.
He and his mother froze together.
From between the trees, a shadow moved.
Not fast.
Not sneaking.
It pushed its way forward, branches bending, leaves tearing, the forest itself giving ground as if something too large to belong there was forcing its way through.
Bruce felt it before he understood it.
The ground didn't shake—but it might as well have. Each step landed with weight, with purpose, with the certainty of something that did not need to be careful. To Bruce, sitting low in the dirt with only his unsteady balance and a ring of stupid chickens for protection, it felt like the approach of a storm that had decided to walk.
The chickens froze.
Not a single cluck.
Not a wing-shuffle.
The rooster—normally loud, arrogant, convinced of his authority—fell silent, neck stretched, beak slightly open like he'd forgotten how to make noise. The hens huddled together instinctively, small bodies pressed close, eyes fixed on the treeline.
Bruce felt his mother go still.
Her breath caught.
Her hands—so often busy, so often strong through necessity—went empty at her sides.
Then the thing stepped out of the forest.
A green shape first.
Then shoulders.
Then size.
A man.
But to Bruce's eyes, that word didn't fit.
This was something huge.
Tall. Broad. Wrapped in a hunter's cloak the color of moss and wet pine needles, the fabric stretched across a frame that looked like it could snap trees if it leaned the wrong way. The hood shadowed his face, turning him into a faceless mass for a heartbeat too long. A quiver of arrows rose over one shoulder like the spines of some predatory animal; a long knife hung at his side, dark and solid and real.
Over his back he carried a great sack, bulging and heavy, sagging with weight as if he'd scooped up half the forest and decided it belonged to him now.
His breathing was loud.
Not the ragged breath of weakness.
The breath of effort.
The breath of something that had walked far, fast, and without fear.
Bruce's mind scrambled for comparisons.
A bear.
A giant.
A really buff looking Medieval bandit.
Something that, if it decided to step on him, wouldn't even notice the resistance.
Mother took a step back.
Just one.
Her hand flew to her mouth, fingers trembling as if she were trying to keep her heart from escaping. She looked very small all of a sudden—petite, thin, tired, barely strong enough to carry a half-full bucket of water on a good day.
Bruce understood something then with sudden, terrible clarity:
If this thing meant harm, there was nothing between it and them.
No walls.
No guards.
No weapons.
Just a woman.
A toddler.
Seven hens.
And a rooster who had forgotten how to be brave.
Bruce's body reacted before thought could catch up.
He pissed himself.
The warmth spread, humiliating and useless, and he hated it—but fear didn't care about dignity.
The man stopped.
Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his head.
The hood shifted just enough.
Blue eyes met violet eyes.
The moment stretched—tight, silent, balanced on a knife's edge.
Then—
a smirk spread across his face.
Slow.
Knowing.
Unmistakably pleased.
"Well," he said, voice low and familiar, words dressed in that old-beard English Bruce still couldn't quite parse. "Long time no see, fair one."