The book lay on the carpet like a fallen leaf from a tree I couldn't see. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drum counting down the seconds before the maid might turn, before someone might enter. The risk was a live wire in the quiet room.
I take a full breath. Let's concentrate.
This was it. The first true act of defiance, of agency, in this new life. Not just internal exercise, but an operation. I had never walked, never truly crawled with purpose in this body. My training had been static, in place. Now, I had to translate strength into motion.
Pushing up from the mattress, I planted my feet. They wobbled, but held. I stood up slowly. Surprisingly my legs were able to hold my weight. A fierce, silent pride surged through me. Yes, these are the results of my training! My quadriceps, hardened by thousands of tiny leg lifts, trembled but locked. I was standing, peering over the ornate railing of my gilded cage.
The floor looked impossibly distant, a cliff of woven wool. But jumping down will hurt this body. I need to be careful. A fall could mean a broken bone, a cry that would bring attention, an end to my secret preparations. I had to be a climber, not a jumper.
My small hands, stronger than they looked, gripped the top rail. I hooked a leg over, my body twisting awkwardly. It was an ungainly, precarious maneuver. For a terrifying second, I was straddling the rail, half in the crib, half in the open air. I shifted my weight, committing. I slowly grabbed the edge with my hands and slowly put my legs on the ground.
I hung for a moment by my fingers, then let go.
The drop was shorter than it looked, but the impact was a jarring shock that traveled up my spine. Even though it was a soft landing it still hurt… A sharp ache bloomed in my ankles. I bit down on the inside of my cheek to stifle a yelp, collapsing into a heap on the luxurious, absorbing carpet.
I lay still for a count of three, listening. Only the soft, even breathing of the maid by the door. She hadn't stirred.
Gritting my mental teeth, I pushed onto my hands and knees. The crawling was clumsy, my limbs still learning coordinated movement, but it was effective. I scuttled the few feet across the carpet, my eyes locked on the dark leather spine.
My fingers closed around the book. It felt real, solid, cool. I dragged it back toward the shadow of the crib, out of the direct line of sight from the door. Sitting with my back against the wooden side, I opened it.
The pages were thick, creamy parchment. The script was elegant, flowing, and completely alien. But it was organized. Charts. Paired symbols. Pictures of simple objects—a sun, a cup, a hand—next to the strange script. It was this planet's language.
It was a primer. A child's first reader. Or an adult's guide to a foreign tongue.
I am finally learning this planet's language. The relief was so profound it felt like a physical warmth. A door in a blank wall had just been cracked open.
I began to devour it. I turned the heavy pages carefully, my eyes scanning the graceful, unfamiliar characters. I focused, forcing connections. This looping symbol matched the drawing of the tree. This sharp angular cluster was paired with a verb for 'to run.' I worked silently, furiously.
And then I noticed something extraordinary. I started seeing the words. I turned the page and remembered every single content of it. I didn't just understand it; it was etching itself into my mind with perfect, instantaneous clarity. The position of a word on the page, the slight ink smudge on the corner, the grain of the parchment—it all imprinted itself. My brain was so powerful that it remembered exactly what was written there.
I closed my eyes. The page reappeared in my mind's eye, flawless. I could read it from memory.
Is this a photographic memory? The thought was dizzying. I wish I had this in my university; shit should have been so easier. All those nights of cramming code, of memorizing dialogue, of struggling with concepts—gone, replaced by this effortless, total recall. This brain is exceptional! Another facet of this noble body's "high quality." It wasn't just physical; it was cognitive. A tool for survival. I am in a noble family after all.
The elation was instantly shadowed by cold suspicion. Wait… this is suspicious. Who dropped this? I looked up again, scanning the empty air, the high ceiling. There are no signs of the system… The blue screen had been impersonal, administrative. This felt… targeted. A gift placed directly in my path the moment I articulated the need for it. Was I being guided? Or groomed? What is this?
A sound—the soft scuff of a slipper on stone from the hallway. Time was up.
I had a split second to decide. Taking the book back into the crib was impossible; it was too large to hide. My only play was misdirection. I let the book fall from my hands. Then, I screwed up my face and let out a sharp, genuine cry of frustration and fear—the cry of a baby who had somehow tumbled out and was startled and alone.
Soon after the maid entered.
She gasped, a rare break in her impassivity. She hurried over, her face a mask of concern. She scooped me up, checking for injury, murmuring soothing, meaningless sounds. Her eyes flicked to the book on the floor. She paused, a flicker of confusion crossing her features. Where did it come from? But her primary duty was me. She picked me up, casting one last puzzled glance at the book, and placed me gently back in the crib. She did not retrieve it. Perhaps she assumed one of the golden-haired ones had left it and it was not her place to touch it.
As she fussed over me, I kept crying, the perfect picture of a frightened infant. As I closed my eyes I started to remember the words inside the book. The pages flashed behind my eyelids. The symbols, their meanings, their sounds—they were integrating, cross-referencing themselves in my formidable new mind.
Language acquired.
The crying subsided into hiccups, then silence. The maid resumed her post, throwing occasional wary looks at the mysterious book on the floor. It was retrieved an hour later by a different servant, who took it away without a word.
It didn't matter. I had it all. The key was now inside my head.
At least now I have many things to do.
The routine transformed. It was no longer a prison sentence; it was a boot camp. Training. Learning. Eating. Pooping. Sleeping. This is the only things I did. Every moment was allocated. During my physical sessions, I would recite vocabulary, conjugate verbs I'd inferred. While being fed or cleaned, I would listen intently to the maids' rare muttered words, matching them to the lexicon in my mind. The alien language, which had been a melodic fog, began to resolve into distinct shapes, into meaning. My strength soon started to grow stronger, and in tandem, my understanding of the world grew roots.
Day 300.
A mental audit. My mind's capacity is almost inhuman. The photographic memory was just the start. My speed of comprehension, my ability to deduce grammatical rules from fragments of overheard conversation, my capacity to hold and process multiple streams of information—it was like upgrading from a rusted bicycle to a quantum computer. I can just see a book and remember anytime, anywhere. This helps a lot.
It was the perfect espionage tool. I could study the text later, in the privacy of my mind, decoding reports on crop yields, or troop movements, or obscure rituals.
Now there are no suspicions that a child could read a book at such a young age. My learning was entirely internal, invisible. I remained a quiet, observant baby to them. If I was on earth I would be treated as a world-class genius. Well it doesn't matter now.
I understand 90 percent of it now. It just requires more time. I could follow conversations.
And that's when the unease, deeper than the initial fear, began to solidify.
I wonder why EVERYTHING is going smoothly.
The mysterious book had been a boon, not a curse. My training was progressing at a phenomenal rate. My mind was a vault of stolen knowledge. My body was growing strong and coordinated. I had suffered no illness, no accident. Father didn't visit me at all.
My father hasn't visited me in weeks.
Is this 'extreme nightmare'? The question echoed in the quiet of my mind. Compared to the bloody end on the mountain, this was a life of privileged, silent preparation. If so… this is quite easy.
A voice in my head, the voice that had lived a life of quiet disappointment, of last-minute betrayals, of buses that fell only when I was left inside, hissed a warning.
No, I cannot say just that… I don't know what will happen in the future.
Extreme Nightmare wouldn't be about the struggle of infancy. That was just the loading screen. The difficulty was in the world itself, in the rules I didn't yet understand, in the smile of the man who owned me. I was amassing tools—strength, knowledge—but for a game whose objective was still hidden. The true horror wasn't present hardship; it was the dread of the inevitable turn, the moment the gilded floor would drop out from under me, just like the bus.
I looked out the window at the impossible, beautiful spires under the twin moons. The silence of my nursery felt less like peace and more like the held breath before a storm.
Let's hope that the future goes well.
But hope, I had learned in two lives now, was not a strategy. It was the thing you clung to when all your preparations had failed. I would not rely on hope. I would train harder. I would listen more closely. I would memorize every word, every face, every shadow in this opulent hold.