The void was not empty.It was a formless, senseless soup of potential. Then, with a violent and shocking suddenness, it was everything. Sensation returned not as a gentle dawn but as a supernova of input, blinding, deafening, and terrifying.
Pressure. An immense, crushing pressure all around him, squeezing him, forcing him through a narrow, agonizing passage.Cold. A shocking, brutal cold that assaulted his naked skin, so different from the warm bed he had just occupied.Light. A blurred, dizzying smear of brightness and shadow without form or meaning.Sound. A roaring in his ears, muffled and distorted, out of which a voice, high and strained, began to emerge.
"...there now, my love, my little one, hush... oh, he's here, he's here... such a strong cry..."
The words were English, but they seemed to come from a great distance, filtered through water. He tried to orient himself, to understand, but his body was not his own. It was a tiny, writhing, helpless thing, and it was screaming. A raw, ragged, instinctual wail of protest was ripped from his own lungs. The sound was alien, pathetic, and it was his.
No. This is a dream. A hallucination. The final, chaotic firing of a dying brain. This is not real.
But the sensations were too visceral, too relentless. The cold air on his damp skin was real. The rough texture of the cloth he was being wrapped in was real. The overwhelming, primal scent of milk and blood and female sweat was real. He was being lifted, his world tilting on a nauseating axis. He was pressed against something soft and warm, a steady thump-thump-thump vibrating through his fragile skull. A heartbeat. A mother's heartbeat.
Mother? His mother was Clara. She had been kind, her hands worn from needlework. She had died of a wasting fever when he was fifteen. He remembered the stillness of her face in the coffin, the scent of lilies in the parlor. This voice, this heartbeat, belonged to a young woman.
Panic, pure and undiluted, flooded his system. This was not a dream. The clarity of his thoughts was too sharp, too lucid. He could remember the scent of ink in his shop. He could remember the curve of Elara's neck as she bent over her drawing. He could remember the white-hot pain of his death. And he could feel the utter, absolute helplessness of this infant body.
He tried to form a word. "Elara." What emerged was a choked gurgle, a mewling sound that was swallowed by another involuntary, shuddering cry. His new lungs, these tiny, inefficient bellows, burned with the effort. His limbs, these uncoordinated appendages, flailed without purpose.
The woman, Clara, his mother, held him closer, her murmurs a constant stream of nonsense and comfort. "Hush, my angel. The world is a cold, bright place, isn't it? But you are safe. You are loved."
The love in her voice was a tangible thing, a warm blanket thrown over the ice of his terror. His infant body, starved for comfort, began to respond to it, the wails subsiding into hiccupping sobs. But his mind, the mind of Lysander the man, recoiled in horror. This was a violation. This was a prison. He was trapped in the most fundamental cage imaginable, his own past self.
The days that followed were a masterclass in humiliation. He was a passenger in a vessel he could not steer. His needs were reduced to their most basic: the gnawing ache of hunger, the discomfort of soiled linens, the desperate need for sleep. He was picked up, put down, fed, and cleaned according to a schedule he did not control. The proud owner of The Quill & Compass, the lover of Elara, was now a thing of flesh and instinct.
He learned the rhythms of this new, old world. The small, timber-framed room with its single hearth. The constant chill of the 1701 winter, the Great Frost, he remembered it being called. His father, Edmund, was a broad-shouldered, kind-faced man whose hands were calloused from his work in the leather trade. He would come home in the evenings, smelling of tannin and the cold, and would hold him up with a look of bewildered pride.
"He has your eyes, Clara," Edmund would say, his voice a low rumble.
"But that frown is all you, my dear," Clara would reply, her smile evident in her voice. "He looks as if he's pondering the weight of the world."
If only they knew. He was pondering the weight of the world, the weight of a world he had already lived in. He spent his waking hours mapping the room, memorizing the patterns of light and shadow that moved across the ceiling, studying the faces of his parents with an intensity that was far beyond a newborn's gaze. He was gathering data, trying to find a crack in this nightmare, a way to prove to himself that he was still Lysander.
Sleep was his only reprieve, but it was a treacherous escape. He dreamed of his shop. He dreamed of the weight of a book in his hand. Most vividly, he dreamed of Elara. He dreamed of the sound of her laughter, the intelligent spark in her eyes, the feel of her hand in his. He would wake from these dreams crying, the infant's body expressing the man's profound, soul-crushing grief. Clara would be there instantly, her presence a comfort that could never truly reach the part of him that was broken.
This was not a second chance. It felt like a cruel, cosmic joke. A punishment for the sin of having been too happy. To have touched the sun, only to be thrown back into the deepest, darkest well, with the knowledge that he had to climb out all over again. The sheer, monotonous stretch of time that lay before him, the years of helpless childhood, the awkwardness of adolescence, the slow, grinding journey back to adulthood, felt like a life sentence. He wasn't just living his life over; he was serving a prison term in the jail of his own youth.
A profound lethargy began to settle over him. What was the point? If this was to be his existence, a cycle of living and dying and returning to this helpless state, then resistance was futile. He ate when food was put in his mouth. He slept when exhaustion took him. He lay in his crib, his eyes open but unseeing, a tiny monument to despair. The vibrant, ambitious man was being buried alive under the suffocating weight of inevitability.