The first thing he knew was pressure, crushing, wet, and absolute. Then light. White, jagged, hostile: a spike hammered through eyelids not yet made for it. He tried to move, but his arms jerked like puppet strings tangled in a typhoon. His lungs burned, then spasmed, and a sharp, helpless animal noise tore out of his mouth.
'Oh god, I'm alive? Why can't I move? Why am I screaming?'
The world thundered back at him, blurred and massive and impossibly close. Smells. Sweat, iron tang, the dark green note of wet grass, and under it all, the sick-sweet milk scent he associated, with the sudden clarity of a spreadsheet autofilling, babies.
A shape hovered above, all color and motion. Hair black as static clung to damp cheeks, framing a face carved by exhaustion but caught in this raw, triumphant disbelief. The woman's lips moved, syllables tumbling out that sounded like they shouldn't go together, but the melody behind them was unmistakable: relief, joy so sharp it bordered on panic.
He wailed harder. The sound shredded his throat, but he couldn't stop it. Another face loomed in from the side: heavier jaw, eyebrows like twin scars, eyes wide with ancient terror. The man was saying something too, but the words blurred into a background hum until a single phrase, sharp as a bell, cut through.
"Alistair," the man whispered, reverent. "Alistair, look at him, Eira, he's already got your scowl."
'Alistair? That's not… Wait. Wait, did I hear that right?'
The woman, Eira, apparently, pulled him close, skin hot and shivering. Warmth pooled around his face, stifled the noise for a second. Her voice, impossibly gentle now, ran over him in a musical hum. He felt himself bobbing slightly, a rhythm synced to her heartbeat, until the ache in his lungs gave way to a curious, floating numbness.
He tried to open his eyes, but everything stayed watery and distorted, like peering through an unskippable cutscene. Shapes moved beyond his field of vision, slow and deliberate.
The man's huge hands hovered, then awkwardly tucked a coarse, scratchy blanket around him, a gesture so clumsy and careful that Riku, if he'd had control of his face, would have snorted.
'Great. I got the tutorial parents. They'll probably die in the prologue.'
But they didn't seem to be going anywhere. The man, his father, he guessed, stood rooted, hands still trembling even as he tried to hide them at his sides.
Eira pressed her forehead to Riku's, her breath a wet exhale of exhaustion and stubborn pride. He could feel the tension ebb from her frame, could almost map the relief radiating out from her pulse.
Rain battered the roof above, thick and insistent. Riku tracked the drips as they raced down the window, the glass warped so badly he couldn't tell if it was day or night. Beyond the smear of condensation, he caught a flicker of green, then a rush of light: a candle flame guttering in a draft.
He blinked, and for one heart-stopping instant, the air above the flame rippled, not like heat, but with a shimmer of blue-white static, like the afterimage of a dead television pixel. It vanished when he blinked again.
'Weird. Did I just… see that? Or is my brain still booting?'
He squinted, but his vision was already going fuzzy at the edges. He heard Eira's voice again, softer now, whispering words he didn't understand but felt like they belonged to him. Her hands cradled the back of his head, the pressure just shy of too much, her thumb tracing something across his temple.
From the corner of his new eye, he caught the man's hand squeezing Eira's shoulder. For a moment, the three of them just breathed together, the only sound the syncopated patter of rain and the unsteady rhythm of three hearts learning to share a beat.
He wanted to say something, anything, but all that came out was a hiccupping gurgle.
'Mortifying. I swear I wasn't this loud in my first life.'
A shift in the room. Someone else entered, their steps damp and tentative. Riku's nose filled with the tang of old wool and peat smoke.
A woman's voice, brittle but kind, murmured something as she set down a bundle on the table. The blanket slipped, and he caught the quick side-glance she gave him, wrinkles fanning from her eyes, mouth pinched as if she was fighting a smile.
'NPCs everywhere. Fantastic.'
He tried moving again, and this time his arm flailed free of the blanket. His hand, so small it looked fake even to him, brushed against Eira's jaw. Instead of jerking away, she laughed, the sound as surprised as it was delighted.
"Greedy little sprout," she crooned, and the words seeped into him like a spell.
The room was small, stone walls patched with wood, every surface cluttered with clay pots and stained mortar.
Riku took in the thick wooden beams bandaged by iron, the battered table scarred with knife marks and spilled candle wax, the single window fogged with breath and storm. There was a smell underneath everything, faint but persistent: a green, buzzing presence that felt almost alive.
He inhaled, and the world settled inside him.
As the light faded, his mind drifted. He slipped in and out of awareness, sometimes wading through the warm syrup of sleep, sometimes bobbing to the surface, pulled by the anchor of Eira's voice. He saw flashes: the man's clumsy attempt at a lullaby, the old woman muttering as she swept up the afterbirth, the candle flame dancing in the window, always with that strange, electric shimmer just beyond its reach.
Once, in the half-dark, he felt something move inside him. Not hunger or pain, but a pulse, a silent thrum that set his bones humming.
He opened his eyes in time to see the blue-white shimmer again, this time swirling slowly above the crib. It drifted, weightless, then coiled inward and vanished as his heartbeat slowed.
Eira looked up at the same instant, her eyes narrowing. "Did you see that, love?" she whispered to the man, but he only grunted, already half-asleep in his chair.
She stared at Riku, her gaze sharper than any he'd known.
"I think he's special," she said. "You feel it too, don't you?"
The man mumbled something about all babies being magic, but the woman only nodded, as if she'd already known.
The candle guttered. The storm receded. Silence pooled in the corners.
As his new body surrendered at last to sleep, Riku felt a gentle chime bloom behind his eyes. He saw, for a split second, a menu flicker in blue; words scrolling past in the clean, clinical font of a system prompt:
[SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[WELCOME, ALISTAIR CYPHER.]
[STATUS: NEW ENTITY REGISTERED.]
[BODY: INFANT FORM — HEALTH OPTIMAL.]
[BEGIN ADAPTATION CYCLE?]
'You've got to be kidding me,' he thought. 'I got the menu screen?'
But the text faded before he could read on, and he slipped under, arms bundled tight, the world's pulse thundering in his ears.