November 1957 - February 1958, London, England
Dying was supposed to be the end. It was supposed to be a fade to black, a cessation of thought, the final closing of the curtain.
Instead, there was cold.
And noise.
And the crushing, claustrophobic realization that he was trapped in a prison of soft, useless flesh.
His first month was a blurry nightmare of sensory overload. His eyes—once capable of reading fine print and navigating busy streets, were now useless orbs that could barely distinguish shadow from light. His limbs were heavy, disconnected things that jerked without his permission. He was a mind, sharp and terrified, drowning in a vessel that operated on pure instinct.
He tried to speak, to scream, I am here! I am a person! but the only sound that tore from his throat was a thin, high-pitched wail.
It was humiliating. It was exhausting.
He spent days drifting in and out of a twilight state, where the memories of the Before—skyscrapers, paved roads, the smell of diesel—bled into the reality of Now. The Now smelled different. It smelled of beeswax, old dust, and something sharp and metallic, like the air before a thunderstorm.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know who he was.
He only knew that he was small.
Awareness returned in fragments.
The first thing he learned was the hierarchy of the Giants.
There was the Warm One. She smelled of lavender and something slightly acrid, like burnt sugar. She was the one who held him the most, her grip tight, bordering on possessive. She did not coo or babble like mothers in his memories. She whispered.
"Mine," she would hiss into the shell of his ear, rocking him in the dead of night. "My star. My little King."
Her voice was intense, vibrating with a desperate sort of love that felt heavy, like a wet wool blanket. When she looked at him, he saw himself reflected in dark, frantic eyes. She terrified him slightly, but she was also his only anchor in this blur of grey.
Then there was the Quiet One. He smelled of ink and tobacco. He rarely touched the baby, preferring to stand over the crib, looking down with a critical, calculating gaze. He didn't feel like a father; he felt like an inspector checking the structural integrity of a bridge.
And finally, the Shadow.
Sometimes, an old man would enter the room. The air would change instantly. The static that constantly buzzed against the baby's skin would ramp up into a low hum. The Shadow didn't speak often, but when he did, the other Giants went silent.
"He tracks movement," the Shadow rumbled one evening. The voice was deep, resonating in the baby's chest. "His eyes are clearing."
"He is perfect, Grandfather," the Warm One replied instantly. Her voice held a tremble of deference.
Grandfather.
So, a family. A rich one, judging by the feeling of the silk sheets and the fact that he had never felt hunger for more than a few seconds before a small, spindly creature with large ears appeared to feed him.
Servants. Old money. Aristocracy.
The baby who was once a man filed this information away. He was safe. He was provided for. But he was bored out of his mind.
It was in the third month that he discovered the Hum.
He was lying in his crib, staring up at the enchanted mobile that spun slowly above him—tiny silver dragons and snakes chasing each other in lazy circles. He was frustrated. He wanted to turn over, but his neck muscles were still weak, and his arm was pinned under his side.
He felt a surge of irritation, a hot spike of want.
And the room replied.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation, like a plucked violin string vibrating inside his marrow. The air in the room grew thick. The shadows in the corner of the nursery seemed to stretch, reaching toward the crib like curious fingers.
He froze.
What was that?
He pushed the feeling again. He focused on his irritation, on the desire to move, to change his position.
Shift, he thought.
He didn't roll over. Physics was still physics. But he felt a strange, liquid sensation ripple across his scalp. It felt like cold water running down his head.
The door creaked open. The Warm One—Mother—stepped in. She froze mid-step, her eyes widening as she looked at him.
"Oh," she breathed, rushing to the cribside.
She reached down, her fingers trembling as she brushed his hair. He looked up, confused. What had he done?
She picked him up, carrying him to the large oval mirror that stood in the corner of the room.
"Look, Vega," she whispered, pointing at the glass. "Look at what you can do."
He looked.
The baby in the reflection stared back with wide, grey eyes. But his hair...
His hair was not black. It was a vivid, shocking green, the colour of fresh moss.
The baby blinked. The reflection blinked.
That's me.
Panic flared in his chest. Why is my hair green? Is it a disease? Is it—
As his panic spiked, the green shifted. It didn't fade; it bled. The colour drained away like ink in water, replaced instantly by a stark, terrified white.
He watched, mesmerized, as his own biology obeyed his emotions.
It's not a disease, he realized, the adult mind piecing together the impossible puzzle. The static he felt in the air, the heavy atmosphere, the spinning dragons, the changing hair.
Magic.
He was in a world with Magic.
He wasn't just reborn. He was... something else.
He looked at his mother in the reflection. She wasn't scared. She was beaming. She looked voracious, proud, vindicated.
"A Metamorphmagus," she cooed, pressing a kiss to his forehead, which rippled and turned a soft pink at the contact. "The House of Black has returned."
House of Black.
The name meant nothing to him. It sounded gothic. Pretentious.
But as he looked at his shifting face in the mirror, watching the colours dance across his skin like an aurora, he didn't feel fear anymore.
The spark was dormant, small, and unrefined, but it was there. It was in his blood. It was in the walls of this dark, heavy house. And it was waiting for him.
The baby named Vega closed his eyes, and for the first time since his death, he smiled.
I can work with this.