Darkness. Pressure. Pain.
These sensations were his entire world now—a far cry from the white-hot agony of the bullet tearing through his chest. How long had he been floating in this limbo? Minutes? Hours? Years? Ti had no aning in this crushing void.
Then ca the contractions. The darkness squeezed around him, forcing him forward into a tunnel of pressure. He couldn't scream, couldn't fight, couldn't do anything but surrender to the inexorable force pushing him toward... sothing.
Light exploded around him, blinding after an eternity of darkness. Cold air shocked his lungs, and he heard himself wail—a high, thin sound that couldn't possibly have co from his own throat.
Hands—impossibly large hands—lifted him. A voice spoke in hushed, musical tones that sohow sounded both foreign and familiar.
"A healthy child, Your Highness," said the voice, soft yet authoritative.
"Let see," commanded another, rich with power and exhaustion.
He felt himself being wrapped in sothing impossibly soft and handed over to soone new. His vision was blurry, unfocused, but he could make out the outline of a face—beautiful, with high cheekbones, luminous eyes, and pointed ears that swept upward like delicate wings.
The princess gasped softly as she held him, her expression transforming from exhaustion to wonder. Her eyes, vibrant pools of erald, filled with tears as she drew him close to her heart.
"My child," she whispered, her voice like gentle rain on leaves. "My beautiful, perfect child."
Her fingers, slender and warm, caressed his cheek with such tenderness that he felt his infant body calm instantly. Her touch carried sothing more than physical comfort—it radiated love, protection, a bond that transcended the strange circumstances of his rebirth.
Then, she notice sothing off.
She quickly pulled the swaddling cloth more securely around him, her movents precise and deliberate.
"Leave us," she commanded the attendant, her voice steady despite the emotion evident in her eyes.
"But Your Highness, the afterbirth—"
"I said leave us. Now. Return in ten minutes, not before."
The attendant bowed and retreated, closing the chamber door behind her. Only then did the princess unwrap him slightly, her face a mixture of wonder and disbelief as she examined what she had found.
"Impossible," she whispered, her fingers tracing his tiny form. "How can this be? You are... you cannot be."
She paused, then laughed softly, a sound like silver bells. "Yet here you are, my little miracle." She pressed her lips gently to his forehead, and he felt warmth spread through his entire being.
"We have much to discover together, you and I," she murmured, rocking him gently. "I can see it in your eyes—there is sothing special about you, sothing beyond what others might understand."
He tried to speak, to ask where he was, what had happened, but all that escaped was another infantile cry.
'What is happening?' he thought, panic rising as realization dawned. 'I'm... a baby? How am I a fucking baby?'
He blinked his unfocused eyes, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The woman holding him—his mother?—had ears that ca to delicate points. Like sothing from a fantasy movie or book, not sothing that existed in real life. Yet here she was, as real as the soft blanket wrapped around him, as real as the cool air on his skin.
"I will protect you," she promised, her voice dropping to a whisper. "With everything I am, I will keep you safe." She stroked his cheek again, her touch feather-light. "I am sure your sisters will love to see you. They have been waiting so impatiently for your arrival."
The princess—his mother—studied him with those strange, luminous eyes before quickly rewrapping him. "No one can know," she murmured, more to herself than to him. "No one."
Minutes later, when the attendant returned, the princess had composed herself completely, though her arms still cradled him with fierce protectiveness.
"The child will be called Eren," she announced, her tone allowing no discussion.
"Eren?" the attendant repeated, surprised. "I have never heard that na before, Your Highness."
"It cos to from the old songs," the princess replied firmly. "This child is Eren of Starblood, and I will tend to the child myself."
"But Princess Elysia, that is hardly necessary. The royal nursery has excellent—"
"I have decided," Elysia cut her off, her voice gentle but unyielding. "Prepare the adjacent chamber for the child. I will oversee everything personally."
The attendant looked startled but knew better than to argue. "As you wish, Your Highness."
'Eren,what kinda of na is that' he thought, processing the na as his infant mind struggled against the overwhelming newness of existence. 'That's who I am now.'
In the days that followed, Eren drifted in and out of consciousness, his infant body demanding more sleep than his adult mind rembered needing. Each ti he woke, he tried to focus his blurry vision, to make sense of this strange new world.
The ceiling above his cradle was unlike anything he'd seen before—living branches intertwined with polished wood, forming an intricate latticework. Soft light filtered through crystalline growths that seed to be part of the structure itself. This was no hospital, no normal building of any kind he recognized.
When Princess Elysia ca to him, he stared at her, trying to comprehend. Her ears really did co to delicate points. Her movents were too graceful, too fluid to be human. Her skin had a subtle luminescence that caught the light in impossible ways.
'This can't be real,' he thought. 'People like this don't exist or am I dreaming.'
Yet she was real. When she lifted him from his cradle, her touch was warm and solid. When she spoke to him in that musical language, the sound vibrated in his ears like any other sound. When she changed his swaddling clothes, the cool air on his skin was as real as anything he'd ever felt.
"My little star," she would call him as she held him against her heart. "My brave little warrior." Her voice would drop to a whisper then. "You have journeyed so far to reach , haven't you? Across distances I cannot fathom."
A week passed before Eren had a coherent thought that wasn't imdiately swallowed by confusion or infant needs. He was being held by Princess Elysia near a tall window. Outside, he could see trees unlike any he'd known—their silver-blue leaves shimring in a light breeze. And beyond them, in the dayti sky, he could see not one but two moons, pale ghosts against the blue.
'Another world,' he realized with sudden clarity. 'I've been reborn in another world.'
The thought should have been terrifying, but his infant brain couldn't sustain terror. Instead, he felt a strange calm wash over him. He was here. This was real. And sohow, he rembered his previous life while beginning this new one.
Princess Elysia must have felt him tense, because she looked down at him with concern in her eyes.
"What troubles you, little one?" she murmured, her finger gently stroking his cheek. "What thoughts move behind those eyes?"
She smiled then, a smile so full of love it made his heart ache. "Your sisters are asking about you constantly they will be back by tomorrow. They have made you gifts already—little cloth animals and painted stars to hang above your cradle." Her voice softened further. "They will protect you too, my Eren. In this world of wonders and dangers, you will never be alone."
Eren couldn't answer, of course. But as he looked up at this beautiful, inhuman face—at this mother who was clearly hiding sothing about him—he felt the first stirrings of a question that would co to haunt him:
'What am I in this world?'And why does my mother fear what I might beco?'
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