Gabriel slept peacefully. His stomach churned, but he refused to wake. The alarm hadn't sounded yet, so he remained wrapped in warmth, drifting in that sacred limbo between dream and day.
But then—a sound.
Low. Mechanical. Insistent.
A hum, unfamiliar and wrong.
He stirred, flailing weakly, one arm swiping at the void where a nightstand should have been. Nothing. His fingers passed through empty air.
Then came the voice.
Cold. Unyielding. Counting down.
His eyes cracked open—barely. It felt like lifting the lid of a coffin. His eyelids were stone slabs, sealed for centuries.
Before him hovered a panel of light. Its edges shimmered an eerie, translucent blue. The countdown had reached four.
Images flickered across its surface—children. Dozens of them. Strange, small, and varied in race and form. Some looked human. Others didn't.
But what caught his eye wasn't the grotesque variety of the children.
It was the word CHOOSE, written in harsh, crimson letters.
Three.
His sleep-fogged mind scrambled to make sense of it.
Two.
Panic surged.
He jabbed at the first child he saw.
The moment his finger touched the image, the countdown vanished. The silence afterward rang in his ears like a bell.
Then—nothing.
He floated. No, he drifted in a void more absolute than sleep. No sky, no ground. No sound, no breath.
He tried to speak—but had no mouth.
He tried to scream—but had no voice.
He could feel his heart hammering in his chest—yet there was no body to house it.
Only thoughts.
Trapped. Weightless. Hollow.
Then the voice returned—flat, mechanical.
"Congratulations. You have chosen to be born in the House of Aren."
"Born?" The thought rose in his mind like a gasp. "What do you mean, born?"
"System Directive: Initialization in progress.Unknown artifact detected.Unable to remove.Error.Error.Process complete.Have a nice life.**"
And then—motion.
He was pulled, or pushed, or hurled. Falling? Flying? He couldn't tell. Up and down meant nothing here.
His thoughts spiraled."What is this? Where am I? I feel… light. Lighter than air…""Darkness. Still. Endless. Am I dead? Is this what death is?"
Then—light. Distant at first. It rushed toward him like a comet.
"Wait—no! Fast! Too fast! Stop! STOP!"
WHAAAAAAAAAAAA—
"Congratulations, my lady."
The voice was warm. Kind. Real.
"It's a boy."
"He is so adorable," another maid whispered with a warm smile, her voice trembling with restrained joy.
Lady Ariana, noble of bearing and pale of cheek, nodded slowly. In her arms, she held a bundle swaddled in linen and love. Her hands trembled; her smile glistened like a crescent moon on a dark lake. "He is," she murmured, her voice soaked in unshed tears.
Just moments before, the child had been silent—eerily so.
No breath, no cry.
The midwives exchanged glances, their hearts chilled with dread. Some began to weep in silence.
But then—suddenly—he cried. A sharp, defiant sound that pierced the stillness like thunder over a quiet lake.
A midwife—elderly, her nerves worn thin by time—let forth a breath she did not know she held.
"Quick, summon the lord," she commanded, her voice brisk, bearing the urgency of one who had seen too many births end in death.
And in that moment, Gabriel, now a child, felt everything.
The cold upon his skin. The heat of arms wrapped around him. Voices unfamiliar yet somehow important.
He blinked, twice, his vision awash in a flood of alien brilliance. Light assailed him. Sound bruised his ears. The world was a cacophony. A riot.
And then—a face.
A woman's face. So vast from his mewling, tiny vantage that she seemed a goddess.
Her beauty was otherworldly, like moonlight upon jade. Her eyes, vast as starfields, shimmered with something he could not understand—love? Hope? Sorrow? She gazed at him not as one who sees a child, but as one who sees a miracle.
He trembled. This wasn't death. It was worse. It was beginning again—in a world he didn't know, in a body not his own, carrying memories that shouldn't follow a soul."