The nightmare came on James's seventh birthday.
He'd been expecting it, in a way. The memories of his previous life had been surfacing with increasing frequency over the past year. Fragments at first, then longer sequences, then entire days relived in perfect clarity while his new body slept.
But this was different.
This was everything at once.
He was eight years old again, standing in the cottage doorway, watching men tear through his mother's belongings. The book in the farmer's hands. His mother's eyes meeting his across the room, understanding, forgiveness and grief all at once.
"That's mine. I confiscated it from a traveling merchant."
The square. The stones. The sound they made when they struck flesh. His mother's screams cutting off into wet gurgles. Blood pooling in the packed earth. The old woman's smile as she threw her stone, as she watched his mother die, and looked at him like he was an experiment yielding fascinating results.
The forest. Hunger like a living thing eating him from the inside. Raw rabbit meat between his teeth. The taste of tree bark and his own blood. Cold rain soaking through inadequate clothing. Hallucinations of people who weren't there. The slow shutdown of his body, organ by organ, system by system.
The void. The pull. The terrible crushing pressure of birth.
All of it, compressed into a single moment.
James woke with a scream trapped in his throat, lungs burning, heart beating faster like it was trying to escape. His sheets were soaked with sweat and his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't make them stop.
And on his face were tears beyond his control.
The door opened in that moment as soft footsteps crossed the room.
"James?" Eliza's sounded sleepy and concerned. "Sweetheart, what's wrong?"
He tried to speak but couldn't. Tried to compose himself and failed. The memories were still too fresh and visceral. He could still feel the stones hitting his mother's body. Could still taste starvation at the back of his throat.
Eliza gathered him into her arms without hesitation, holding him against her chest the way she had when he was an infant. "Shh. It's alright. You're safe. Whatever you dreamed, it's not real. You're here. You're safe."
But that was the problem, wasn't it? It was real. It had happened. He'd lived through it, died through it, and carried those scars into a new life that hadn't earned them.
James buried his face against his mother's shoulder and let himself cry. But this wasn't the calculated tears he'd learned to produce to manipulate emotions, these were real tears.
Eliza held him through all of it, rocking gently, humming a lullaby under her breath. She didn't ask questions or demand explanations. Just provided comfort.
Eventually, the tears stopped. The shaking subsided, and James felt hollowed out, empty in a way that was almost peaceful.
"Better?" Eliza asked softly.
James nodded against her shoulder.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
He shook his head.
"Alright." She shifted, settling more comfortably on his bed without releasing him. "Then we'll just sit here until you're ready to sleep again."
They sat in silence for a long time. Through the window, James could see the moon, fuller and slightly larger than the moon in his previous world, one of a dozen small differences he'd jotted down. The night was quiet except for the distant sound of wind chimes from a neighbor's house.
Finally, James spoke. His voice came out hoarse, damaged by screaming. "Mother?"
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"If someone... if someone you loved was accused of something terrible. Something they didn't do. Would you defend them?"
Eliza was quiet for a moment. Then she answered. "Is someone accusing you of something, James?"
"No. It's just... hypothetical."
"Hypothetical." She didn't sound convinced, but she played along. "Then yes. Of course I would defend them. If I knew they were innocent, I would stand by them no matter what."
"Even if everyone else believed they were guilty? Even if defending them put you in danger?"
"Especially then." Eliza's arms tightened around him slightly. "Love means standing beside people when it's hardest. When they need you most. That's when it actually counts."
James thought of his first mother, taking blame for a book that wasn't hers. Standing in that square with stones raining down, protecting him with her last act even though he'd been the one to bring danger into their home.
"What if they died anyway?" His voice was quiet. "What if you defended them and they died and you couldn't save them?"
Eliza drew in a sharp breath. "James..."
"Would you regret it? Defending them?"
"No." She said it without hesitation. "I would regret not trying. I would regret abandoning them to face it alone. But I would never regret standing by someone I loved, regardless of the outcome."
James closed his eyes. Something in his chest, some knot that had been there since he could remember, loosened slightly.
"I had a nightmare," he said finally. "About someone dying. Someone who didn't deserve it."
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. Nightmares are terrible things." Eliza stroked his hair gently. "But they're not real. Whatever you saw, whoever you lost in the dream, they're not real."
She was wrong. But he couldn't tell her that.
"Can you stay?" he asked instead. "Just for a while?"
"As long as you need."
Eliza stayed until dawn, holding him while he drifted in and out of uneasy sleep. When James finally woke properly, sunlight was streaming through his window and his father was standing in the doorway with a concerned expression.
"How is he?" Grayson asked quietly.
"Nightmare," Eliza replied, carefully extracting herself from James's bed. "A bad one. He was... it was intense."
Grayson nodded slowly. "He's been under a lot of pressure. The advanced tutoring, the testing, everyone expecting him to much of him all the time. Perhaps we've pushed too hard."
They were talking about him like he wasn't there but James kept his eyes closed and listened.
"He's seven years old," Eliza said, and there was an edge to her voice. "Seven. I know he's brilliant, I know he's special, but he's still a child. He should be playing with other children, not spending all day with tutors who treat him like a curiosity."
"He is a curiosity though," Grayson replied gently. "One in a generation intelligence. Maybe one in a century. We have a responsibility to nurture that."
"We have a responsibility to let him be happy."
Eliza sighed. "Did you see him last night? He was absolutely terrified. What kind of nightmare does a seven-year-old have that leaves him like that?"
There was a moment of silence. Then Grayson spoke again. "You think it's something more?"
"I think our son is carrying something heavy. Something he won't talk about. And I think pushing him isn't helping."
James felt something unexpected at those words. Gratitude. This woman who'd given birth to him, who had no reason to love him beyond biological imperative, was trying to protect him and give him space to be human.
It was more than anyone in Ashfeld had ever done for his first mother.
"We'll talk to the tutors," Grayson said finally. "Ease off the advanced curriculum. Let him have more free time. Maybe enroll him in some social activities with children his own age."
"Thank you."
The footsteps of his parents retreated, closing the door softly and James opened his eyes to find himself alone in his room, sunlight warm on his face, the remnants of the nightmare finally fading into memory where they belonged.
He got out of bed slowly, his body still feeling wrung out and exhausted. In the mirror above his dresser, he examined himself.
He looked nothing like Victor Morningstar. That boy had been thin and hollow-eyed even before the starvation, marked by poverty and hardship.
But when he looked in his own eyes, James could still see him there, the anger and the grief.
"You're dead," he told his reflection quietly. "Victor Morningstar died in that forest. I'm not you."
His reflection stared back, unconvinced.
"I'm not," James insisted. "You were weak. You depended on others. You loved your mother and it destroyed you when she died. I won't make those mistakes."
But even as he said it, he thought of Eliza holding him through the night. Of Grayson...
He thought of how much it would hurt if he lost them.
"Damn it," James whispered.
He turned away from the mirror and went to his desk. Pulled out a journal he kept hidden beneath loose floorboards—a habit from his previous life that he couldn't seem to break. The journal was written in a cipher of his own devising, mixing languages and symbols in ways that would take years to decode even if someone found it.
He opened to a fresh page and began to write.
Day 2,557 of my second life. Age: seven years, zero days.
The memories came. All of them. I knew they would eventually, but the reality was worse than anticipation. For several hours, I was Victor Morningstar again. Watching my mother die. Starving in a forest. Dying alone.
Eliza comforted me. I let her. This is a weakness I need to address.
He stopped, staring at what he'd written. Crossed out the last sentence with sharp, angry strokes.
This is a complication I need to understand. Love is a liability. But these people care for me genuinely, without ulterior motive. That's rare, possibly valuable and possibly dangerous.
I need to decide what I am. Victor Morningstar was destroyed by love... his mother's death broke him. James Aldric is surrounded by love and doesn't know what to do with it.
Perhaps I need to be neither. Or both. Or something new.
The Affinity test is five years away. Five years to prepare. Five years to master whatever I can before the world decides whether I'm magical or scientific.
James closed the journal and returned it to its hiding place. Then he dressed and went downstairs to face his birthday. A day his new parents had filled with celebrations.
But as James walked into the dining room and saw the decorations they'd hung, the cake Eliza had spent hours baking, the carefully wrapped presents Grayson had selected with more thought than skill, something in his carefully constructed detachment cracked.
These people loved him. Not James Aldric the prodigy, just James. Their son, their miracle, their world.
And despite everything he'd learned, despite all his determination to remain untouchable, he loved them back.
That was going to be a problem.
But it was a problem for future James to solve.
Today, he could pretend to be a normal child, play games and eat cake and laugh at bad jokes.
Tomorrow, he could go back to plotting how to break the world's fundamental rules.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart!" Eliza swept him into a hug the moment he entered the room.
"Thanks, Mom," he said, and meant it more than she could possibly know.
Grayson ruffled his hair with awkward affection. "Seven years old. Practically a man."
"Practically," James agreed, and smiled.
He looked at his parents, at the decorations, at the carefully prepared celebration, and made a decision.
He would become inevitable. Would master both magic and science and prove that the Schism's divisions didn't matter to him.
But he would do it without sacrificing this. Without destroying the people who'd given him a second chance at life and loved him without knowing what they were loving.
Victor Morningstar was a genius and it had gotten himself and his mother killed.
James Aldric would be one and survive it along with his new parents.
And maybe, just maybe, he'd figure out how to do that without becoming a monster in the process.
It was an ambitious goal. Perhaps impossible.
But James had died once already, endured starvation, rebirth and memories that should have broken his fragile mind.
If anyone could do the impossible, it was him.
The birthday party started and children arrived. Games were played. Cake was consumed.
And through it all, James smiled and laughed and played the part of a normal seven-year-old boy.
But in his mind, behind his eyes, Victor Morningstar and James Aldric merged into something new.