The void had claimed him completely.
His consciousness flickered like a dying candle in an endless expanse of nothingness.
Questions spiralled through his mind as he floated in the darkness—Where am I? Who am I?
But neither thought nor voice could penetrate the suffocating silence that gripped his very soul. Only the weight of eternity pressed down, heavy and absolute.
Time became his sole companion in that abyssal realm. He could sense its passage like water trickling down his fingers, a peculiar tickling sensation that defied explanation.
The darkness wrapped around him with deceptive comfort, a velvet shroud that whispered promises of eternal peace. Perhaps madness had already taken root in his mind; The peace, he was coming to like it.
He allowed it to consume him, the peace, the quiet, and the nothingness.
His mind stalled.
Years dissolved into decades, decades into centuries. He drifted in that liminal space between existence and oblivion, asking the same questions that had no answers, caught in an infinite loop of confusion, acceptance, and slumber.
Until today.
A blade of light pierced through his sanctuary of shadows, sharp and merciless as it invaded his consciousness. The sensation was agony, a brutal awakening that shattered the comfortable numbness he'd grown to cherish.
His first coherent thought was resentment; the abyss had been home.
Who is it? Who's calling for me?
He groaned as he felt his soul being yanked from the velvet cocoon of darkness and thrust directly into the light.
When awareness finally crystallized, terror followed swiftly behind.
The world around him had transformed. It was no longer the familiar abyss.
Where. Where am I?
Rather, he was thrown into something from a child's fever dream. Trees loomed like ancient giants, their branches clawing at a sky that seemed impossibly distant. Every blade of grass stood taller than it should, every flower bloomed with threatening enormity.
He tried to move, to escape this twisted landscape, but his legs betrayed him, weak and unsteady.
"I can't walk."
A voice he'd never heard before screeched out.
"This." His hands found his throat, "This is my voice? No, that. That doesn't make sense."
Horror crashed over him in waves as he stared down at hands that were not his own. Small, delicate, undeniably childlike. His mind reeled, rejecting what his eyes confirmed: he was in the body of a child, trapped in this weak existence.
The ground rushed up to meet him as his knees buckled, breath coming in sharp, panicked gasps.
His heart thundered against his ribs like a caged bird desperate for freedom. Each beat sent fire through his veins, each breath filled lungs that had forgotten the taste of air.
Ba-dump... Ba-dump...
Warmth flooded through him, alien and overwhelming after an eternity of cold comforting darkness. He was alive, impossibly, incomprehensibly alive.
"But, why?"
He hadn't asked for any of this. Why had he been thrown out of the dark? Exiled from his own home after aeons?
Was this a cruel joke of fate?
His thoughts were cut short.
The sky above bled crimson as dusk approached, draining the world of colour. His instincts flared to life.
As night fell, the familiar darkness brought him comfort. It resonated with him, and his body felt stronger than it should, unnaturally resilient for someone so young. When he clenched his fists, power thrummed beneath the surface, a mysterious enhancement that defied explanation.
"What is this power?" He muttered to himself, a habit he had picked up in the abyss.
The abyss had undoubtedly changed him, marked him in ways he was only beginning to understand.
He looked around, gathering his surroundings and memories that had faded from his mind aeons ago, came surging back as he recognised the place.
He was in a well-maintained, expensive park. The kind of place where wealthy families brought their children to play.
Stone pathways wound through manicured gardens, leading toward distant streetlights that flickered on and off. He followed the trail with growing confidence, his short legs carrying him faster and farther than any normal child could manage.
An iron fence bordered it; it was tall, almost half his size. Akin to a barrier that separated his past and the future.
He hesitated for an instant and looked back to where he'd come from.
The abyss was no longer there. All that remained behind him was a mound of grass, a handful of trees and a delicate field of flowers that seemed to sway with the wind.
He was lost. Which meant there was no way to go but forward.
I have to find out where I am
That thought was an instinct that had bloomed in his mind. An instinct so distant from his life in the abyss that it felt foreign when it returned.
Survival was calling to him.
He sprinted to the barrier, muscles coiling with inhuman precision, and he launched himself skyward. For a moment, he was airborne, weightless and free, before landing hard on the other side with a bone-jarring impact.
He gasped for breath; the sensation of being weightless felt nostalgic, even natural. But as he struggled to his feet, a bittersweet smile rested on his lips. He had somewhat accepted that he'd not feel that way again.
The street beyond revealed itself in fragments: vintage automobiles from decades past, architecture that whispered of mid-20th century Europe, an absence of modern technology that confirmed his worst suspicions.
Before he was thrust into the abyss all those aeons ago, he was a person from the modern world. However, seeing that he had returned to a different time, he was slightly conflicted.
On one hand, he had supposed future knowledge. On the other hand, he knew nothing of this time period.
His stomach churned. He retched as acidic bile threatened to shoot out of his mouth. A strange, grumbling pain gripped his abdomen; he felt hollow.
"What is this?" His thoughts spun into disarray until he arrived at the answer. "Of course. How could I forget?" He chuckled.
"Hunger."
The boy trudged along the street till he entered a market of sorts in a residential suburb. It was there that a savoury scent tugged at his nose. He spotted a few stalls on the street, merchants who were selling their last goods to a handful of customers.
Food.
He wanted whatever they had. But as memory served him right, he had nothing to trade it for.
It was a vexing situation.
I guess there's no choice but to resort to theft.
He scuttled closer to the stalls, ever so quietly. His small frame with the added cover of night was enough to keep him obscured. When he reached the edges of the cart, he leaned closer and heard the customers haggling with the vendor.
It was the perfect cover for some shacanary.
But as his thoughts aligned, and he outstretched his hands, a strange sensation trickled along his fingers. The apple wobbled and fell into his palms, then another, and another.
The coincidence startled him, but the boy promptly slipped away before anyone could notice.
A coincidence? No.
He was certain that it couldn't be. Whatever strange ability had triggered that was not exactly in his control.
"Another gift from the abyss?" The boy muttered.
But he didn't let his thoughts wander; instead, he devoured the apples with startling efficiency, appetite far exceeding what his small frame should have demanded.
With his hunger subsided, he looked for an answer.
The city streets beckoned, and he moved with purpose now, seeking understanding of this strange new world that had claimed him. He scuttled along, from street to street, nook to cranny.
While wandering around a dead end, near a brick wall of an alley, he felt it, a tender touch caressing his skin, like walking through invisible silk. The sensation was brief but unmistakable.
The boy held up his hand and curiously pushed against the wall. The bricks shuddered and swallowed him, spitting him out to the other side.
The empty and dead alleyway exploded into life.
Suddenly, impossibly, he stood in the heart of a bustling marketplace that hadn't existed moments before. Cobblestone alleys branched in impossible directions, shop signs swayed without wind, and crowds of people materialised as if summoned from thin air.
But these weren't ordinary people. At least they didn't seem so to him.
Robes billowed around figures who carried slender wooden sticks in their grips that sparked with wisps of light. Paper birds took flight with casual flicks of wrists, shop windows displayed impossible wares, and the very air hummed with arcane energy.
His pulse quickened.
I wasn't just reincarnated into the past.
The boy's eyes widened as memories flickered in his eyes. He recognised those strange wooden sticks, the robes, the birds. Everything fell into place.
"Magic."
He had not just been reincarnated, but thrown into a world of magic. A world that he somewhat knew of, nonetheless.
Harry Potter? The wands and the robes definitely fit that story.
Suddenly, his outlook on the world changed. The wizarding world stretched before him, vast and dangerous and absolutely magnificent. The abyss hadn't just spat him out to give him a second chance; no, it was a new life with an adventure he had never thought possible.
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