The darkness was absolute. It was a heavy, suffocating silence that felt like being submerged in deep water. Kaelen had no sense of his body.
He had no sense of time. Had it been days since he stood defiantly against the demon Zekyl? Had it been years? He drifted through the void like a speck of dust in an empty room. There was no pain, but there was no peace either.
There was only the memory of the cold rain in Oakhaven and the smell of blood on the Demon Continent.
Then, a pinprick of light appeared.
It started small, like a distant star, but it grew with terrifying speed. The light became a roaring flood that burned through his closed eyelids. His ears popped. The silence was shattered by a cacophony of muffled voices and a high-pitched, rhythmic wailing.
Kaelen tried to breathe, but his lungs felt tight and full of fluid. He gasped, and a sharp, stinging sensation flared in his chest. He let out a cry. It was a thin, shrill sound that made his own ears ring.
"He's here," a woman's voice whispered. It was soft, melodic, and thick with exhaustion.
Kaelen's vision was a blur of watery shapes and bright overhead lanterns. He felt himself being lifted. Warm, soft skin pressed against him. A pair of hands wrapped him in a thick, woolen cloth. As the haze cleared, he saw a face looking down at him.
The woman was beautiful. She had long, jet-black hair that fell over her shoulders like a curtain of silk. Her skin was pale, almost like porcelain, and her eyes were a deep, comforting violet. She looked like she had just run a marathon, with beads of sweat on her forehead, but she was smiling.
"I will name him Valerion," she said. Her voice trembled with a strange kind of joy. "Valerion Solari."
'Valerion? Who is Valerion?' Kaelen thought.
He tried to look around, but his neck felt like a wet noodle. He couldn't even hold his own head up. He saw a man lean into his field of vision. The man was broad-shouldered with a sharp, regal jawline.
His hair was a bright, shimmering blonde, and his eyes were the color of a summer sky. He looked like the kind of man who belonged on a recruitment poster for a holy order.
The man reached out, his large hand gently stroking the woman's cheek before resting on Kaelen's tiny head.
"Valerion Solari," the man repeated, his voice booming with pride. "It is a perfect name. He is our son, Lyra. Our first son."
Kaelen froze. The reality hit him with the force of a physical blow. He wasn't in the afterlife. He wasn't in some hellish prison for the talentless. He had been reborn.
'A second chance? To start over from zero?'
Lyra, his new mother, pulled him closer. She began to rub his stomach gently, her fingers tracing small circles on his skin.
Despite being a man who had spent decades drowning his sorrows in ale and fighting demons in the dirt, Kaelen couldn't help it. The sensation was overwhelmingly ticklish. He let out a bubbling, toothless laugh that sounded like a small bird chirping.
The parents laughed with him, their faces glowing with a happiness that Kaelen had never seen in his previous life. He felt a sudden, heavy wave of exhaustion. Being a baby was hard work. His eyelids felt like lead, and as he drifted off, the warm room faded into a different kind of dream.
He was standing in a room made entirely of shadows. In front of him stood a man whose face was a featureless void. The figure didn't move, but its presence filled the space with a weight that made Kaelen's heart hammer against his ribs.
"You have been granted a rare mercy," the faceless man said. The voice didn't come from a mouth; it echoed directly inside Kaelen's skull. "A new family. A body that is not broken. Do not waste the spark this time, Kaelen Vane. Or perhaps I should say, Valerion."
Kaelen woke up with a jolt. His tiny heart was racing, and he realized his face was wet. He was crying. The fear from the dream was still clinging to him like a cold shroud.
The door to the nursery creaked open. Lyra and the blonde man, whom he now knew was named Aris, rushed to his side.
"Oh, my little star," Lyra said, scooping him up and rocking him back and forth. "Were you having nightmares? You're safe now. Mommy is here."
Aris rubbed his back, his large hand covering nearly half of Valerion's body. "He's got a fighter's spirit already, crying out like that."
Valerion was starting to calm down until a sudden, warm pressure built up in his gut. A loud, wet "crump" echoed in the quiet room. A foul smell immediately began to waft from his swaddling clothes.
'Did I really just shit myself?' Valerion thought, his face turning a shade of red that had nothing to do with crying. 'I am a grown man. This is the ultimate indignity.'
A few days passed, and Valerion began to observe his surroundings with a critical eye. He was definitely reborn. This wasn't a hallucination.
His mother, Lyra, was a woman of high standing, often seen reading thick tomes bound in silver. His father, Aris, was a man of action, always carrying a heavy practice sword and smelling of cedar and sweat.
Aris was a bit too affectionate for Valerion's liking. One afternoon, while Lyra was resting, Aris leaned down and planted a loud, wet kiss right on Valerion's forehead.
'Hey! Watch it! That's my first kiss in this life, you blonde oaf,' Valerion thought, scowling and waving his tiny fists in the air.
He decided to have a little fun with them. When Lyra would sit with him, trying to get him to speak, he would look her in the eye and say something that sounded like "Monther" or a half-assed "Ma." She would squeal with delight, calling for the maids to come see the genius child.
But when Aris came over, hoping for a "Dada," Valerion would just stare at him with a flat, unimpressed expression. He would open his mouth, let out a tiny "Da—" and then immediately stop, closing his mouth and looking at a spot on the wall. Aris would deflate, looking genuinely wounded.
'Consider it payback Aris,' Valerion mused.
One morning, the maid left a small hand-mirror on the edge of the changing table. Valerion managed to roll over and catch a glimpse of himself. He had a tuft of black hair starting to grow and large, intense eyes.
'Well, at least I won't be an eyesore,' he thought snarkily. 'If I grow up looking like a mix of those two, I'll be breaking hearts just by standing in a room. Small victories.'
He also learned the date from the heralds in the street. It was Year 122. He did the math. He had died eight years ago. The memory of the fight with Zekyl came back to him in sharp, painful flashes.
He wondered what had happened to his old body. It had probably been eaten by scavengers or left to rot in that purple wasteland.
The thought made him feel a hollow ache in his chest. He had left his sister and his brother behind. They probably didn't even know he was dead. They probably didn't even care.
A sudden jolt snapped him out of his thoughts. Aris had picked him up and was hoisting him into the air.
"Valerion! You want to see your awesome old man's sword skills?" Aris laughed, swinging a wooden training sword with his free hand. "You're going to be a swordsman. A top-tier knight! We'll clear the frontier together!"
Lyra walked in and immediately snatched Valerion away, pressing him to her chest. "Absolutely not, Aris. Look at those eyes. He has the soul of a scholar. He will be a mage. He will stand at the head of the Royal Academy."
Valerion went limp in her arms, putting on his best "dumb baby" face. He let a little bit of drool escape the corner of his mouth.
'Mage? Swordsman? It doesn't matter,' he thought bitterly. 'I'll probably just disappoint you both. I was born without a spark once. Why would the heavens be any kinder the second time?'