"Ugh!"
The young man plummeted toward the surface of the planet. Just as he breached the cloud layer, the invisible pulling force suddenly yanked him sideways, dragging him across the sky to the completely opposite side of the world.
The speed was dizzying; the terrain below blurred into a chaotic smear of colors.
Finally, the momentum died down, allowing him to open his eyes and take in his surroundings. He was hovering high above a massive expanse of land.
Boom! Distant shockwaves rattled the air, followed by the muffled cracks of magical explosions.
'Is this... a battlefield?' he deduced, his eyes widening.
As his soul began to descend at a much gentler pace, the sheer scale of the conflict hit him. The battlefield was colossal, easily swallowing up more territory than a medium-sized country in his old world.
Below him, two massive armies clashed. One side wielded oppressive, shadowy energies, while the other fought back with radiant bursts of light and plants.
'Wow... they are strong.' Watching the earth-shattering explosions, a sudden, involuntary thrill rushed through his soul. A small, eager smile crept onto his face. 'I want to fight them...'
To a regular observer, it looked like a young man's excitement for battle. But deep within the core of his being, faintly stirring, instantly craving.
'Aidana, what race are they?' he called out internally.
Silence met his question.
'Right... I guess she said I can't speak with her before being born.'
Left to his own devices, he focused on the dark energy users. They possessed elegant, slightly elongated ears, pale white skin, and glowing, blood-red eyes. 'Vampires, maybe? Aidana said if it could be imagined, it exists in The Realms.'
He turned his gaze toward the light magic users. They shared the same pointed ears but were notably taller, their movements graceful and precise. 'Elves.'
'Let's see which side I'm going to end up in...'
Expectant, his soul drifted toward the edge of the battlefield, far away from the active violence. Beneath him lay a dense, ancient forest.
In the center of the woods stood a massive sycamore tree, safely encased beneath a shimmering, hemispherical barrier. The barrier also seemed to hide the tree, yet he could see through the illusion, maybe because he was still in a soul state.
His transparent form glided effortlessly through the magic shield. Up close, he realized the massive trunk of the tree had been hollowed out and crafted into a beautiful, cozy home.
Suddenly, a deep, masculine voice echoed from within, chanting in a rhythmic, foreign tongue.
'What language is that?'
Before he could process the strange words, a woman's agonizing scream pierced the air. The pulling force tightened, dragging him directly through the wooden walls of the house.
"No... we—we will lose it... Please stay with us..." the woman wept, her beautiful voice cracking with absolute exhaustion.
"He's our child... he'll be a legend... we won't lose him here!" the deep-voiced man roared, pouring everything he had into his magic as he continued his frantic chanting.
The young man couldn't decipher a single word, but the raw, desperate pain in their voices was universal. 'This language is going to be tiresome to learn...'
Before he could think further, a blinding flash of white light consumed his vision. When the glare faded, his senses were completely warped. The world became heavy, muffled, and entirely submerged.
'Am I... underwater?'
"Uh... The pain... the pain is gone!?" Staggering backward, the beautiful, curvy woman tried to sit up on the bed.
She wore a split blue dress and a delicate golden tiara shaped like three wavy branches, with a glowing blue gem clutched against her forehead.
She anxiously pressed both hands against her belly. It was barely showing a bump, indicating she was only around her fourth month of pregnancy. Her long, silver-white hair fell over her shoulders as she trembled.
Beside the bed, the man sank to his knees, utterly spent from expending his mana and life force all at once.
He wore a sharp black and red suit with a vest, his hands encased in dark leather gloves. His raven-black hair brushed the wooden floorboards as he looked up, waiting for the devastating news.
Seeing the tears streaming down his wife's face, a heavy shadow fell over his pale features.
He forced himself to his feet, stepping over to the bed to pull her into a tight, protective embrace. As she wept against his chest, he felt his own heart tearing into pieces.
The father cursed his own weakness. The newly forming soul and body of their child had started to collapse because his own vampire blood and his wife's elven nature were too opposing, too volatile.
Shame and guilt gripped him for what he had done without her consent.
To drag out a soul of the Hall of Bones, he had to break the laws of nature and betray even his wife's trust, yet still he failed to save their child...
Inside the dark warmth, the young man grimaced. 'It's so difficult to move...'
With a surge of stubborn will, he forced his undeveloped phantom limbs to shift, kicking outward.
The mother suddenly gasped, pulling back from her husband's chest to look directly into his eyes.
"It moved... our baby just moved! His life force... It's coming back!"
The father's eyes ignited with newfound hope. Seeing the tears of pure relief spilling from his wife's eyes, he gently cupped her face and kissed her, the heavy guilt in the room temporarily melting away into profound love.
The world dissolved into a warm, rhythmic darkness as the weeks bled into months.
At first, his immature mind could grasp nothing but the steady, comforting thump-thump of his mother's heartbeat and the rise and fall of her breathing.
But as time passed, his prison grew tighter. His body was fully formed, and he could hear his new parents speaking to him through the veil of flesh.
He quickly noticed his father wasn't always around; the man's deep voice only appeared a few times or even just once a week.
'Mom, calm down... your heart is racing,' he would think anxiously.
Frequently, he felt his mother's body spike with adrenaline, her voice raised in sharp, angry arguments with unfamiliar people. It remained tense like this for another month until the outside voices finally stopped, leaving only the quiet, peaceful murmurs of his parents.
Then, during his seventh month, a sudden spark ignited within the dark.
[Notice: Mana detected within the Host's developing vessel.]
The robotic chime shattered the long months of silent warmth. The young man's conscious mind snapped awake in the dark.
[I welcome the Host to the Great World of Ananterra!]
'Ah, hi Aidana, hm? Is it just the system still?' he thought, a massive wave of relief washing over him. 'Anyway, it's been a while. Can you help me understand what they're saying out there?'
With the System translating the foreign language, the young man listened to his parents' conversations every single day. He quickly learned the brutal reality of the war outside, and exactly why his mother had been so stressed.
'I'll surely help when I grow up,' he promised silently. 'Just wait a little longer...'
The sheer effort of thinking exhausted his infant brain, and he drifted back into a deep sleep.
As the day of birth drew near, the father could no longer bear the suffocating weight of his secret.
"My love, I have something to tell you," he murmured one evening. The man's eyes shifted, turning a bright, blood-red as he looked directly into his wife's calm, blue gaze.
"Okay? Tell me."
"...Please, sit down first."
She sat on the edge of the bed, and he immediately took his place beside her, holding her hand tightly as he forced the truth into the open.
"I used forbidden magic on our child. That night... I reached into the Hall of Bones and called forth a dead soul." The man took a ragged breath. "I fused that dead soul with the newly forming soul of our baby because I thought he couldn't withstand the pressure of our opposing natures. I love you, and I am so deeply ashamed that I didn't ask for your consent... I just... I couldn't bear to see you break if we lost him."
He fell silent, bracing himself for her fury. Her face darkened significantly. 'This is going to hurt...' he thought, well aware of her terrifying strength.
"Let me ask you," she said, her voice dangerously quiet. "Who am I?"
"One of the smartest and most beautiful women in the world," he answered hastily.
"So you know," she said, leveling a deadly serious look at him. "Then do you truly think I wouldn't notice if something altered the very being of my own child?"
"There is a different soul in our—"
"If you have a biological child and adopt another, do you treat them differently?" she interrupted sharply, staring him down until he slowly shook his head. "I am giving birth to him. We are raising him. If you dare to say he is not our child, then I don't know what a child even means in those thousands of worlds."
The father stared at her, completely stunned. The heavy guilt that had plagued him for months shattered, replaced by an overwhelming wave of gratitude and humility.
'Mother...' the boy thought in the dark, his chest tightening.
"I'm sorry," the father whispered, placing a trembling hand on her cheek. "I really was blind. For all my years behind me, I couldn't see the bigger picture and was thinking so shallowly. I love you."
"I love you too," she smiled beautifully, leaning in to kiss him.
'Thank you...'
Deep inside, the young man let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He had come to care for them deeply over the months, but a quiet, agonizing fear had been festering in his soul—the fear that if they ever discovered what he truly was, they would cast him out. To hear his new mother accept him completely filled him with a profound sense of safety.
Now, he just wanted to meet them face to face.
The final month vanished in a flash, and the day of labor arrived.
The birth was natural, and with his father's and mother's powerful magic ensuring there were no complications, the transition was swift.
The world suddenly turned freezing cold and blindingly bright.
Air rushed into his lungs for the first time, burning like raw fire.
He tried to demand to know where he was, but his newborn vocal cords betrayed him—shattering the quiet room with a loud, pathetic, and helpless wail.
He hated the weakness. His infant body was ruled entirely by survival instincts, forcing him to cry against his will.
Overwhelmed with emotion, his father looked down at him, his wine-red eyes flaring into a brilliant, glowing crimson. Ashamed of being unable to control his own intensity and worried he would scare the baby, the father carefully handed the newborn over to his wife.
The mother pulled the crying infant against her chest, rocking him gently.
'Uh... hey, calm down... blue... beautiful...'
Forcing his blurry vision to focus, the boy looked up into his mother's radiant light blue eyes.
Seeing the absolute, unconditional motherly love reflected in her gaze, his frantic baby instincts finally settled down.
The crying stopped.
His father sat beside them, wrapping a protective arm around her waist as she rested her silver-haired head against his shoulder. It wasn't a perfect world, and it wasn't a conventional family, but it was theirs.
After a long moment of quiet serenity, the mother looked up at her husband and whispered, "Then... what will his name be?"