Chapter 2 – A Baby's Diary
Christian's first days— Lian inside Christian Raymond's body —were slow on the outside and loud on the inside.
On the outside, a calm baby who nursed, slept, and cried when the diaper got heavy.
On the inside, an adult squeezed into a tiny body—too many memories, too little patience, and curiosity to spare.
"So this is it… I died twice just to come back as a damn baby," he thought, trying to bring his little hand to his face. The arm failed halfway, flopped onto his chest, and he stared at his chubby fingers like his own body was laughing at him.
He started with what he could do: observe.
The voice of the woman who carried him—his new mother, Lia—was the most constant sound. When she spoke to him, her tone softened, her words stretched like a lullaby. With the others, the rhythm changed: firmer, sometimes tired, sometimes carrying a thread of irritation that never quite snapped.
— "Good morning, little one" — Lia murmured, bending over the improvised cradle and tucking the blanket under his chin. Her warm breath touched his skin, and her fingers brushed his sweat-damp forehead, pushing a stray lock of hair aside.
Magic was his other obsession.
The memory of the midwife, Yana, still burned: glowing hands, cleansing warmth, an invisible pinch in a place he had no intention of forgiving anytime soon.
"If I got reborn in a world with magic just to live the same miserable life as before, someone up there has a rotten sense of humor," he thought, his tiny forehead creasing at the cracked wooden ceiling. In his head, he repeated the words he'd heard like passwords:
— Purificatio totalis.
— Manus invisibilis.
He waited for the house to fall quiet, for night to settle on the roof. When only the wood's creaks and a stubborn cricket outside remained, he tried.
He opened his mouth; his lips were soft, his tongue felt like a folded rag.
— "Pu… pu…" — came out, more drool than sound, sliding down his chin. The baby-version of purificatio died right there. Nothing. Not a spark of energy, not a thread of warmth.
Stubborn, he pulled air through his nose.
— "Ma… nu… is…" — he tried again, the "s" turning into a wet hiss, his face reddening with effort. In his head, the word was clear: manus invisibilis. On his lips, it sounded like someone choking on porridge.
This time, he tried copying what he remembered of Lilia's movements too: the stroke in the air, the small twist of the wrist.
The problem was that baby arms weren't made for precision.
His little hand rose crookedly, fingers opening and closing in chaos. He tried to draw a circle in the air… and only managed a clumsy pat to his own chest.
The second motion, which should've been a firm downward slash, turned into a drag of his hand across the sheet, crumpling the fabric and tugging a bit at Lia's clothes.
She muttered something unintelligible, rolled over, and dumped half her weight on top of him.
"Yeah… zero elegance," he thought, getting crushed under her arm.
He forced another attempt.
He inhaled, tried to speak, tried to move his hand at the right timing, combine sound, gesture, intention.
The result was a muffled "Ma… bu… is…" and a flailing arm spasm that almost jabbed him in the eye.
"Of course not," he thought, letting out a tiny sigh that almost slid into a cry. His fingers only wrinkled the cloth in a frustrated, sloppy scratch. "In a game there's always a prerequisite: level, affinity… and here I don't even have a status bar. There's gotta be a core sleeping inside me or something like that. There has to be," he concluded silently, trying to force his focus into his own chest even as sleep dragged at his consciousness by the ankles.
He blacked out before the theory could finish. A baby's body doesn't negotiate with investigation.
Humiliation came in bundles: poop without warning, pee without permission, heat sticking to his skin. A soaked diaper was a sentence. The crying came automatically—more from rage than pain.
Lia came fast. She picked him up carefully, one steady hand supporting his head, her body tilting in a practiced motion to lift him from the cradle. No look of disgust, no grumbling, no "again?" in her face. Just a low voice he didn't understand but that dissolved the irritation riding his cry.
— "There, there… it's okay, it'll pass" — she whispered, checking for redness, cleaning with careful motions, changing the cloth, tightening the knot at his waist.
"You look tired…", he thought, feeling his body relax against his will while her breathing set a calm tempo in his ear. His little hand grabbed her clothes and stayed there, a reflex he hated recognizing.
"Don't do that. Don't get attached to me… don't make that mistake," he thought, the adult mind speaking from behind baby eyes. In his other life, every time someone came too close—Bia, Vani, anyone who dared call that family—the world found a way to rip them away. Always in the dirtiest way possible.
"You don't know what you're getting into, Lia…", he thought, while his head was already sinking on her shoulder, surrendered to the rocking and the warm smell of smoke, leather, and cheap soap. The urge was to let go, to create distance, to keep the safe pattern of having no one.
His body betrayed him in the lowest way: it loosened, nestled closer, searched for warmth.
"Maybe just for today…", he gave in, the thought already drowning in sleep.
Later, lying beside him, Lia pressed her mouth to his tiny forehead and repeated the sound the same way as before, with the same rhythm, like turning an invisible key:
— Christian…
The name soaked through his skin and spread slowly.
"So this is who I am now," he thought, tasting each syllable inside like someone comparing a new medicine to an old one they already knew by flavor. Lian Rid sank deep down, like an echo swallowed by damp concrete—heavy, stained with gunfire, hospital light, and the smell of dried blood. Christian Raymond came clean, empty, with no history stuck to him.
"At least the name isn't that bad," he decided, tired humor fading in and out. "It works. I can restart inside it." He let the sound repeat in his head—Christian, Christian, Christian—until it stopped feeling like a stranger's name and started fitting like an oversized coat that, sooner or later, your body fills out.
♦
On the second day, the house woke early.
Lia sat on the edge of the bed, breathed deep, dragged both hands down her face in a slow gesture, like she was pushing exhaustion under her skin. If life were fair, she'd be wrecked. Still, she rose firm, tied her hair in a quick knot, and came to the cradle.
— "Come on, my little one" — she murmured, smiling faintly as she tucked him into the cloth. She adjusted the fabric on his shoulders, crossed it behind her back, tied it at her waist, and nestled him against her chest—secure and warm.
Lia held him tight to her chest, one arm beneath him, the other shifting the weight like she carried a bundle too fragile to bounce carelessly. The wind she'd summoned still brushed lightly over his skin, taking a bit of his weight, but it was nothing spectacular.
"What a letdown…", he thought, feeling her heartbeat thump steadily between his shoulder blades. "I thought you'd make me float through the air, like a magic trick doll…." With each step, her body rose and fell in a near-hypnotic sway, rocking his in a lazy back-and-forth. Sleep came in waves tugging his eyelids down, but he forced his eyes open, stubborn, like passing out meant losing important data.
The kitchen she entered looked ripped from an old book. A dark stone hearth blackened by soot, an iron pot resting above it, crackling with leftover heat. Crooked clay shelves, edges cracked, holding chipped bowls and cups that didn't match anything. Bundles of dried herbs hung near the window, giving off a mixed scent of leaf, smoke, and old dampness. The wooden table in the center bore knife scars, broth stains, years of use carved into every corner.
"Very medieval…", he thought, tracking a shaft of light slicing in through the window crack, making dust dance like slow little stars. "No wires, no bulbs, no screen glow. If magic has to exist anywhere, it's in a setting like this." He shifted his neck in the improvised sling to steal a few more degrees of view.
A girl standing on a bench kneaded dough with enthusiasm and almost zero technique. Flour in her hair, on her apron, on the floor. Every punch sent a small white halo into the air.
When she saw Lia at the door, she jolted so hard she almost sent the bowl to the ground.
— "I… I just wanted to help!" — she whined, raising floury hands, eyes wide with honest panic, like she'd set the kitchen on fire instead of just dirtying it to hell.
Lia frowned and nodded at the mess.
— "Lyra, I told you not to touch the stove alone" — she said in that short-scolding tone of someone who's repeated it ten times this month.
Lyra dropped her gaze instantly, chin tightening, fingers crushing the apron. Her whole body said "sorry" before the words.
Lia exhaled, her hard expression melting like ice in sun. A tired sigh left with the air. Her hand rose and ruffled the girl's hair in automatic affection.
— "Come here. Help, but next to me" — she added, voice lighter. — "That way you don't burn the house down."
Lyra laughed softly, relieved, sliding off the bench to glue herself to her mother's side.
"Bia would've loved you as a mother, Mrs. Lia," Christian thought, his chest tightening in an old, familiar way. The image of his sister from the other life hit him whole and shattered at once: Bia laughing with her mouth full, cursing the world and shielding him with her small body. Her hand pushing his head down when things got bad. The hospital. The smell of disinfectant. The machines.
He shoved the memory back down, like slamming a drawer shut with his knee.
"Later," he thought, flat. "Not here."
He forced his attention back to the hearth.
Lia stepped close to the stone stove. She extended her hand, fingers loose, her whole body aligning in a movement she probably didn't even notice anymore. Straight back, chin slightly lifted, eyes fixed on the logs.
Her lips moved naturally, and her fingers traced a nearly invisible shape in the air, like drawing a symbol no one else could see.
— Ignis.
The air above the wood shimmered faintly, like heat over pavement. For a second, nothing happened. Then a spark bloomed out of nowhere, clung to the dry logs, and fed greedily. The flame grew on the next breath, spreading into living orange. Warm light licked the soot-dark walls, dancing in Lyra's eyes as she watched with her mouth open.
The fresh smell of smoke filled the kitchen, mixing with the mild acidity of raw dough.
A shiver ran through Christian's skin—not fear, not cold. Something subtler, like sensing pressure change before a storm. The air around him seemed to… adjust. Like someone pushed energy one way, stole it from another, and the whole room rebalanced itself without asking.
"So that's how it is…", he thought, locking onto Lia's hand like a lab experiment. "She doesn't create fire from nothing. She pulls that energy, shoves it into a point in the air, forces it to become heat and flame. Word, gesture, focus… it's just an organized way of telling the world: 'do this'."
His mind slid automatically into old physics language.
"Energy in, energy out. Nothing's free. She must be draining something from inside herself, pushing it into the air as heat. Like yanking a battery wire and pressing it to the wood," he thought, watching the timing between the word and ignition. First the command, then the flow, then the result. A small closed system repeated so often her body did half the work alone.
Lyra clapped and bounced on the bench, snapping him out of the mental spiral.
— "Mom! You're amazing!"
Lyra nearly jumped in place, eyes shining like Lia had summoned a tiny dragon instead of just lighting the stove.
Lia blinked with that mix of pride and exhaustion only mothers have, and grabbed a basket of vegetables. Slightly wilted tomatoes, strange purple roots, leaves streaked with veins of other colors. None of it looked recipe-book normal, but she worked with it like holiday food.
One by one, she chopped with precision born of habit. The knife rose and fell in a steady beat, tapping the wooden board in almost musical rhythm. Each piece dropped into the copper cauldron hanging over the new flame.
She extended her hand again, now over the pot's rim, fingers gliding slowly through the air as if measuring temperature.
— Aqua.
The air seemed to sink a fraction, like someone scooped water from an invisible river. Droplets formed midair, thickened into a clear stream that poured into the cauldron. The sound of water hitting metal was full and round, the kind that makes you want to close your eyes and just listen.
"Fire, water, spoken word… this is a system, not a miracle," he thought, still in the sling, eyes glued to her hands. "Activated by commands, directed by intention, energy does the rest. Word, focus, flow. If I crack the logic behind it, I can do it too…"
Lyra leaned over the cauldron, shoved her nose into the steam, and pulled a satisfied face like she was tavern food critic.
— "It's gonna be good!" — she declared, puffing her chest.
"Your confidence is borderline illegal," he thought, watching her waddle around the kitchen always one step from breaking something. "If the world doesn't break you first, you'll be a fun problem, kid."
The stew smell spread thick and simple, doing better than any summoning spell.
The man appeared first—broad shoulders, scruffy beard, eyes still stuck with leftover sleep. He scratched his neck, hair sticking up in every direction like he'd lost a fight with the pillow.
— "Smells good, Lia" — he murmured, leaning in to kiss her temple before dropping onto the bench with the weight of someone who carried the day on his back.
— "Sit and wait, Tomy" — she replied, stirring without pausing, not even looking at him, but with a smile hiding in the corner of her mouth.
Then the teenage girl entered—hair in a messy knot, sleeves rolled up, eyes that had seen too much worry for her age. Behind her came a boy yawning loud, tripping over his own feet and poking his sister because it was the only skill he'd mastered.
Chairs scraped. Complaints about hunger. Short laughs. Someone asking if there was extra bread. The house filled with voices like it was filling with air.
"So these are my siblings," he thought, seeing the picture form: the responsible one, the functional idiot, the too-electric child, the half-broken father, the mother holding everything together with both hands. "Textbook family. Almost too nice for me to believe."
Tomy grabbed an empty clay jug, rested an elbow on the table, relaxed, and ran his hand along the jug's mouth like someone reaching for tap water.
— Aqua.
Water appeared again, obedient, rising from nowhere and filling the jug to the brim. Clear, clean, reflecting orange firelight. The air shifted around it softly, like a pressure dial only he could feel turning.
"Everyone here conjures like they're turning on a faucet," he thought, his tiny forehead creasing on its own. "If I fall behind in this game, I become dead weight. And dead weight in a world like this doesn't look healthy if I want to stay alive."
His little hand clenched in the cloth. Weak, untrained, but the decision behind it carried the weight of someone who already knew what happened to those who didn't keep up.
During the meal, talk bounced around in an organized chaos with its own rhythm:
— "Caliste, less bread" — Lia said without looking, exactly as the oldest reached for a fourth slice.
— "Lilia, help clean up after" — she added, stirring and blowing steam away.
— "Lyra, sit properly" — Tomy cut in, steadying his daughter's chair before it tipped.
— "Okay, Dad!" — Lyra grumbled, straightening with dramatic exaggeration, chin lifted, then winking at Christian, who stared at her with an almost offended curiosity.
"Noisy family, small house, hot food…", he thought, an annoying peace pushing into his chest from the inside, too good to be comfortable. "They're totally different from my family on Earth… Is this planet called Earth too? Or something generic like 'Gaia'?" he drifted, letting his mind play because it was easier than remembering where he'd come from.
Lia brought a spoon to his mouth, brow furrowed, testing the temperature like it was a suspicious chemical.
— "Come on, open your little mouth—" — she murmured, blowing gently before touching the broth to his lips.
Christian pulled a brief face—automatic reflex at the strong, rustic flavor so different from anything industrial back home. Still, he swallowed.
"So awful… bleh," he thought, feeling the heat scrape down his throat. "But the worst part is it really tastes like baby mush I used to feed Bia when she was little," he compared, tired humor hurting more than helping.
After breakfast, the day broke into chores and small spells, as if magic were just another kitchen tool.
Father and the boy went out—Caliste slinging a bow over his shoulder with adult seriousness. Tomy strapped on his quiver, checked arrows, spoke low and serious to Lia:
— "We'll be back before sunset."
He bent to gently touch Christian's head in the sling like a makeshift talisman, then squeezed Lia's shoulder with a callused hand.
— "Be careful in the valley" — she answered, firm and short. No scene, no speech, but the worry in her eyes followed them until they vanished down the road.
Lilia stared at the house a second like she was measuring a battlefield before fighting. Then she rolled up her sleeves, opened windows, beat rugs, stacked crooked chairs in a corner.
She stopped in the middle of the room, breathed deep, and lifted a hand.
— Vortices.
The air obeyed.
A small column of wind spun in the center, scooping straw, dust, husks, forgotten crumbs. Everything swirled gently to the open door, then got pushed outside by the window's draft. The wind passed over Christian and tousled the few hairs he had.
"Wind too," he thought, tracking the motion sharply. "So I've seen fire, water, wind… there's probably earth and more hiding somewhere. Literally an element catalog like an RPG."
Lyra tailed her sister, trying to copy the hand movement, brows nearly knotted from effort. Her lips moved silently, trying to land the word.
"Hm… her gestures and sequence look a lot like Lilia's," he analyzed. "If this were a fighting game, she's at that stage of 'mash every button and pray a combo happens.' It isn't lack of will… maybe lack of understanding? Who knows."
Nothing happened besides a long frustrated sigh from the girl and a sideways glare at her own hand like her fingers were guilty.
Lia went through her day using magic like taking shortcuts.
A short gesture to lift a heavy basket she couldn't carry alone. A near-whispered command to pull water from a pot into a bucket without straining her arm. A discreet glow at her fingertips to dry her clothes faster near the hearth.
No grand show. Just routine. Technique. Saving effort.
"So the rule's clear," Christian thought, missing nothing. "Magic isn't a 'heroic last resort.' It's a normal-day tool. That means whoever doesn't use it… falls behind."
He recorded everything: the sound of words, finger positions, the delay between speech and effect, the shift in pressure, the way the floor reacted, the way his own body felt when someone cast near him.
He stored it all line by line, like jotting down a busted build in an old notebook to use when no one was watching.
"I don't understand your language," he thought as Lia hoisted him higher in the sling, rocking him gently while wiping the table. "But I understand mechanics. If logic's hiding in there, sooner or later I'll rip it out. Physics was already hard on Earth… here, poor thing. But pattern is pattern in any universe, I hope."
Later, Lia took him outside, leaning on the doorway just so he could "get some air," as she put it.
The sun was low, spilling tired orange into a sky fading toward purple. Uneven fields stretched to the horizon, patches of green surviving between raw earth. A few lone trees broke the view, and a crooked fence set the "yard" boundary more by stubbornness than effectiveness.
A skinny dog slept curled near the chicken coop, ears twitching at insects. The wind carried earth, feathers, smoke, and a distant hint of other houses burning wood.
"Huh… so this is the new world," he thought, eyes sweeping everything, absorbing texture, color, smell. "Rural, simple, patched-up… like a forgotten countryside no one remembers exists. Kind of pretty, kind of sad. Easy to get attached to… easy to lose everything too."
Lyra came running sideways, breathless and wild-haired, holding a thin branch like a legendary sword.
— "Mom! I almost hit a bird!" — she announced proudly, swinging the branch like a trophy.
Lia turned her head slowly, a full second of silence, then lifted an eyebrow with surgical precision.
— "Lyra, you're not supposed to hit any bird. Go help Lilia with the chickens" — she said, nodding toward the coop in a tone that didn't leave room for debate.
"The chickens here look normal at first glance," Christian thought, watching them scratch at the dry ground. "Beak, feathers, sharp eyes… all the same. Until you notice the beaks are thicker, the feather tips shine metallic, and the legs look built to kick someone to death."
One raised its head and stared at the door like it was deciding whether to charge Lyra or not.
"And they're bigger," he noted. "Halfway between chicken and turkey. If one of those pecks my face, I'm a filet."
The skinny dog by the coop cracked one yellow eye open, ear twitching.
"Dog is still dog," he concluded. "But that one's got too many teeth for my taste, and a slightly wrong look…", he thought, a mental ugh rising as he eyed the thing—almost wolf-sized, shaggy coat too thick for a normal mutt, but thin in an ugly way, ribs marked by scarcity.
Farther out, a bird landed on the crooked fence. Small, light, perfectly "normal"… until it shifted and revealed a split tail swaying in two beats, like someone glued it on afterward.
"That's it," he decided, tracking the quick wing flick. "Someone took Earth animals, opened an editor, and tweaked details: a bit bigger here, a weird color there, an extra bone, a spare tooth. Just enough to remind me of home and, at the same time, rub in my face that this isn't home."
Lyra pulled a face that blended drama and indignation, dragged her feet two steps like the ground had suddenly doubled in weight, then ran back just to lean in and plant a quick kiss on Christian's cheek.
"Pushy and cocky," he thought, his cheek still warm and wet. "But honest. If she stays like this, she'll grow up thinking she can do whatever she wants."
♦
Night fell. The house dimmed in layers.
First, the clatter of pots stopped. Then the chatter thinned to murmurs behind doors. The hearth shrank to glowing embers. The world folded down until it was only their room, half shadow, half silence.
Lia fell asleep fast, her heavy arm over him like a warm wall against everything else. Her smell—smoke, leather, clean sweat—made a cocoon it was hard to want to leave.
"Okay… let's try to think straight," he thought, holding his breath briefly like it could stabilize his mind. "This isn't a game, it isn't anime. If this exists, then it's some kind of energy. Energy always has rules. This energy is a field, not a miracle."
The idea calmed him.
"Field…", he thought, his brain sliding automatically to university. "Like an electric field, a magnetic field… or some steroid-fueled mix of both. The core would be the source, like concentrated charge. The rest of the body is the medium. What I do with 'will' is basically messing with boundary conditions."
He almost laughed.
"If my professors could see me using physics to try to bend magic… they'd lose their minds," he thought, dry amusement. "But screw it. Even if the laws here are different, it's still energy moving from A to B. And energy doesn't come from nothing. If it moves, there's a reason."
He closed his eyes and dove inward.
First he found only the heart, beating too fast in the tiny chest—an impatient drum. Muscle, blood, body. Familiar stuff. He pushed deeper, searching beneath that rhythm for another frequency, something that wasn't flesh or heartbeat.
Little by little, he felt it.
Not pain, not tickle. It was… density. A compact, muffled heat, like an ember hidden under a thick layer of ash.
"There," he thought, an involuntary smile trying to rise. His little hand lifted a bit, heavy, trying to point at his chest. "A concentrated, anomalous energy source stuck to me. If that isn't a core… then I'm crazier than I thought," he concluded, accepting the possibility with half-tired humor.
"Alright. Let's assume that's the source… so where's the field?"
He pictured the air around him as an invisible sea of particles—not exactly molecules, but something occupying space that could be pushed, compressed, thinned. His old physics intuition nudged.
"If the core is an energy source, I can steal a tiny sip of it and shove it into the air," he thought. "More energy here, a bit less there… like squeezing and releasing a hose. Where I squeeze, the air has to move."
He visualized the core pulling a minuscule gulp of that thing he couldn't see but could feel, then pushing it toward his hand.
"Energy leaves the core, runs through something I'll call 'channels' until I learn the real name, reaches the hand, and pushes the air," he thought, using Lia's heavy breathing as a metronome, each inhale marking the tempo. "No magic word, no stupid hand-ballet. Just oriented energy flow."
When he felt the faint pressure—real or placebo, whatever—he aligned intention.
No Latin phrase mangled by baby tongue. His body was still a baby, his mouth barely managed syllables. So instead of a verbal formula, he used what he had: image.
He recalled the breeze at the window earlier, the dust rising when Lilia used wind. Not just the sensation, but the effect: air pressure shifting, particles being pushed.
He imagined it again, but with the force vector born from his palm.
"Field of this strange energy producing a pressure variation in the air, direction: forward," he thought, extending his hand a few centimeters into the dark as if pushing something heavy no one else could see. "No spectacle. Just proof of concept."
At first, nothing.
Only silence.
Then, a ridiculous puff.
So weak that anyone else would blame the drafty window. But the touch on his skin didn't come from outside-in; it came from inside-out. The air answered his will, even if only to say "okay, I'm here." A few hairs on his forehead shifted lazily.
His eyes snapped open, glowing in the dark.
"It worked," he thought, fingers trying to grab the nothing in a goofy reflex. "No word, no gesture—just field and intent. It was me. Not luck," he admitted, and didn't even try to hide the pride this time.
A little giggle slipped out, choked and dangerous.
— Heh… — he let out, then froze mid-sound, turning slowly to check if Lia had woken.
Her breathing stayed heavy and steady, vast enough to fill their tiny world. Still.
"If a crumb of energy can already push air…", his brain sprinted ahead of his body. "How long until I can do something actually useful? One day this becomes blade, shield, propulsion… anything. My hypothesis was really right…"
He swallowed the euphoria with effort.
"I need to see if I can do more later," he thought, forcing his hand to relax like releasing an over-tensed muscle. "Slowly. If I get greedy, I'll blow a channel and die of magical hemorrhage. Great scientific paper, terrible ending."
Even so, a stubborn smile glued itself to his mouth, refusing to leave.
Fatigue came like a tide. The heat in his chest retreated, the core saying "enough for today" without asking. His eyelids weighed down like someone dumped wet sand on them.
Before he fully blacked out, one last thought dragged itself through, stubborn:
"I've been trash long enough in the other life," he thought in a fraying thread of consciousness, remembering the alley, the blood, the gunshot, the feeling of being one more disposable statistic. "This time, I climb. Even if it's the last thing I do. I can't die again…", he decided, holding that promise like a rope stretched over an abyss.
He fell asleep.
Outside, night stayed ordinary. A dog barked at nothing, wind stirred the leaves of a crooked tree, a branch snapped somewhere far off. Inside the wooden house, everything looked the same—same bed, same hearth dimming, same routine waiting for morning.
But in one corner of that room, a baby who still couldn't say "mom" had just torn from the world the first proof that he wasn't just another victim in the script. And quiet as it was, the air still held the almost imperceptible trace of a wind that came from nowhere… except him.