The room exploded with sound the moment the midwife lifted him.
Voices overlapped. Someone laughed through tears. Someone else sobbed outright. Hands clapped shoulders. A woman cried out from the bed, raw and shaking with relief. The air was humid with sweat, smoke from the hearth, iron and herbs. Whatever language they were speaking washed over Luthor in meaningless waves.
The old woman holding him spoke again, her voice bright with triumph.
Luthor lay limp in her arms, swaddled in rough fabric, eyes moving as much as his tiny body would allow. The world tilted as she shifted him from side to side. There was a Low wooden ceiling with dark beams. Firelight dancing across clay walls. A bed soaked with the aftermath of birth. A woman lying there, pale and spent, staring at him as if he were the only solid thing left in the room.
"So that's my new mother," he thought. "Great. She looks like she barely survived round one."
A broad-shouldered man hovered at the edge of the crowd. His hands kept clenching and unclenching like he didn't know what to do with them now that the danger had passed. Tears tracked blindly down his face.
I guess that's the Father, then.
Two more shapes pushed forward. A boy and a girl, both thin, eyes wide with equal parts fear and curiosity. Siblings. Of course.
"Perfect," Luthor thought. A" poor house, a wounded mother, a shaking father, and two mouths ahead of me in line. This just keeps getting better."
Another woman rushed in with the children, her presence folding into the chaos. The bed creaked. Everyone spoke at once. The midwife moved with calm authority through it all, cleaning, wrapping, passing him briefly from one set of hands to another.
Through it all, Luthor stayed silent.
He didn't cry. He didn't flail. He simply watched.
Silence in adults might bring neglect, but in babies, however, it draws attention.
A worried note crept into the mother's voice as she tried to lift herself despite the pain. The midwife stopped her with a sharp word and a steady palm. Then, as if to prove a point, she unwrapped him again and tapped him smartly.
His world jolted as he felt like someone had slapped his butt quite heavily.
Luthor reacted on instinct more than intention. A tiny grunt escaped him. A sudden warmth followed.
His mind seized the moment with childish glee.
Take that.
The midwife blinked. Then laughed as her dress was drenched in his pee. The tension in the room loosened like a knot pulled free. Someone took him to be cleaned again, and the old woman muttered something dry about lively children.
Luthor grinned in his own private way, pleased with himself.
Then the midwife raised one finger.
She traced a slow circle in the air and slashed through it with a deliberate motion. A single word left her lips. "Vanish."
Darkness gathered at her fingertip like spilled ink gathering itself.
She touched the damp fabric of her dress, then her shoes.
The stains vanished.
Not faded.
Completely finished.
Luthor stared in open shock as the substance dried, cracked, and crumbled into dust before simply ceasing to be.
For the first time since waking in this world, real excitement surged through him.
Magic.
It was not tricks. Not illusions. It was real magic.
The midwife turned back to the bed and raised her hands above the mother's body. Her fingers spread wide. Her arms rolled through a slow, circular arc, gathering something unseen between them as she moved.
Another word. Different. Lighter.
Warmth filled the room.
Soft light settled over the woman's lower body like sunrise filtered through water. Color returned to her skin. The tightness eased from her face. Even her breathing smoothed.
Luthor watched every movement with ruthless focus, imprinting it deeper than memory. His tiny limbs twitched beneath the cloth as he tried to mirror what he could.
Another click inside him.
A second door unlocking.
So this is how it works, he thought. Words. Shapes. And Intention.
The idea took root instantly and viciously.
If there's room here for magic… there's room for me to disappear into it.
The room quieted again as Luthor was passed into his mother's arms. The worry returned immediately to her face as she studied him.
She spoke softly, fear leaking through her tone. "My baby..."
The midwife hesitated. Then smiled with practiced assurance.
She took him back once more and traced another pattern, slower this time. A final word followed.
A thread of light drifted from her palm and flowed into him.
The warmth surged through Luthor's body like liquid sunlight. It expanded from his chest to his limbs, to his fingertips, to places he barely understood how to feel yet. For one brilliant moment, he wasn't small. He wasn't helpless.
The light flared, then began to fade.
Panic struck.
No, he thought fiercely. Not yet.
He focused with everything he had on the last lingering strands of that energy, pulling, feeding it with raw will. He didn't know how. Only that he wanted it.
The glow faltered.
Then grew.
The midwife jerked back in surprise.
The light around Luthor brightened on its own, spilling softly against the dim room. Gasps rippled through the onlookers.
"Wha..."
Then the strength vanished all at once, and the darkness folded in.
Sleep took Luthor like a dropped curtain.
When he was placed back into his mother's trembling arms, the old woman stood very still, studying the tiny shape she had just scanned.
At last, she spoke gently. "Leon..."