Time is a strange thing when you cannot track it by the sun or a clock. For Vaelen, the first few weeks were a blur of hunger, warmth, and the heavy fog of an infant's brain. His mind was that of a veteran warrior, he spent most of his time fighting the urge to sleep. Every time he tried to think deeply about his past or his future, his eyelids would betray him.
By the end of the second month, the world started to sharpen. The blurry shapes of his room became clear. He lived in a house made of heavy, dark wood. The craftsmanship was excellent. There were no gaps in the floorboards to let in the winter chill. Outside the window, he could see the tops of evergreen trees dusted with white. It was a cold world, but his home was a fortress of warmth.
His mother, Elara, was his primary world. She was patient. She spoke to him in a melodic tone that he slowly began to decode. It wasn't just about the words. It was about the rhythm. He noticed that she used a specific rising inflection when she was asking a question. She used a sharp, short sound when she wanted him to stop squirming.
"My little star," she would say. Or at least, that is what he imagined the word for star was based on the way she pointed at the night sky.
Vaelen spent his days listening. He was like a sponge. He cataloged every sound. He realized that the language of this world was far more complex than the guttural tongue of his old home. There were subtle shifts in breath that changed the meaning of a word entirely.
He didn't learn any full sentences in those first few months. He only learned markers. "Milk" was a soft, wet sound. "Cold" was a sharp, biting syllable. "Lyra" was the name of his older sister.
Lyra was a constant source of both entertainment and mild peril. She was three years old and possessed a boundless energy that Vaelen found exhausting to even watch. She would bring him rocks, leaves, or her carved wooden bird. She would talk to him for hours, unaware that her brother was internally critiquing her grammar and sentence structure.
By the third month, Vaelen tried to get back to work. He was a man of action. Sitting idle in a cradle was a special kind of torture. He started with his breathing. In his old world, ki was moved by the breath. You drew air into the lower abdomen, compressed it, and pushed it through the meridians.
One night, while the house was silent, he tried it. He took a slow, measured breath. He tried to find his center.
'Nothing.'
There was no heat. There was no internal spark. It felt like trying to start a fire with wet matches. His body was too soft, too undeveloped. The pathways he was looking for simply didn't exist yet.
He didn't give up. He spent the fourth and fifth months trying to replicate the green light he had seen from the healer. He remembered the word she had used.
"Euu!" he would whisper whenever he was alone.
He tried saying it with a focus on his chest. He tried saying it while reaching for the ambient energy in the room. He could feel something in the air. The room was filled with a faint, static-like pressure. It was the mana. He could sense it, but he couldn't grasp it. It was like trying to catch smoke with his bare hands.
'It's right there!' he thought, his frustration mounting. 'I can feel it against my skin, but it won't go inside.'
The more he tried to force the magic, the more his body resisted. He would end up with a headache and a wet diaper, which was a humiliating combination for a former Great Blade. He had to remind himself to be patient. He was rebuilding from zero.
By the sixth month, he had achieved a few small victories. He could sit up on his own if he leaned against the side of the cradle. His neck was finally strong enough to hold his head steady for long periods. This allowed him to observe the rest of the house when Elara carried him around.
The house was larger than he thought. There was a hearth that crackled with a blue-tinted flame. That was another sign of magic. Regular wood didn't burn blue. He saw his mother wave a hand over a pot of water to make it boil. She didn't even say a word. It was as natural to her as breathing.
This realization humbled him. Even the common folk, or at least his mother, had a connection to this power that he couldn't even begin to replicate.
He also noticed the lack of a father figure. He saw his mother look at a cloak hanging by the door with a mixture of sadness and pride, but no man ever came to claim it. The house was quiet, run entirely by Elara. This suggested his father was either a soldier, a traveler, or dead. Given the quality of the house, Vaelen leaned toward a soldier or a man of high status.
One afternoon, Lyra sat by his cradle. She was trying to teach him how to say her name.
"Ly-ra," she said, over and over. She pointed at herself. "Ly-ra."
Vaelen looked at her. He decided it was time to give them something. If he stayed too quiet, they would keep worrying. He took a breath, focusing his vocal cords.
"Ly... ra," he croaked.
His voice was high and thin. It sounded nothing like the deep baritone he once had.
Lyra froze. Her eyes went wide. She let out a scream of pure joy and sprinted out of the room, yelling for their mother. Vaelen sighed and slumped back. The drama of a three-year-old was something he was still getting used to.
He looked at his hands again. They were still small. Still weak. But he was growing. He could feel his bones lengthening and his muscles slowly gaining density. He hadn't mastered magic. He hadn't even found his ki. But he was starting to understand the world.
He learned that the green-haired woman's name was Sister Mira. She wasn't his aunt, but a local healer. He learned that the name of their village was Oakhaven, or something close to it. He learned that he was still unnamed in the official sense. His mother called him "Little Thorne" when she thought he was sleeping.
'Vaelen Thorne,' he thought. 'I'll keep that name for now. Even if they give me a new one, I know who I am!'
He watched the blue flames in the hearth from across the room. He felt the mana pressing against him, a silent invitation he couldn't yet accept.
He closed his eyes, listening to the muffled sounds of his mother and sister celebrating his first word in the next room. It was a simple life as it was a slow life. But for a man who had spent his first existence as a puppet of fate, this slow pace was exactly what he needed to build a foundation that no deity could ever break.
He fell asleep that night not out of exhaustion from magic, but out of a strange sense of contentment. He was six months into his new life. He had a long way to go, and he was perfectly fine with that.