"Five years have gone by since I arrived in this world", a young boy sighed as he watched the moon and the stars in the night sky through the window.
If looked closely, the boy appears near human, but not quite so.
His ears are long and pointed in an upward direction, while his skin is violet in colour. Except for those distinctions, he would resemble a human child.
Yes, he looked humanoid, but he is not a human.
He is Syldan Starborne, a Night Elf, one of the subraces of the majestic and proud Elven race.
He was once known as Thomas, an orphan from Earth, who lived without a family or friends. He was average in studies and only graduated from high school before leaving the orphanage. Without a college degree, he could only work in supermarkets and similar jobs.
While not working, he would indulge in Webnovels, which were his way of escaping the brutal world where he was ignored and seen as of no value.
His favourite novel was "The Tyrannical Hero and his multi-racial harem".
The novel's name was a cliche, but he loved the story, not for the Hero nor for the Harem, but because of the world-building efforts the author had put in. Thomas loved it, as he could easily picture himself in the world of Arkanum, where the story takes place.
Though he dreamed of being in that world, he was realistic and knew that it could never happen, but it happened.
He died because of a reckless driver, and woke up as a newborn baby in the novel world.
From birth, he could remember his past and could hear the words, but the language was new and had no connection with the language of his past, which made it impossible for him to understand things.
Though he remembered the past, whenever he dug deeper, he would tire out.
He understood that he was an infant with years of memories that someone his size and strength couldn't process. Yeah, the brain is not developed yet to process things. Once he understood that, he stopped thinking about too many things.
His first task was to understand the language the people around him spoke.
He knew that he was an Elf from his appearance, but the language was quite difficult to learn. Since his baby brain couldn't process more than a few words at a time, he could only relate things slowly and understand as time went on.
By the age of two, he could clearly speak and understand most of the language, except words of a complex nature.
In any language, there were words that would have different meanings in different scenarios. So, that part was still a bit troublesome for him at the moment.
By the age of three, when he started to read, which gave him partial access to the family's library, he was able to put a lot of information together.
He was reborn as the second son, the youngest child of the Starborne family patriarch.
When he heard the name Starborne and his race as Night Elf, he felt something. His memories stirred as he heard the name before, but he crossed it out as nothing but a reincarnator's paranoia.
Not every transmigrator or reincarnator would have a good start. The start, the progress, everything varies.
What Thomas... Sylvander wanted to find out whether he had a good start or not. He didn't think about the future immediately, but what he found later on made him reconsider that.
When he learned that the world he was reborn in was called Arkanum, the world where his favourite webnovel, "The Tyrannical Hero and his multi-racial harem", takes place, he felt shivers.
To be sure, he checked other things before coming to a wrong conclusion.
The shivers only increased as he learned about the continent and the city where he is currently located. Too many coincidences, or as he knew, no coincidence but the truth about his doom.
In most novels, Elves were not the main race.
They appear as strong and proud, but when the story of the Hero starts, they lose everything. Only a few survive, or the hero would be the saviour of the Elves. Anyway, the hero would bag a couple of Elven beauties, and that would be the highest point an Elf can gain in a novel.
To Thomas... No, Sylvander, that felt like a curse.
He is an Elf and a man. So, no hero would come save him, especially when he knew that his family was doomed.
Everything looked down for a while, but things changed when he learned the name of his brother.
Sylander is the third child and the second son in the family. The first of them was a girl, and then came his brother, and after him, Sylavander did, but he didn't come to know about them, not until he had crossed the age of three, when he met his brother for the first time.
When he learned that he was reincarnated into the doomed family of Starborne, he cursed his luck.
In the novel, one of the Female Leads was a Starborne, the heiress of the family. While she was still at the academy, during her fifth year, which was the same for the Hero, the family was attacked and erased.
Well, only the main family, while most of the branch family members were on the central continent.
After that, she, who always rejected the Hero's advance, accepted him in exchange for revenge. She gave the title of the Heir to Starborne to one of the branch family members and joined Hero's party. She knew that she couldn't exact revenge without help, and so she sacrificed herself, though she knew that the Hero was a greedy asshole.
Yeah, due to her blessing, she knew what others wanted from her, which made it easier for her to choose her friends' circle. She was also the sole reason why the Elven Princess and Dragon Princess didn't fall for the Hero, but did when she had other priorities to take care of.
The good thing was that Sylvander remembered all the mentioned names, and one of those names was Rutherian Starborne, grandfather of Rystera Starborne, one of the female leads.
It was said that Rutherian was over 200 when he died, and by that time, Rystera was yet to be born.
Rutherian, as it turns out, is his brother, born only twenty years before him.
The Elves live longer when compared to the humans.
Though as one ranks up, their lifespan increases, while comparing an Elf and a Human of the same rank, the Elf lives longer than the human, but the reproduction rate of Elves is lower than that of humans.
This made the total number much less than what it should be when there are people who lived centuries. Also, it was weird as there would be decades of age gap between siblings, but Sylvander didn't care at that moment.
To him, there are still at least two centuries before the doom came for the family and then the world.
Oh, yeah, the doom of the world started with the fall of the Starborne family, but that was of no concern for the present Sylvander.
After getting hope of finding a solution for his and his family's survival, he vowed that he would give his best to save them, but that has to wait for a little longer, as he had other things to take care of in order to achieve that.
"Little Syl, it is time for the Ceremony. Let's move or we are gonna be late", a voice came from outside his door.
The boy turned towards the door and spoke, "Coming, Mama", and he quickly put on his coat, the last piece of his attire for the night, before leaving the room.