Chapter 3 – The world's rhythm
After the first breeze of magic, the weeks of Lian—inside Christian Raymond's body—started to pass at an irritatingly slow pace.
I'm sending the excerpt already revised and adjusted, keeping everything you put, just polishing rhythm, voice, and fitting the thoughts better:
The days followed a monotonous rhythm: waking up to the noise of the house, nursing whatever there was, watching everyone, trying to decipher the language of that world; at night, when the house sank into silence and only the embers in the hearth still insisted on glowing, the fun part came—practicing magic until the body said "enough."
On the outside, he was still just a calm baby.
On the inside, he was an impatient adult with the feeling of being late for a race only he knew existed.
It was in that routine that he truly began to understand the world he had fallen into.
Poverty was in everything.
In the way Lia scraped out the very last drop of stew from the pot, tilting the copper cauldron until the final thick thread slid into the bowls.
In the care with which Tomy counted the strips of meat on the board, calloused fingers touching them one by one, as if he were calculating the future in pieces.
In the way Lilia sliced the bread, always measuring in silence the thickness of each piece, the knife going back and forth slowly so no one went without.
His father, together with Caliste, spent most of the day in the forest, with a bow and simple knives, hunting whatever they could.
Every now and then, Christian heard their heavy steps on the porch long before they came in—boots dirty with mud, tired voices, the smell of sweat and dried blood. In those moments, the kitchen gained a tense silence: first Lia checked what was in the sack; only then did the rest of the family come closer.
She opened the sack carefully, hands firm even when her shoulders trembled. The sound of wet meat hitting the board filled the space. Sometimes it was a skinny rabbit. Sometimes two small birds. Sometimes almost nothing.
"Fragile balance…", he thought one night, listening to the knife scrape bone on a scrawny rabbit while Lia separated meat from scraps. "One good hunting day, everyone eats. One bad day…", he let the sentence die on its own, his chest tightening half from empathy, half from experience.
Lia split her time between the house, the children, and the small garden beside the tired wood they called home. Shriveling tomatoes, leaves a stubborn green, a few roots smaller than they ought to be. She crouched with a sigh, sank her hands into the soil, pulled weeds carefully, like everything there was glass.
"It's little, but it's the only food that doesn't depend on the forest," he thought, watching through the window while she bent over, the sun catching her brown hair tied in a makeshift bun. "If this dies, we go with it…"
Over time, being carried from one place to another in the sling, Christian began to assemble a map of that slice of world: the main road that cut through the village and vanished toward the distant city everyone mentioned as threat or hope; the smaller path that went down to the stream; Yana's house, always smelling of strong herbs even from outside.
Since he had no books to read and didn't know the words yet, he always paid attention to people's conversations. When a rare traveler stopped at the edge of the road, someone inevitably said something that always sounded the same, with the same weight of "here" and "us":
— … Éstia … our village… — came stitched into the middle of sentences.
Lia sometimes murmured it while complaining about the drought or the lack of merchants, Tomy said it when comparing that end-of-nowhere to "a real city," Yana spat the name with disgust when cursing the villagers' ignorance.
It was always the same sound repeating, with the same melancholy stuck to it.
When Lia went out with him tied to her back or chest, Christian could see the details better.
A house with a roof patched with scraps of leather. Another with clotheslines so worn they were almost transparent, swaying in cold wind. Barefoot children running after a piece of wood like it was treasure. A skinny dog sleeping under the shade of a broken barrel.
But what drew his attention most were the things that didn't exist on Earth.
A tree by the well had fruits with dark-blue skin that glowed faintly when the sun hit at a certain angle, like they kept a spark inside. On another house, someone had hung, on the veranda, a bundle of thin roots that floated a few centimeters above the rope, held by nothing, turning slowly as if air were water.
"Okay, that's new," he thought, staring at the floating roots while Lia talked to a neighbor. "A plant that glows, a plant that floats… at least people have normal-people faces. Two legs, two arms, no tail, horn, or extra eye," he assessed, a half-smile slipping out inside him. "Aside from being able to use magic, they're basically human by the book. Are there other races around here? Elves, dwarves, beast-people… or is that just a privilege of fictional worlds back on Earth?"
That certainty that, at least, people's faces weren't strange helped hold a small part of the panic in place. The rest he shoved deep down.
His mother sometimes took him and Lyra to Yana's house to examine the girl. Apparently his sister suffered from some kind of problem that kept her from using energy.
Yana was basically the village healer, or at least that was what he deduced. Several people from the village would go there to receive some kind of treatment.
The old woman's house stood on slightly higher ground, near a dry tree full of strips of cloth tied to the branches—like wishes or promises.
Inside, the place smelled of burned herbs, old dust, and something metallic. Bundles of dried roots hung from the ceiling like little vegetable skeletons. Glass vials with liquids of questionable colors rested on a crooked shelf that looked ready to give up on life.
Yana didn't look like anyone's sweet grandma.
She had wrinkles, sure. Lots of them. But none of them softened her face. Her clear eyes were sharp, alert, the kind that missed nothing. Her gray hair, bound in a low bun, looked so tight it could hold a bad day in place.
She watched patients the way someone appraised a tool: measuring wear, imagining how long till it broke.
And at the end, the coins always came.
— Three copper coins now, plus one when she manages to conjure something — Yana said on one of those visits, running a hand over Lyra's forehead as the girl sat on the chair with her legs swinging.
Lian—Christian, in that house—was in Lia's lap, pressed to her chest, his face half buried in the cloth, but his eyes wide open. He didn't understand the whole sentence, but a few words were starting to stand out from the rest, like islands in noise:
Coins. Conjure. Lyra.
Lia pressed her lips together. The arm under him tensed, as if her whole body had shrunk a little.
— But… Yana, you know that we… — she started, her voice wavering.
Lian wasn't following the content, but he recognized that tone. It was the same kind of sound an adult made when trying to negotiate late bills with a bank clerk: explanation, apology, embarrassed pleading, all mixed together.
Yana raised an eyebrow, slow.
— I don't work for free, Lia — she cut in, dry. — If I don't charge, who pays for my herbs? The air? The forest? Yana's good will? — she huffed, straightening her back. — Bring it little by little, but bring it. If I let you forget, you forget.
Lia lowered her gaze. Her free hand went to the inside pocket of her apron, fumbling the fabric like she was looking for courage along with the coins. When she finally pulled out three little pieces, Lian felt her chest sink with a trapped sigh.
The sound of the coins falling into Yana's hand rang too loud in the small room. A simple, dry clink, but heavy.
"I got it," he thought, letting his eyes follow hands, expressions, drooping shoulders. "She talks, my mom shrinks, coins disappear… same logic as always, just a different set."
Yana closed her fist around the coins with the habit of someone who had repeated that gesture her whole life. She didn't thank. She didn't smile. She just dropped them into a wooden pot on a corner shelf, like she was feeding some invisible beast living inside it.
"Medieval capitalism, lovely," he thought with a thread of tired irony. "Don't need to know the words to see who's paying the bill."
The old woman leaned over Lyra again.
She took a small crystal from a little box, about the size of a chicken egg, polished to shine. The way her fingers held it showed respect. That wasn't just a tool; it was something rare.
Yana pressed the crystal to Lyra's forehead, right at the center, and murmured some words. Lian recognized fragments only, sounds repeated from other visits, a sort of technical litany he still couldn't decode but already filed away as "spells to see inside."
The crystal lit up.
For a second, a weak, washed-out glow spread inside the stone. No intense light, no strong color. Just a timid flicker that died too fast.
Yana's face hardened a little more.
She murmured another sequence, shifted the crystal's position, repeated the process. The result was almost identical.
— Nothing — she said at last. — Her core doesn't react. It's… strange.
Lian didn't understand the whole line, but the ending tone was clear. That wasn't praise. Even less relief.
Lia clenched her hands in her apron again, her knuckles whitening.
— Is there anything we can do? — she asked, her voice breaking halfway.
Yana shrugged like someone who'd walked that road too many times.
— We strengthen the body, clean what we can clean, and wait to see if the core decides to wake up someday — she answered, turning her back to rummage through a shelf. — I don't sell miracles.
"Disease?" Lian thought, fixing on the new word.
— How much? — Lia asked, already knowing the answer, still asking anyway.
— Two coins — Yana replied with the same casualness someone else would use to say "two spoonfuls."
Lia closed her eyes for a second before slipping her hand into her pocket again. She produced the coins with painful reluctance. Lian felt her heart tighten beneath him again.
"She charges even on top of other people's desperation," he thought, keeping the placid baby face. "Wicked old woman… or just someone who can't afford to be nice?"
Yana took the coins, ran her thumb over them, checking the count, and muttered something between dissatisfaction and acceptance. She didn't give any back. But she didn't raise the price either.
Her eyes returned to Lyra.
This time, they lingered longer. They traveled slowly up and down: legs too thin, drooping shoulders, skin a bit pale, tiredness stuck in the girl's bones. There was irritation in Yana, yes, but also something like a different discomfort. A kind of worry that brought zero profit.
She sighed low, almost as if she'd forgotten anyone was listening.
Then she put a hand on Lia's shoulder.
She said something in a lower, heavier tone. Lian didn't catch the words, but he caught the weight. He recognized the rhythm: it was the same kind of line a doctor on Earth used when meaning "we'll try to keep it stable" instead of "she'll get better."
♦
It was there, in Yana's house, that Christian saw for the first time a real attempt at healing magic.
Not on Lyra, but on another day.
It started in the dirt street. Muffled screams, running footsteps, people calling for Yana. Lia went to the door with him in her arms, curious, and what she saw made Christian's stomach twist.
Two men carried an elderly man on a kind of makeshift stretcher, two logs and an old sheet. The old man had to be in his seventies, maybe more. His skin was too pale, his chest rising and falling with difficulty, his clothes torn and soaked with blood.
His legs… were in a state Christian would've preferred not to see.
Deep cuts, exposed flesh, dried and fresh blood mixed together, strange marks like something had ripped pieces out rather than sliced.
Lyra and Lilia appeared at the next door, peeking in fear.
— Yana! Yana! — one of the women cried, hair tied in a rushed, messy bun, face wet with tears. — Please… please help him!
Yana came out slowly, wiping her hands on a cloth already stained. She looked the whole scene over without hurry, like someone assessing a broken thing to see if it was still worth fixing.
— Put him here — she ordered, pointing to a reinforced bench inside.
The men went in carefully, but a low groan still slipped from the old man. The room felt smaller. Too many people, too little air.
Lia stayed at the door, pressing Christian to her chest as if she wanted to shield him from seeing. By reflex, he turned his face away—then looked back. It wasn't curiosity. It was habit. Suffering wasn't new to him. Only the scenery changed.
"What the hell…", he thought, eyes narrowing. "What did this to that old man?"
Yana moved her hands over the old man's body without touching, fingers trembling slightly. She murmured words he didn't know. The air changed; Christian felt a diffuse warmth, as if the room had pulled an invisible blanket over the man.
The healer's hands began to glow a pale green, sliding up her arms like liquid smoke.
She held her palms over his chest—no direct contact—and the glow flowed down, seeping into skin as if it were being absorbed.
Smaller cuts began to close slowly, the skin pulling edges together like it was stitching itself. On the legs, all that happened was the bleeding stopped. The flesh stayed ugly, tense, ragged.
The man breathed in deep, once, twice, eyes almost opening. The woman beside him squeezed his hand hard.
— Father… father, please hold on… — she sobbed, voice splitting.
Yana kept going, sweat appearing on her forehead. The glow faltered, then came back weaker.
"She's spending her own core?" Christian thought, trying to feel the flow. "Or just channeling something from outside? So far, healing isn't miracle, it's just… an extension of the same mechanics."
After a few minutes—longer than they should have been—the glow ran out.
It didn't fade. It ended.
Yana pulled her hands back, shoulders dropping a little, her face still expressionless. The man's chest rose once, very deep, and then stopped.
Silence.
The kind that weighs.
The woman took a few seconds to understand.
— Father? — she called, her voice almost childish, like she'd slid backward in time. — Father…? — she shook his shoulder lightly. — Father!
— Enough — Yana said, firm, catching her hand before she could shake him harder. — He's gone.
The woman broke into full sobbing, raw and ugly, filling the room. One of the men who had carried the old man lowered his head, jaw locked, fists clenched.
Christian watched in silence, body still in Lia's arms, mind chewing every reaction.
"So that's how it is," he thought, looking at the old man's face—now too peaceful. "Magic heals, but it doesn't pull anyone back from the other side. There's a limit. A body breaks past a point where not even this strange energy can glue it."
Yana wiped the sweat from her brow with the same cloth as always and breathed in. Then she said what needed saying. Not cruelly, but hard.
— I did everything I could — she said, looking the woman in the eyes. — The wounds were too deep. He must've been like this for hours. You took too long to bring him.
The woman hiccuped something between "we couldn't" and "we tried." No one answered.
Yana closed the old man's eyes gently, dragging the lids down.
Then she turned to the man who seemed to be leading the group.
— You owe me three silver coins — she said, direct. — I used herbs, I used crystals, I used my mana and I lost time. You knew that when you knocked on my door.
The man lifted his face, a mix of revolt and exhaustion rising.
— He… he didn't even… — he started, swallowing the rest.
— And he would've died on the road if you hadn't brought him — Yana cut in, unruffled. — The chance was small, I told you. You insisted. My work doesn't vanish just because the world is unfair.
He shut his eyes, breathed in, and with trembling hands pulled a few coins from an inner pocket and handed them over. The woman beside him didn't even look; she stayed clutching the dead hand of her father.
Lia shifted uncomfortably, holding Christian tighter.
"She charges even for grief," he thought, unable to decide if he despised it or understood it. "I don't know if that makes her cruel or just someone who got tired of being beaten by life. Maybe both."
After that, the body was taken away, wrapped in a sheet. The voices retreated, turning into distant murmurs. Yana's house returned to its heavy quiet.
— You… can go — the old woman said, softer now, looking at Lia and Lyra. — Today there won't be an exam. The girl won't lose anything if she waits a few days.
Lia nodded, eyes a bit redder than before, and hurried out, hugging Christian to her chest like he was the last living thing she could hold.
Christian let his head rest against her neck, listening to her heart speed up and then settle.
While the body fought to keep the head steady and not let the neck flop, his mind worked.
The language of that world, for example, was a puzzle he decided to create for himself...
♦
As the weeks passed, sounds began to repeat:
— Lyra, get water.
— Lilia, bring more bread.
— Caliste, watch the vale.
— Tomy, the creature…
"'Water' is obvious," he thought one afternoon when Lia conjured a crystal-clear stream straight into the cup and repeated the sound slowly for Lyra to learn. "Bread too. Vale… probably forest or some part of it. Creature…", his stomach twisted just remembering the worried tone in his mother's voice.
While he babbled random sounds to avoid suspicion, he stored everything: rhythm, intonation, words that always came together. He didn't understand full sentences yet, but the foundations were there.
"Learning a language as a baby is stealing XP…", he thought, resting his chin on Lia's arm as she carried him in the sling while stirring a pot. "The brain absorbs faster, but I still have to deal with the 'drooling on my own hand' part."
In magic, progress was small, but constant.
In the first week after the breeze, Christian could already do more than a stupid little puff. What had been just a shy movement of air began to become a tiny whirlwind, spinning around his fingers.
The problem came after.
He held the spin for three seconds and then his body collapsed. His heart sped up, his breath rasped short, his muscles went heavy like someone had filled him with sand.
"This is draining something that isn't just physical strength," he thought, sprawled in the crib after another attempt, chest rising and falling fast. "It's another kind of fatigue."
That's when he started building a theory.
Every time he conjured, he felt that heat in the center of his chest diminish a little. Like there was a reservoir inside him, emptying by spoonful.
"So I do have a core," he concluded, staring at the crooked wooden ceiling. "Like a battery of energy. I use it, it empties. I sleep, it fills a bit. But it's weird… it's like an organ that's part of the body."
But that wasn't all.
Sometimes, when he was quiet, just breathing, he had the clear impression that something from outside brushed that core too. Like wind passing over embers.
"If I'm right, it's not just my energy," he thought one night, listening to cold air slip in through the window crack. "The whole world must have loose mana out there. And we pull and channel it."
He ended up with two hypotheses.
First: people are born different. Strong core, weak core, average. Some must barely have a core, others maybe were born so stable they hardly felt fatigue. And if the universe wanted to be even more of a jerk, there were probably people who didn't even need a core to make strange things happen. He had no way to know. Yet.
Second: the core wasn't just a tank; it was a bridge. It linked the person to that invisible "sea" he felt around his body every night.
So he discovered what that energy was. In visits to Yana's cabin with Lyra in Lia's lap, Christian had already noticed a pattern. The old woman took the crystal, pressed it to his sister's forehead, and murmured the same words each time, brow furrowed:
— … mana… core… — she repeated, while the crystal's glow failed, lighting weakly and dying fast.
He didn't catch the entire sentence, but those two sounds—"mana" and "core"—always came with the light, the faint warmth, and the healer's heavy expression as she looked at Lyra's chest.
From there, it was easy to name things: what ran inside him was mana; what seemed spread through the world, ready to be drawn, was too. The core was the bridge between the two—the wire linking the inner reservoir to that external ocean he still couldn't measure.
"In the novels and manga I read, protagonists figured this out in half a page. Jealous," he grumbled inside himself, closing his eyes.
The issue was testing without dying of exhaustion.
One dawn when the house felt even quieter than normal, an idea clicked.
"If the core is a battery and a bridge at the same time… maybe I can recharge while I use it," he thought, half sitting, half slumped in the crib, hands gripping the edge so he wouldn't roll. Moonlight streamed through the window, painting pale stripes on the floor. The air was cold enough to prickle skin, but the blanket helped.
He closed his eyes and settled his breathing.
Inhale. Exhale.
Inhale. Exhale.
"Okay," he thought, lightly curling his fingers. "My core is this warm little ball in my chest. Around it, a sea of mana. And I'm the filter."
In his head, he tried to frame it in terms a professor of physics wouldn't throw an eraser at him for.
"On Earth, this would be like a system trying to balance," he thought. "There's a place more 'full' of energy and another more 'empty'. The tendency is to flow from full to empty. If the core is the 'empty' point… I just need to convince the mana that in here something's missing and out there something's abundant."
He imagined the core as a dim sphere, pulsing slowly like a covered lamp. With every inhale, a thread of the "sea" drew closer. With every exhale, the core absorbed a bit, swelling with light.
"If there's loose energy in this air, it has to be within reach," he insisted. "It's like pressure difference: if I create the right 'vacuum' in here, the rest comes in."
In the first attempts, nothing.
No tingling, no temperature shift.
Just a dull ache in his forehead and the feeling of meditating wrong.
"Congrats, I reincarnated in a world with magic just to lie in a crib doing breathing exercises from a meditation app," he thought, irritated. "Maybe I'm just overcomplicating something everyone solves by saying six words and done."
On the tenth or twentieth attempt—he'd already lost count—something finally responded.
A light tingling ran over his skin, starting at his fingers and coming to his chest. A faint heat lit exactly where he imagined the core.
His eyes flew open.
The sensation vanished, like it hid itself out of embarrassment.
"Are you kidding me?" he thought, staring at the ceiling again, offended. "An eternity breathing for half a second of effect?"
Still, a satisfied laugh crept in.
"Okay… it's tiny, but it exists," he thought, feeling his chest swell with a pride way too big for that body. "It's like filling a bucket with a cracked spoon, but it's better than nothing."
Stubborn as ever, he kept at it.
On the following nights, he sanded the idea down until it felt less stupid. Instead of only imagining the core pulling, he began using his hand as a "hook": fingers moving slowly, as if catching invisible threads in the air and drawing them to his chest.
"Like a manual pump," he thought on another dawn, wiggling fingers in the dark. "The core is the reservoir, the channels to it are little suction pumps. Pull from outside, dump inside. Repeat until saturated."
Each day, the heat responded a bit faster.
When the technique finally stopped feeling like pure imagination, he decided to name it.
"Refluxo de Mana," he decided, lying on his back. "A fancy name helps take it seriously. And if this world doesn't have a technique like this, then it's registered under my name."
It wasn't brilliant, but it worked: while he breathed in that rhythm and "pulled" from the environment, the core seemed to wear down less.
Over time, he noticed patterns. On cold, dry days, the Refluxo stayed sluggish, barely made a difference. On damp days, with the forest's strong smell slipping in through the window, the response was clearer, the heat filled faster.
When he felt he had a minimum of control, he decided to combine theory and practice.
It was night.
Lia slept beside him, arm half over him, half on the mattress. Her breathing was a deep, steady metronome. The whole house fit into a handful of sounds: wood popping, timid wind, some animal outside.
Christian breathed in.
"First: Refluxo de Mana. Pull gently," he thought, eyes closed.
The core answered with a calm heat, no fuss, like it was saying "I'm here."
"Second: breeze."
He raised his hands slowly, fingers spread. He imagined air spinning between his palms, twisting into a small obedient whirl. In his head he organized it like he was applying pirated fluid dynamics.
"Air is fluid, mana is fuel," he thought. "I just give a tiny 'push' and let the system obey."
A breeze was born. Thin, shy, but real. Then it shaped into a tiny spin between his fingers, lifting a strand of his own hair.
This time, though, his body didn't black out in three seconds. Fatigue came, but mild, as if the Refluxo were replenishing at the same speed he spent.
"Now we're talking, damn it!" he thought, feeling a grin spread on its own. "System almost in dynamic equilibrium… my thermodynamics professor would have a heart attack."
He held the spell a few more seconds, monitoring sensations. His head didn't spin, his hands didn't tremble as much, his chest didn't hurt.
Then mana decided to charge him in a different way.
A discreet itch bloomed at the tip of his nose.
He ignored it.
"Focus on the wind," he thought, narrowing his eyes. "Breathe, hold, stabilize…"
The itch got worse. It turned into an insistent annoyance, like someone stuck a feather up his nostril and gently rotated it.
"What a pain…", he thought, trying to rub his nose with his fist without dismantling the whirl.
It barely worked.
The wind was still there. So was the itch.
Soon it was impossible to pretend it didn't exist.
The sneeze betrayed him in a second of inattention.
— HATCHOO! — he exploded, way too loud for his body size.
The whirl collapsed instantly, mana scattered like spilled water, and a drop of drool went flying with it.
Christian froze, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling like it was at fault.
"What the hell…", he thought, wiping his nose.
Attempt two.
Refluxo de Mana, breeze, whirl, itch, denial of reality, and—
— HATCHOO!
Third.
Same sequence. Same result.
"HATCHOO!"
By the end he was a little out of breath, eyes watering, dignity smeared across the crib.
"Great. I invented magical rhinitis." he thought, flopping back, exhausted. "It's not magical collapse, not internal damage. The Nobel committee would love it."
On the bright side, he saw that sneezing didn't wreck his core and didn't hurt anyone. Lia didn't even wake up; she just mumbled something, rolled over, and kept sleeping.
Despite the embarrassment, one thing was obvious: he'd advanced.
Now the spell lasted longer, the drain was smaller, and he was sure he was pulling a bit from the environment, not just emptying his own tank. In exchange, he earned a sneezing session every time he overdid it.
"Welcome, idiotic side effect," he thought, pulling the blanket up to his chin. "At least it's not something like bleeding from the eyes."
Sleep came heavy.
"Okay… one thing at a time," he thought, feeling the core warm and slowly dim. "Spells I'll manage. The problem will be increasing this bastard's capacity… and finding out if there's any kind of real refinement or advancement, because so far nobody's said a word about that."
His small body, finally, demanded its turn. His lids gave in.
He still had time for one last bitter, determined thought:
"I'm not dying weak again. Not even if I have to learn everything by improvisation."
After that, silence. Just Lia's breathing, wind outside, and in the chest of a stubborn baby, a core learning to pull from the world as much as the world would pull from him.
♦
The next morning, the world didn't get prettier, but it got louder.
The smell of food—something between warmed bread and thin broth—was the first sign the day had properly started. Steps crossed the house, chairs scraped, voices blended into calls and complaints.
Lia was in the kitchen, organizing the scant provisions: a small piece of salted meat, some vegetables from the garden, yesterday's bread, counting everything with her eyes.
Tomy and Caliste were finishing getting ready to go out; boots being tied, simple cloaks thrown over shoulders, knives checked at the belt.
— Love, don't forget what Mara said at the start of the month — Lia said, voice tense, never stopping her stirring over the fire. Steam rose, fogging her face for a moment. — That creature… it might still be around. The forest's been strange lately, and the last thing we need is one more problem. Be careful, okay?
Christian didn't catch all the words, but a few were already branded: "creature," "forest," "problem." Her worried tone filled in the rest.
"Hmm, what could it be…", he thought, watching Tomy rake a hand through his hair on instinct. "It's a creature, that's a fact, but… it must be like a mana beast or something," he thought, trying to keep the logic going. "How different must they be… maybe like the fictional ones from fantasy tales…", he concluded, giving up on answers where there weren't any.
Tomy, as always, tried to lighten the mood.
— It'll be fine, sweetheart — he replied with a tired smile, leaning in to kiss Lia's forehead before dropping his weight onto a bench like the day already sat on his back. — We'll come back with what we need. I promise.
Caliste, leaning in the doorway, thumped his boot on the ground, impatient.
— Let's go, Dad. The more time we waste here, the less chance we have of finding anything — he said, eyes narrowed, as if Lia's warning were just another delay.
Lia looked at him for a beat, maybe thinking of snapping back. In the end, she only breathed in.
— Be careful, then — she repeated, now to both of them.
"That Mara is probably a hunter, an adventurer, maybe? If adventurers exist in this world…", he thought, following their movement to the door with his eyes. "Or both things. Who knows."
His body as it was made it impossible to learn more about the world around him. Everything he'd learned so far came from what he could see while he was carried on his mother's back through the village: the humble houses, the strange plants, the few familiar faces.
The sound of boots outside and the creak of the door closing marked their departure.
After the men left, the house switched to "domestic survival mode."
Lia and Lyra went to tend the garden.
Lilia stayed tidying the small storage shed.
Before going out, Lia laid him down in the bedroom crib, with a clean cloth under him, a light blanket, and the window cracked open.
— Stay quiet, okay? Mommy will be right back — she murmured, adjusting his position and tapping his nose like it was a power button.
"If you only knew," he thought, staring at the ceiling as soon as she left. "Perfect moment for me to do something stupid," he thought, and an unconscious baby-evil giggle slipped out of his mouth.
Silence took over the space. A bird sang outside. A faint wind slipped in through the crack, stirring the patched curtain.
Chris breathed in.
"Alright. Testing fire magic in a wooden, straw crib is suicide. Hmm, maybe water? Worst case I turn into a fish or grow gills if it goes wrong," he thought, stretching his small hands out in front of his face.
He closed his eyes, calling the core again.
He felt the heat in his chest flare, faint but present. He focused on coolness. He pictured water running over fingers, humid breeze on skin, drops on a lake's surface. The Flux Resonance came almost automatically—the breathing rhythm matching the mental motion.
Little by little, a sense of dampness formed between his hands.
When he opened his eyes, a small bubble of water floated there, a bit bigger than an orange, trembling like it might explode any second.
"Hehe… what do we have here…", he thought, an involuntary smile tugging his chubby cheeks.
He kept the sphere stable, fingers moving lightly, guiding its shape. He could feel the energy inside it, alive, like it had its own density. The sensation was completely different from wind—heavier, fuller.
"Okay… stabilize, baby. Don't shake. Don't explode," he thought, furrowing his tiny brow and sticking out his tongue in concentration.
For two seconds, it worked.
On the third, disaster started.
The bubble's surface vibrated, a little inner ripple spun faster, Christian felt the connection slipping.
"No, no, no…", he thought, trying to correct the flow, clenching his fingers like that would fix it.
The bubble imploded the wrong way.
Water splashed over his hands, face, chest. A cold jet hit his forehead and ran down to his nose. It soaked the cloth, spattered the blanket, and trickled to the side of the crib.
— "Urgh!" — he made a reflexive face, squeezing one eye shut.
He sat there, drenched, looking freshly betrayed, breathing through a wet nose. For two seconds he held a dignified silence.
Then he couldn't.
"Damn, this thing is still unstable," he thought, blinking fast to keep water out of his eye. "But it's a start at least…", and an inner laugh rose anyway.
With his tiny hands, he tried to wipe his face, spreading more water than drying. Hair stuck to his forehead, half the cloth already damp.
"I look like a rat that fell into a bucket," he thought, and the image was so ridiculous he couldn't stop a grin. "Still have a long way to go with refining magic…", he sighed, accepting the mess as part of the process.
Still… he'd done it. Made water where there was none, held it for a few seconds.
"Well… for a baby with no motor coordination, that's great," he thought, leaning the back of his head into the makeshift pillow, feeling the cold slowly fade as the cloth absorbed it.
Then he closed his eyes for a moment, hearing from afar Lia and Lyra chatting near the garden, voices mixed with the sound of a hoe biting soil.
He was still very worried about the reincarnations. If he died again, would he be reborn again? "And how long would that last? Eternity?" he thought, with a strange tightness in his chest.
"But one thing I know… I need to get strong," he thought, feeling fatigue tap him lightly, not enough to drop him. "This time I won't be just a passenger in this world. Even if I become the devil himself." A stubborn smile spread across his still-wet face.
The world's rhythm stayed the same: hunting, garden, pot, worry about creatures in the forest, simple spells to light fires and clean the house.
But between one day and the next, between a feeding and a nap, between a sneeze and a failing bubble of water, Lian was, step by step, ripping from this world the right to be just another baby on the edge of a forgotten village.