Arc 1: Rebirth and Realization
Chapter 1: A Second Chance
The first thing I noticed was the cold.
Not the sterile, air-conditioned cold of a hospital room—the kind I'd grown intimately familiar with over ten years of confinement—but a visceral, shocking cold that wrapped around my entire body like I'd been dunked in ice water.
The second thing I noticed was that I couldn't breathe.
Panic flooded my system. My lungs burned. I tried to scream, but nothing came out except a pathetic, strangled sound that didn't even sound human.
Then suddenly—air.
Sweet, precious air rushed into my lungs, and I gasped. The sound that escaped me was high-pitched, weak, and utterly foreign to my ears.
What the hell?
I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. Everything was a blur of incomprehensible shapes and muted colors. Sounds filtered through—voices, deep and overlapping, speaking in a language I should have understood but couldn't quite process through the fog in my mind.
My body felt wrong. Too small. Too weak. I couldn't move my limbs properly; they flailed uselessly like I'd forgotten how to control them.
Am I... drugged? Did something happen during surgery?
No. That didn't make sense. I hadn't had surgery scheduled. The last thing I remembered was...
Oh.
Oh no.
The monitor's flatline. The feeling of my chest tightening, unable to expand. The nurses rushing in. My mother's face, pale and tear-streaked, as she held my hand and told me it would be okay.
It hadn't been okay.
I had died.
At nineteen years old, after spending a decade in that hospital bed, reading novels and dreaming of adventures I'd never have, I had finally succumbed to the illness that had defined my entire adolescence.
So what the hell was this?
A warm weight settled around me—two weights, actually. Arms. Someone was holding me. The voices became clearer, closer, and I felt a gentle touch on my forehead.
"She's beautiful," a woman's voice said, trembling with emotion. The language clicked suddenly in my mind, comprehensible now. "Look at her hair... it's so unique."
"Both of them are," a man replied, his voice thick with something I couldn't quite identify. Pride? Relief? "A boy and a girl. I never imagined..."
Both of them?
A boy and a girl?
My mind, still sluggish and struggling to process everything, finally caught up with the implications.
Twin.
I'm a newborn.
I've been reincarnated.
The revelation should have been earth-shattering, but honestly? After ten years of reading every isekai, reincarnation, and transmigration novel I could get my hands on during my hospital stay, it felt almost... expected? No, that wasn't quite right. It felt surreal in a way that made my still-forming thoughts spin in circles.
I finally managed to force my eyes open fully. The world was still blurry—newborn vision, I supposed—but I could make out shapes. A woman's face, kind and exhausted, with warm amber eyes and light brown hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. She was smiling down at me with such pure, unfiltered love that something in my chest—my new, tiny chest—tightened painfully.
A mother.
I'd had one of those, in my previous life. She'd visited every day, read to me, brought me books when I asked, and never once complained about the financial burden or the emotional toll. She'd held my hand as I died.
And now here was another mother, looking at me like I was the most precious thing in the world.
I'm sorry, Mom, I thought, directing it to the woman I'd left behind. I didn't mean to leave you. But... maybe this is a gift? A chance to actually live?
"What should we name them?" the man asked. I couldn't see him clearly yet, but his voice was warm, genuine.
"Arthur," the woman—my new mother—said immediately, glancing to the side where I assumed my twin brother lay. "For our son. I've always loved that name."
There was a pause, and I felt her shift me slightly, bringing me closer to her chest. The warmth was comforting in a way I hadn't experienced in years.
"And for our daughter..." She hesitated, then smiled. "Elina. It means 'bright, shining light.' After everything... after this miracle... it feels right."
Elina.
Arthur.
The names echoed in my mind, and suddenly, horrifyingly, everything clicked into place.
No.
No, no, no, that's not possible.
But even as I tried to deny it, the evidence was overwhelming. The names. The fact that I was a twin. The language that had suddenly become clear in my mind—it was English, but not quite, like a parallel version of it that existed in...
The Beginning After the End.
(Let's take a moment to appreciate the incredible world TurtleMe brought to life — and the characters that feel so vividly alive.....thank you now let's go back)
I'd read that novel cover to cover, multiple times. It had been one of my favorites during those long hospital nights when sleep wouldn't come and pain meds only did so much. The story of King Grey, reincarnated as Arthur Leywin in a world of magic and adventure, growing from a child prodigy to one of the most powerful beings in existence.
And now I was his twin sister.
His twin sister who didn't exist in canon.
The implications hit me like a freight train—or at least, what I imagined a freight train would feel like, since I'd never actually been hit by one. If I was here, if I existed in this world, then that meant the story could change. The carefully crafted plot I'd memorized might not unfold the same way. My presence could butterfly effect everything into chaos.
Or... maybe I was supposed to be here? Maybe this was an alternate timeline, or a fanfiction made real, or—
Stop. Stop spiraling.
I forced my infant mind to calm down, focusing on the steady rhythm of my new mother's heartbeat. Panicking wouldn't help. I needed to assess the situation logically.
Facts:
1. I had died in my previous life at nineteen after a decade-long illness.
2. I had been reincarnated as a newborn in what appeared to be the TBATE universe.
3. I was Arthur Leywin's twin sister, a character who did not exist in canon.
4. I retained all my memories from my previous life, including extensive knowledge of the original plot.
5. My body was currently useless, as I was literally hours old.
Unknowns:
1. Would the plot follow canon, or had my existence already changed things?
2. Did I have any special abilities beyond my memories?
3. Would Arthur remember his past life, like in canon?
4. How much time did I have before major plot events started occurring?
And finally, What was I supposed to do with this second chance?
That last question hung heavy in my mind. In my previous life, I'd been a passive observer, confined to a hospital bed, living vicariously through characters in stories. I'd dreamed of adventure, of magic, of living rather than merely existing.
Now I had that chance.
But I also knew what was coming. The dungeon incidents. The war with Alacrya. The corruption. The deaths. So many deaths of characters I'd grown to love through the pages of a webnovel.
Could I stop them? Should I even try? Wouldn't interfering make things worse?
One problem at a time, Elina, I told myself, borrowing my new name. First, survive infancy. Then worry about saving the world.
As if sensing my thoughts, my mother shifted again, and suddenly I was positioned next to another small, warm body. My twin brother. Arthur.
Even through my blurry newborn vision, I could make out black hair opposite to what I mine looked like in my past life—my mother had mentioned it being unique. But where I apparently had purple eyes (though I couldn't confirm that myself yet), Arthur's eyes, when they briefly fluttered open, were a startling blue.
King Grey's eyes, I thought. He really is in there.
As if he could sense my gaze, Arthur's eyes focused on me—or tried to, anyway. Newborn vision was terrible for both of us. But there was something in that gaze, even clouded by the limitations of an infant's body, that confirmed my suspicion.
He was aware. Conscious. Just like me.
Hello, brother, I thought, unable to communicate any other way. Welcome to your second life. I hope you're ready for the absolute chaos that's coming.
His tiny face scrunched up, and he let out a small sound that might have been agreement or might have been gas. Hard to tell with babies.
Our mother's laugh drew both our attention. "They're looking at each other," she said, wonder in her voice. "Reynolds, look. It's like they already know each other."
If only you knew, I thought wryly.
Reynolds—our father—moved into view, and I finally got a look at him. Tall, strong build, with kind eyes and a warrior's bearing. He was smiling so widely it looked like his face might split in half.
"They're perfect, Alice," he said softly, pressing a kiss to our mother's forehead. "You're perfect. I can't believe we're parents."
"Parents of twins," Alice corrected with a tired but radiant smile. "We're going to need so much help."
You have no idea, I thought. Just wait until your children start manifesting mana cores years earlier than normal and displaying combat prowess that makes trained soldiers look like toddlers.
Actually, that raised a question. Would I be able to form a mana core like Arthur? In canon, his advantage came from his previous life's experience with ki, allowing him to understand the flow of energy and accelerate his progression. I didn't have that experience. I'd been a chronically ill teenager whose greatest physical accomplishment was walking to the bathroom without assistance.
But I did have knowledge. I knew how the magic system worked, at least in theory. I knew about the stages of mana core development—from dark red to light red, orange, yellow, silver, and white, with the transcendent levels beyond. I knew about augmentation and conjuring, about elements and deviants.
Whether I could actually apply that knowledge... well, that was a problem for future Elina.
For now, I was a newborn who was rapidly losing her battle with exhaustion. The brief burst of consciousness that came with my reincarnation was fading, and my infant body was demanding sleep with increasingly insistent signals.
As my eyes began to close against my will, I caught one last glimpse of Arthur. He was already asleep, his tiny chest rising and falling peacefully.
Sleep well, brother, I thought drowsily. Tomorrow, our adventure begins. Just... very, very slowly. Because we're babies. And babies mostly just eat, sleep, and poop.
So glamorous, this reincarnation thing.
The last thing I remembered before sleep claimed me was my mother's gentle humming, a lullaby in a language I now understood, and the warm weight of her arms keeping me safe.
For the first time in ten years—no, for the first time in my entire existence across two lives—I felt something unfamiliar.
Hope.