Year 1460 – Shersian Orphanage
Night came with a soft drizzle and the smell of stew.
Alaric ate slowly. His stomach, shrunk from too many empty days, complained at being asked to work again. Still, the warm broth and bits of vegetable felt like a miracle.
He sat at one end of a long table, other children scattered alongside him. Some snuck glances at him. A few offered small, unsure smiles. He didn't remember their names yet.
After supper, Elaina herded them to wash their bowls, then to bed.
"Sleep," she told Alaric, tucking a thin blanket around him. "If you wake from bad dreams, shout. I've had worse thrown at me."
He almost believed her.
The dormitory darkened as the lamp was turned down. Rain tapping on the roof filled the space between the soft snores of exhausted children.
Alaric lay on his side, facing the wall, bag pulled tight to his chest. He thought sleep would take him instantly.
It didn't.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Shuru on fire. Or another city, not of this world, with towers and screens and wrong-colored skies.
He must have drifted at some point, because when voices reached him, they came through the thin wood of the wall like they had back home.
"…he's awake more now?" Father Corwin's voice, muffled.
"In bits," Elaina replied. "He tires quickly. But the fever's gone."
"You said he was muttering when you found him," Corwin said. "Still doing that?"
"Less," Elaina said. "The first night he kept saying things I didn't recognize. Strange words. Like he was somewhere else."
"War does that," Corwin sighed. "Especially to little ones. They mix dreams and memories. As long as he knows his own name when he's awake, we'll take it as a blessing."
"I'm keeping an eye on him," Elaina said. "He's… quiet. But not empty."
"Quiet can be good," Corwin answered. "We have enough noisy ones already."
They both chuckled softly. Their footsteps moved away.
Alaric's fingers clenched in his blanket.
Strange words.
He knew what they were.
Shelter. Siren. Missile. Nuclear.
He had never heard anyone in this world say those things. Not in Horsin. Not in Shuru. People here said "mana," "demon," "sword."
But he knew.
He saw the mushroom-shaped cloud inside his skull. He heard the emergency broadcasts, the rising tone of sirens, the panicked voices on those metal devices people pressed to their ears.
He sucked in a breath.
I'm not just dreaming.
Those aren't stories. That was… me. Somewhere else.
His heart hammered.
I lived in that other place. I died there.
And then I woke up here. As a baby. Grew up. Learned to chase chickens and light little flames.
His head spun.
Reincarnated.
The word slipped into his mind as if it had been sitting there, waiting.
He didn't know if this world had that word. Maybe he'd heard it in his first life. Maybe not. But it fit.
Another chance.
"Just sleep," Elaina murmured faintly through the wall, far away. "We'll figure the rest out later."
Alaric rolled onto his back and stared into the darkness.
Twice now, the world had burned around him. Once under a wrong sky he barely remembered. Once under a sky he knew by heart.
Both times, he'd been too small to do anything but hide and shake.
The inner voice that had mocked him in the barrel was quiet, but he could still feel it coiled deep down, like a bad dream that hadn't finished.
You never could. You never will.
He gritted his teeth.
That voice is wrong.
I couldn't do anything then. I couldn't do anything in Shuru.
But I'm not going to stay like that.
I'm here again for a reason.
The thought was huge. Maybe too big. But once it settled in his chest, it didn't move.
"I'll change it," he whispered into his blanket, so softly no one else could hear. "Next time something like that comes… I'll be able to do something."
He didn't know how yet.
But he knew where to start.
Magic.
Mana that listens when you call it.
If I can understand how it really works…
His eyes finally grew heavy, thoughts still humming.
This time, when sleep took him, there were no sirens. Just a quiet, tired dark.