Chapter 2 – lullaby

  To be frank, this has been the most indescribable hour of my life. Not in the exaggerated, modern sense where people say something is unbelievable because it mildly inconvenienced them. No. I mean indescribable in the way a man might describe being struck by lightning while standing knee-deep in an unfamiliar ocean under a foreign sky. My name is, or rather was, Axon, a perfectly average college student teetering on the edge of graduation and staring down the wide, uncertain world like any young adult preparing to step into a life not yet lived.

  I was an orphan. A scholarship kid. I never excelled beyond what I needed to survive, though I always had the capacity for more whenever I forced myself to sit down and focus. My life, for all its simplicity, was not bad. The best word I can use is content. I had been content with everything, or so I thought, until not long ago. And now, with the analytical mind of an introvert trapped in a cascade of wildly unfamiliar sensations, all I could do was observe the outlandish series of events unfolding around me.

  “Lars, honey, look. It is a boy. He has your big nose.”

  The voice cracked through the ringing in my ears, muffled like sound underwater. My newborn body struggled to interpret the sensory overload slamming into it. Compared to the ears that once tolerated techno music at two in the morning, the auditory sensitivity of a fresh infant was a nightmare. Every sound felt like it was scraping directly across my undeveloped nerves.

  I expected warmth, maybe the tender embrace of a mother I had never known, because that is what books and movies had taught me about birth. That a mother holds her child first. That the world begins soft and gentle and loving.

  I was disgustingly wrong.

  The first real sensation that registered was not love, or a caress, or even the comfort of a blanket.

  It was my butt being smacked.

  The sharp thwack exploded across every fragile neuron I possessed. Pain shot up my spine like someone had plugged me directly into a wall socket. For a split second, my newborn brain short-circuited.

  “Margo,” a deep voice snapped, “if you lay another hand on my baby, I will ensure it is the last thing your hand ever touches.”

  The tone alone nearly made me forget the sting. There was iron in that voice. Steel. Authority wrapped in fury. My father, whose name I assumed was Lars based on the earlier comment, clearly did not appreciate the woman manhandling his newborn son.

  “My lord,” the wet nurse stammered, hands trembling as she backed up a step, “I am only trying to stimulate the young lord’s lungs. It is used on newborns who are not naturally crying after birth, to ensure the lungs expand properly.”

  Every eye in the room shifted to me.

  Only then did I register the problem.

  I was not crying.

  At all.

  Without meaning to, I had activated the cardinal sin of being a newborn. I was quiet, alert, awake, and not behaving like a newborn at all. Every rational alarm in my nineteen year old brain started firing at once.

  So I did the only logical thing a reincarnated adult trapped in a newborn body could do.

  I opened my tiny mouth and unleashed the mightiest baby scream known to mankind.

  “WUAGHHHHH.”

  Beautiful. Horrifying. Necessary.

  At last, my first baby cry in this new world.

  The nurse exhaled in relief. My father relaxed a fraction. I was officially no longer suspicious. Just loud.

  Once the dangerous misunderstanding was resolved, I was finally handed, with considerably more gentleness, back into the arms of the woman who had given birth to me. And for all the overwhelming sensations and chaotic mental calculations I had been juggling, everything stopped the moment my eyes locked with hers.

  My mind went perfectly still.

  Utterly silent.

  Something inside me, something guarded and lonely from my past life, cracked open under the weight of a sensation I had never truly known.

  Warmth.

  Not generic kindness. Not politeness. Not the brief comforts offered by friends or teachers.

  Motherly warmth.

  A soft, unconditional, instinctive kind of love that I had only ever read about.

  Her arms enveloped me, securing my tiny body in a cocoon of heat and safety. I could feel the tremor of exhaustion in her muscles, the faint shake in her breath. She smelled like snow and something faintly floral, mixed with the iron tang of post birth. Her heartbeat sounded like a war drum muffled by blankets, strong and steady and grounding.

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  I stopped panicking.

  For the first time since my reincarnation, I simply existed. No analysis. No fear. No strategies.

  Just a helpless baby resting in the arms of a woman who felt like she had always been mine.

  The room quieted. Even my father seemed to soften as he watched us.

  “My love,” my mother murmured, turning her tired yet brilliant eyes toward the towering man beside her, “what shall his name be?”

  I finally looked, truly looked, at my father.

  He was enormous.

  At least six foot five, shoulders broad enough to block a doorway, chest built like tempered iron. His hair, cut in a short military style, shimmered silver like molten mercury. His face was sharp, every angle carved by experience and responsibility and the battlefield. There was nothing soft about him except the way he looked at us.

  This was Lars Loren.

  My father.

  A man who carried the aura of a storm held barely in check. The kind of man who did not survive wars but ended them. I would later learn of his double edged great axe, a monstrous weapon as tall as an adult man and sharper than elven forged steel. He had carved the Loren name into the foundations of the Barony through blood and strength alone.

  A monster, a hero, a warrior.

  And yet, in this room, he was simply a father waiting to speak his son’s name.

  He answered without hesitation, as if the decision had been etched into him long before I was born.

  “His name, my dear, will be Lance.”

  A powerful name. Strong. Heroic. Noble.

  I personally liked Axon more, but who was I to argue with a giant barbarian warlord.

  My mother smiled faintly, exhaustion pulling at the corners of her lips as she stroked my back in soft, rhythmic motions. Then she addressed the two remaining people in the room, the nurse and my father.

  “Margo, husband, please leave me and the baby alone while I rest. It feels like I have not slept in days.”

  My father hesitated, clearly torn between concern and obedience, but ultimately succumbed to the fierce, loving command of a tigress exhausted from giving birth. With a reluctant nod, he withdrew and ushered the nurse with him.

  The moment the door shut, the world seemed to shrink to just the two of us.

  She shifted me gently, adjusting my tiny form so she could study my face. In her eyes, I saw the dance of pale blue and white, the snowflake patterned pupils swirling like enchanted frost.

  She was breathtaking.

  I would later learn her name. Lafiel Loren, a snow elf and more importantly a noble one. She stood six feet tall, her frame elegant yet sinewy, her beauty both ethereal and formidable. White cascading hair fell around her like a winter waterfall, except for one striking lock of golden blond that hung three inches down the left side of her face.

  Her skin was pale, nearly luminous, yet her muscles coiled beneath like ice bound steel. Soft in appearance, strong in truth. Droplets of sweat still clung to her skin, remnants of the hours of labor she had endured. And despite everything, she shone with the grace of a goddess.

  But beauty was not what seized my attention.

  It was the way she touched me.

  Her hand rose, cupping my entire face with the gentlest palm I had ever felt. Shock rippled through me, my adult consciousness scrambling to process the intimate tenderness. I tried to speak or cry or move, anything, but my newborn body responded with all the coordination of a wet noodle.

  Instead, I stared at her helplessly.

  Her voice drifted through the dim room, soft and melodious, carrying an ancient cadence that resonated with something in my soul.

  She began to sing.

  A lullaby. A blessing.

  A spell.

  “Sleep, my snowflake, soft and white, Cradled in the hush of night. Blue flame dances where you lie, Lit from stars that kiss the sky.

  Born of storm and winter’s grace, Lightning’s spark upon your face. Magic hums beneath your skin, A stormfire soul so fierce within.

  Winds shall guard you, swift and bold, Through the trees and arctic cold. Frost and fire, wild and tame, Child of ice and sacred flame.

  May blue fire light your path so true, And thunder sing the heart of you. Let no shadow touch your name, Blessed by snow and storm and flame.

  So hush now, child, and close your eyes, Dream beneath electric skies. For in your breath, the Northwind sings A prince of frost with lightning wings.

  Her song wrapped around me like the warm embrace of a winter hearth. Magic stirred in the air, thick and palpable. Frost tinged mana curled from her voice like dancing ribbons, brushing against my forehead, my chest, my tiny fingertips.

  Her words echoed through my bones.

  Through my soul.

  Through the fragment of Axon still clinging to identity.

  The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. Not painfully, but reverently, as if the world itself were bowing to her voice. Snow elf magic was not subtle. It was a force of nature. Divine, ancient, and pure.

  Her palm warmed.

  My head tingled.

  The world shimmered.

  Then came pain.

  Sudden. Searing. White hot.

  A spike of heat shot into my skull so violently that my newborn body convulsed. I cried out, not from confusion but from the unmistakable agony of something unlocking inside me.

  A voice rang out in my mind.

  Mechanical. Cold. Absolute.

  SYSTEM NOTIFICATION:

  A mother’s blessing has been detected.

  Light split across my vision, shaping itself into words only my soul could read.

  ─── SYSTEM STATUS ───

  Name: Lance Loren

  Family: House Loren, Knighthelm Frostwall

  Tier: 0

  Level: 0 Experience: (0/100)

  Class:(N/A)

  Core: (N/A)

  AFFINITIES: (N/A)

  BOND:(N/A)

  BLESSINGS: [REDACTED] (Ancient, Bloodline)

  -Effects: [REDACTED]

  SKILLS (N/A)

  Class Skills (N/A)

  ─── SYSTEM STATUS ───

  The light faded.

  The pain trembled away.

  And I, a reincarnated college student and newborn son of a warlord and a snow elf noblewoman, let out one final pitiful cry.

  Then sleep claimed me entirely.

  A new world awaited. A new life.

  A new family, something I never thought I would have.

  And as unconsciousness swept over me like warm tides, one simple truth settled in my heart.

  I will sleep very, very well tonight.

  Thoughts on the author using AI