When I looked at the massive book that was now sitting next to me, I remarked that it was even larger up close, and it was more apt to call it a 'tome.' This strange tome reminded me of the bibles from the previous world, but I knew this book was definitely not ordinary. I strained to sit up in my cradle, which took me longer than I cared to admit.

  Being a baby was tough work, for your body never did what you wanted it to. It took me a full minute to simply open the book’s cover, as I couldn’t seem to get my chubby hands to grip the rough leather surrounding it. The binding was ancient, its surface etched with faint grooves that prickled against my palms. When I finally pried it open, frustration bubbled in my chest—the pages were dense with strange symbols and angular lines, eerily reminiscent of Japanese from my past life, yet twisted into something alien. No matter how I squinted, the characters slithered away from meaning, as if the ink itself resisted translation.

  Useless. I sighed—or tried to, my infant lungs producing a squeaky huff—and began flipping through the tome, hoping for a single comprehensible clue.

  The crisp parchment crinkled beneath my tiny fingers as I turned to the next the page, its earthy scent mingling with the faint tang of magic lingering in the air. My breath hitched. There, sprawled across the vellum in vivid, otherworldly pigments, was a lifelike rendering of Celeste. Not a static image—no, this was alive. The figure shimmered like a mirage, her features softer yet undeniably hers, as though the artist had captured her essence through a dreamer’s haze.

  She hovered weightlessly, radiant and serene, her gown rippling as if caressed by an unseen wind. Below her, a throng of elven figures—lithe and delicate, their almond-eyed faces unmistakably akin to my parents’—groveled in worship. Their bodies pressed into the earth, rising and falling in a synchronized rhythm of devotion, like waves lapping at the feet of a goddess. Celeste’s hand stretched toward them, her smile cryptic, almost pitying, as if privy to a joke only eternity could fathom.

  Do they revere her? Fear her? The question coiled in my mind, sharp and insistent. But the book demanded more.

  I flipped another page, and the air itself seemed to crackle. Here, Celeste stood triumphant above a horde of snarling, green-skinned creatures, their jagged teeth bared in silent screams. Flames erupted from her palms—not mere fire, but twisting, sentient serpents of gold and crimson—devouring the fray below. The scene pulsed with heat; I could almost smell the acrid stench of charred flesh, hear the guttural roars choked into ash. My heart raced. This wasn’t art. It was a window. A memory.

  Page after page, her legend unfolded in flickering vignettes. A towering monolith of stone, its spires clawing at a storm-wracked sky—the skyscraper. The same obsidian edifice I’d glimpsed from Celeste’s arms as I soared above the continent. In the drawing, she hovered before it, her expression unreadable, one palm pressed to the ancient rock as though communing with its soul.

  My mind trembled with curiosity, 'That's the tower I saw earlier! What significance does it have on this worl—'

  The door creaked.

  I froze. My mother stood silhouetted in the threshold, her green eyes wide, arms laden with books that clattered to the floor as she surged forward. “Kane!” Her voice quaked—not anger, but panic. She snatched the book from my grip, her slender fingers brushing the open page. For a heartbeat, the illustration flared brighter, Celeste’s gaze flickering toward us before the cover snapped shut.

  When she addressed me, her usual warmth had hardened to flint, yet beneath it simmered something raw. Fear. Guilt? She hesitated, then softened, tucking a stray curl behind my ear.

  In response I merely rolled over in my cradle, feigning innocence. My mother sighed as she reached down to retrieve the tome, placing it next to the stack of books on the bed. She grabbed a book from the pile and brought it over to me, it was as if she was saying, 'Here, play with this one.'

  The replacement book was a flimsy thing, its cloth cover fraying at the corners, dwarfed by the gravitas of the leather-bound tome my mother had whisked away. No gilt-edged pages, no whispers of magic—just garish illustrations peeking from its spine, so childish they bordered on insulting. Yet boredom, that cruel jailer, left me no choice. I pawed at it with uncoordinated fists, my stubby fingers slipping until the cover finally creaked open.

  The pages smelled of pulp and lavender, cheaply printed but new, as if purchased hurriedly from some backwater peddler. Inside, cartoonish elves grinned beneath labels: “Apple,” “Sun,” “Cradle.” Simple. Infantile. Perfect.

  She bought this for me. The realization warmed me, even as I scoffed. Did she think pastel drawings of strawberries would sate me? But the gesture itself—the quiet consideration—mattered. My mother wasn't just placating a fussy baby. They were trying.

  Not that they’d grasp the depths of my desperation. For hours, I hunched over the pages like a scholar deciphering sacred texts, tracing each blocky glyph with a spit-damp fingertip. “Moon” resembled a lopsided melon. “River” zigzagged like a child’s stitchwork. No pronunciation guides, no grammar—just nouns hammered into my skull through brute repetition. My head throbbed by the third chapter, synapses screaming under the strain.

  'Baby brains are gelatinous.' I reminded myself, collapsing backward into the cradle. Patience. Slow breaths.

  Across the room, Mother hunched at her desk, her silhouette haloed by a lone candle. Tome after tome materialized from the shelves, their spines cracking like distant gunshots. She scribbled notes with manic precision, quill darting like a spider spinning silk. What’s she hunting? I wondered, eyelids sagging. A cure? A secret? Or something darker?

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  As sleep dragged me under, I clung to the primer’s simplest word—“Mama”—scrawled beneath an elf with her face, her smile soft and unburdened. A lie, but a beautiful one.

  Being trapped in a baby’s body was its own form of torture. The Bright World Book of First Words—a garish, cloyingly illustrated tome—became my lifeline. Its pages were filled with grinning elves holding apples, sunsets over toy-like villages, and labels in looping script: “apple,” “flower,” “moon.” Simple. Useless. Yet I clung to it, memorizing every brushstroke, for in this infant purgatory, it was the only thing mine.

  Mother noticed. Each time she pried it from my pudgy hands to wipe drool off its spine, her brows knit. “Someone’s obsessed.” she’d tease, unaware I was reverse-engineering her language through repetition. At night, she’d read it aloud, her melodic voice flattening the rhymes into data. “See the apple, round and red! See the moon above your bed!” I cross-referenced her inflections, her finger-taps on each word, and slowly, the puzzle clicked.

  By week eight, I understood.

  By month four, I could speak—in theory.

  “—and your father thinks dragging us to the Basilica will help?” Mother’s hiss shattered the nursery’s stillness. She paced, braiding and unbraiding her hair, unaware I’d long decoded her midnight rants. “As if those zealots wouldn’t lock you away the moment they realize you’re—” She choked, knuckles whitening around the windowsill. “...veilborn.”

  The word splintered the air. Veilborn. New. Ominous.

  She slumped into the rocking chair, tears glinting in the lamplight. “Gods, Kane, what am I going to—”

  “Ish okay.”

  The words slipped out, clumsy but intelligible.

  Her chair screeched. “What did you say?”

  Panic surged. 'Too soon.' I blinked, letting my tongue loll in a dribble-soaked grin.

  “K-Kane?” She crouched, gripping my shoulders. “Did you… understand me?”

  I swatted at her earring, babbling nonsense.

  “No. No, of course not.” She laughed, shrill and unsteady. “Four months old. Four months.” She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I’m hallucinating. Sleep deprivation. Stress. That’s all.”

  I kept up the charade, cooing at the ceiling while her breathing steadied.

  “You’re just a baby,” she muttered, more to herself than me. “A perfectly ordinary baby.” Her gaze drifted to the Bright World Book on the shelf. “Even if you… float sometimes.”

  The lie hung between us. I rehearsed caution: No more slips.

  But the world had other plans.

  A jade flare ignited her pupils, sharp and sudden. She stiffened, the air around her crackling with static as though the room itself held its breath. “The wards,” she whispered, her voice taut. “Someone’s crossed them.”

  In a heartbeat, her nightgown shimmered into a travel-tunic, the fabric rippling like water as it settled. She paused at the door, her gaze slicing back to me. “Stay still, Kane. Whatever happens.”

  Then she was gone, leaving behind the faint tang of copper on my tongue—fear or magic, I couldn’t tell—and the hollow stare of glaring from the shelf.

  Minutes stretched like hours. My worry coiled tighter with each passing second, my imagination conjuring shadows that slithered just beyond the door. When she finally returned, relief flickered—until I saw the figures trailing her.

  One was my father, his face a mask of unease. The other was a stranger, draped in plain white robes, his hood pulled low to obscure his features. Only his dark grey eyes were visible, sharp and calculating as they swept the room.

  “Rolim!” My mother’s voice trembled, her fear palpable. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Rolim? The name echoed in my mind, 'So that’s his name.'

  My father remained silent, his jaw clenched, while the priest stepped forward, his gaze locking onto me, “Is this the child?” he asked, his voice smooth but edged with suspicion, “You claimed he was veilborn.”

  Rolim stepped forward, his smile strained, “Y-yes, your holiness! The moment he was born, he fell—but then he started floating!”

  My eye twitched, 'Fell? You dropped me, you bastard!'

  Mother stepped in, her voice honeyed but laced with steel. “You must be mistaken, Rolim. You’ve been… unwell since you left.”

  The tension in the room thickened. The priest’s gaze narrowed as he leaned closer, his long grey beard brushing the edge of my cradle. “The historical records describe pre-puberty powers as a hallmark of veilborn.” he mused, his fingers brushing my hair aside. “But he bears no mark. Just this… peculiar white hair.”

  He turned to Rolim, his tone sharpening. “What proof do you have to support your claims?”

  Rolim laughed nervously, the sound grating against the silence. “The proof? The proof is the child himself!”

  Before I could react, his hands were under my arms, lifting me into the air. I wanted to scream, to thrash, to punch him in his stupid, desperate face.

  “What in the goddess’s name are you doing?!” Mother’s voice cracked like a whip as she rushed forward.

  “Just watch, your holiness! The baby can float!” Rolim exclaimed, releasing me.

  I dropped like a stone, landing back in the cradle with a dull thud. To sell the act, I wailed, my cries piercing the room as I flailed my tiny limbs.

  “Waaah!” I shrieked, although no tears streaked down my face.

  “He can float, you say?” The priest’s voice dripped with skepticism, his patience clearly wearing thin.

  While the drama unfolded, I noticed Mother’s gaze darting to the bed. A stack of books sat there, the Book of First Words peeking out from beneath the pile. Her worry was palpable.

  I didn’t have time to think. Flexing my mental muscle, I nudged the children’s book to the top of the stack, hiding Celeste’s tome from view. Mother’s eyes widened as she caught the movement, her surprise flickering across her face before she schooled her expression.

  “J-just let me try again!” Rolim pleaded, his voice desperate. “I swear, I’m not lying!”

  The priest shook his head, his robes rustling with the motion. “I’ve seen enough. Rolim Dorran, misleading the church is a grave offense. Consider yourself fortunate I’m not pursuing this further.”

  He turned to leave, his gaze briefly sweeping the room. When his eyes landed on the stack of books, I held my breath. But the children’s book on top drew no suspicion. With a final glance, he strode out, his footsteps echoing down the hallway.

  “Your holiness, wait!” Rolim called, scrambling after him. Before he left, he turned to Mother, his voice low and venomous. “Ialantha, we’ll talk later.”

  The door slammed shut, the sound reverberating through the room. Mother exhaled sharply, her shoulders sagging with relief. Then she turned to me, her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowing.

  “Kane.” she said, her tone equal parts suspicion and awe. “You have some explaining to do.”