“Open up.
Big bite.”
Alice held the spoon out, nudging Silas’s lips.
Eleven months had passed since he was pulled into this world.
By now, he had settled into the slow, quiet routine of infancy.
There was little reason for an eleven-month-old to complain.
Someone fed him, washed him, bundled him against the draft, and looked after him with honest affection.
Even so, living under the same roof with them made one thing clear.
Their life was far tighter than it appeared on the surface.
Carrying an adult consciousness inside a baby’s skull gave Silas an absurd advantage with the local dialect.
He began by locking onto proper nouns, then everyday greetings, then the words repeated around the kitchen table, like food and eat.
From there, the grammatical syntax fell into place.
At ten months, he could form short, functional sentences.
By eleven, the words rolled off his tongue without hesitation.
To Clara and Alice, the conclusion was obvious.
The boy was a prodigy.
What ordinary infant spoke in complete thoughts before blowing out his first candle?
He had even picked his own name.
When Silas noticed they were still calling him “little one” while waiting for some cue, Clara and Alice began throwing out different names around the crib.
Silas played along, pretending to mull over their list with theatrical baby frowns before firmly settling on his old name: Silas.
Why invent a new identity?
Silas was who he had been, and it was who he intended to remain.
His speech had outpaced normal infants by a wide margin, though he took zero satisfaction in the milestone.
Ten months of grinding his teeth just to articulate like a toddler?
It was humiliating.
Still, beating himself up over it was pointless.
He had no tutors, no grammar scrolls, no magical translation arrays.
Everything came from raw observation, logic, and stubborn trial.
That was what counted.
If he kept that pace, he could map out the broader society much faster and begin laying the groundwork for his Path.
For now, though, haste was useless.
He needed meat on his bones first.
Which meant swallowing his lunch.
Silas opened his mouth, letting Alice guide another spoonful of warm mash past his teeth.
“Good, right?” Alice asked, beaming.
“I put in extra pepper, just like you wanted.”
“Very good, Sister,” Silas said, pushing as much warmth into his child’s voice as he could manage.
In truth, the porridge tasted awful.
Having lived a million years in the Grand Library of the Heavenly Wizard World, he had dined on delicacies beyond mortal imagination.
But Alice had spent an hour stirring the pot over a hot stove for him.
He was not about to spoil her mood over the spoiled palate of a former library slave.
Besides, the fuel mattered.
A developing body required steady nutrition, and severe deficiencies could permanently damage neural growth.
Silas refused to gamble on that.
He had spent an entire lifetime crippled by the worst cultivation talent in existence thanks to the Fountain of Immortality.
He had no intention of ruining this fresh vessel before he even began.
If a million years of reading had burned one lesson into his soul, it was the absolute supremacy of a sound mind.
He swallowed the mouthful down.
Which means I can finally practice an authentic Path here.
A sudden heat bloomed in his chest.
Since the moment of his rebirth, he had checked and rechecked his meridians.
This mortal shell carried none of the lingering curses or problems caused by the Fountain of Immortality.
The grand expanse of cultivation lay wide open before him.
And at the summit of his ambition sat a single, non-negotiable target.
He would stand as a Path Ancestor.
Silas’s eyes flashed.
The Mentalist Path will rise in this lifetime.
His pulse kicked.
Finally.
That single prospect made every indignity of rebirth worthwhile.
He could barely wait for the day his vessel grew strong enough to take that first step.
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