POV – Azra'il
The darkness and silence of the womb are comforts one only learns to appreciate once they are violently stripped away.
Three days. Three long, excruciating days have passed since I was ejected into this new existence. If there is a genuine purgatory somewhere in the cosmos, it is not made of fire and brimstone; it is made of fragile flesh, soft bones that cannot bear their own weight, and a total, humiliating, absolute dependence on other people.
For a soul that has crossed dimensions, led armies, and governed empires with a wave of her hand, being trapped in a body that can barely coordinate its own fingers is a daily test of sanity. I would have liked to spend this time meditating, refining my energy channels, or studying the magical density of this new world. But no. My newborn brain is perpetually hijacked by crude biological demands. Hunger. Cold. Colic.
And, naturally, personal hygiene.
At this precise moment, I was lying on a rough wooden table beneath the pale light of the sun filtering through a rustic glass window. The scent of damp pine, hearth smoke, and a sharp herbal soap filled the room.
The woman with oval spectacles and auburn hair pinned immaculately in place, who went by the name of Lilia, was performing the hygiene ritual with near-military seriousness. Her movements were precise, efficient, those of a servant trained to exhaustion. And yet, Lilia had an Achilles heel.
That Achilles heel was me.
More specifically, my anatomy.
Lilia untied the knot of the rough cloth nappy with steady fingers. But the moment the fabric parted and revealed what lay beneath, the woman's professional composure faltered. Her hands froze in mid-air for a fraction of a second. Her eyes, behind those oval lenses, blinked in evident confusion. I could see a subtle wave of colour rise from her neck to her cheeks. She cleared her throat with a dry, uncomfortable sound before averting her gaze slightly and pressing on with a haste she was clearly attempting to disguise.
〈I believe we've backed her into a mental dead end again, Eos. She's still trying to decide whether to swaddle me as an heir or an heiress.〉
[The social and religious conventions of this world are severely binary, Azra'il. For the mind of a feudal servant, your intersex biology is an anatomical mystery without precedent. Her readings suggest she is torn between her professional duty to care for you and a superstitious fear that you may be some manner of mystical anomaly.]
〈At least she hasn't tried to exorcise me with salt or holy water. I've had lives in which village midwives attempted to burn me in the straw before my first bath. This woman, Lilia, at least has a stomach for the unusual.〉
[Her efficiency is remarkable. I would nonetheless advise against releasing any flicker of mana whilst she is changing your nappy. Her heart is already operating under constant stress on account of your presence.]
Lilia folded the clean cloth with unnecessary force and secured the nappy to my body with a firmness that bordered on silent protest. When she finished, she lifted me with rigid arms and set me back in the wicker cot, carefully, but without any trace of the warm affection that wet nurses typically lavish upon infants. I was an enigma, and Lilia clearly preferred to keep her distance from enigmas capable of disrupting her perfectly ordered routine.
Beside me, in the same cot, my room-mate, whom our progenitors had already christened *Rudeus*, slept soundly. He looked every inch the conventional baby. Sparse, light-brown hair, chubby rosy cheeks, and the loud, contented breathing of someone without a single worry in the world. He already had an official name. I, by contrast, remained a nominal void in that household. To Paul and Zenith, I was simply "the first child," "the white-haired baby," or, in the whispered conversations that took place late at night, "the problem."
I watched them. My infant vision was still a blurred mess of shapes and colours, but Eos compensated for the limitation by decoding every murmur that echoed through the room.
The wooden door of the nursery creaked softly. Zenith, the blue-eyed blonde, entered with slow steps. Three days of rest had restored some colour to her fair skin, though she still appeared fragile beneath the sunlight coming through the window. She walked directly to our double wicker cot and, with a tired but infinitely gentle smile, leant over and lifted Rudeus carefully into her arms, nestling him against her chest.
Zenith moved to the upholstered wooden armchair in the corner of the nursery, settling into it with a quiet sigh. She began to nurse Rudeus there. There was a genuine softness in her movements, a serenity I had witnessed in hundreds of mothers across my many lives. She seemed entirely unconcerned with the troubles of the outside world; in that moment, her universe was reduced to the infant at her breast.
Standing just behind her, leaning against the doorframe, was the man with brown hair and leather garments, Paul.
Paul carried the scent of sweat, earth, and the oil used to polish metal. His shoulders were broad, his arms muscular, and he moved with a lightness that contrasted sharply with his physical size. I still did not know his precise skills or his role in this society, but it was abundantly clear he was no intellectual or academic. His face was set in an expression of deep frustration and doubt.
He pushed off from the doorframe and walked towards the cot. His heavy footsteps made the old wooden floorboards groan beneath his boots. Paul stopped before the cot and crossed his muscular arms over his chest.
Before looking inside, he cast a sidelong glance at Zenith in the armchair. A faint, proud, uncomplicated smile crossed his face at the sight of his son feeding. Rudeus looked like him, the same coarse features, a few strands of brown hair, an ordinary physiognomy that Paul could grasp without effort.
But then his gaze shifted sideways. To me, lying still in the double cot.
And the smile vanished instantly.
I stared back. My eyes, too luminescent, too blue for an ordinary newborn, held his gaze directly. I did not look away. I did not blink with the vague innocence of an infant. I simply watched him, with the cold composure of an ancient soul that has seen gods fall and empires turn to dust.
Paul hesitated. I could see tension accumulating in his broad shoulders. He took half a step back, his eyes widening slightly. Through the leather sleeves of his garment, the hairs on his arms rose visibly. He experienced a chill every time he looked at me for too long. It was the survival instinct of an ordinary man screaming from the depths of his subconscious that the creature in that cot was no ordinary baby.
"Zenith..." Paul murmured, his voice low, almost a taut whisper, as though he feared I might understand him. He looked away from me with uncomfortable haste and gestured towards my cot. "Are you... are you quite certain she's all right? I mean, look at her. Rudeus isn't one for crying much, but he does cry when he's soiled. She doesn't. She barely moves at all. She just... stares at me. That look of hers gives me the most dreadful feeling up my spine."
"She is perfectly healthy, Paul," Zenith replied from the armchair, adjusting Rudeus protectively in her arms. Her voice was gentle, but carried an implicit note of warning that even a man as straightforward as him could decipher. "Lilia examined her thoroughly this morning. She feeds well, responds to stimuli, and all her senses are functioning."
"I know, but..." Paul scratched the back of his neck, visibly ill at ease. He took another step forward and extended a calloused finger, touching my cheek lightly. I didn't react, keeping my expression entirely neutral. He then pointed to the small birthmark just below my left eye, then glanced at Rudeus in the armchair, who bore an identical mark in precisely the same spot. "That mark... I think it's the only thing that proves they're actually blood twins. Because apart from that, she looks nothing like either of us. That white hair, those eyes... and that other matter... Lilia told me something."
The room fell silent for a few moments, broken only by the rhythmic sound of Rudeus feeding.
"And what did Lilia tell you?" Zenith asked, her tone cooling perceptibly.
Paul hesitated, glancing quickly at Lilia before continuing in an even lower voice: "She said that in some of the more remote villages... or even in the feudal provinces... children born with that sort of... condition... or with such unusual features... are seen as ill-omened. Children cursed by demons, or with something wrong in their very soul. Lilia suggested that perhaps we ought to send her to a distant healers' temple to receive a blessing or some treatment. But I've been thinking, Zenith... what if we simply left her at an orphanage somewhere far from here? Lilia has also been saying that if the villagers find out, they may believe our house is under a curse. How are we supposed to explain that our firstborn came into the world with this sort of... problem? Deformity?"
A faint sting of contempt moved through my consciousness.
Defect. Cursed. Deformity.
Common words in small minds. In medieval worlds, where survival rates were low and superstition governed the fields, infanticide or the abandonment of "defective" children in the forest, left for nature to reclaim what was hers, was common practice. Prejudice in a feudal age was always so predictably tedious.
But it was Zenith's reaction that truly drew my attention.
"Paul Greyrat."
Zenith's voice was not raised, yet the tone of icy authority was sharp enough that the brown-haired man straightened almost immediately, nearly taking a step back. In the corner of the room, Lilia stopped folding the cloths entirely and kept her head down in absolute silence.
"She is our daughter," Zenith said, with an unshakeable steadiness that made the temperature of the nursery seem to drop by several degrees. She held Rudeus in one arm, but her pale blue eyes were fixed on Paul like two blades. "I carried her for nine months. I felt every movement she made. She is not a defect, and she is not a curse. If the village wishes to talk, let them talk. If anyone is frightened of her, they may keep their distance. But she is not going anywhere. She stays here. Under my protection. Have I made myself clear, Paul?"
Paul swallowed. He looked at his wife in the armchair and recognised, quite correctly, that pursuing the argument would be the equivalent of diving headfirst into a nest of wolves with his hands bound. He raised his hands in surrender, his shoulders dropping as he let out a defeated sigh.
"All right, all right. I didn't mean to... I was only worried," Paul muttered, visibly sheepish. He hesitated for a moment, looking from Zenith to the cot, before continuing with a baffled expression: "And... well, you said 'daughter'? 'She'? How do you know it's not a 'he'? A boy... or whatever the case may be?"
Zenith looked at me in the double cot with a gentleness that seemed entirely impervious to his doubts.
"She has soft, delicate features, Paul. Like a girl's. So she shall be our daughter," Zenith replied with a quiet firmness that made it plain the matter of how to refer to me had already been settled, and settled by her alone.
Paul exhaled through his nose, abandoning any thought of debating the nuances of my identity with his wife.
"Right. If you say so..." Paul grumbled, crossing his arms again. "But what's her name to be, then? We can't keep calling her 'the first one' forever."
Zenith's posture softened, her fond gaze returning to me. She extended her free hand and touched the side of the cot.
"I've already chosen her name," Zenith said, a quiet smile on her lips. "During the pregnancy, particularly in the final weeks when the weight of it was unbearable... I had the same dream, night after night. I saw a silent clearing beneath a sky full of stars I had never seen before. And a voice, a soft, crystalline voice, whispered the same name into my ear, over and over again. She called me mother, Paul. And she asked to be called by that name."
I raised a mental eyebrow, directing my thoughts towards the secondary consciousness drifting alongside my soul.
〈Eos... by any chance, were you paying nocturnal visits to our progenitor's subconscious whilst I was busy floating about in the womb?〉
[A rudimentary precautionary measure, Azra'il. Had I not planted the post-hypnotic suggestion in her cerebral cortex during the gestational period, the probability of you being christened with something rustic, difficult to pronounce, or simply mortifying, such as Leopoldina or Gertrude, was approximately 87.4%. I considered it a service to your ancestral dignity and the preservation of your sanity.]
〈You are a cheap dream-weaver, Eos. I will grant, however, that it was excellent work. And how did you manage to make her accept such an exotic name by the standards of this world?〉
[I used the resonance of your own ancestral soul signature to shape the dream. Zenith's mind, it appears, carries a strong heritage of religious belief; the dream was interpreted as a sacred revelation. A divine sign she would never dare to question or disregard.]
"Azra'il..." Zenith pronounced the name slowly, savouring each syllable. "That is her name, Paul. Azra'il Greyrat."
Paul blinked, repeating the name clumsily, nearly stumbling over the consonants. "Azra'il? That's a rather... strange name. I've never heard anything like it in any kingdom. Are you quite sure you wouldn't prefer something more ordinary, like—"
"Azra'il," Zenith repeated, with a quiet resolve that admitted no rebuttal.
"All right, all right. Azra'il it is," Paul muttered, sighing and scratching the back of his neck. He looked over to fix me with one last glance, that faint discomfort still evident in his eyes. "I hope that name brings her more fortune than mystery."
I slowly closed my eyes, feigning sleep beneath the watchful gaze of the brown-haired man. They could worry about me, about my origins, about what the village might make of my unusual appearance. My name, at least, was secured. And, more importantly, I had discovered something valuable about the fair-haired woman.
Zenith Greyrat was a fortress. She was prepared to face the prejudice and superstition of her own husband and of society at large in order to protect a child whom others deemed "defective." For someone who has been mother and father across many lifetimes, and who understands the value of unwavering loyalty, Zenith's stance in that moment was the first glimpse of genuine respect I had felt in this new existence.
You are a good mother, Zenith. I shall remember that.
〈Eos, maintain your monitoring of Zenith's vital signs. And run a passive mana scan of the surrounding area. I want to know precisely how far behind this world actually is, compared to the cultivation and magical systems we have encountered before.〉
[Mana scan initiated. The ambient mana density in this region is considered medium-low. The energy flows are crude, unrefined. The locals use mana as brute force, water rushing through a broken pipe, rather than something refined into a stable spiritual core.]
〈As I suspected. A magical dark age. It shall be rather amusing to see what we can do with it once this body is large enough to hold a spoon without trembling.〉
Then I noticed a subtle movement in the wooden armchair where Zenith sat.
Rudeus, who until that moment had been focused entirely on the instinct to feed, released Zenith's breast. He turned his chubby head slowly in the direction of the double cot and fixed his green eyes directly upon me.
It was not the vague, unfocused gaze of an ordinary newborn. He appeared genuinely puzzled, his brow minutely furrowed, as though attempting to make sense of the situation around him. My brother clearly had not the faintest idea what our parents were saying, yet he seemed to sense, through some primitive twin intuition, that the entire conversation had been about the silver-haired creature lying in the cot beside him.
I held his gaze for a moment with my luminescent blue eyes.
〈What is it, chubby-cheeks? Lost something over here?〉
[Notification: The adjacent infant is displaying focused visual tracking directed at you. Rudeus's cerebral activity is fluctuating in an atypical manner, though there are no indications of physical distress or imminent crying.]
Rudeus blinked, appearing mildly unsettled by the glacial intensity of my stare, or perhaps simply defeated by the physical effort of keeping his head turned. He let out a small, lazy yawn and slowly closed his eyes, pressing his fat cheek against Zenith's chest and surrendering to sleep.
I watched him for one last moment before turning away. He was a strangely placid baby... or perhaps simply a very idle one. Either way, it suited me perfectly. The less fuss he made, the sooner I could disregard his existence entirely and focus on recovering my own strength.
I closed my eyes and turned towards the opposite side of the cot, making the most of the precious silence that had at last settled over the nursery. My new family life was only just beginning, and patience would be, by a considerable margin, my most heavily tested skill in the years ahead.