***
'Curse you, gods! Just when is this dream going to end.... kill me already.'
He said in agony, as his life slowly flashed in front of his eyes.
***
Four years later :
It has been four years since Alger died at the hands of that dark presence... and four years since he was reborn into this strange world.
At first, he thought he had been sent back in time. But that assumption didn't hold up. He soon realized he had been sent to an entirely different world altogether.
During these four years, Alger has learned a lot about the orphanage and about this world itself.
The world is a strange mix of medieval and 16th-century Europe... but not quite. Magic.... or what it's called in this world, Element, played a major role in shaping this world's identity. It had its own rules... its own logic.
Sister Twilight used to take him outside once every month. To teach kids how the world functioned. Although most kids just used this day to see cool things outside the Orphanage, for Alger, a day like this was gold!
He was able to see the outside world, the people, the shops, the currency....
Although he wasn't able to deduce exactly how big the world was just from going out in a small city. He still learned a lot.
***
The calendar was eerily similar to that on Earth, the only difference being the names of the months and days. Alger was born in the year 960, on the third day of the third month.
Since this world didn't have clocks, the concept of time was a little weird. People used terms such as hours and minutes, but there wasn't any basis to define what they were... so they weren't accurate.
That's why people just used the position of the sun to know what time it was... like the good old days.
The people here used the decimal system for counting, just like Earth. And they even used meters and kilometers for mapping out distances.
But the language.... it was weird. It was similar to a few languages on Earth... but weird, it sounded older, or maybe newer. He wasn't sure. It was Unique. And since Alger didn't have proper material, it took him nearly a year just to understand it and another year to speak and read it fluently.
Its Alphabet was something he had never seen before. It looked old... and yet looked far too advanced at the same time. The language didn't have any name as it was the only one spoken in the world...
***
The headmaster of the orphanage was the same man who held him on the day he was born.... although Alger had no idea what his relationship to him was.
The orphanage was larger than Alger had expected, capable of housing nearly 100 children. One of the first shocks he encountered here was the fact that children weren't given names until they turned four.
It had a number of facilities, including something Alger became immediately obsessed with: a library.
But the good books were kept on shelves far beyond his reach. And the sisters couldn't trust a young kid with such expensive books...
He wanted more. He wanted knowledge—especially about Element.
He tried asking Sister Twilight, but she only gave him fairy tales.
Sister Twilight. She was a young, beautiful woman who had once been an orphan herself. She was the one who brought Alger into the orphanage on that fateful day. And of course, she wasn't the only sister in the Orphanage.
The sisters taught young kids basic arithmetic and the language of Mytherra until they were fluent. Alger had been skipping these lectures, of course, as he had already learned all of that.
Alger had never seen someone actually get adopted, maybe people just didn't like adopting children, or perhaps the role of the Orphanage in this world is different.
But he had seen children leave the Orphanage when they turned 16.
After you turn 16, you have to leave the orphanage to find your own path, usually by entering a school.
***
Today was the day Alger would finally receive a name. And with it, official access to the library.
Alger stood in the bathroom, balanced on a wooden stool, staring into the mirror.
He saw a pale, slender boy with snow-white hair and emerald-green eyes staring back.
This was his new body.
He still had his old habit of talking to himself
"Damn it my tooth feels loose..."
He was cut off by a sudden shout.
"You! What are you doing here? The headmaster has already named your brothers and sisters!" said one of the sisters.
Alger's eyes widened.
Curse it! How could I forget!?
"Sorry Sister! I'm going now!"
He ran out of the bathroom and down the stairs to the headmaster's office. Before entering, he knocked.
"Come in."
When Alger entered, he saw a small but organized room. There was a huge bookshelf to his right, covering the entire wall. And to his left was a wall covered with trophies and medals, and at the center of the trophies lay a dusty katana, mounted on the wall itself.
The table on which the headmaster was sitting was directly in front of the door. Unlike the room, his table wasn't organized at all—there was a lot of trash on it. It sort of reminded Alger of his old table.
The headmaster was smiling.
"Ah! If it isn't the white-haired rascal who keeps sneaking into the library. Honestly, I have high hopes for you becoming a mage one day. Sneaking in, stealing keys... clever little things like that."
He paused.
"I have just the perfect name for you.... Alger."
Alger's heart sank.
Huh?!... impossible! No way....
"Headmaster... may I ask you why that name?", his face showed that he was a little shocked.
"It's what your mother wanted to name you—if you were a boy, that is," the headmaster said with a smile on his face
It's okay, Alger. Calm down. Coincidences exist....
"Headmaster, may I ask you more about my mother?"
The headmaster paused for a while and then said,
"Alright, Alger. We may not have been related by blood, but to me, she was like a little sister... she was the prettiest woman I ever knew. Her emerald eyes and golden hair always made people turn to look at her, even if just once. And then one day, she fell in love—and that's how you came to be here."
So the headmaster is my uncle of sorts.....
"....what about my father?", Alger asked the headmaster with a curious face.
The headmaster leaned back on his chair and pondered for a bit while looking up at the ceiling.
"To be honest with you, Alger—I have never met your father. But your mother has told me a lot about him. She described him as a tall, handsome man, his hair as white as the snow, and his eyes as dark as a starless sky. He vanished a few months before you were born."
...he disappeared, huh?
***
Now that Alger was four... he was officially allowed to read all of the books of the library─as long as he was being supervised.
After leaving the headmaster's room, he immediately asked Sister Twilight to take him to the library.
"Sister Twilight, can you please take me to the library?"
Since the headmaster encouraged reading, she couldn't refuse.
Once they arrived, Alger pointed at the section he wanted.
"The history section, please."
She blinked.
"History? Wouldn't you rather read a book about magic... with pictures?"
"No."
She didn't argue further. To her, there was no way a four-year-old who had only just started reading could understand a book like the one he picked.
She didn't know Alger had been sneaking into the library every night and reading dictionaries.
He reached for the book that had been calling to him for months, an old volume with a cracked leather cover.
The title read: Terra
He opened it carefully.
Alger turned the page.
There was a map, one that showed a detailed map of a country named 'Mytherra'.
The map was split into four parts: Northern, Western, Eastern, and Central.
Mytherra was large... calling it a country would be an understatement, it was closer to being a continent, spanning thousands of kilometers across.
Three sides of the country met the sea. Whereas the Eastern territory faded into a brown....
On each edge of the map: north, south, east, and west, was a single word.
'Unknown'
He stared at the map. Something about it felt... familiar.
But even after analyzing the map for a while, he couldn't come to a conclusion....