I woke up in a magical crib, and it was not as serene as one would imagine—particularly when said crib had seemingly signed up for a premium security package without asking its occupant.
The rune-carved cradle softly hummed along with Sharath's heartbeat as if it were a burglar alarm with a hint of nursery rhyme and an extremely persistent smoke alarm. Its gentle, enchanted blue glow filled the nursery with a reassuring light that would sometimes **flash so brightly as to briefly blind crossing servants**. If this were a hotel, Sharath would have rated it five stars and reviewed it as "Luxury Incarnate—Comes with Built-in Force Field and Mild Retinal Damage."
Sadly, the body he was in at the moment had other things on its mind. He was hungry, itchy, dinged slightly by the indignity of requiring someone else to clean him off, and **working on what he thought was his first existential crisis regarding the metaphysical ramifications of being burped**.
*This is probably how intelligent Roombas feel—high processing capacity, relegated to cleaning floor grime, and getting the occasional toddler-kick.*
A maid rushed in, lugging a basin and whistling what was most definitely a death march, disguised as a happy tune. Her robes swirled dramatically, adorned with softly glowing thread—most likely minimal enchantments that did nothing other than present her as a **Christmas tree on legs experiencing an identity crisis**. Sharath had come to recognize these small touches. Even fashion here was magically tuned. Last week, he'd witnessed a servant's apron catch flying soup in midair, which had then rebounded into another servant's face with the accuracy of a guided missile.
As she came near, Sharath blinked naively—a skill he was quickly mastering even though his eyelids felt like forty pounds each. It was a useful ability in his new profession: looking baby-like while conducting world-domination-level thinking.
"Oh, you're awake, little master," she said, grinning with the sort of intensity that implied she'd either drunk too much coffee or was barely sane. "Good. Lady Ishvari will be glad. She's been afraid you're too quiet for a infant. **Most babies cry loud enough to rouse the dead. You just. stare. Like a small, judging owl.**"
Sharath gurgled back. It was the most sophisticated linguistic device he now had that wouldn't get him immediately labeled a sorcerer-reincarnate and perhaps incinerated at a very tiny stake.
As the maid smoothed out his sheets with the precision of a bomb diffuser, she grumbled, "Weirdest thing—your cradle throbbed again last night. **Gave the dog such a scare, poor beast ran headfirst into the gate rune, bounced off the wall, and ended up in the fish pond. Still smells like charred fur, pond muck, and regret.** The cook's threatening to put it on the lemon if it doesn't get washed in a hurry."
Sharath snorted—a noise that escaped with the force of an angry little walrus.
**A snort.**
*NO! Keep your reflexes in check, Krishnamurthy! You're a cute blob of sentient pudding, not a pint-sized critic giving the family's animal control policies the once-over!*
The maid's basin hovered suspended mid-air, halfway to the washstand. She slowly turned to glare at him with the same level of intensity someone might direct at a just-espied house plant that sounded like it might be coughing.
"Did you just. **snort**? Like, with *judgment*?"
He blinked wildly and gurgled once more, trying to appear as brain-dead as possible. Too bad his gurgle sounded suspiciously like a muffled laugh.
She glared at him with the analytical look of a detective who'd discovered a smoking gun. "You're not like other babies, are you? Other babies don't appear to be **mentally writing scathing critiques of my domestic skills**."
*Lady, I broke RSA-4096 encryption prior to discovering how to crawl in my last life. You have no idea the tip of the iceberg of how unlike other babies I am. Your cleaning method also needs improvement—you left a spot.*
Later that afternoon, he was propped up on a silk-lined cushion like a **tiny, unwilling king holding court**, while various nobles stopped by for ceremonial visits. Sharath had mentally dubbed this exhausting practice "Kiss the Baby, Whisper About Succession, and Try Not to Drop the Future Lord."
"I hear his aura is unusually stable," said one lady in emerald robes that probably cost more than a small castle.
"Stable? It's **shining**," her friend breathed with the awe one might reserve for sacred relics. "The Magister said it vibrated back at him. **As if it were attempting to harmonize. Or maybe to mock his pitch.**"
"He appears. attentive," a grayer noble whispered, shifting his glasses uncomfortably. "Too attentive. As if he's **passing judgment on my life choices and finding them lacking**."
Sharath most definitely was. *Those shoes with that robe? Seriously, Lord. whoever you are?*
One of the younger aristocratic women—clearly a woman who'd never encountered a boundary she didn't take the time to conquer—leaned forward and committed the fatal error of wiggling her bejeweled fingers in his face as if he was some particularly stupid household cat.
Sharath reacted in what his old life's self-defense classes would have termed a textbook counter-grip move. In his new life, it was better described as a "baby death clasp of diminutive revenge."
The woman let out a shriek—half joy, half the understanding that this baby had a hold that could likely shatter walnuts. "**He's so strong! Like a little lion cub! A very small, very intimidating lion cub who might be scheming something!**"
*More like a very small, very judgmental tech consultant with muscle memory from typing 120 words per minute and a thorough knowledge of pressure points.*
Lord Varundar himself showed up shortly later, storming in with the melodramatic swagger of a man who'd rehearsed his entrance before a mirror and perhaps also worked on his lines. He had a mug of what was unmistakably fermented goat milk with a dash of remorse.
"There's my boy!" he shouted with sufficient loudness to **rattle windows and make three servants spill their cleaning equipment**. "Come, Sharath! Squeeze your father's thumb and assert control over the family pets!"
Sharath complied, squeezing with both small fists and what he guessed was sufficient pressure to leave minor bruises.
Varundar laughed, thrilled and seemingly pain-resistant. "By the ancestors, he's already developing a warrior's grip! **He'll be swinging a sword before he learns to talk! And judging by the look in his eyes, likely brainstorming enhancements for said sword!**
*Or constructing an experimental drone that carves bread with mystical accuracy and maybe provides snarky commentary on your fighting style.*
Lady Ishvari arrived next, her eyes relaxing at the sight of her son—though Sharath did notice she stayed out of his grabbing reach. She knelt down beside him and slid her hand into her pocket to produce a wooden animal carved into a creature that appeared to be the product of a lion and a porcupine having a very bewildered affair.
"I had this when I was a child," she explained, putting it down beside him with the gentle awkwardness of a bomb defuser. "It's magical. If you squeeze its stomach, it sings nursery rhymes. **At least, it used to sing nursery rhymes. Now it just. screams mostly.**"
She squeezed it hesitantly.
The porcupine-lion cross let out an immediate war chant-sounding rendition that sounded like a squirrel choir that had been gargling rocks and maybe calling up demons. It was so bad that it came out in a way nobody could have predicted that a vase on the table behind him shattered, two birds tumbled out of a tree outside the window, and in the distance, some dog started howling in existential despair.
Sharath blinked with horror.
Ishvari winced as though she'd just seen a miniature musical apocalypse. "**It was once softer. Much softer. I suspect it is broken. Or maybe possessed by something with extremely bad musical taste.**"
He extended a chubby hand and **struck it off the cushion with the resolute strength of a small music critic giving a biting review**.
The toy landed with a satisfying thud on the stone floor and blessedly went quiet.
She erupted into laughter—the relieved, slightly hysterical sort of someone who'd just lived through a small supernatural mishap. "**You have great taste, at least! And unexpectedly good reflexes for someone who can't even keep his own head upright!**"
Sharath spent the evening in his rune-cradle, inwardly processing all this while his actual digestive system rumbled threateningly.
*Alright. Let me evaluate this sheer pandemonium I've been born into:*
**Parents**: Caring, funny, a little spooky, and seemingly utterly indifferent to magic toys that sound like calling the apocalypse.
**Cradle**: Magic-capable, mood-sensitive, great at listening in, and perhaps scheming its own agenda based on the overly suspicious manner in which it hums when no one is paying attention.
**Body**: Baby. Delicate. No teeth. Zero bladder control. Somehow able to write reviews that would reduce Gordon Ramsay to tears.
**World**: Medieval fantasy, governed by magic, bizarre politics, musical animal landmines, and nobles who dress as if they lost bets with extremely vengeful tailors.
**Conclusion**: Adaptation has to be strategic. Overperformance = suspicion and potential witch trials. Underperformance = disappointing prodigy parents and probable boarding school. Balance = live long enough to save the world and maybe correct their awful fashion sense.
As he digested this thumping information dump, there was a soft knock at the door—the sort of knock which could imply either extremely good news or the worst possible.
A moment later, there was a tall, thin man walking into the nursery like a very sinister scarecrow, followed by a smaller figure in a very dark indigo robe who glided like someone who definitely rehearsed dramatic entrances.
He bowed to Lady Ishvari with the kind of dignity normally reserved for undertakers. "My lady, the court magister has arrived. He wishes to take the formal aura reading, now that the child is several days old **and no longer glows quite so fiercely.**"
Ishvari looked about as certain as someone being asked to volunteer for experimental surgery. "Is that safe? **The last time someone magical examined him, three candles spontaneously lit themselves and the cat developed temporary telepathy.**"
The robed figure moved forward, dropping his hood to show a lean face scored with glimmering tattoos—glyphs that flowed across his body like silver writing trapped in a whirlwind and perhaps talking to each other in an animated manner.
"It will be soft, my lady," he replied in the tone of one who'd promised this before and likely been mistaken. "A surface scan only. To know what gifts your child has inherited. **And if we need to alert the royal mage council or just get better fire insurance.**"
She nodded reluctantly, the way oneconsents to bail out of a perfectly fine airplane. "Go ahead. **But if he begins to float off the ground, we're bailing.**"
Sharath observed with rapt interest masquerading as the vacant expression of someone whose greatest cares were milk warmth and diaper fit.
The magister drew up a long crystal wand that resembled something that might cast spells or receive a number of distinct radio stations. He directed it at Sharath with the measured delicacy of a person defusing a magical explosive.
A slowly rotating web of shimmering sigils burst into existence in the air—like planets in orbit, but planets that vibrated menacingly and from time to time **sparked with what suspiciously resembled small lightning bolts**.
"**Hmmm**," the magister muttered, his brow furrowed over his readings as if attempting to decipher some hopefully obscure tax form.
"Hmmm?" Ishvari repeated, rapidly moving into the maternal protect mode of a lioness who'd seen danger threatening her cub.
"This child's aura…" He peered closer, his frown growing so intense that it was bordering on geological formation. "It is old. **Very old**. But warm. Cultivated. **And it seems to be. critiquing my scanning method.**"
He addressed Varundar, who had just arrived with the entrance of one who'd been listening outside the door. "My lord, your son's spiritual vibration is akin to that of a sage and not an infant. It's as if… **as if he recalls everything and is now taking mental notes of our performance.**"
Varundar lifted an eyebrow in practiced parental cynicism. "Remembers what, exactly? **How to criticize our housekeeping? Because he's certainly been doing that.**"
"That," the magister said, glaring at Sharath with the focus of someone attempting to decipher a particularly knotty puzzle, "is the question."
*Oh great*, Sharath thought, *I've been spiritually audited by someone who most likely takes this job way too seriously.*
The magister's crystal wand shimmered, and then started **pulsating in time with Sharath's heartbeat**. The lights in the room faded for a moment, and Sharath glimpsed something behind the symbols. A form. An echo. Like a specter of his old self—binary code stacked beneath the runes, **code being interwoven with magic some sort of preternatural programming language**.
The magister took a sharp breath that sounded like someone who'd just discovered their house was haunted by a particularly tech-savvy ghost. "This child… **he carries echoes of another life. Another world. And possibly several advanced degrees.**"
Ishvari clutched her husband's hand with enough force to potentially cut off circulation. "You mean he's… reincarnated? **And overeducated?**"
"I can't say for sure. But the omens are… **forceful and frankly rather intimidating**. You have to keep an eye on him. **And maybe some baby-proofing that takes supernatural intelligence into account.**"
*No no no*, Sharath reasoned frantically, struggling hard to appear as a groggy drool-blob who could not possibly comprehend the idea of advanced calculus. *Do not even begin a prophecy around me. I am NOT interested in being The Chosen Baby, The Destined Toddler, or The Infant of Unusual Destiny.*
The magister stood up, the posture of someone bringing news that would certainly ruin everyone's night. "**He might institute grand change. Or maybe just super cutting-edge criticisms of our existing systems. Either way, things are going to get interesting.**"
He bowed formally, adjusted his hood as if adopting a secret identity, and departed with the thespian flair of someone who certainly rehearsed exits on his downtime.
Sharath released the loudest, most undignified burp in the history of burps—a sound that was at once babyish and yet somehow accusatory.
**Perfect baby credentials: re-established.**
Later that evening, as everyone else slept off their respective magical epiphanies, Sharath honed his "Passive Baby Surveillance"—or as he liked to refer to it, "Professional Eavesdropping with Plausible Deniability."
He remained immobile, eyes half-closed, as if listening with the intense concentration of an industrial spy.
In hushed tones that carried with them a tone of earnest rumor from the hallway:
"**…Aldric says the child needs to be taken to the Temple for testing. Again. Says that of every child born under a full moon during a storm, or who looks at him strangely.**"
"'**But this one shines, Rava. His crib hums back when he wails. Last night it was harmonizing. I'm certain it was showing off.**"
It is from the distance end of the hallway, in the tones of individuals who believed they were being discreet:
"**…Lord Varundar has been insisting on increased rune incorporation in the exterior walls. That kind of innovation could create enemies. Particularly if his son is some sort of magical whiz kid with a voice on structural engineering.**"
"**But if the boy takes after his father's brain and his mother's intuition… and whatever the devil that aura scan was supposed to tell us about.**"
Sharath experienced both pride and existential horror.
*They're already speculating about my future impact on society. I haven't even learned to crawl yet, and they're treating me like I'm going to redesign their entire civilization. Which. honestly, probably isn't wrong, but still.*
When a tiny thing slid along the stone floor—a six-legged creature the size of a cat, with fur that glowed like moonlight reflected in a disco ball, and the determined stride of something with an extremely important mission to accomplish.
It stopped alongside his cradle and blinked up at him with eyes of gold that contained way too much brainpower for an entity that resembled a **conscious dust bunny with grandiose delusions**.
He blinked back, wondering if this was some sort of magical pet or just another Tuesday in his new, perpetually strange life.
*Okay, definitely not a cat. Possibly a thinking mop with views and a sideline in the supernatural spying business.*
The animal let out once—a mournful sound that blended crystalline bells with the satisfied purr of a cat who'd just knocked something costly off a high one—and then disappeared into a darkness with the melodramatic gesture that seemed to be the norm around here.
*This planet is completely crazy. I adore it. But also, I'm certainly going to require backup plans, perhaps a wand, and perhaps a type of supernatural insurance policy.*
The next morning, Lady Ishvari caught him smiling up at her with what she no doubt took for innocent baby bliss but was in fact the smug face of a person who'd successfully pulled off a night of surveillance.
"Why are you smiling, hmm?" she said, picking him up lightly while inspecting his face for the presence of ghosts. "**Did you have a dream about starlight again? Or were you scheming something? Because that's absolutely a plotting smile.**"
Sharath grasped her face with the grabby abandon of one who'd gone too long without human contact for their nocturnal bout of clandestine gathering of intel.
For an instant, his strategic mind fell silent. He did not think like a technomancer or a scientist or a man who would change magical society. He was merely a baby, freshly born, being hugged by someone who cared for him greatly and seemingly was not too fazed about his potentially supernatural birth.
She kissed his forehead and said, "**You're going to change everything, aren't you? Probably starting with our sleep schedules and ending with the fundamental nature of reality as we know it.**"
*That's the plan, Mother. But first, I really need to work on this whole 'subtle' thing.*