Black. Silence. Floating.
No light.
No pain.
Not even death. Just… emptiness.
Henry Moreau could no longer feel his body. He felt no warmth from the quantum core, no scent of burnt metal. He could hear neither alarms nor distant screams, nor the whispers inside his own head. Everything had vanished.
Until the world returned, in fragments.
His first memory was a blinding light.
Then a cry. His own. A sharp, tiny, animalistic scream.
And a voice. Soft. High-pitched. Unintelligible.
"He's breathing! It's a miracle… Your Majesty, the Dauphin is vigorous."
Dauphin?
He wanted to speak. To protest.
But his vocal cords no longer belonged to a man.
He no longer was a man.
Versailles, October 22nd, 1781
Golden light filtered through silk curtains. The air smelled of linen, perfumed powder, and hand-washed sheets. In a finely carved cradle, an infant cried.
And within that infant, somewhere in the folds of his still-unstable mind…
lived the consciousness of Henry Moreau.
The first days were a torment.
He had no control over anything.
Not his body, not his breathing, not his movements. A prisoner trapped in a living shell.
He could make no sense of the sounds around him. Voices spoke French, yes, but not the French he knew. It was too proper, too polite, too… theatrical. "Madame votre Altesse," "Monsieur le Grand Chambellan," "Oh, how radiant His Majesty is this morning." Laughter, curtseys, antiquated phrases. Powdered faces leaned over him, frozen smiles.
"What the hell is this circus?"
He thought. But he could not speak.
He tried to scream in protest, to wail in rage. Only a pathetic whimper emerged. Then he gave up because he was pissed.
Days passed. He began to adjust to the strangeness of his new body.
He felt hunger, cold, sleepiness—but also a growing clarity.
As if each day freed a fragment of his adult mind.
The inner voice of Henry, the sergeant, reasserted itself.
And it was in no mood for jokes.
"Okay. You're not dead. At least, not as expected. You're in a baby. Fantastic. Demonic possession, time jump, post-traumatic hallucination? Calm down, you've seen worse. Afghanistan 2024, the tunnel, the cave… remember that."
Yet nothing explained the language, the surroundings, the faces… nor the disturbing sense of familiarity that this place evoked.
On the seventh day, a governess lifted him and carried him into a vast chamber, lined with gold and embroidered tapestries.
She turned toward a full-length mirror.
And for the first time, he saw his reflection.
A chubby infant, pale-skinned, bright-eyed, swaddled like a porcelain doll.
A foreign face.
Yet one detail struck him: the features, the powdered hairstyle of the man holding him in a painting on the wall behind the mirror.
Louis XVI.
He could have recognized him anywhere. He had seen that portrait at the Musée d'Orsay an afternoon with his nephew.
And then… everything shifted.
He understood.
Not everything. But enough for adrenaline to ignite in his mind.
"Versailles. Late 18th century. Monarchy. Wait… the Dauphin?! Oh shit… SHIT! I'm in the body of Louis-Joseph of France! Son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The first heir. The kid who dies at nine."
His breath caught. Or at least… as much as a baby could gasp.
"You mean… I'm the heir to the throne of France? And I'm going to croak in ten years from some nasty lung thing? No way."
He had always been pragmatic.
Not religious. Not superstitious. He believed in reason, in the concrete. But now…?
He had to admit: death had not killed him. It had transferred him.
Into a place, a time, a body… where history itself would soon teeter.
"Jacobins, the Revolution, the Terror, severed heads… and me, right in the middle of it. Wonderful. What a joke."
His mind creaked with sarcasm.
But deep down, a cold fire reignited.
The fire of a former soldier.
The one who calculates. Who plans.
"If I'm really Louis-Joseph, I have a unique chance. Not to relive my life… but to change history."
October 25th, 1781 –The baptism
The ceremony was a spectacle of opulence.
Gold, incense, choirs, nobility lined like statues in the royal chapel of Versailles.
He did not understand all the priest's words, but some hammered into him:
"Eldest son of France," "Dauphin," "legitimate heir."
He was sprinkled with holy water, presented to the court, blessed by the Church.
And then… a gift.
"His Majesty the King wishes to offer his son this modest symbol, recently returned to the royal treasury by an anonymous collector."
A box was opened. And there, beneath the gilding, on a velvet cushion…
The cross.
His cross.
The one he had carried his whole life. The one he had bought at seven. The one he had held tight as he died.
The shock hit so hard he thought he might lose consciousness inside his own skull.
"No. Impossible. It's… it's her. The same engraving. The same wear on the right arm. How…?"
A chill ran through the small body that could not speak.
Later, as he was in his cradle, he thought:
"You sacrificed yourself to save the world.
You woke up in the body of a prince dead for two centuries.
And the only thing that came with you… is this damn cross."
He might have laughed. If he could.
Instead, he sank into a deep sleep, exhausted by emotion.
One thing was certain.
He was already here.
So better go at it fully.