When I woke up, it wasn't like waking up from a regular sleep. I opened my eyes, expecting to see my familiar apartment, but there was nothing. The world around me was dark, and I could barely make out anything. I tried to move, but my body didn't respond the way I expected it to.
I felt strange. I couldn't understand the situation fully, but there was an uncomfortable pressure on my body, particularly near my lower abdomen. The sensation was suffocating, like something was enclosing around me.
Suddenly, a flash of white light exploded in front of me. It wasn't like the thunderous strike I had witnessed earlier; this light was much closer, overwhelming, and all-consuming. I was being drawn toward it, not the other way around.
Instinctively, I closed my eyes, overwhelmed by the sensation. My body seemed to jerk upwards on its own, like a sudden lift from the ground. I gasped, my lungs filling with air in an uncoordinated, desperate way.
I opened my eyes again, trying to get a grip on the situation, but what I saw made my heart race with fear. Looming over me was a giant. The figure was blurred in my new, limited vision, but it was unmistakable—a giant of a woman, around her forties, looking down at me.
Her eyes softened, and I heard a faint sound. A sharp pain in my backside made me yelp—but instead of the expected cry of shock, a baby's cry escaped my mouth.
A baby? I thought, my mind racing. What happened to me?
In the next moment, the giant, this woman, passed me over to another figure. She was younger, probably in her twenties, with tired brown eyes and light golden hair. Her face was soft, full of tenderness—a look of pure, unfiltered love. I felt an immediate connection, a bond I'd never felt before.
She was my mother. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Somehow, I had been reincarnated. My mind tried to grasp the enormity of it, but there was little time to process as the world around me shifted again.
A shadow loomed over me, and another giant appeared—this time a man, his face filled with relief. He was young, in his early twenties, with green eyes that shimmered with an emotion I couldn't quite name. His dark red hair matched the shade of the warm light in the room.
My father, I realized, and I felt the strangest sensation of familiarity.
He spoke to my mother in a language I didn't recognize. It was similar to English but distorted, alien. His words sounded soothing, like a promise or a reassurance, though I couldn't understand them.
As I lay there, watching my new parents in awe, a profound wave of exhaustion hit me. My body felt heavy, and my eyes grew unbearably tired. The weight of it all—the confusion, the strangeness, the sudden shock of being in a new life—began to overwhelm me.
I closed my eyes, feeling the softness of the blankets around me, the gentle hum of the world moving around me, and the comforting presence of my parents. There was something in their gazes—something warm and reassuring that made me feel safe.
I let out a deep breath, and slowly, sleep overtook me, my thoughts suspended in the limbo between life and death.
In the silence of the room, my parents watched me with gentle smiles, their hearts swelling with love for the child they had just welcomed into their world. They had no idea the storm that had raged to bring me here, but they knew, as I did not, that this was just the beginning of something new.