Aren was awake.
That, at least, was certain.
Light pressed against his eyes. Not painfully, but insistently, as if the world refused to let him retreat back into darkness. Shapes hovered above him—blurred, colorless at first—then slowly sharpened.
Cloth. Shadows. The curved line of a tent's roof.
'So I can see,' he thought.
That alone eliminated several possibilities. He wasn't blind. He wasn't dreaming. Dreams didn't have this kind of resistance, this stubborn solidity.
He tried to move.
His body answered sluggishly. An arm jerked, uncoordinated, the motion so clumsy it startled him.
'That's… not right.'
He could feel everything. The roughness beneath his back. The weight of air on his skin. The strange lightness of his limbs.
Too light.
Too small.
His field of vision tilted as someone adjusted the cloth beneath him. A face entered his view—female, unfamiliar, lines of worry etched deep around her eyes.
She spoke.
Soft words flowed over him, meaningless but gentle.
He tried to speak back.
His mouth opened.
A thin, helpless sound came out.
Crying.
Aren froze internally.
'No—stop.'
The sound continued anyway, breath hitching, chest tightening in a way he did not command.
'Stop crying,' he ordered himself.
Nothing happened.
The sound grew louder.
Frustration flared, sharp and sudden. He tried to clench his jaw. His muscles ignored him. His face twisted without permission.
'This is my body,' he thought angrily. 'Why can't I—'
A hand lifted him.
Warm. Careful. Experienced.
The crying eased despite his anger, as if his body betrayed him a second time.
The woman murmured again.
Another voice joined hers. Deeper. Male.
Short words. Firm tone.
They weren't speaking to him. They were speaking about him.
'All right,' Aren thought grimly. 'That answers it.'
He didn't need weeks or months to understand.
He was a baby.
A real one.
Small. Weak. Dependent.
The realization didn't explode. It settled heavily, like a weight placed directly on his chest.
'So I really did die.'
The hospital came back to him in fragments. The sterile smell. The ceiling tiles. The doctor standing too straight, hands folded.
Cancer.
The word surfaced cleanly.
Daniel Carter had known it was coming. He had known, lying there, that his life would end quietly. No legacy. No family. Just unfinished thoughts.
He had wished—once, maybe twice—for another chance.
Not like this.
The woman adjusted her grip, bringing him closer to her chest. He could hear her heartbeat. Fast. Uneven.
'She's afraid,' Aren realized.
Not of him.
For him.
The thought unsettled him more than fear ever had.
He drifted, then surfaced again, consciousness bobbing like a piece of wood in water. Hunger came suddenly, violently. It wasn't an emotion—it was a command.
His body cried again before he could stop it.
'This is humiliating.'
Yet when the hunger faded, so did the anger. His thoughts slowed. The world softened.
This pattern repeated.
Wake. See. Feel. Cry. Drift.
Each time he woke, he learned something new.
The tent was not large. He could tell by how quickly shadows crossed the ceiling when someone moved outside. The air smelled of dust, leather, and smoke.
Not a hospital.
Not modern.
'Pre-industrial,' he noted. 'Nomadic or semi-nomadic.'
A historian's mind didn't vanish just because the body changed.
The man came often. He didn't speak much. When he did, his voice carried authority without harshness.
Short sentences. Direct.
When the man held him, the world felt steadier. Less chaotic.
'Father,' Aren thought, testing the word.
It fit.
The woman—his mother—hovered constantly. She watched his breathing when she thought no one noticed. She touched his forehead, his hands, as if confirming he was still real.
He didn't understand her words.
But he understood her fear.
And slowly—against his will—he began to care.
'This is dangerous,' he warned himself. 'Attachment always is.'
Yet when she set him down and stepped away, a strange discomfort followed. Not hunger. Not pain.
Absence.
He hated that most of all.
Time passed strangely. He couldn't measure it properly. Sleep fractured it. But his awareness sharpened.
He learned the limits of his body.
He couldn't sit up. Couldn't turn on his own. His hands opened and closed uselessly, grasping at nothing.
Every failure irritated him.
'I conquered libraries with less effort than this,' he thought dryly.
One day—or night; it was hard to tell—the tent was quieter than usual. Fewer voices. Less movement.
The man and woman stood close together.
Low conversation.
The woman sounded tired. The man answered slowly.
Then the man leaned closer to Aren.
He spoke directly to him this time.
The sound of his name reached Aren's ears—clear, deliberate.
Aren.
He felt it settle, not as something new, but as something already claimed.
'That's me,' he thought.
The man's thumb rested briefly against Aren's tiny hand. The contact was brief, restrained, but meaningful.
Protection.
Responsibility.
Aren closed his eyes, exhaustion dragging him under again.
Before sleep claimed him fully, one final thought surfaced—quiet, steady, without drama.
'I don't know what this world will demand.'
A pause.
'But I won't waste this life.'
Sleep did not erase awareness completely.
Even drifting, Aren remained half-present, as if some instinct refused to let go. Sounds filtered through first. A low crackle. Fire. Someone moving outside the tent, footsteps pressing into dry earth.
The air cooled.
He stirred, discomfort creeping in before he understood why. The cloth beneath him had shifted. A draft brushed his cheek.
He made a sound—not a cry this time, just a thin, breathless noise.
It was enough.
The woman was there almost immediately.
Soft, hurried words.
Her hands checked him with practiced speed. Chest. Arms. Face. When she lifted him, her movements slowed, careful again.
'She's learning me as much as I'm learning her,' Aren thought.
The idea lingered.
In his old life, no one had learned him like this. No one had watched his breathing or adjusted their entire rhythm around his needs. Nurses came and went. Doctors spoke in controlled voices. Concern had been professional.
This was different.
Dangerously so.
He felt her sit, felt the subtle sway as she settled against the tent wall. Her body became a barrier against the cold, against the world beyond the thin cloth.
Aren's breathing evened out despite himself.
'This is how attachments form,' he thought. 'Quietly.'
The man's voice sounded again, closer this time.
Short exchange. Reassuring.
The woman answered him more softly now. Tired, but calmer.
Aren focused on the cadence of it. Not the words—he still couldn't grasp those—but the rhythm. The rise and fall. The way meaning lived beyond language.
'Pashto,' he guessed. 'Or something close.'
That mattered.
Language meant time. Time meant adaptation.
The thought gave him a strange sense of stability.
He was helpless, yes. Small. Bound to a body that obeyed its own rules.
But he was not erased.
He still observed. Still thought. Still remembered.
And memory, he knew better than most, was power that compounded quietly.
His eyes closed again.
This time, sleep came without resistance.