Sam's world exploded into white.
When he opened his eyes again, there was only darkness. No field, no wheat, no angel baby, no endless blue sky. Just a smooth black void surrounding a single white flame that floated at the center of everything, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat.
For a moment, Sam only stared at it. Then the impossible truth settled in.
That flame was him.
Or at least, it was what was left of him.
It did not look like the gray, dying ember he had been before. This was brighter, cleaner, touched by the angel baby's strange white light. It was less like fire now and more like a tiny living star suspended inside a glass sphere, radiant and alive, with a bright core beating at its center.
Sam tried to move, but nothing happened. He had no arms, no legs, no mouth, no lungs. And yet somehow, he could see. Somehow, he could think.
"…am I seriously a ball of light now?"
The thought echoed through the dark, but no answer came. Of course it didn't. Sam would have sighed if he still had anything to sigh with.
Then the light began to change.
At first, it was only a faint thickening around him, like mist gathering around a candle flame. Then the mist became substance. Matter formed from nothing, building itself around the pulsing white core with terrifying precision. A heart came first, a real one, shaping itself around the light layer by layer as muscle and tissue knitted together as if reality had decided to rebuild him from scratch.
Sam felt all of it.
Veins branched outward. Nerves sparked into place. Bone formed. Muscle wrapped around it. Organs unfolded one after another, threaded through with thin lines of white radiance that tied everything back to the core in his chest.
His core.
His heart.
Or maybe both.
It was impossible to understand. Sensation poured into him too quickly: pressure, weight, structure, presence. It felt like being born and remembering every second of it. His spine aligned. His lungs opened. A skull formed around something delicate and electric, something that flickered with thought before Sam even understood what it was.
A brain.
Him.
Sam.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the process stopped.
Silence returned. Stillness. Completion.
Sam tried to breathe, and this time his chest moved.
He opened his eyes.
The darkness reflected him back like polished glass, and whatever relief he might have felt died instantly.
The face staring back at him was not his. Not even close. Wide violet eyes blinked in confusion, framed by long, delicate lashes. Soft brows, round cheeks, a tiny nose, a small mouth, pale skin that almost seemed to glow, and a dusting of short platinum-blond hair.
It was not a man's face.
It was not even close to a man's face.
It was the cutest, softest, most harmless-looking baby face imaginable.
Sam stared. The baby stared back. They blinked at the same time.
"…no."
The reflection did not change.
"No, no, no. That's not—"
Before he could finish, a ripple of white light passed through the void. Something soft formed around him, wrapping his tiny body in one smooth motion. Plush white fabric covered him from neck to foot. A hood settled over his head. Long rabbit ears flopped gently to one side, and a little round tail appeared behind him.
Sam lifted his hands.
Tiny mittened paws rose into view.
Small.
Ridiculously small.
For one long second, he could only stare. Then his voice came out high, sharp, and very much not his.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
The sound of it made him freeze.
Then the panic hit properly.
"Did that baby angel seriously turn me into a newborn baby girl in a bunny suit?"
His tiny body jerked in midair. Little legs kicked uselessly while mittened hands flailed at the empty dark. Outrage flooded through him all at once, hot enough to almost cover the horror.
"This is not what I meant!" he shouted. "I was being sarcastic! Maybe a little delusional from blood loss, sure, but sarcastic!"
He twisted, trying to grab onto something, anything, but there was nothing around him except the endless black reflection of his new body. Small. Soft. Female. Absolutely not him.
"Wishes are supposed to come with warnings!" he yelled. "Terms! Conditions! At least a tiny pop-up that says, 'Are you sure you want to become your own girlfriend?'"
His little fists clenched.
"You could've made me taller, richer, stronger! You could've given me a working phone! Literally anything else!"
He kicked the air in a furious little full-body squirm.
"I don't want to be a baby, and I definitely don't want to be my own girlfriend!"
The void answered with silence.
Sam waited, breathing hard, if this tiny body even counted as breathing. Nothing happened.
"…hello?" he called, weaker this time. "Angel baby? Chubby cheeks? Creepy divine toddler? You still there?"
Still nothing.
His anger faltered, leaving behind something colder and more uncertain.
"…you've gotta be kidding me."
Then the darkness began to glow.
At first, it was only a faint shimmer beyond the glassy black. Then golden threads seeped through the void, weaving closer and closer until they brushed against his skin. Sam froze as the light gathered around him, layering over itself, curving into shape. It did not squeeze or trap him. It held him.
A soft shell of golden fire formed around his tiny body, warm and bright and pulsing with the same rhythm as the strange second heartbeat in his chest.
Sam stared at it, wide-eyed.
"…what is this?" he whispered. "Am I powering up?"
The golden shell pulsed once, then again, and his chest answered.
Two heartbeats.
Two rhythms.
Before he could make sense of it, the darkness around him began to bend. The smooth black surface stretched like elastic, pulled outward by something far beyond it. The golden cocoon tugged him with it, gently at first, then harder.
"…wait."
The void thinned ahead of him.
"Wait, wait, hold on—!"
Sam reached out, but there was nothing to grab. The surface gave way, and with a sharp, sudden release, he was pulled through.
For one brief moment, everything felt thick and heavy, as if he had been thrown through dark water.
Then there was light.
Too much light.
Not gentle sunlight. Not the soft glow of the wheat field.
Fire.
Vast currents of golden plasma roared around him, rising and collapsing in storms larger than continents. Arcs of flame towered through the impossible brightness. The world churned with heat and pressure and ancient violence, not like ordinary fire, but like creation itself boiling around him.
Sam had no time to scream and no time to understand. The golden cocoon carried him through it all. He should have burned. He should have vanished. Instead, the shell held.
"What—what is this?!"
His tiny voice disappeared into the scale of it. He was nothing here. Less than dust. A speck wrapped in gold, drifting through the heart of a star.
Then, suddenly, the fire fell away.
Cold silence rushed in.
Sam shot out into open space, still wrapped inside the golden cocoon. For a moment, he only floated there, stunned, while the chaos receded behind him.
Then he looked back and saw the Sun.
Not a sun.
The Sun.
It filled the darkness behind him, vast and burning, a colossal sphere of golden fire hanging in the void like the heart of creation itself.
Sam stared at it, and his mind simply stopped.
Then, very softly, he said, "…no way."
The truth settled in slowly and terribly.
He had been inside it.
Inside the actual Sun.
And now he was floating in space.
Alive.
Somehow.
A thin, disbelieving laugh escaped him.
"…did I just pop out of the Sun?"
For a moment, the star only burned behind him, vast and indifferent.
Then its surface changed.
The endless turbulence began to draw inward. Fire tightened. Light gathered. The chaotic storms of the Sun focused toward a single point, becoming deliberate in a way that made Sam's stomach drop.
"…huh?"
The golden cocoon pulsed, and the second heartbeat in his chest answered.
The Sun flared.
Sam's eyes widened.
"…wait."
The light sharpened.
"No, no, no—"
For one impossible instant, everything turned white. Then the beam came.
It did not travel like ordinary light. One moment, the Sun burned in the distance. The next, a column of golden fire existed between them, a radiant lance cast across the void with impossible precision.
"What the—!"
The words barely left Sam before the beam struck and golden light swallowed him whole.
But it did not burn. It did not tear him apart. It simply took hold of him, wrapped around the golden cocoon, and carried him forward with a force so absolute that everything else disappeared. The darkness, the silence, the strange feeling of drifting through space — all of it vanished beneath the impossible rush of motion.
He was no longer floating.
He was being sent.
The beam stretched outward from the Sun in one perfect, unbroken line, and Sam moved with it, a tiny bright speck racing through the solar system so fast that distance lost all meaning. Worlds flashed past too quickly to understand: Mercury, a scorched stone flicker; Venus, a pale glow hidden beneath endless cloud. Each one appeared and vanished before his mind could properly grasp what he had seen.
There was no time to think. No time to scream. No way to stop.
Then the Moon appeared ahead.
For one breathless second, its pale, silent surface filled his vision, ancient and gray and impossibly close. The golden beam swept over it, and the dead dust below shone faintly beneath the light, as if something living had brushed across it.
Then it was gone.
Earth rose beyond it.
Blue. White. Vast.
It grew larger with every heartbeat until it filled everything Sam could see.
"…wait—!"
Panic finally caught up with him.
"No, no, no—!"
The atmosphere rushed up, but the beam tore through it as if the sky were nothing more than mist. Clouds split apart beneath him, scattering in white and gray ribbons as the golden light carved a path straight down from space to the frozen world below.
Far beneath him, the north lay locked in winter.
A small island rested alone in a sea of ice, buried beneath untouched snow. At its center stood a ring of ancient stone: twelve dark monoliths arranged around a flat circular slab, its surface carved with markings almost worn away by time.
The beam struck the circle directly.
For six seconds, the world changed.
Night became day.
The light did not explode outward. It pressed down, vast and unwavering, as if the earth itself had been pinned beneath the hand of a god. Snow vanished where the beam touched, flashing into water and then steam. Frost cracked and withdrew from the ground. Heat rolled outward through the island, and the ice around it shifted with a deep, distant groan.
Steam rose in heavy waves, blurring the stones.
Inside the beam, Sam fell.
He tumbled helplessly through the golden column, his voice lost in the force around him, dropping faster and faster like some tiny fragment of the Sun being returned to the world.
Far beyond the island, people saw the light.
Across frozen coasts, dark forests, scattered settlements, and silent hunting grounds, heads turned toward the sky. Animals froze. Tools lowered. Voices faded. For those six seconds, whatever had mattered before no longer did.
The sky burned gold.
And the world watched.
Then the beam began to withdraw.
It did not fade. It retreated, narrowing as it rose, pulling itself back through the torn clouds. The golden column collapsed into itself as it climbed higher and higher, leaving the sky to close behind it like a wound trying to hide what had happened.
Higher.
Smaller.
Then gone.
The light vanished back into the Sun, and just like that, it was over.
The wind returned. Snow began to fall again, soft and steady, covering the island as if nothing had happened at all.
At the center of a stone circle, in a shallow crater of dark, steaming earth, a small figure lay still.
Sam.
The white bunny suit was spotless, with one long ear bent awkwardly to the side. For a long moment, the tiny body did not move.
Then her eyes opened.
"…what…"
The sound came out faint and uncertain.
She stared up at the sky as the clouds slowly drifted back into place and snowflakes fell in quiet spirals around her.
"…what's going on…?"
She tried to speak again, tried to force the words out properly.
"Hey, what the hell—"
"Ah…"
The sound stopped her cold.
Her brow furrowed. She tried again, harder this time.
"What—"
"Ah… eh…"
The noise that came out was soft, small, and completely wrong.
Her eyes widened.
"…no."
Her breathing quickened as she pushed against the ground, trying to sit up. Her arms trembled beneath her. Her mittened hands slipped uselessly against the wet snow. Nothing moved the way it was supposed to. Nothing had the strength it should have had.
She managed to lift herself for half a second.
Then collapsed back onto the cooling earth.
"This is so unfair—!"
"Ahhh—!"
The words did not come out.
Only a strained, rising cry.
Panic and frustration surged together. Her tiny legs kicked weakly. Her hands curled into small, useless fists.
"I can't even—what is this?!"
"Eee—ah—!"
Her voice broke apart completely, dissolving into helpless, uneven sounds.
Her chest tightened. Her vision blurred. She tried to ask what was happening to her, tried to demand answers from the sky, from the angel baby, from anyone who might be listening.
But the question never formed.
Only broken little cries escaped her.
Then her breath hitched, and this time she could not stop it. A full, helpless wail tore out of her, loud and uncontrollable, echoing faintly between the ancient stones as tears spilled down her cheeks.
She lay there in the falling snow, trembling and crying without restraint.
Alone.
Confused.
And completely, undeniably, a baby.
The snow continued to fall. The wind whispered through the stone circle.
And the world gave her no answers.