The baby screamed — raw, ragged, alive.
It wasn't the clinical cry of a newborn in a sterile crib. This was primal. A defiant shriek torn from tiny lungs not yet ready for the bitter air. Smoke lingered in the hut, mixing with the stench of sweat, blood, and damp earth.
Outside, wind howled across the open plains, tugging at the loose thatch of the broken roof.
The mother, pale and fevered, clutched the child against her chest. Her face was gaunt, and the veins in her arms bulged unnaturally — overdrawn by childbirth and poor spirit circulation.
The old midwife snapped commands at the others, her hands slick with afterbirth, her eyes hollow from too many winters.
"He lives," she croaked.
"Another mouth for the dirt to claim."
The father, a wiry man with a deep scar on his collarbone, knelt by the fire, holding a dull iron blade over the flames.
Not to cut — to purify.
Disease could spread fast in a place like this. The Western Plains had no doctors. No pills. Just pain and hope and the will to survive.
The child kept crying.
Inside that fragile body, Arion Drayke was awake.
He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe properly without wailing like the infant he now was.
But his mind — his brilliant, burdened mind — was very much intact.
He recognized the straw bedding. The clay walls. The cracked stone hearth. Primitive.
There was no electricity, no hum of refrigeration, no synthetic bedding, no medical scanner.
The blade over the fire was real iron. The bowl collecting blood was carved bone.
No running water. No clean sheets. No... logic.
Where am I?
The thought slammed against the walls of his new brain, fogged and underdeveloped.
Everything hurt. His chest rose and fell like a broken bellows. Every muscle screamed from simply existing.
This isn't Earth.
The woman holding him sobbed softly.
Arion looked up — or tried to — his new neck unable to hold weight.
Her skin was bronze from the sun, her hands calloused. This woman was no nurse. She was a peasant. A mother who looked both relieved and afraid to see her child breathing.
There were no machines here.
No charts to track his growth.
No name tags.
No monitors.
Just wind and soil and fire.
He'd read stories like this.
Reincarnation novels. Cultivation sagas. Fantasy. None of them had prepared him for the smell. The pain. The helplessness.
Someone outside shouted.
The door creaked open, wind blasting in.
A man entered — tall, thin, sunburned. His tunic was patched with leather, and a short, rusted blade hung from his belt.
He looked at the child and then at the woman. "Name him."
The woman blinked, her voice barely audible. "We... we haven't chosen one yet."
"Too late," the man muttered.
"The scribes ride tomorrow. If he's to be named, do it now. Or he'll be listed as 'Ashborn.'"
A flash of something crossed her face — shame? Or defiance?
She looked down at the baby, her child. His little hands were curled into trembling fists. His breath stuttered. His skin was pale from the effort of surviving his own birth.
"Ar..." Her lips moved, unsure.
Then again, stronger. "Arion."
The man sneered. "Too grand. That's a name for nobles."
"It's his name," she said, holding him tighter.
Arion watched the exchange, his infant mind struggling to hold on.
So it was decided. The name remained. His name.
Arion Drayke.
The room fell into silence again, the storm outside losing its fury.
And yet — for the first time — Arion felt something stir.
It wasn't spirit energy. Not yet.
It was memory.
Buried deep in cells too weak to hold them, his mind remembered steel cities, quantum networks, strategic warfare, systems of law, and the brutal calculus of empire.
And now... he had nothing.
No tools.
No resources.
No influence.
Only a child's body.
And a world of dirt and spirit that did not want him.
But Arion was never one to ask for permission.
And deep within that tiny, screaming body, the spark was already kindling.