The rain was pouring down. Lightning flashed across the sky, followed by the booming sound of thunder. The world had turned grey, and an air of depression permeated the surroundings. I stared at a wall as my body began to get colder and colder and the sound flickered in and out. Through my hazy mind, I knew I would not make it. Slowly moving my gaze from the wall to the person hovering over me, I saw a worried teenage girl with tears streaming down their panic-stricken face. Her hands were covered in blood as she pressed on the wound on my abdomen that continued to ooze blood. As the world around me began to get cloudy and I fell into the darkness, my final feelings were simply relief.
What seemed like forever and an instant passed, and the nothingness around me began to fade. Replacing that odd feeling was a warmth that surrounded my entire body. I didn't know how long the warm feeling would continue, but I decided to enjoy it while it lasted. It was a much better feeling than the numbing coldness I felt when I died.
[Is this heaven?] I wondered.
I tried to open my eyes and look around, but it was as if my eyes were sealed. My body felt as though it was made of lead and I realized I could barely move. Unable to see or move, I had no choice but to stay still and wait. Eventually, I fell back into the darkness, seemingly not recovered from my death.
I was unsure how fast time was moving as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I had no idea how long I lay there, but eventually, I felt my body had some energy to move. Even though my body still felt like lead, I struggled to stretch out my hand. After what seemed like far too long, I finally felt walls around me. I was shocked. It turned out that the walls were the source of heat that surrounded me. As I continued to move around the tiny space I was in, a female voice reverberated around me.
[Who is that?]
While unsure of what they were saying, the gentle voice was soothing, and I felt myself slowly drifting off to sleep again.
As I began to stay awake more and more, I had a disturbing idea about my situation. It seemed that I might have turned into a baby. And a baby that hadn't even been born for that. One day, the thought suddenly came to me as I gently felt out of the confined space I was in again. The ability to move slowly getting easier. That soothing voice, which appeared often, came and seemed to cause me to stop moving unconsciously. As I lay there listening to the unknown words being spoken, the thought that this is what a baby must feel like popped into my head. At first, it was just an amusing thought. But as I began to compare things, I realized it was the most likely explanation for what was happening. Accepting that it was probably the case, I wondered what was happening. Many questions started circulating through my head as I had nothing to do.
[Why could I only hear her sometimes?]
[Does this mean reincarnation exists?]
[Would time have passed quite a bit from my previous, or would it still be near the same period?]
[Why can't I understand what she was saying?]
[Was I going to be born a different race from my last life?]
Like that, time passed again, and before I knew it, I began to feel the walls around me start to contract and press against me. It stayed like that for a bit before I began to be forced in a particular direction. Unable to control what was happening, I went with the flow. Suddenly, there was an intense pressure around my body. Before I could completely register any pain, I seemed to pass through it and was greeted with a bright light. Blinking my blurry eyes to try and see clearly, my body was handled roughly as I was quickly wiped down and then put in someone's arms.
An old voice sounded next to me as I was turned this way and that. My eyes were still blurry, with black spots dancing from the sudden bright light. Finally, after a few minutes, I was handed to someone else again. The gentle voice that I had been hearing the entire time while I was in the womb then sounded next to me softly in my ear. I could not understand what was being said, but I could feel the love and warmth coming from that voice.
[So, I was right about me being a baby]
Moving my head toward the voice and continuing to blink to clear my eyes, I could see a blurry figure holding me. Then, after a while, I could see the beautiful face of the woman I assumed was my mother. Her long silver hair pooled around her shoulders, with some sticking to her sweat-soaked skin. Gentle gold eyes stared at me as she held me and inspected me. Unable to stop staring at her, I opened my mouth, and a waa~ waa~ sound came out. As soon as she heard me, the beautiful woman smiled, and I felt as though I was almost blinded.
[This woman is as beautiful as an angel. I've never seen someone who was this beautiful before.]
That was how my first meeting with my new mother came and went. As soon as my mother's body was well enough, she immediately left where she gave birth to me and began traveling. One of the things I noticed at first was that the era I was born was utterly different from the era of my past life. While in my past life, I lived in a modern era with cars and skyscrapers and such, the time I was in now was set back in time. Instead of cars, there were carriages. Instead of skyscrapers, it was more of the old European buildings.
As my mother continued to travel and I grew up, I realized something else. The world I was born in also seemed to be a completely different world compared to the one I used to live in. Not only had I discovered that there was magic in this world, but many creatures and races that didn't exist in my world existed here. Stuff from legends such as dragons and phoenixes were here, and many others that I had never even heard about before. While there were some normal animals like chickens, fish, and such, the diversity of this world's animals, plants, and people was incomparable to my last one. Knowing that I had to relearn everything, I seriously spent my early years growing up diligently learning from my mother.
Just like that, six years had passed, and I had pretty much assimilated into this new world.