Artemis Isles, Western Region, Kingdom of Loclover
Within a grand palace on an expansive estate, a strikingly beautiful woman knelt in despair. Her raven-black hair framed her pale, tear-streaked face, and her stormy gray eyes overflowed with sorrow. Despite the pallor of her complexion and the cascade of tears, her ethereal beauty shone undiminished.
In her trembling arms lay an infant, his golden-blond hair gleaming faintly. Unlike most babies, his skin was not the healthy pink of life but an unsettling ashen gray. The child displayed no signs of life.
To her left stood a handsome young man with hair like ripened wheat and eyes as green as emeralds. His expression betrayed a profound sadness as he looked on silently.
"Mama! Mama!" A small girl of about three years toddled closer to the grieving woman.
Her long, jet-black hair and large gray eyes mirrored her mother's features, making her a miniature replica of the mourning woman. Tugging insistently at the woman's sleeve, the little girl pleaded, "What happened?!"
Kuyomi, the grieving mother, couldn't bring herself to answer. Clutching the lifeless child tightly, she sobbed quietly, unable to process her daughter's questions.
The physician standing near the bed coughed lightly, her voice laced with regret. "Lord Verdi… I'm so sorry, but this child…"
Her sentence trailed off, her words stifled by the cold, piercing glare from Verdi. The young lord's demeanor darkened, and the air seemed to grow heavier under his gaze.
"Could you leave us?" he asked curtly.
"Yes!" The physician nodded hastily, trembling with fear.
She was just an ordinary doctor. How could she withstand the wrath of such a prominent figure?
As she turned to leave, she cast one last regretful glance at the lifeless infant, her face etched with guilt and sorrow. She had overseen the delivery, and while the child's death wasn't her fault, her sense of duty as a doctor weighed heavily on her conscience.
At that moment, the supposedly dead child suddenly opened his eyes.
"What—what?!"
The physician gasped in shock, pointing a trembling finger at the baby.
Verdi raised an eyebrow, his frown deepening. Following the direction of her shaking hand, he turned to look at his son.
All eyes in the room were now fixed on the infant.
Somehow, the baby, with his wide, curious gray eyes, was gazing back at them, studying each face with innocent fascination.
A stunned silence filled the room.
"Mama… he's awake," the small girl's soft voice broke through the collective disbelief.
Verdi moved to take the baby into his arms, but Kuyomi clutched him tightly, as if terrified he might slip away again.
Suppressing his eagerness, Verdi motioned for the physician to examine the child. She nodded and hesitantly placed her hand on the baby's wrist.
"Lord Verdi, the child has a pulse!"
As the doctor confirmed the impossible, the room seemed to thaw from its frozen disbelief.
The infant, held and inspected with growing urgency, was overwhelmed by confusion and questions. In truth, he understood nothing at all.
His mind reeled.
This child… no, the one in control of this body was Hakoa Sora.
After his fateful conversation with the chess-patterned man, Sora had agreed to transfer his soul to another world, escaping the chains of fate. He had expected his soul to inhabit the body of someone recently deceased or to arrive in his own body. But to occupy the body of an infant?
"Hmm… It seems this child was already dead... I don't sense any presence but my own," he mused inwardly.
"Still, isn't my luck terrible? To think I have to go through this phase of life all over again…"
Sora sighed internally, feeling a wave of self-pity for his misfortune.
...
Sora drifted off to sleep for a while. After several hours, he woke up. Looking around, he noticed his mother, Kuyomi, sleeping on a nearby bed while he lay in a separate, small crib.
Kuyomi had just undergone childbirth. She was utterly exhausted, not only from the delivery but also from the immense grief and shock of being told her child was dead. Any normal mother would have fainted from such despair, yet her sheer willpower kept her conscious.
Fortunately, she had remained awake long enough to witness the miracle—her child was alive.
After that, she had fallen into a deep sleep.
"So this is the other world, huh?" Despite being a newborn, Sora could sense the subtle differences between this world and Earth. Merely breathing was enough to make him feel at ease; the purity of the air relaxed him profoundly.
The air was so clean and refreshing that it made Sora feel as if he could fall asleep again just from the comfort of breathing it.
Sora glanced around the room from the limited angles his infant eyes allowed, but he found nothing out of the ordinary.
The room was styled in a blend of medieval and Victorian designs. The walls were ornately decorated, with beautiful paintings hanging at intervals. Gas lamps lit the room, and a fireplace stood at its center, spreading warmth throughout the space.
Feeling the comforting heat emanating from the fireplace, Sora shifted his gaze to his tiny, pudgy arms, stretching them out in front of him.
"These are really a baby's hands..."
Like any newborn, his skin was smooth and soft, with a delicate pink hue. His fingers were tiny and plump.
After Sora's soul had revived the body, its heart began beating again, circulating blood to every cell and restoring the infant's vitality rapidly. Still, his skin retained a faint ashen gray hue.
Sora's wide eyes were filled with curiosity and amazement. It was clear that part of him still struggled to believe everything that had happened. Yet, as he examined his tiny hands, that disbelief melted away.
"Ah, what am I supposed to do for the next few years?"
"Hmm, this world seems medieval. Maybe it's a world of magic? That's likely! After all, isn't the West synonymous with magic? I just hope there aren't any overly fanatical churches…"
"Tsk, waiting to grow up is going to take forever."
He closed his eyes, feeling a deep drowsiness accompanied by a hint of hunger. His mother had fallen asleep early, so he hadn't had his milk yet. The little infant was starving.
"Judging by how beautiful this house is, I must be a noble!"
"I'd love to see myself in a mirror right now. Tsk, tsk, the father of this body looks like a prince, and the mother's beauty is out of this world! While it's not too important, being born into a handsome body like this means my luck isn't entirely hopeless…"
"Oh, right! I should try my ability and see if the status window works…"
"Let's give it a shot…" He silently wished for success and thought to himself, "Status!"
…
"Still gone, huh? Looks like he wasn't lying." Sora felt a twinge of regret. The status window would have been immensely useful, but it truly seemed to have vanished.
Unbothered by it for long, he closed his eyes again and drifted back to sleep.