Noah had died an untimely death due to an episode of acute respiratory crisis.
Shortly after taking his last breath in one of the most pitiful ways, the teenager passed on to the other side.
A place better known to humans as the Afterlife.
He found himself floating in what seemed like air yet wasn't, surrounded first by darkness.
Not long after this realisation did many other forms like him appear, surrounding him.
There were several immaterial existence hovering and possessing nothing of their own, except a certain level of consciousness of their being.
Noah was a wisp at this point and he could see several other wisps around him and many more were still appearing.
They all glowed in an ethereal whitish-blue light as they floated in this boundless sea of darkness.
'Is this Heaven?'
'Is this Hell?'
'...Just what is this place?'
Numerous questions raced through the teenager's mind as he observed his surrounding.
Many more wisps continued to appear in their numbers up to the point where they suddenly stopped doing so.
To describe it, one could say that this batch where Noah had found himself was filled up and ready to be shipped to wherever.
Noah felt nothing in this place.
Not worry.
Not fear.
Not joy.
Not happiness.
He felt absolutely nothing.
He was like an empty vessel floating aimlessly on a dark sea, whose fate and destination was in the hands of the waves of this dark sea.
Suddenly, a dot of light appeared up ahead in the distance.
An instant later, that speck of light exploded and stretched from side-to-side to become an irregular horizontal line of bright, blinding light with several small branches spreading out from it.
Noah then felt something shortly after the light appeared.
He felt an inclination to head towards the light.
This instinct was not his.
It had not come from him.
It was as though it was forced upon him, as if he was already programmed to do so whenever the strange light appeared.
As Noah and the other wisps around him travelled towards the light across the several hundreds of kilometres of dark space that separated them, another strange thing happened again.
A large golden circle, spanning about a few tens of metres, appeared underneath Noah and some of the other wisps, shining with golden light that beamed upwards, disrupting their journey.
'What's going on?'
At the same time with his thought, Noah and the wisps trapped inside this circle heard a voice speak.
"...All Life Incarnation!"
'What's that?' The teenager's soul wondered.
However, before he could process what was happening, Noah was sucked into the centre of the eerie, mystical golden circle.
Several other wisps had been floating within the boundary of the circle, but only Noah's soul had been, unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, at the centre of it.
Before he knew it, he was pulled from the cosmic race to the strange light and into a golden circle which he did not know where it came from.
All thanks to Madame Linshel's desperate attempt to save her newly birthed grandchild, Noah's soul was pulled away from his journey into the Afterlife and back into her world.
...The magical world of Fantasia.
******
The Kingdom of Emberfort, one of the major regions in the Human Territory of Fantasia.
At the secret location that had been chosen for Lady Anastasia Flamine to birth her child, away from prying enemy eyes.
The handsome, young man, who had stormed into the room, was the husband of Lady Anastasia and the father of the newborn, Sir Jekyll Flamine.
His black bearded face was drenched in sweat, and his hair of the same colour was slick from it, from how quickly he raced back to this secret location.
Sir Jekyll had been around at the start of his wife's labour, shuttling between being a loving and supportive husband, who was there by her side, and patrolling the location for any abnormalities in the atmosphere.
'You can do it, sweetheart,' Sir Jekyll prayed in his heart as he paced to and fro, just outside the room.
Several individuals dressed in black and grey attire were stationed outside the location to keep watch and alert the rest at the slightest hint of an intrusion.
However, after he was informed by one of the maidens that the delivery had been successful, Jekyll leaped for joy.
Sadly, that joy was snatched away from him at the very next second when the maiden gave him the second news — the heartbreaking one.
"S-Sir… The baby…"
"Out with it!" he unconsciously blasted the maiden.
"What happened to the baby?"
"The baby has not shown any signs of life." the maiden reported.
"What about Anna?"
"Lady Anastasia is fine."
Although he took solace in the fact that his wife was okay, Sir Jekyll's entire world still came to a stop.
He couldn't think of anything else but what had happened in the previous pregnancy.
Similarly, Sir Jekyll had lost his first child and he was not ready to lose a second one.
No! Not in the same way as the first.
He was going to do everything within his power to change the hands of Fate this time around.
That was the notion at the back of his mind when he stormed out of the location to go and get the item — the Black Box — which he had now returned with.
Storming into the room, Jekyll saw his wife who was severely distressed and at another side of the room were the seven maidens, who had burned their magical power to save the child, collapsed on the floor.
Even the renowned Madame Linshel sat on the ground, her back resting against the wall, trying to gather some of her strength back.
The Magic Spell she had cast was a special one.
A Forbidden Spell which she was forced to use because of the circumstances that were in play at the moment and with the approval of the Grand Magus, who also happened to be the father of the baby in question.
It was bound to take a toll on her body and it was not like age was on her side either.
Jekyll's gaze met his mother-in-law's as he surveyed the room and Madame Linshel gave a slight nod to her son-in-law, who nodded in return.
Jekyll understood the significance of that head nod.
It was Madame Linshel telling him that the coast was now clear for him to act.
Everything was in his hands now.
They both understood each other and Jekyll knew that it was now up to him to save his baby.
"I'll undo the Seals and save him," Jekyll declared as he lovingly stroked his wife's long hair before planting a kiss on her forehead even as sweaty as it was.
Sir Jekyll carried the black box to a corner of the room and placed it on a table there.
He puffed his cheeks and blew out air in preparation for what he was about to do.
Jekyll looked back at his wife and the baby, who was mildly clinging to life.
The sight of them was all the resolve and justification he needed to use the power of his office as the Grand Magus of the Kingdom of Emberfort right then and there.
Jekyll was going to unseal something that he ordinarily should not.
However, the Grand Magus was ready to bear the consequences of his action as long as his newborn son had a chance at living.
He heaved a sigh and placed his hands on the black box about half the size of a briefcase.
But before commencing and without any movements, a luminescent wall erupted from behind him that went around to encase him along with the black box.
It was like a small cage which locked him and the black box in.
Sir Jekyll did this to contain himself and the item in case the process of releasing the seal went south.
The item inside that box was a special and sacred magical item.
It was quite coveted, so much hat only those who had attained the status of Grand Magus of Emberfort had a key to unsealing it.
That was why Jekyll had to abandon his wife and go and get it himself.
'Just hang in there, darling. Please, just hang in there…'
With that, Jekyll immediately and effortlessly undid the First Seal.
And with the First Seal broken, Jekyll opened the box and inside it was a cube with shining lustre and many different colours.
The cube was small but heavy with magical energy.
The sheer amount of energy it exuded caused the Grand Magus' barrier to react with multiple cracks that threatened the barrier's stability manifesting on it.
The Grand Magus observed at the several cracks and breathed a sigh as he contained the energy from the cube that resisted his magic
'What an immense level of power.'
He inhaled deeply to calm his nerves before proceeding any further with the unsealing process.
Jekyll knew that if he broke the Second Seal, then there would be no going back from then.
He looked at his wife again and as if she understood the internal struggles her husband was battling, Anastasia nodded as a means of encouraging him.
Her nod was an assurance that they were in this together and that was the only thing that mattered to this couple.
Sir Jekyll nodded back and then took a blade from his side and made a cut right at the centre of both his palms.
He proceeded to use the blood to drawing runic markings on his forearms.
The atmosphere of the room got intense and dense with magical energy as the Grand Magus ousted an unnatural amount of this energy, even more than the combined energies of the seven women from a short while ago.