A baby's cry echoed through the small wooden house.
"Wa wah wah!"
An elderly woman named Maren cleaned the newborn with practiced efficiency, her wrinkled hands wrapping him in a plain linen blanket. She yelled excitedly toward the door, "Come in—all of you!"
Four people hurried inside. A young man with dirt-stained hands rushed to the bedside, his face pale. "Grandma Maren—are they—?"
"Alive and well, Kael," Maren said, thrusting the baby into his arms. "Here, look at your son."
A middle-aged woman clasped her hands, tears in her eyes. "The Verdant blesses us!" Behind her, a stocky man grinned while a teenage girl peered over his shoulder.
Kael stared at the infant's unusually bright green eyes. "Dad, Mom, Nyra—look." He turned to his wife on the bed. "Lira… thank you."
Lira smiled weakly. "His name is Elias."
So began Elias Verdant's life in Eldrion.
When Elias first opened his eyes, panic gripped him.
Where am I?
He tried to speak, but only a baby's cry emerged. A woman's face appeared—soft features framed by wildflowers braided into her hair. "Hush, little sprout. Mama's here."
The voice calmed him, but the truth was clear: This isn't my body.
He slept fitfully; dreams haunted by memories of another life.
---
A year passed.
Elias learned his family's names through snippets of conversation. Grandfather Garrick, a farmer with calloused hands from tending stubborn soil. Grandma Maren, sharp-tongued but gentle when brewing herbal tonics. Father Kael, whose fingers always smelled of freshly turned earth. Mother Lira, who hummed lullabies while weaving baskets. Aunt Nyra, a wiry teen obsessed with training her Manifestation.
In his past life, he'd been Luo Haoyu—a normal alchemist who died clutching the Seedstone, an artifact he found in one of his excavations that fused with his blood. Now, he was Elias Verdant, part of a family who all had "useless" Manifestation: Verdant Ivy, a fragile plant that couldn't even strangle a rabbit.
One afternoon, Nyra dragged him to the garden. "Watch this, Eli!"
Vines sprouted from her palms, coiling into a thin lattice. Three yellow glowing orbs—Aether Cores—hovered above her wrist.
Garrick snorted from his rocking chair. "Took you three months to grow a fence?"
Kael chuckled. "At least it'll keep rabbits out."
Nyra scowled, but Elias stared, fascinated. Manifestations. Aether Cores. This world's power system.
"Don't pout, girl," Garrick said, whittling a stick. "With our low-ranked manifestation, becoming a Aether Acolyte at sixteen's decent."
Elias perked up. Manifestor – the term for those who'd reached the first rank - Aether Acolyte.
Kael crouched to inspect her fence of smoldering vines. "Ranking up's not about speed. Ten cores make a formation, which makes a rank. Mess up the formation and …" He snapped his fingers. "Poof. Back to square one."
He glanced at his tiny hands. Since awakening here, he'd felt a faint pulse beneath his skin. "The Seedstone's power. It's still inside me."
---
At night, Elias lay awake recalling his old life.
Orphaned young, raised by a grandfather who forced him to become a professor, he worked hard and had been an average researcher doing menial tasks and working his way up the ladder. In one of his excursions to the mountains, he was collecting sample data for his research when he saw a brown marble half-embedded in one of the rocks.
There, he'd found the Seedstone.
Blood from a cut palm awakened it. Roots erupted from the stone, piercing his flesh. His last memory was collapsing as emerald light consumed him.
Now, reborn, he understood. The Seedstone was likely the cause of his transmigration.
---
Elias observed his family closely.
Their Manifestation, Verdant Ivy, let them coax plants to grow faster or sturdier. During droughts, Lira used hers to revive wilted crops. Kael once propped up their collapsing barn with vines thickened overnight.
But he noticed their limits. Three Aether Cores marked Nyra as a novice. Kael had five, Garrick seven. Not even one of them qualified as a Manifestor. Each Core granted slightly better control—but their ivy remained fragile compared to noble plant-based families' towering oaks or venomous thorns.
Although limited by his body, he tested the uses of the seedstone. Since it could transmigrate him here, it must have some other uses too.
He tested theories in secret. When Maren left her seedlings unattended, he crawled to the pots. A strange warmth bloomed in his chest as he touched the soil. The sprouts shot upward, unfurling leaves in seconds.
"Elias! Don't play there!" Lira scooped him up, oblivious to the trembling plants.
He feigned innocence, but inside, triumph flared. It The Seedstone enhances growth of the plants, although he was unsure by how much.
---
By his first birthday, Elias had pieced together his goal.
He finally had a family. Although their current life and Manifestation was not the best. But if he could reshape their "weak" Manifestation …
I'll make the Verdants unignorable.
One evening, as Nyra struggled to mend a broken trellis, Elias focused on the pulse in his chest. He imagined it seeping into the air, willing the vines to twist, strengthen, adapt.
A single tendril curled toward him, sturdier than the rest.
No one noticed.
But Elias smiled.