The smell of wet earth and the cutting cold of the wind. That was it. The last sensations of my world. A world that, until a few hours before, was all I knew. A world of stone castles, wooden villages and the promise of a comfortable, although sometimes tedious, life as the son of a minor nobleman in the Holy Roman Empire of the 14th century.
My life, however, has never been as simple as that of other boys my age. I had Marco.
Marco was the opposite of me. While I lived in a stone house with servants and a full table, he lived in a humble hut on the outskirts of the village, with his grandmother already bent over the years. Our lives were as far away as heaven and earth, but our destinies intertwined the day I saved him from being beaten by a group of ruffions. From that day on, an unlikely friendship was born, forged in loyalty and mutual respect. He was my soul brother, my confidant, the only one who saw beyond my last name and treated me like Edward, only Edward.
On that fateful day, an unprecedented storm swept our region. It was not an ordinary storm; the sky seemed to tear, and the air vibrated with a strange energy. The rain fell in torrents, and the wind howled like a hungry demon.
I was at home, watching the fury outside, when the concern for Marco hit me like lightning. He lived far away, in the countryside. "Mom, dad, will Marco be okay?" I asked, my voice loaded with an anxiety that they didn't seem to share.
My parents, always more concerned about their own safety and position, responded with an indifference that froze my blood. "Who knows, my son," said my father, "as long as we're safe, that's what matters." The disgust I felt for his words was almost as strong as the fear that grew in my chest.
That's when hell was unleashed.
Black swirls, like funnels of darkness, began to emerge in the city. Screams of despair echoed through the streets, mixing with the sound of wood cracking and stones falling apart. "Save yourself who can!", was the scream that spread. My parents, finally taken by panic, grabbed me and my little sister, running out of our house. Seconds later, one of the swirls swallowed it, turning it into dust and debris.
In the chaotic rush, in the middle of the terrified crowd, I lost my parents and my sister. Desperate not to be trampled, I saw a free path towards the field and ran, driven by a single hope: Marco.
I ran until my lungs burned, until the sight of his cabin made me stop. Or what was left of her. It was a pile of wreckage, as if a giant had stepped on it. A hurricane. My heart tightened.
And then I saw him. Mark. He was there, kneeling between the ruins, digging frantically, throwing wood to the side. His eyes were red, his face stained with mud and tears. He was looking for his grandmother.
I ran to him, but before I could reach him, Marco found her. She was under the rubble, motionless. I remember her words, weak, but full of an unshakable strength: "Run away from here, my little one. Go look for help in the city." Marco refused, crying, trying to move her. "You can't die here!" she shouted, her voice suddenly strong. "Go! Save yourself!"
At that moment, the sky seemed to go crazy. More swirls, bigger and darker, appeared around us, accompanied by thunder that tore the air. Marco, with his face twisted in despair, finally gave in to his grandmother's scream and started running, crying, towards the city.
I followed him, but the storm caught up with us. A piece of roof, torn from somewhere, hit Marco, holding his leg. He fell, unable to get up. I ran to him, the adrenaline pulsating in my veins. With a desperate effort, I managed to remove the wreckage.
When we prepared to flee, a gigantic whistle formed in front of us. This one was different. It wasn't just wind and darkness; there was a shapeless mass, almost alive, spinning inside. It was as if the abyss itself had opened.
In the blink of an eye, we were sucked in.
The darkness swallowed us. The sound of the wind turned into a deafening roar. We were separated, one shouting the other's name, Marco's voice getting lost in chaos. We were thrown up, out of the whirling, and then we started to fall.
The fall seemed endless. I looked down, and what I saw made me question my sanity. It wasn't my world. It was a colossal battlefield, a chaos of war where dragons spat fire, giants crushed everything in their path, soldiers clashed with magicians, and spells tore the sky.
Every time we fell, we were sucked by portals that opened in the air, throwing us at different points of that insane war. And with each portal, something changed. I felt my body shrink, then stretch, as if it was being molded and remodeled. I was changing age, aging and rejuvenating in the blink of an eye, witnessing eras of conflict in seconds.
Until, in the last portal, everything went dark.
"Did I die?", the question echoed in my mind, a voice that seemed strangely distant.
Slowly, my eyes opened.
The world was a blur of gigantic shapes and soft colors. A face hovered over me, huge like a moon, framed by hair that looked like strands of molten gold. The giant's lips moved, and a bubbling and melodic sound filled the air. It was a language I didn't know, but the tone was unmistakable. Affection.
I tried to shout Marco's name. I tried to ask where I was. I tried to curse the heavens for the cruelty of our destiny.
But my mouth didn't obey. My lips, chubby and useless, just trembled. My throat, instead of forming words, produced a high-pitched and pathetic sound. A cry.
The panic, cold and sharp, pierced the fog of my confusion. I looked down, or where I thought my body should be. What I saw were two tiny and chubby arms shaking uncontrollably. Hands that could barely close in their fists.
I wasn't dead. I wasn't in an afterlife.
I was a baby.
The golden-haired woman - my... mother? - lifted me up, nestling me against her chest. Despair rose down my throat like bile. I was Edward, a fourteen-year-old boy from the Holy Roman Empire. I had seen my house being destroyed, I had held Marco's grandmother's hand while life left her, I had been torn from my world. And now, I was trapped in this prison of childish flesh, unable to talk, unable to walk, unable to do anything other than cry and dirty the cloths that involved me.
The humiliation was torture. The impotence, a hell much worse than any fire I could have imagined.
The days turned into a blurred monotony. Wake up, be fed, be clean, sleep. For a normal baby, this would be paradise. For me, it was purgatory. My mind, Edward's mind, screamed silently inside this child's skull. I watched everything with desperate attention, the only thing I had left.
I learned names. The golden-haired woman was Elara. The man with broad shoulders and a serious look that sometimes held me with a strange delicacy was Valerius. They were my new parents. Their house was modest by the noble standards I knew, but comfortable. And the strangest of all: it was full of casual magic.
I saw Elara murmur a word - "Lumen" - and a small sphere of light floated from the ceiling, illuminating the room. I saw Valerius gesture with his hand and firewood in the fireplace to get ready and light it alone.
Magic. The war I saw when I fell... the magicians, the dragons... was all real. This was a new world, governed by new rules.
A spark of something that was not despair shone inside me. If the magic was real, then maybe... maybe there was a way out. A way. If I could master this power, maybe I could find a way to grow faster, to gain strength. Maybe I could find Marco.
The image of his face, twisted in terror while we were separated in the vortex, burned in my mind. Was he here somewhere? Would he also have been reborn? Or would he have arrived with his original body, lost and alone? Uncertainty was an open wound. Finding him was not a desire; it was the only reason that prevented me from drowning in madness.
I needed power.
The decision solidified in my soul. I wouldn't be a helpless baby. I would be an observer. An apprentice. I would decipher this world from inside my crib prison and, the moment my body allowed me, I would subdue it.
One day, while Elara was rocking me, she hummed a soft melody. I was hungry, and frustration bubbled inside me. I wanted the bottle on the next table. I wanted her now. I focused all my anger, all my longing, on that object. Come to me!
The bottle shook.
It was only for a second. A slight rattler on the wood. Elara didn't notice. But I do. I felt it. An energy inside me, a hot current that responded to my will.
She was weak, undisciplined and fleeting. But it was there.
A real smile, the first since I arrived in this world, stretched my baby lips.
I wasn't helpless. I was just starting. And I would do what it took to find my friend, even if I had to turn this new world upside down.