‘Get out!’ Elrhain jolted up in fright, his hands swiping hard towards an unseen chasing foe, his body covered with sweat even the chilly night wind could not stop.

The boy looked left, and then he looked right. After a brief second of confusion, he sighed in relief when the present came back to him.

A prone form squirmed to his side with a soft groan. It was Agwyn.

She was suckling on her thumb, deep asleep. Her other hand punched the bed before she muttered something both in Earth Common and Uorian, then whacked his side with a solid thud.

Elrhain winced, checking her breathing through the pain before confirming she had not woken up. The violence was unintentional.

A few minutes later, he laid down again in hopes that sleep would come. A sweat damped leafy towel now hung by the bar of the bed, and an empty clay cup beside a pitcher by its leg.

But sleep did not come alone.

In Elrhain’s previous life, he created an energy source that had fundamentally changed how the world worked. He and his invention made the planet greener, reducing death in the energy sector by tiers because of how safe it was to operate with its eco-friendly fuel, water.

His device, the single-core hydro annihilator, had pushed forward humanity by centuries in too many technological fields to count. It was something that could only be created with true genius, or so the world thought. After all, who would ever believe the advent of the single-core was ninety percent freak accident and ten percent stitching already established theories together into a Frankenstein of physics, chemistry, and math?

It made deep space exploratory spacecrafts a reality. It helped clean up the ocean of radioactive wastes. It injected steroid-like progress in the asteroid belt colonization plan.

It made him a billionaire.

For a while, it also gave the Collective military, economic, and political power over the three other nations.

Yet, just as naturally, it had destroyed the existing energy sectors of their recovering world into atomic bits. Millions of people lost their bread earning jobs, with companies reporting credit losses in trillions. Riots like sparks in a brushfire blazed in the Middle Eastern, Siberian, South American, and North Nordic regions, almost heralding the second age of terrorism against the Collective.

These only touched the iceberg of all the harm his invention had harbingered.

The next five years were one of the most stressful periods of Elrhain’s past life.

“It’s a nuclear reactor in disguise! It will herald another seven hundred years of dark age!” preached the media, the politicians and the jobless workers all around the scattered world.

They then hailed in triumph when radical groups actually tried, and failed, to weaponize his invention into past-reminiscent nuclear bombs. That was all the proof they needed, twisting the event regardless of the result into their own narrative.

Ultimately, the genius invention cost him friendship, trust, love and most of his faith in humanity.

And at the end of his drifting life as a semi-spectating audience of the world, no different from a reader voting for changes in a story on a quest forum, when Agwyn convinced him to try one more time to relive his youthful passion for science, it had cost him his life.

No one wanted to see the arrival of another cleaner, low cost, higher performance energy source. Not when the first one kicked the interests of so many people and factions in the guts before spitting on their tattered remains.

‘This world is different,’ Elrhain’s eyelids slowly drooped. He rationalized his choices by embracing the blackness.

‘I’m the prince… consort?… but am I, really?’

He’d seen how the other dhionne nobles, including Elder Sonora, spoke of his family. Their west lake faction might bow down to Agwyn’s house outwardly. But, they could never hide the derision that naturally oozed out of their posture and speech when Elrhain or his parents were in the same room.

They probably didn’t even try.

Fortunately, the big guy and the slug woman didn’t let his trust down, as well as the ever-thoughtful grandpa Thundham.

He was ninety-nine percent sure that they could shoulder any pressure the haughty blue bloods could throw his way.

But that remaining 1% kept him awake at night. It crept into his psyche and nudged all the insecurities, fear and rotten memories, forcefully lifting up those horrific experiences from his past life to haunt him like vengeful spectres.

‘Don’t break the status quo, Ellie, for your own good. If not, only support what Annie wants to do from backstage. Don’t do anything yourself. Don’t even try.’

‘Dhionne are no different from humanity. At least the old world didn’t have nobility. In this world, it’s the law of the jungle. If anything goes wrong, there will be no courts where you can appeal your case.’

‘Annie, Cyra, Bromwyn, and Thundham aside, will the extended Earthloch family be willing to let you try dubious science crafts when they have no idea what it is even about? Moreover, the nobles make no attempts to suppress their dissatisfaction with you.’

‘As it is, resources run low. The clan may struggle to barely trudge through this collapse. Why should it, then, waste crucial manpower and resources for your made-up non-ritualistic experiments? Such action by the Earthlochs will only offend the nobles further, prove to them of the Siorrakt’s bias towards Siaglas.’

‘The nobles are pushing for Annie to take another fiancée. How long can her family keep them at bay? Which is more important, the nobles’ loyalty or Annie’s feelings? It does not even need saying, when right now unity is the most precious commodity the clan can hope for.’

‘You need achievements. But if you try, and you fail, it might cost you everything! The nobles will get an excuse to act. Those bloody bastards of a hyena and a vulture will never ignore such… a perfect… chance. Mother, father…’

‘I’m just a child… I know nothing about this world….’

A nightmare threatened to unveil its gaping maw once again before the goddess of sleep swatted it away with a mean pout; her jewelled arms beaconed Elrhain into a misty embrace.

“Forget the worries, forget ambition, forget the wrongs in front of you.”

“Just sleep, eat, and play with Agwyn.”

“Play with me, for this is a dream.”

“The disc is a novel, a song, and maybe a game.”

“While for the clan, your knowledge does not matter. That’s why to you, they don’t have a future.”

“Be a bystander, a sightseer. How nice was your last life as a spectator? “

“You were happy then. Weren’t you?”

Weren’t you?

Elrhain’s mind faded to a dusky slumber, with another flavour of dread painting a future darker than even the nightmares, to lull him into a false nirvana. Beneath all that, something warm and fluffy hugged him tightly, as if it was a shining ray of starlight leading him towards salvation.

******

「You know, our clan is more like a tyrannical autocracy than a monarchy.」 Agwyn chirped. The bright morning light coloured her leafy hair a vivid blue as it swayed in the wind from up in Cyra’s arms.

Right now, the two children were being carried by Cyra and Bromwyn up a stone walkway on the Earthloch house’s dweller mountain.

Eluned had been busy with something the past month, running off somewhere with Dofnald before the first light even hit the disc, and coming back all tired and achy in the evening.

Agwyn had asked the couple some very rude and blunt questions in her boundary-less curiosity the first few days.

After some fierce rounds of blushing and flushing, the two adults had constantly apologized to both the children and their in-laws like they had committed some forbidden sin.

In the end, Bromwyn blared their worries off with his jovial laughter, telling them to “do what you must, for that is the way of Earthloch!”

「I see.」

Elrhain replied to the glaring girl, his voice inadvertently laden with indifference. The boy’s mind speculated on other things, such as if his parents were actually having a romantic escapade like Agwyn had insisted, and why his dreams had been so torturous lately.

He didn’t even gawk or comment as Bromwyn carried him past open-aired walkways of ruined architecture, wooden arches that spanned over waterfalls, and hanging bridges lacing on to the mountainside on thick vines falling from the jungle canopy above.

「Hmph! Doofus.」 Agwyn pouted, her glare turning stinky.

Elrhain waved it away while pinching his nose. He supposed the girl was feeling shy after being coddled to sleep by him the day before.

“Gwyn, stop making faces at Rhain. That’s very impolite.” Cyra chided the little girl. “It is also useless. You need to whip him into shape like I did with your father.”

Bromwyn burst into a cackle, not even denying her.

“Stop teaching her weird stuff!” Elrhain protested; the threat to his tranquil life was enough to bring his distracted mind back.

Agwyn had been extremely bipolar recently. Who knows what kind of annoying ideas she would hatch with parental permission.

When he saw the two imps, one big and one small, look at each other for a thoughtful three seconds, then giggle at him like creepy twins, he felt a cold premonition shiver down his spine.

‘Happy thoughts!’ Elrhain blew hot air out of his nose before choosing to ignore their silly antics.

“Big guy, where are we going?”

“We visit the cloistered hall today, my stout champion. It is high time you both meet other dhionne your age. After all, you will need to foster a harmonious relationship early if you are to rule them in the future.”

Elrhain squirmed, his fears threatening to re-emerge at the mere mention of, god forbid, socializing.

“Um, can we do it later? My tummy doesn’t feel so good.”

“My, could the cheeky little Rhain be afraid of strangers?” Cyra barged into their conversation like a pirate of cruel humour.

“Why, I would never! Where did the poison tongued mini meanie go? Gwyn, you need to be careful. Rhain could be one of those husbands who are all lordly to their wife but shy like fox kits outside.”

“Will you shut up, slug woman?” The sudden rage that boiled in his blood blew away the fears. The vein throbbing on his temple changed from red to purple, and his hands searched for something to throw at the air-headed menace.

He only found Bromwyn’s fuzzy, Viking beard.

“Mommy, it’s okay. I will pwotect Ellie; he can be like widdle fox kit. Kits cute.”

Bromwyn and Cyra stopped in their tracks, their eyes going wide like saucers. Elrhain took in a deep breath before facepalming, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

A few seconds of explosive silence later, the two adults burst into sniggering laughter, with Bromwyn almost dropping Elrhain in a fit of giggles. Servants ran in from all over the place in panic, only to leave again even more confused.

Elrhain was tempted to tug at the big guy’s beard, but concluded it was futile. He couldn’t even muster up enough courage to talk back now, let alone seek revenge. Anything he said would be twisted into a charcoal-fired epic roast by the slug woman and her evil spawn.

But within that moment of shame, somewhere unknown in his heart, he felt a different kind of emotion. Relief.

This was banter. Family banter.

A smile spontaneously crept onto his concealed face.

The worries from the nightmares slowly faded elsewhere, his mind finally finding a semblance of rest despite being wide awake.