The wet darkness that had consumed the black-haired man’s body had then consumed his mind leaving him in a state of unconsciousness. His perception of time faltered months became seconds within seconds until time suddenly reemerged with the exasperation of an intaken breath, his very first in his new life.

The man’s mind was now in the body of a beautiful baby boy. His eyes shut to shield away from the discomforting blinding lights that filled his vision and his ears rung with loud sounds that startled his regained senses. A strong suffocating urge to cry nearly overwhelmed him, but he did not give in to it.

“Hmm… That’s odd. Why isn’t he crying?”

He struggled to open his eyes, but his body wouldn’t let him. He felt weak, defenseless, and confused by the events transpiring around him. What more, he had a peculiar and indescribable sensation that two beings were present in the room with him.

Confirming that to be accurate, he heard their voices speaking with words he could neither comprehend nor understand as being noises that held substantive meaning. What he did understand, however, was that where there were people, there were enemies.

Suddenly, he felt something grab him and hoist him up into the air. This caught him off guard, momentarily stunning him. He couldn’t quite make out what was happening, but he quickly regained his composure and retaliated by flailing his arms around wildly in a vain attempt to strike his perceived combatant.

A soft voice lightly chuckled. He hadn’t laughed or heard a laugh in so long that he had forgotten that such a sound existed, but something inherent in its nature, something instinctual to human beings, resonated a sense of safety within him, a feeling for which he had been so far removed that experiencing it now felt like feeling it for the first time.

He felt calmed by the feminine voice, so he relaxed his limbs back into a resting state and began waiting idly.

“What should we name him?”

His eyes fluttered open to see an angelically beautiful face with a warm, soothing smile speak those softly spoken words which could not be unspoken.

“His name shall be Azriel.”

***

Three years had passed by in a flash, and the once primal spirit now resided within the body of a three-year-old boy, one that, though quiet, could speak well enough for a kid his age, if not better.

The three-year-old Azriel was tall for a three-year-old and well-proportioned too. When he grew up, he was sure to be categorically beautiful both in facial and bodily features. His eyes were azure blue with a golden corona ringing the pitch-black pupil. His thick hair was blond and straight, long on top, cut short on the sides, with a cowlick lifting the bangs.

Azriel was sat in front of a hefty tome repeating the same sentence over and over to himself until he could understand it. He had been sat there for hours reading the same sentence over and over, studying it without ever having a thought in his mind to take a break. He was ferociously tenacious and vigorously intent on understanding and memorizing every word and sentence of the tome, front to back.

Once he understood the sentence, he expended no time on moving to studying the next. This was what his daily routine consisted of for the last few months. And, within this time, not only had he learned a fair bit of written language, but he also discovered much about the world in which he inhabited.

The tome was an all-encompassing encyclopedia that taught about history, science, math, agriculture, biology, zoology, astronomy, religion, and skills. Were it not for the illustrations, Azriel wouldn’t have been able to decipher any meaning from the passages, but unbeknownst to him, the more significant factor at play in his extreme learning speed was the skill “Adept Intuition”?

From what little he understood, skills were special abilities that people were born with and often influenced the path in life that they would choose to walk. For example, someone with a skill that makes them physically stronger may choose to become a soldier or a manual laborer, whereas someone with the skill “Fire-Ball” might become a mage.

This concept of skills was a tad odd to Azriel, and he couldn’t determine exactly why he had such a hard time believing in the concept when as far as he knew, he should’ve felt that way about everything equally. Living in a world in of itself was deeply surreal to him, and he struggled to find value in even his own parents. He had a suspicion that they had unique thoughts, not unlike his own, but he kept subconsciously slipping back into an apathetic view of them as being not anymore self-aware than the red and blue-banners of the mysterious realm from which he hailed.

That realm from which he originated was another intrigue for him. Once he understood the concept of life and death and heaven and earth, he vigorously studied the descriptions of heaven, the afterlife, or any shred of text that could be related to no avail—all except for one tiny detail. A passage was written that described the vistas of heaven, the place where you come from and return to upon death. As told about in the tome, the architecture was made of white marble and lined with gold

Azriel’s child-like naivety allowed him to believe the description of heaven without questioning its legitimacy. He had not yet been disillusioned by liars and storytellers, so he had not even conceived that people would even do such a thing. Besides, the illustrations of white marble and gold columns were reminiscent enough of the portal door from which he came into this realm, that—to him—gave it a level of credence as to its validity.

Although the realm of his origin was not quite the heaven described in the tome, the link between them was there, and thus he could conclude the implications of his realm of origin. He had been in a transcendental place like heaven from which he was then born into this realm.

That revelation led Azriel to forgivably assume that heaven was a place that everyone had seen before and known well from their assumed numerous cycles of death and rebirth. His intuitive reasoning being, “If I saw it, other must’ve aswell.” It took many days working out the contradicting information from the passages in the tome for him to realize that it was anything but. Other than people called “prophets” and “reincarnations” no one else has ever been confirmed to have seen heaven.

“Am I?” Azriel breathlessly queried.

Azriel wasn’t a verbose talker. The first three words he spoke aloud were “I am soldier,” which he said alone while reading a passage from the tome about war, but his parents believe his first words were ‘Are you me?’. Azriel’s parents were excited by this development but were unsure what he was asking, and a little put-off by how eerily complex the phrasing was for a then two-year-old.

“Are you me? Are you… me?” he huffed, contemplating how to clarify what he was trying to ask back then.

“Are you… like me?”

“Do you think… me?” he sighed, unable to work out how to phrase his question.

Azriel climbed to his feet, trying to maintain balance in his young body to which he was not yet well-adjusted, and stepped forth onto a red thatch rug.

Upon the rug stood an old wood stool in front of a window. Climbing atop it, he peered out the window to view structures he understood to be houses and people walking back and forth on the dirt street below.

In the distance, there were farm fields with a forest lining the edges. The timber houses were never more than two stories tall with roofs of brownish-yellow thatch mixed with mush and whitewashed walls that had cracked from a heavy dose of sunlight and time. The simple people went about their daily duties within the quiet cluster of structures, going to and fro with baskets filled with gathered materials or anything related to the task in which they were performing.

Azriel was born to peasants in a small farming village; this much he understood. However, he hadn’t yet learned of feudal castes, so he hadn’t a clue that put him right square on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Even if it were explained to him, he still would have trouble grasping the idea of himself not being at the top.

He looked through the window in awe of the people below as the presence he could sense approaching called out from behind him.

“Hey, little buddy, what ya lookin’ at?”

The rugged voice was that of Azriel’s father, Lazarus.

Lazarus was tall, rugged, handsome, and had his son’s eyes and hair color. However, Azriel fundamentally lacked a gauge for beauty, so he wouldn’t have known, but even so, there was some about him that made him noticeably different from the other peasantry even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

As he stepped closer, Azriel visibly became a bit skittish, causing him to stop in his tracks. He wanted to bond with his son like any father would, but every time he did, Azriel would resonate an aura of foreboding that put him off, to say the least.

Lazarus swallowed and took another step forward, saying, “It’s nice outside today. Maybe we could…”

Azriel listened silently with cold dead eyes.

“Eh-erm,” Lazarus coughed, nervously looking around the room till his eyes stopped on the tome opened to a page illustrating a battle between Gilgamesh, the reincarnated hero of the 2nd era year 245, in his ultimate fight against the demon lord Adramelech.

“O-Oh, you have a good eye. This story is one of the greatest epics in the history of Aarterra.”

Picking up the book and sitting on Azriel’s bed, Lazarus patted the space beside him, signaling for Azriel to come and listen to him read.

It took a few seconds for Azriel to understand the meaning of this gesture and a few more to consider whether he would. He had already read that passage more than a hundred times, but more than anything, he felt nervous about sitting so close to someone five times his size.

His father watched in discomforted awe as Azriel jumped from the stool, flipping twice in the air and landing perfectly at the spot beside him on the bed. Lazarus looked perturbed but not too surprised. He hadn’t yet been able to fully get over his son’s frightening mannerisms and extraordinary feats of finesse, however after three years of it, it was to be expected.

“S-So, the epic of Gilgamesh. It all started when he was born to the tribe Uz in the year 224 of the 2nd era—”

Lazarus went on to recite the story about the man Gilgamesh, the supposed first documented reincarnation of a person from another world called earth, who went on a long journey through the Nabi deserts in search of his secret lover, the princess of Alibaba. Supposedly, the princess was kidnapped by a court jester who turned out to be the first king of demons—The first of many—Adramelech, in disguise. Once Gilgamesh found his lair, he killed the demon lord Adramelech and saved the princess, married her, founded the Semerine Empire, which conquered and united the Nabi desert, and they lived happily ever after.

Azriel looked up at his father and stared deeply into his eyes with cold, steely eyes that sent a running chill down his spine.

“You… Are…”

Lazarus nervously swallowed as his son attempted to speak.

“Do you…”

Azriel looked up to the ceiling and stared at it in contemplation before looking back down to his father, clearly articulating, “Can you think like I can?”

Lazarus was startled by the sudden jump in Azriel’s articulation.

With furrowed brows, he responded, “Y-Yes. Of course, I can.”

Immediately, Azriel’s eyes lit up as his mouth began to curl into a cute little smile.

Lazarus seeing his son smile for the first time, began to get teary-eyed.

Azriel’s lip quivered as he asked, “What… You…”

He took another moment to cogitate.

“What… are you… thinking now?”

His father wiped his eyes with the collar of his shirt and responded, “I’m thinking that I’m happy that you’re smiling.”

Azriel’s face started to contort, attempting to hold back a tidal wave of raw repressed emotion while eking out, “And… what… are you… thinking… now?”

Lazarus’s tightening throat struggled to answer, “I’m thinking that seeing you cry makes me want to cry.”

With sudden rapidity, the dam that had firmly encased Azriel’s 100,000 years of torment and pain broke, sending waves of this feeling that had been long forgotten bursting out from every single pore, and within each and every inch and fiber of his being rippled the deepest latent sensory inclinations that withheld the acutely needed humanization for which he hadn’t even known he sought.

Lazarus wrapped his arms around and hugged Azriel tightly to his chest while his son cried into it for what felt like hours. He didn’t understand what his son was feeling or why he felt it, but he kept holding him close however long he needed, for that was the only thing he knew he could do in that moment.

“It’s alright now,” he spoke in a crackling voice, failing to choke back some tears of his own.

Azriel cried and cried until night fell when his crying subsided only due to the exhaustion it had caused him. Lazarus took advantage of this opportune moment to tuck him away in his bed, quietly sneaking out the door while slowly shutting it behind him.

That night Azriel slept soundly, the first night without waking night terrors.