Nocturne blinked.

She wondered if her sight had betrayed her.

She closed them and gently massaged her eyelids, hoping for the world to make sense again after she opened them.

It didn’t.

Her two year old brother had comfortably seated himself upon the leatherbound chair that was usually occupied by mother. The chair, like most chairs, was naturally adult-sized but her brother had overcome that shortcoming by placing two cushions that usually served as accompaniment for the diwan in the dining room beneath him, elevating his seating position.

Then, he had somehow figured out the activation mechanism for a crystal lantern— which was, as far as Nocturne was aware, the only crystal lantern in the entire house.

If the situation had been limited to that, Nocturne would not nearly be as surprised as she found herself to be.

But her brother… he had retrieved a thick tome from the bookshelf positioned behind the chair he had so regally seated himself upon.

It now lay unfolded across a lacquered wooden table, her brother’s expression one of great concentration as his pupils flickered from one line to the next. Nocturne had seen her mother sit on the very chair Altair had enthroned himself upon and her expression had overlapped with the one her brother was making now as she had jotted down notes in a thread-bound book while referencing scrolls and tomes.

It was an expression that should not have belonged to a two year old child.

In her shock, Nocturne, who was still not fully acclimated to her new body, ended up stumbling forward. It was her fear of injuries and far superior reflexes compared to her body’s development that allowed her to recover her footing, but as a result, the ajar door creaked as it was pushed back.

Altair’s focus was abruptly shattered, his brows scrunching up in surprise as his eyes followed the source of the noise. His cherubic countenance no longer seemed to contain the innocence of a child as Altair’s suspicious gaze landed upon Nocturne.

Before Nocturne could even collect her thoughts, the serious expression on Altair’s face was gone.

“Nocturne!” Altair playfully exclaimed, his expression one of unbound joy as he clapped his hands together in delight. His tone carried mother’s accent, the words echoing with a melodic grace; pronouncing her name as ‘Nohk-turhn’.

Nocturne remained rooted to the spot as Altair began to ruffle the tome’s pages, shifting them back and forth without any real purpose to his actions. Brother had always been a precocious child, so it wasn’t surprising that he would be interested in tomes and scrolls over toys and puzzles.

Was he just trying to figure out what the tomes were supposed to do? Although she had never activated the crystal lantern before, it couldn’t have been too hard to figure out, at least not for her brother.

Then, had she imagined the expression on her brother’s face?

Was her tired mind playing tricks on her?

Even if a child was trying to read a tome, what was wrong with it?

Then why was she so unsettled?

‘Ah.’

The reason why Nocturne was so unsettled was because of herself.

Someone like her existed in the world.

Could there be….

‘No.’

She had gotten a second chance. A second life.

Everything was going perfectly.

Her curiosity had the potential to ruin it.

Surely there couldn’t be another like her.

But…

She had to know.

Nocturne might have gotten a second chance at life, but at the end of the day, she was merely an eleven year old child. A child who knew that bad people existed in the world. Had she been older, perhaps she would have known to approach the situation with more tact. More caution.

But she had to know.

Not for herself but… for mother. If brother was a bad person, as much as merely imagining the possibility tore away at her heart… she would protect mother.

“Who are you?” Nocturne’s words were spoken with conviction, her accent lacking the melodic chime this world’s speech carried. For… the words were spoken in English.

----------------------------------------

The first two years of Altair’s life was spent largely in his interactions with the ‘Void’. Of course, he didn’t forget to engage in his normal baby-duties, which included playing with Nocturne, crying when he was hungry, crying when he required hygienic intervention and of course, intently imbibing the little knowledge Mother deemed fit to impart to an infant.

The Void helped him piece together an understanding of the world but as Altair had come to learn through experience, its knowledge was not absolute. A memory he desperately clung onto was his first ‘doctor’ appointment, a few weeks after he had turned a year old.

Hilde was the name Mother used to address the woman in her mid-thirties. Her warm chestnut hair was tied into a neat bun, her kindly smile carrying the grandmotherly sagaciousness of a far older woman.

She carried with her no medical equipment or surgical implements, to the point where not even a stethoscope or a basic thermometer could be found on her person.

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The memory of that time remained fuzzy at best, for a spasmodic cough had wreaked havoc upon his lungs; his tiny body directing the bulk of its energy to the immune system in order to combat the allergens that assailed it. Repeatedly coughing took a toll on his body, making him feel enfeebled. No longer did he have the strength to even sit up, his throat dry and his nose runny. Most of all, sickness had weakened his mental composure, rendering him unable to interface with his favourite pastime— the Void.

Trapped within a hazy fog of weakness and exhaustion, there was little Altair could do but wait for it to pass.

‘When will this end?’ he had mustered what little strength he could and asked, but his fears were once again proven true as the Void turned a deaf ear to his query.

It was Hilde’s kindly visage that had ended his monotony. From the moment he had laid eyes on the doctor, he was captivated. It was not her appearance or expression that drew him but the hazy fog weighing him down seemed to recede upon her approach. Almost as if it was afraid.

Hilde spoke and although Altair couldn’t yet decipher the language she used, the intent behind her words was clear enough. The lady meant him no harm.

Altair did not react as Hilde placed her open palm onto his chest. He did not protest as she gently pressed down, like a child his age ought to have.

Instead, he was curious.

The next moment, the world was replaced with light.

Altair was bathed in a warm golden glow, yet it did not sting at his eyes.

The light was bright— too bright— yet he could see Hilde’s smiling visage clear as day.

Heat.

Heat was the next sensation to follow.

A heat that first enveloped his heart and then branched out into countless directions. He did not remember if it was a few seconds that had passed or a few minutes, but at the end of the experience, the heat had suffused his entire body, down to the last cell.

This heat did not burn.

This heat did not hurt.

It was a benevolent heat.

The heat emanating out of a fireplace in the bitter cold of midwinter.

A heat of rejuvenation.

The strain weighing down upon his lungs, the particularly bothersome wheezing that he had been dealing with for a few days now and the spasmodic cough… it was all gone. Not healed but… obliterated.

As if it had never been there.

The Void within him trembled.

The Void within him quaked.

The Void within him demanded.

“Do not forget this moment.”

So Altair remembered. He clung onto the memory with every inch of his being.

He did not understand why, then, but the closer he got to his second birthday, the more his memories slipped past him.

Conversely, the Void became far more forthcoming with its answers.

‘Why am I forgetting things?’ he had asked the Void.

Infantile amnesia turned out to be the answer. It was supposedly something that every child had to go through.

Though perhaps ‘forgetting’ was not the correct terminology.

Altair still knew who mother was. Altair still knew he loved mother. He knew who his sister was. He loved his sister. The transitory movements in between, the mundane repetitions of getting cleaned, getting fed— all those seemed to blend into one cohesive experience, leaving him unable to gauge the passage of time, taking away the ability to distinguish one day from the next.

It was on his second birthday that the process finally reached completion.

Both the unavoidable infantile amnesia and the void’s unravelling.

His medical knowledge that, had been returning in bits and pieces of drip-fed knowledge came flooding back to him without warning.

His identity, his likes and dislikes in the previous world and most importantly or perhaps most regrettably…

… his regrets.

The Void had been him all along. The same way he was the Void.

The synthesis of an entire civilization’s medical knowledge— the end result of experiments, postulates, theories, research and the fruit borne from the efforts of practitioners of medicine that far encompassed his own skill in the subject… that was the legacy he had brought with him into this world.

‘Who was he?’

Ryan Kimura.

Except that answer wasn’t entirely correct.

The love he felt for his mother, even after regaining his previous life’s memories, remained unchanged. The adoration and care that he felt for his sister was as genuine as the lifeblood flowing in his veins.

Those feelings were anchored to his soul and he would carry them to his grave.

The soul.

An abstraction beyond the realm of medical sciences.

Unscientific, unverified mysticism.

Yet there was much that human medicine could not explain.

Why did humans dream? What was the evolutionary purpose of dreams? What meaning did they hold, what portent did they signify? What was human consciousness? Did the end of consciousness mean the end of life?

The last question at least, Doctor Ryan Kimura could answer.

Reincarnation existed.

He could feel it.

He was Ryan Kimura.

But that was only one half of the story.

A reincarnated soul that was allowed to keep his memories.

That meant that he was also Altair Isadora-Braveheart, son of Isadora Elsie-Willowdale.

It was that thought— that sole thought— that kept the burgeoning rage coursing through his mind at bay.

A rage so intense that it transformed into wrath.

Magic existed in this world.

Magic that could heal.

A mockery, an insult, a humiliation of his efforts— of humanity’s efforts— to treat those who suffered from illnesses and disease cast upon them through no fault of their own.

He remembered.

Although his mind was a swirling blur of compounded knowledge, he remembered.

The winged one that had taken his life.

Had they cast him in this world to mock him.

The lives he was so desperate to save… could have been treated with a wave of his hand, if he had been born in a different world?

He dared not cast aspersions on the winged one— not aloud— not after suffering the consequences once.

He locked that rage and buried it deep within the recesses of his heart.

Not for himself, no.

Altair Isadora-Braveheart had people he needed to protect.

And after his memories had returned, he now had a goal.

This magic… This miraculous ability to heal…

He would make it his.

Tragedy would not be allowed to strike upon those he loved.

That was not a statement.

It was an oath.