The last thing I saw was my body erupting into flames, the heat tearing through my flesh and bone as the explosion engulfed the entire building. In an instant, everything seemed to erase its existence and was swallowed by a blinding flash. I remember it very clearly—the agonized screams of that proud man as the fire consumed him. And then there was Selery, whose body was caught in the fire’s merciless grip and the flames curling around her like twisted fingers.

But how was I seeing this? How could I be recalling my own death with such clarity? It was impossible, yet the memories were very vivid.

And after that... nothing.

I was surrounded in darkness. An endless and suffocating void. There was no ground beneath me, no sky above me, only a crushing emptiness that wrapped itself around me like a shroud. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. My all senses were cut off, leaving me with nothing but only thoughts, and I was suspended in an eternal abyss like a prisoner in a place that had no shape, no sound, no escape.

Idle host detected.

That voice again. That cold, emotionless voice, echoing in this darkness and repeating the same commands over and over that I never understood.

Initiating synchronization process...

A sudden jolt surged through me again, like a pulse of electricity racing along my nerves. My consciousness seemed to quiver, but then the sensation faded, slipping away like water through my fingers.

Synchronization failed.

The darkness thickened around me again by wrapping me tightly and suffocating me in with its nothingness.

Searching for a new host...

I had heard this voice so many times that I had lost count. It brought the same result every time—failure. At first, I tried calling it out, begging it to answer my questions. What was happening to me? What was this... host? And what exactly was Aster? But the voice never responded to my desperate pleas. It just continued its cold and calculated loop.

Trapped into this endless cycle, I began to wonder if this was my punishment. Was it some kind of purgatory for my sins? Or had I become a ghost who was bound to this darkness? Memories of Selery were the only thing keeping me from unraveling completely. Her smile, her voice, the way she’d laugh... They were the threads holding me together. Though I could no longer feel tears even when I wept for her.

"What had I become? What was left of me in this place?"

All I ever wanted was to live a peaceful life with Selery, sharing simple moments and savoring her cooking. But everything was gone. It could have been years—centuries, in this dark abyss, where time had lost all meaning. The only thing that remained was this darkness, which is suffocating and relentless.

Idle host detected.

"Here it comes again."

Synchronizing with a new host...

Initiating synchronization process...

"Another failure, no doubt."

Synchronization successful.

"What? Successful? I mishear it, right?"

Suddenly I feel a surge of energy shot through the endless void. Something stirred. Something inside me. I felt... a presence, a connection, like I was being pulled out of the endless dark. I tried to move after my senses, which are long dulled by the endless void, began to return. I felt limbs, weight, and the pull of gravity.

A light flickered on the edges of my vision, which is harsh and glaring. My lungs screamed for air, and with a violent jolt, I gasped—my chest heaving as if taking in breath for the first time. The sensation was raw and almost painful. I blink rapidly to adjust to the blinding brightness. Everything was hazy and feels like I am seeing through fogged glass.

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Suddenly a face loomed above me, enormous and blurry at first, but slowly becoming clearer. It was the face of a woman, but everything about her seemed... too large. The scale was all wrong, like looking through a distorted lens, which makes no sense.

She leaned closer to me and scanned over me with a stern expression. Her lips moved, but the sounds that reached my ears were nothing but a jumble of incomprehensible sounds. The volume was overwhelming—too loud, too close—and it felt as though I was hearing for the very first time.

"What.........is this?"

Her hands reached down to me, and warmth spread across my skin as she touched me. She continued her motions and started wiping me down with a damp cloth.

"Why was she cleaning me? What was happening?"

I tried to understand, to make sense of the strangeness surrounding me, but confusion clouded my thoughts like a thick fog. I struggled to move my head—or rather, I tried to. It took every ounce of effort, but finally, my vision shifted, and what I saw next made my breath hitch.

A woman lying on the bed and the sheets around her was soaked in blood. Beside the woman, an older lady was holding her hand, speaking in gentle tones, but the words were blur for me.

"Who are they?"

I wanted to cry out and demand what was happening, but my voice refused to cooperate. Panic gripped me as I tried to move, but my body didn’t respond the way it should. I struggled to lift my hand, but it was sluggish and trembling as if weighed down. My fingers flexed awkwardly and refused to obey me. The motions of my hands were clumsy, weak, and unnatural.

"Why can’t I move properly? What’s happening to me?"

With great effort, I managed to look at my hand, and a chill ran through me. It wasn’t my hand. It was small and delicate; the skin is pale and wrinkled like that of a newborn. My breath hitched as I noticed how everything around me loomed so large, the ceiling, which was impossibly high, and the figures around me towering like giants. Everything seemed distorted and blown out of proportion, as if I had been shrunk to the size of an insect.

Then the realization hit me like a punch to the gut.

This is the body of a newborn, and somehow I had been placed here—reborn into this tiny, helpless form.

Confusion twisted in my mind and a tangled mess of fear and disbelief. I had died. I was certain of it. So how could I be here, alive, in the form of an infant?

"What happened to me? Why am I here?"

But before I could grasp its meaning, a scream shattered the stillness. The old woman’s voice trembled with shock and disbelief. The lady who had been wiping me suddenly set me on the bed and ran out.

I blinked through my blurry vision, trying to make sense of the chaos. Then I saw the old woman draping a white cloth over the face of the motionless figure with her hands trembling. It took a moment for the truth to sink in—the woman beside me, the one whose body lay still and cold, was the one who had brought me into this world. My birth mother. Until now, I hadn't known. I hadn't understood.

A strange and overwhelming wave of grief surged through me, knotting my tiny chest. I didn’t know her, not really, yet there was an aching familiarity in her lifeless face. She reminded me of Selery. Memories of losing Selery flared up like flames, mingling with this new raw sense of loss, and my eyes welled up with tears. My small body craved the warmth of the mother I never knew. Was this what it felt like to be a newborn—to instinctively long for a mother’s touch? It felt as though something precious had been ripped away from me all over again.

My grief was jolted by the violent crash of the door bursting open, yanking me back to the present. An older man stormed into the room followed by a lady, his twisted face in rage. The man's face was lined with age, and a few deep furrows were carved into his skin. His graying hair and dark gray eyes were filled with a mix of rage and something else—panic, perhaps. He appeared to be in his early sixties, with a bulky frame that seemed ill-suited for the fine tailoring of his expensive suit. The fabric strained over the roundness of his belly, clinging tightly to his chest and shoulders as though it were barely containing him.

Without hesitation, he slapped the old woman, and the sharp sound of his hand hitting her cheek echoed throughout the room. He started yelling loudly with his angered and panic voice.

In sharp contrast to his outburst, the woman beside him remained disturbingly composed, and a faintly amused expression was dancing on her lips. She looked to be in her fifties; her dark reddish hair was twisted into a high bun, and the strands were secured with jeweled pins that sparkled coldly in the dim light. Her gown was a garish shade of gold, and her jewelry was heavy and expensive. She placed her hand on the man's shoulder and whispered into his ear. In an instant, his anger drained away as if she had cast a spell, and a chilling calm settled over his face.

Together, they turned their eyes toward me, and the shift in their expressions sent a shiver crawling down my spine. The old man’s eyes narrowed, and his lips curled into a grin like a devil. There was something unsettling in the way they looked at me, like a pair of hunters savoring the sight of helpless prey.

The man stepped closer, leaning over me. His breath was hot on my face and smelled like alcohol and something bitter. His eyes shone with a strange kind of amusement, and he let out a low, rumbling laugh. He spoke in a language I didn’t understand, the words sounding like meaningless noises in my ears. Even though I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying, I could feel that something wasn’t right. The way he hovered over my crib reminded me of a hunter enjoying the sight of trapped prey.

In the midst of this, I felt a wave of fatigue wash over me, perhaps because of this small body that betrayed me. I struggled to keep my eyes open, but exhaustion clung to my limbs like a heavy blanket, and the world around me grew dimmer with each blink until I fell into the darkness again.