There was darkness, and then there was more darkness and then-

An urgent voice in a language that I couldn’t discern.

I felt heat on my face and arms as I was slowly and exhaustingly being pushed out of a- oh.

Smell, touch and sound came to me all at once, I could hear what could only presumably be my mother's anguished cries of pain and shouts of encouragement from a distinctly masculine voice which I suppose was my father.

Wait, isn’t a baby supposed to cry or something?

Not wanting my new parents to worry that I was stillborn, the moment that I figured out how to use my vocal cords, I started screaming in a way only babies could, heralding my birth to the world.

I was grabbed by a strong yet gentle pair of hands and was dutifully carried to a blurred shape which reached out its hands to hold me.

The pair of hands gently gave me to my mother whose eyes were filled with tears of joy.

I saw a pair of bright green eyes with flecks of blue as my father bent down to gaze at me and placed a finger on my sternum, tickling me slightly, eliciting a giggle from my developing vocal cords.

My mother playfully slapped my father’s hand before peering down at me with a pair of astonishingly azure eyes. Her auburn hair cascaded down like an avalanche but before it could hit me, it dangled mid-air, completely defying all laws of physics that I knew, as if it were magic.

Wait a second, perhaps magic is possible in this world?

She smiled a smile that reached her eyes, revealing a pair of perfect dimples.

Before I could form any coherent sound, my eyelids drooped down and an avalanche of tiredness assaulted me.

Under the loving gazes of my new parents, I fell into a blissful, dreamless sleep.

< >

I playfully grabbed my mother’s auburn, silky hair as with my chubby infant fingers as I hung from her shoulders, wrapped in a cream-coloured shawl.

I had been living under my parent’s roof for 10 months now and had been settling into a peaceful lifestyle.

The 10 months were relatively unremarkable, the most exciting thing being that I had eaten a variety of foods that were definitely not in my former world.

With my weak infant muscles, I had not yet learnt the art of walking, an obstacle that I desperately wanted to overcome.

Curse you reincarnation!

In this new world, I had been born as a human yet again, apparently humanity was not bound to one planet, but rather was a multiversal species.

Even though I was the same race, English was not the dominant language, rather it was a language called Sephorinan, one of the last relics of our home world Sephorina.

Unfortunately, when faced with a foreign language, I had to learn it from scratch.

Why can’t they just speak English as well?

Though it seemed a daunting task, I had managed to snatch the meaning of a few words, namely my own name- Arden.

Apparently, that meant ‘arduous’ as my birth, allegedly, took longer than the norm.

Along with that, I had managed to learn the meanings of a few other words such as ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’.

I had also learnt the names of my family.

When I say my family, I don’t only mean my parents, it turns out that I was not the first of their children, but rather the second, I had an older sister- Kara who was 3 years older than me, nearing 4.

With the stares she sent me every time I saw her, she seemed to perpetually dislike everything to do with me.

It was because she had been dethroned as the youngest and most of my parents’ attention was focused on me rather than her now- a fact that I always made known with a smirk whenever I saw her. This fueled her dislike even more.

Hah! Suck it!

In my previous life, I had been the eldest child from an early age and had never been subjected to the attention that my younger siblings had. Now, however, the tables had turned.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I winced slightly, remembering my old life and what that Paragon thingy had said before I reincarnated.

I was not Xanderian anymore. I had a new chance at life, and I would not be so helpless as to be unable to save my family.

All of us were currently in the Beyond, albeit the lowest level, furthest from Sephorina.

The lowest level was called Stronghold and was also the most massive.

It housed many kingdoms filled with distinct species, it was so massive that there were still many undiscovered pockets here and there.

It was also the only level that Non-Reachers could comfortably live in.

My family and I were holed up in a rural village called Reis on the road to a major city called Maji.

I was jostled out of my musings when my mother, slightly frazzled by my previous antics, attacked me with a barrage of tickles,

“Ahhh, Mama stop, Mamaaa,” I pleaded fruitlessly.

“Sol was right, our little prince is a rather cheeky one,” my mother, Rebecca, said.

With a last few tickles, she lowered her hand before resuming her leisurely stroll towards the village market.

Once every week, I accompanied my mother to restock our supplies in Reis’ main market, a bustling and lively venue, filled to the brim with many different people, and even species.

It seemed that this world was more accepting of people compared to my earlier one, where there were conflicts and prejudice between people of varying cultures and ethnicities.

I greatly anticipated our weekly shopping sprees, not only was it fun but I might even be able to see one of the ever-elusive Reachers.

Reacher’s were a topic that rumours were made of, talk of their legendary escapades as they dove ever closer to finding Sephorina were a popular item of gossip.

Whenever talk of the Reachers’ tales was told, even the most far-fetched ones were believed, that was the level of reverence that the average civilian held towards the Reachers.

Hearing snippets of conversation surrounding the Reachers was a perplexing task for my infantile ears as I had to filter out the conversations regarding everyday affairs, however it was worth it to hear even vague mention of the Reachers.

As my mother dove into the crowd, I strained my ears to hear over the din of voices and my efforts bore fruits,

“Didn’t you hear, apparently the Reachers found an undiscovered cavern in the Green Glades!”

“The Green Glades? Isn’t that only the second layer of the Beyond?”

“Did you hear the news? The Noble house of Fezoha has bred yet another scion with an unholy amount of potential!”

“Bah! That House is full of scoundrels, they swindle all our money and still have the audacity to make us pay exorbitant taxes! a silver kadash a month for a field barely 10 feet wide? That’s insane!”

From my previous trips to the town market, I had gleaned much about the way this world worked.

One of these was an unfamiliar currency called kadash.

Kadash was a rectangular coin in nature, with each coin having a specific denomination of either 1, 10, 20 or 50. This was further split into specific tiers of the very ore that they were made from.

At first, they seemed normal, the first tier was called bronze, then silver, then gold, then diamond.

However, after that it became confusing, with the coins now being made from metals that were unknown in my previous world.

There was princium, then alloremium and finally the rarest- faronium.

For the first four tiers, it was 100 of the earlier tier alloy for one of the next tier., for example you needed 100 bronze kadash for 1 silver.

For the last three it was 1000 of the prior tier alloy for the next one, however in the small town where I was born, I had never seen an exchange of goods worth more than a gold kadash, and even that was hailed as an unearthly event, causing a miniature uproar in the town.

A typical family of 4 could comfortably live on 50 bronze kadash a month, meaning a silver for a tiny field could be considered daylight robbery.

Storing the information I had derived, I focused on who my mother was speaking to,

“My, my Rebecca,” a decrepit old lady said, “Little Ard has grown quite a bit since I last saw him.”

My mother pouted slightly, lightly slapping the old lady on her shoulder as if they’ve known each other for a long time,

“You’re always so quick to dote on him but always forget to greet me you old hag!”

The ‘old hag’ gasped theatrically, placing a hand on her chest,

“O woe! I haven’t greeted the dear little princess, will you ever forgive me?” the lady sarcastically said, before changing her tone to that of a scolding mother,

“I have known you since were a little babe, a remarkably cute babe yes, but still a babe nonetheless! I have seen your mother wipe your arse young lady, so I should be able to say whatever the Beyond I want!”

As the lady continued her tirade of insults and accusations, my mother’s cheeks visibly reddened in embarrassment until I thought that it was physically impossible for her to redden anymore.

I decided to save my mother from the relentless onslaught by cutting across the seemingly endless rant,

“Hi aunty Calrith!”

Calrith was an ancient old, well, crone.

And that was saying it in the nicest way possible.

She wore a crimson shawl that covered her hair and a stain-ridden jumper that complimented her loose fitting trousers which's original colour had bled away, leaving a reddish-brown hue.

Her face was aged with lines, but her eyes crinkled in a way that suggested that she had once smiled a lot.

Though she was past her prime, you could tell easily that she would’ve been the envy of many women in her younger years.

These features, however, were disregarded by the very weight of her, well, realness I suppose.

Ever since I met her, I could feel that her very existence had a verifiable weight to it.

Every person I had met felt less real than her, as if she was the anchor that my little town relied upon.

This notion was easily disproved, however, by the fact that nobody really knew her, the only reason my family knew her was because my grandmother had struck up an unlikely friendship with her.

This friendship carried on through to my mother and led her to the very situation she was in now.

The crone, her harangue stopped my adorably infant voice, turned to look upon me and then to my mother, gloatingly she said,

“See? At least little Ard knows his manners. In fact, because of his manners I'll give you this week’s shopping for only 15 bronze kadash!”

My mother, earlier embarrassment forgotten, leapt up and denounced the outrageous scam,

“15 you old bat? I am not paying a kadash more than 10!”

And at once the fierce haggling began.

I mentally berated myself for my past statement and prepared myself for the long and arduous argument that was about to ensue.

I hate shopping.