Debris rained down, drowning out the psychotic laughter of my attacker and plunging everything into suffocating darkness. Chunks of stone crushed me, squeezing the breath from my lungs and pinning my body in a heavy vice. I tried struggling against the weight but my body lay still, too numb to move. I reached for my core, only to find an empty, hollow void.

Panic set in, forcing me to gasp for air that wasn’t there. I choked, convulsing as an unbearable pain surged within me, paused, then ebbed away, leaving me adrift in numbness. My body faded out of existence. I tried to move, to shout, but nothing changed. Questions swirled in my mind as my thoughts rapidly dissolved. As a final testament to my deteriorating mind, a voice resonated within me—not heard audibly, but echoing in my head. It was laughter. Not the psychotic laughter of the assailant, but a more robust and masculine laughter.

“Beat you again, Malasine,” the voice taunted. “Still so slow. Wasn’t that your final option?”

Another voice growled in my fractured mind, deep and feminine. “Argh, shut up! Do you have any idea how long I’ve been watching him? How could he die the second I look away? Who do I choose now?”

“Still pretending you have a chance?” The masculine voice chuckled, the sound rich and mocking. “I guess you should decide quickly then. Not that it will matter.” He roared with laughter, his voice fading along with my thoughts, unraveling into the endless darkness.

Time lost all meaning. An eternity seemed to pass in an instant—or perhaps it was the other way around. I floated in the void, weightless and disoriented, until the first flicker of consciousness returned.

My mind was whole again, as if my brain had been reconstructed. I could think. A blinding white light pierced my closed eyelids, confirming I still had a body.

A cacophony of noise assaulted my ears, each sound sharp and overwhelming. My head throbbed and an agonising force reawakened my senses. The numbness receded, replaced by a growing awareness of my surroundings. Whispers, shuffling movements, and the cry of a baby began to separate themselves from the chaos. Warmth encircled me as something soft was gently wrapped around my body.

The noises stopped. My lungs and throat burned from strain. I opened my eyes to find a giant woman gazing down at me with an adoring expression. She cradled me gently in her arms, a generously large blanket enveloping me and evoking a slight sense of claustrophobia. Despite the weariness etched across her face, a beautiful smile adorned her features.

“Welcome to the world, Kane.”

My heavy eyelids closed, plunging me back into darkness.

I awoke with a jolt, blinking against the brightness. Pushing through the haze of grogginess, I struggled to focus on my surroundings. Memories collided in my head, chaotic and fragmented, but I forced myself to concentrate on identifying any immediate threats. I lay on my back, still cocooned in the oversized blanket. Looming above me was the giant woman, her head resting peacefully on the shoulder of an even larger man. She was asleep. Their features might have been attractive—mid to late twenties, perhaps—if they weren’t several times larger than me.

The woman’s long, wavy chestnut hair cascaded over her shoulders and hung above me like a curtain of vines. Her eyes were closed, but I remembered their captivating dark blue hue. The man beside her had the rugged appearance of a seasoned warrior, with shaggy black curls and piercing golden eyes. I stared at the two of them, trying to make sense of the scene, my thoughts still a jumbled mess.

Do I have a head injury? I wondered, desperate for an explanation.

Before I could dwell on the thought, the man’s golden eyes shifted towards me. He smiled, nudged the woman, and whispered, “Freya, he’s awake.” 

Though his words were in a language I’d never heard before, I understood their meaning perfectly. A fresh wave of questions surged in my already overloaded mind at the abnormal realisation, meshing together to create an unintelligible mass of confusion.

The woman straightened as she rubbed her eyes and turned her attention to me. I shoved my questions aside and tried to move, feeling unusually weak. I worked my right arm free from beneath the blanket and froze. My arm was swollen—no, pudgy. My hand, small and tender, was completely devoid of the scars and calluses I earned through years of arduous training. 

My eyelids were rapidly growing heavy, threatening to close again, but I forced myself to stay awake. A large finger—belonging to the woman—brushed against my open hand, and I retracted with a startled yell. Only, what escaped my mouth wasn’t a yell, but instead a small, pitiful squeal. Horrified, I watched as the two giants exchanged looks filled with pure joy. Slowly, certain puzzle pieces clicked together in my mind.

It couldn’t be real. I refused to believe it.

Frantically scanning my surroundings, I realised we were in a moving carriage, spacious enough to accommodate the giants towering over me. The man leaned in uncomfortably close, only for him to be shoved back by the woman—Freya.

“Ronan, stop it! You’ll scare him. You should know how to treat your kids by now!”

“Should I? It’s only our third one,” the man—Ronan—quipped.

Freya swatted at him playfully, her lips curving into a tired yet affectionate smile.

Their brief exchange handed me the final pieces of the puzzle, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to solve it. If this wasn’t a hallucination… 

I had just been born. 

No, I thought. That’s ridiculous. Reincarnation isn’t real. Besides, I would have to die first… Hold on—did I die?

I lay there, my mind scrambling to piece it all together.

If I died and was reincarnated, why do I still have my memories? Shouldn’t reincarnation wipe the slate clean, resetting me to the state of a newborn? I don’t think my intellect has regressed at all. While searching for reasons to deny the notion, I noticed that many things had suddenly begun to make sense.

The people, the carriage; they weren’t giant, I was just small. It explained how I’d ‘survived’ being impaled and buried under a mountain of debris. The absence of my core, energy, and previous strength could also be explained. I lacked them because this was a new body—smaller, weaker, and nothing like the one I’d known. While the theory didn’t answer all of my questions, it had quickly become impossible to just dismiss.

Confusion gave way to anger at the absurdity of it all, yet I could only squirm in frustration. Those bastards of the kingdom had betrayed me. By now they were probably throwing a festival to celebrate their treachery while gloating over my crushed corpse. I decided I had to return—to make every one of those snakes suffer a fate worse than death. Killing them outright wouldn’t be enough after what they’d done.

Taking a deep breath, I forced my raging thoughts to settle. Revenge required focus, and I couldn’t exact it without first figuring out where I was.

Peering out of the open carriage, I saw lush green hills rolling beneath a cloudless blue sky. The vibrant landscape was striking—unlike any kingdom I had ever known. It exuded an unfamiliar beauty, an alien sense of serenity. That’s when it hit me: my rebirth could have taken years, decades, or maybe even centuries.

If that were true, revenge wouldn’t be an option. The thought gnawed at me, but I could neither confirm nor dismiss it. I was sorely lacking information. The only clue I had was the language spoken by the couple—yet it was utterly foreign to me, unlike anything I’d ever heard before.

The carriage jolted over a bump, yanking my thoughts back to the present. Hunger and fatigue clawed at me, and my thoughts were an absolute mess, even after sifting through them to make sense of the situation. Ronan and Freya—who I assumed were my new parents—were engaged in lively chatter.

“He’s got your eyes,” Ronan said.

“Isn’t that great? Elian has yours, Kane has mine, and Chione has your mother’s,” Freya replied. She listed three names—two that I guessed belonged to my new siblings, and one I understood to be my new name.

Now that I could properly gauge the size of everything, the carriage felt small, incapable of holding more than four adults comfortably. I felt relieved that it was just the three of us. Even so, the cramped space already felt crowded.

I’d never been claustrophobic before being crushed to death, but dying that way seemed to have caused some significant mental damage. I couldn’t shake the sensation of being crushed under that rubble, suffocating.

The carriage turned, and a small town came into view. My anger momentarily cleared as the scene unfolded before me. Compared to the places I had known in my past life, the town looked almost utopian. Its vibrant surroundings—radiant sunshine, clear skies, clusters of well-maintained houses, and the tall, sprawling forest at its edge—combined into a serene setting.

But any fleeting hope that this might offer some semblance of recompense was quickly crushed beneath a resurgence of anger. My ether core, gone. Years of training wasted. The status and authority I had painstakingly built over my lifetime—obliterated in a single night. Nothing could make up for that, least of all some idyllic, small-time village. I cursed myself for even entertaining the thought.

Exhaling deeply, I forced myself to release the rage swelling inside me. My desires no longer mattered; I had to confront the harsh reality, however pathetic it seemed.

I had died.

I had lost everything. And now, I had no choice but to start over.

A profound sense of regret settled in my chest as the carriage pulled up at the town’s edge. Streets of quaint wooden homes lined the path, their charm entirely lost on me. At the pathside, an elderly couple stood hand in hand with a small girl. In front of them, a boy of five or six ran towards the carriage with a wide grin, his shaggy black curls bouncing as he moved. His round, golden eyes bore a striking resemblance to Ronan.

I had never truly known what it felt like to have a family. The orphanage had been the closest thing I’d experienced, but I had never considered them family. Still, they had given me a functional understanding of the concept.

At its core, a family was a group of individuals connected by familial ties, such as blood relations or marriage, upheld by the pretense of unconditional love, a love that conveniently vanished in times of real hardship. The conventional nuclear family, with a mother, father, and their chosen number of children, exemplified this structure.

Now, faced with the prospect of a new family, I took the safest path. I decided to play along.