I can crawl now.

  It’s not fast, not smooth, and definitely not graceful, but I can move about on my own. For the first few days, it felt like trying to swim through mud, but little by little I figured out how to coordinate arms and legs well enough to cross a room. To anyone watching, I probably look like a determined sack of potatoes inching across the floor, but to me it feels like victory. The reign of tummy time is over.

  It’s hot here. Not warm, hot. The kind of heat that never really ends, that clings to your skin and makes every breath feel like soup. Even indoors, with the shutters drawn and a steady breeze blowing through the cracks, the air presses down like a weight. My mother doesn’t seem to mind it. She has deep ebony skin that shines faintly in the sunlight, a kind of effortless beauty that fits the world around her. She seems to be accustomed to the heat as if she was made for it.

  I, on the other hand, am perpetually damp. Babies aren’t built for heat management. I wear little more than a cloth nappy, and even that feels excessive. I’m fairly certain that if someone put me in a blanket again, I would spontaneously combust.

  Still, the world is beautiful. The light here is heavy and golden, the kind that makes everything shimmer. When my mother carries me outside, the horizon hums with color, red clay, green trees, yellow dust, and the smell of baked bread fills the air. Somewhere nearby, there’s running water. I can hear it sometimes, a slow and lazy stream, the kind that speaks of long summers and longer afternoons.

  My eyes have improved since birth, though not perfectly. I can see well enough at a distance now. Up close, everything still blurs together. My own hands fascinate me, they move when I tell them to, but they look alien. Sometimes I forget that I’m supposed to have hands this small.

  My mother’s face is still hard to make out clearly, but her presence is constant. She hums while she works, her voice low and soft, like a river flowing over stones. I don’t understand the words when she speaks. They’re shaped differently than I remember language being. The rhythm is there, the structure familiar, but the sounds themselves have changed. I suppose that’s what centuries do to tongues, they smooth the rough edges and change the meanings until nothing fits quite the same.

  At least reincarnation isn’t strange anymore. It wasn’t even in my last life, but I still count myself lucky not to have been among the first generation of reincarnators. Those poor souls were born into confusion. People thought they were possessed, haunted, or cursed. Imagine being a child again and speaking your first sentence, and instead of joy, your parents try to exorcise you. Some of them didn’t survive long enough to explain.

  Now, things are civilized. There are laws, offices, and systems in place. A person who remembers their past life is required to register with local authorities once they can speak clearly. It’s not an interrogation, just a formality. You don’t give your name or recount your past life, only confirm that you’re a reincarnator. The government keeps simple records for census purposes and to acknowledge your new life as your own. It’s more symbolic than punitive. In my time, that registration also served another purpose: it officially recognized you as an adult at twelve instead of the usual eighteen for first-timers, at least for humans. Other races had their own age scales and rites of passage. The elderly even attend classes about it. I remember the pamphlets: What to Expect When Expecting to Return. The irony never gets old.

  It’s rare, of course. Maybe one in a thousand, if that. But that’s still enough that everyone knows of someone who’s been through it. And because it’s understood, it isn’t frightening anymore. Reincarnation is just another part of life, unpredictable, but not unnatural.

  It isn’t limited to the powerful either. Rebirth happens to anyone. Farmers, merchants, thieves, healers. The soul doesn’t seem to care who you were or what you did. It just moves on, maybe out of habit, maybe out of mercy. Sometimes it even crosses species lines. You can be born human one life and dwarven the next, or something stranger. No one knows why.

  Because of that, racism has mostly withered away. When your grandfather might be reborn as a goblin and your mother might return as an elf, it’s hard to justify hating either. The only label that matters anymore is sapient. People still cluster by geography, forest dwellers, desert tribes, mountain folk, but it’s culture, not blood, that divides them.

  That’s not to say the world is perfect. There are still wars, greed, cruelty. But it’s better. Slowly, painfully, it’s better.

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  The Mudaki Empire proved that change was possible, even if it had to come through violence.

  The Mudaki were the largest slaving power in history. Their economy ran on chains, their nobility on the backs of others. I studied them in my last life, long after their fall. The stories never left me.

  Their emperor was reborn as a slave to the same empire he once ruled. Imagine that. The man who ordered millions into bondage. Reborn, only to find himself wearing the same iron. They say he remembered everything from the moment he opened his eyes. The arrogance, the wealth, the cruelty, all of it crumbled the first time his master struck him.

  He endured. Waited. Grew. When he finally rose again, not as the emperor but as a rebel conqueror, he ended the system he had created. Abolished slavery across every civilized land. It wasn’t just outlawed; it became punishable by death. He executed the slave traders, the buyers, the nobles, the merchants who profited from the blood money. Ninety-nine percent of the Mudaki aristocracy died by his order. The rest fled and vanished.

  It was brutal. But it worked.

  Now, slavery is nearly extinct. The civilized nations won’t tolerate it, and the barbaric ones can’t sustain it under global pressure. The story of the slave emperor became a kind of moral anchor, proof that souls carry memory, and that justice eventually finds its mark. I can’t say I believe in divine fairness not after everything that happened to me, but sometimes the wheel spins just right.

  When I think about him, I wonder how much he remembered of being a ruler when he was a child. Did he stare at his masters and know who they used to be? Did he crawl across a dirt floor and swear that someday he’d walk again as their equal? I like to think he did. I like to think that’s what gave him strength.

  The thought makes me look at my own life differently. My mother doesn’t know who I used to be, and honestly, I’m glad. I don’t feel any need to correct her. She sees me as her son, and that’s enough. I can tell she loves me. There’s warmth in her eyes when she picks me up, and something steady in her voice when she speaks.

  That’s something the first reincarnators never had.

  Sometimes she takes me outside in the evening. The sky turns violet and gold, and the air smells like dust and cooking herbs. People pass by carrying baskets or walking animals. Most have darker skin like hers, though the tones vary, some brown, some near black, some like charcoal. People glance at me as we pass, the way anyone does when they see a baby. They smile, coo, and wave because babies draw that kind of attention. They stare because they think I’m cute, not because they suspect anything about who I am. Babies are just babies here, even ones who stare too hard and seem to listen when adults talk.

  There’s a peace to it I didn’t expect.

  I try to take in as much as I can. The slope of the rooftops, the sound of insects rising with the dusk, the distant chatter of a market somewhere beyond the fields. Everything feels simpler. Or maybe I just notice it more because I don’t have much else to do. Babies have a lot of time to think.

  When I’m not thinking, I’m sweating. The heat doesn’t let up, not even at night. I can feel beads of sweat gathering under my neck and between my fingers. Sometimes my mother fans me with a piece of woven palm leaf while she sings. Her songs are low and slow, full of rhythm and repetition. I like them, even if I don’t know what they mean. I like her voice best when she laughs, it sounds like something alive.

  The language she speaks fascinates me. I try to map the sounds, to match them to ideas. There are echoes of what I once knew, roots and fragments, but it’s changed so much. It must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Enough time for dialects to splinter, merge, and reform into something new. It feels strange, being the relic instead of the scholar.

  And it’s humbling. For all my knowledge, I can’t even speak. I can’t read. I can’t lift a book or form a proper spell. My body is too weak to hold a quill, and this time, there’s nothing inside me to make up for it. Whatever I was before, whatever power I once touched, it’s gone.

  I know why. The false God of Magic took it. He stripped me of my mana, stole my domain, and claimed it as his own. Everything that I had built, every truth I had uncovered, became his throne. And I, Azolo, the man they once called the God of Magic reborn, was left hollow.

  The God of Iron saved what was left of me. He gave me this body. He gave me purpose.

  I was not reborn to teach again, or to study, or to heal. I was reborn to grow. To build a body that could bear the weight of vengeance. To become strong enough to end the usurper who calls himself the God of Magic.

  So, I will grow. I will crawl, and I will stand. I will learn to walk, to run, to fight, to kill. I will rise from the dirt until I am ready to drag a god down into it with me.

  Revenge. That’s what drives me now. But lately, I’m beginning to realize that I can’t live for vengeance alone. There are small things in this new life that matter too. Like my mother, she sneezes three times every single time she sneezes, and for some reason, it never fails to make me laugh.

  I laugh at the thought, a tiny gurgling sound that surprises even me. My mother laughs too, though she doesn’t know why. She leans down, kisses my forehead, and mutters something gentle in our language. I don’t understand the words yet, but I know the meaning.

  I love you.

  And I believe it.

  I look up at her from the floor, watching her outline shift in the warm light. The air hums softly, and somewhere outside a bird calls in the dusk. I crawl toward her voice, inch by inch, arms trembling but determined.

  Alive again. Small, sweaty, and helpless, but alive.

  And for now, that’s enough.