Law of The Web - Volume 1 Chapter 4 - Realization

“4th June, Year 752.”

Elias whispered, his words catching me off guard.

My heart sank, a cold weight settling in my chest. Already June? If Elias spoke true, Stacey and Elias were both staring down their deaths, days away for her, a scant few weeks for him. A tragedy, to be sure, but I couldn’t let their fates cloud my own. Survival was all that mattered now.

Still, the thought gnawed at me. I turned to Elias, my voice low, uncertain.

“You’re certain of the date, lad?”

His weary eyes met mine, shadowed by fear.

“Aye, I’m sure.”

He murmured.

“My tenth birthday is in four days. I can feel… something stirring in me, like an awakening. Not that it’ll do me much good.”

His gaze dropped, his voice fading.

“Even if I didn’t know the day, my birthday is close. So by that logic, my dates are right.”

He glanced nervously toward the front of the wagon, where the scarred man sat.

“Please, stop asking me stuff. I don’t want that brute to notice me again. He has hurt me before.”

I nodded, my mind piecing it together. He feels his awakening coming.

‘Does it strike at ten, then?’

The date wasn’t just a passing detail, it lined up with the crimson words my new gift had shown me. Elias’s soul, flickering wild, was proof enough. I took a slow breath, my thoughts sharpening as I scanned the huddled children in the dim wagon.

If awakening comes at ten, are all these kids nine, or near it?

To test my hunch, I let my ability flare. Crimson words bloomed in the air, spilling secrets about each child. Fourteen were nine, their birthdays still months off, their souls faint but steady.

The other fourteen, Elias among them, were nine but teetering on ten, their birthdays in June or July. Their souls pulsed brighter, erratic like storm-tossed lanterns. Elias’s soul, though, danced wilder than the rest, a frenzy of light.

My brows knit together.

Elias, with his birthday mere days away, was closest to this awakening. His words about feeling it rang true now. The timing is no accident.

But then a darker thought crept in.

‘I am not ten though!’

I was twenty-five in my old life, or was I going mad? None of this made sense. If awakening came at ten, why did I have these powers?

A memory struck me like a thunderbolt.

The bite of Prototype 3, its venom searing through my veins, the agony that swallowed me whole. I had tasted death, true and final. That spider’s poison was a death sentence.

No one could survive a lethal dose from it. Yet here I am.

Darkness had been my last memory, a numbing void after the venom’s grip. Then light…waking in this wagon, surrounded by frightened children, my body strange, small, not my own.

“No way.”

I whispered, the words barely escaping over the wagon’s rattle.

The scarred man’s voice echoed in my mind, calling me a brat, lumping me with these kids. It all clicked, a brutal truth.

“Did I… transmigrate into another person’s s body?”

The words trembled out, and the weight of it hit me like a stone. Everything, the powers, the strange world, the child’s frame I have just stop and properly realize, pointed to one truth…Gideon Harley was dead.

“No… I am dead?”

I muttered, my voice cracking.

“This ain’t fair.”

I glanced around the dim wagon, my eyes unfocused. No mirror to prove it, but my bound feet, clad in tiny slippers, and my short legs screamed the truth.

My voice, high and boyish, sealed it. I was one of them, a child, though my soul carried the mind of a twenty-five years of life.

My fists clenched, rage and grief boiling inside. This body held powers I couldn’t fathom, but they didn’t dull the loss.

I had a good life…not perfect, but it was mines. A fine trade, enough coin for a grand house, horses, and a life of ease and revelry. More than that, I had a family, my mother, sister, grandmother…all waiting for me at home.

Now all of that is gone.

I took a shaky breath, the ache deepening. I had kept to myself, savoring solitude, but I had been free. Now I was a stranger of this new and unknown world in a child’s skin, with no memories of this body, no clue as to why I was here, and why.

Unlike the heroes in tales, I had no inherited knowledge, no grand destiny. My ability only let me see truths others couldn’t, and maybe I could bend time, but at what cost? My life, it seemed.

Despair clawed at me.

Starting anew was one thing, but as a bound child in a perilous world? It was a nightmare like no other. The powers were a spark of wonder, but they couldn’t replace what I had lost…my home, my family, my job, and my life.

I leaned against the wagon’s rough wall, the wood grounding me as my thoughts spiraled.

“I was at my peak.”

I whispered bitterly, staring at the worn floor.

“Now I am just some nameless whelp.”

For the first time in this strange world, I felt the full weight of my fate. This wasn’t a second chance, it felt like a curse.

Gratitude for existing mingled with crushing loss. Like the other children, I couldn’t hold back. Their sniffles and tears filled the air, and despite my years, this child’s body betrayed me.

Tears spilled, hot and unyielding.

“So unfair.”

I murmured, my voice trembling as drops fell to the planks below.

I wept, raw and unrestrained, until exhaustion dragged me into mother rest sleeping and merciful embrace.

My mind finally at ease, as I cried myself to sleep, at the point I no longer cared.

I was too hurt to think straight right now.

And so, my mind sank into the void, as I enjoy the moment of rest after a stressful series of events.