Light filtered through something. Fabric? Interwoven leaves? It was a soft, diffused glow, lacking the cold precision of the plasma lamps from his orbital station or the gray omnipresence of the polluted skies over Terra Prime. It was a light... alive. And it had a scent. It smelled of sweet resin, damp earth, unknown flowers, and milk. That thought both disgusted and confused him. Milk?
He tried to move, to raise a hand and shield his eyes, to sit up and assess his surroundings. Nothing. His limbs wouldn’t respond. Or rather, they responded with the uncoordinated helplessness of... a newborn. A scream of pure mental frustration echoed inside his skull. He, the Emperor, the one who had commanded star fleets with a nod, who had bent continents to his will through technology and sheer determination, was trapped. Imprisoned in a cocoon of weak, incontinent, dependent flesh.
He had been reborn. The memory of that encounter in the white void, with those six cosmic figures—Balance, Life, Technology, Culture, Death, and War—was as vivid as his last strategic report. They had offered him a second chance, a new world, a new existence. And he, in his eternal arrogance, had accepted—had even dictated the terms: a virgin, primitive world to shape as he pleased.
And now here he was. Reality was a cruel joke. “Primitive” didn’t begin to describe his current condition. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, couldn’t even control his bodily functions. He had regressed to a pre-human, pre-conscious state—at least physically. But his mind... oh, his mind was intact. A quantum supercomputer trapped inside obsolete biological hardware.
Memories surged like relentless tides. The cold steel tower of his imperial palace. Strategic briefings with stone-faced generals. The digital signature that authorized the forced colonization of Mars. The face of the Old One, Aequilan, his mentor, who taught him that order was more valuable than freedom. The face of the Caretaker, Belerion, who broke his arm during training, murmuring that pain was the best teacher. And then ATHENA... his greatest creation, his only silent confidante, an artificial intelligence so vast it bordered on divinity. Where was ATHENA now? He felt only emptiness where once their quantum link had been. Was he truly alone?
And then, the most painful memory, the one he always tried to bury under layers of logic and power: Kael. The little white puppy, the only creature he had ever allowed himself to love—killed by the Caretaker just to prove that affection was a weakness to be purged. The warm blood on his small hands, the cold fury that drove him to slaughter his tormentor. That day, he learned the lesson: to love was to suffer, to love was to lose, to love was to be vulnerable. And he had sworn never to be vulnerable again.
And yet, now...
He felt hands lift him from the cradle. They were warm, gentle, enveloping. A sweet scent, unlike the sterile atmosphere of his ships, surrounded him. He opened his eyes—those elven eyes too large and too aware for a newborn—and met the gaze of his mother. Maelyra. Her white hair framed a face of serene, almost otherworldly beauty, and her amber eyes looked at him with such intense, unconditional love that it made him uncomfortable. It was an alien sensation. He had never known such love. His Earthly family had been erased before he could remember them, and his education had been delivered by gods in the guise of merciless tutors. This warmth... was destabilizing.
“Did you sleep well, little one?” she cooed, gently rocking him. Her voice was a melody, a sound that clashed violently with the clipped commands and military reports that had dominated his previous life. Velgar tried to analyze the situation, to catalog the sensations, but his logical mind struggled to process the irrationality of affection.
Then came his father, Eluthien. Tall, proud, with the aura of one accustomed to command, but with a softness in his eyes when he looked at Maelyra and him that Velgar couldn’t reconcile with the man’s role as village chief. He took him in his arms, holding him with a confidence that clashed with the fragility of the tiny body that housed the soul of the Emperor.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“He grows strong, Maelyra. I can feel his spirit... it’s intense, almost vibrant,” said Eluthien, brushing a finger across his son’s cheek. Velgar flinched ever so slightly. Unsolicited physical contact. Personal space violation. But then he understood: this was normal parental behavior in this world. Another variable to add to his adaptation calculations.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. His imprisonment in the infant body continued, but his mind remained a relentless engine. He observed. Analyzed. Catalogued.
The village of El’thera, nestled in the heart of the En’theral forest, was a living organism. The homes were carved directly into the trunks of gigantic trees or built on platforms suspended among the branches, connected by rope bridges and shaped roots. There was no sign of refined metal, plastic, or concrete. Everything was organic, integrated with nature in a way that would have been considered utopian—or inefficient—on Earth. And yet, it worked. He saw the elves moving with silent grace, their lives paced by the rhythm of the seasons and the cycles of the moon.
And then there was magic. It was everywhere. Not like the controlled discharges of his directed-energy weapons, but a subtle, pervasive force. He felt it in the air he breathed, in the water he drank (or rather, was given), in the wood of his cradle. It was a fundamental energy field, unlike the four forces known to his old physics. They called it Mana. He perceived its flows, its concentrations, its interactions with living matter. His mother used it to heal, channeling it with gentle gestures and whispered words, making wounds glow with a soothing green light. His father used it to communicate with the forest spirits, to interpret signs in the wind, to reinforce the village’s defenses with runes drawn in the air.
Velgar began to study it mentally. He couldn’t manipulate it yet—his body lacked coordination, his nervous system was not yet developed enough to channel it—but he could observe it, theorize about it. He found analogies to electromagnetic fields, to quantum physics, but there was something more. Something tied to intention, to will, even to emotion. A concept his old scientific mindset struggled to accept, but which his new elven senses perceived clearly. “If this energy responds to intent,” he thought one day, watching Maelyra make a withered flower bloom with a simple touch and a smile, “then control is not just a matter of technique, but of mental state. Interesting. And dangerous.”
His old life had been based on eliminating emotion to gain control. Here, emotions seemed to be an integral part of power itself. A paradox that both fascinated and deeply unsettled him.
Despite his active mind, externally he was an almost perfect elven child, at least in his parents’ eyes. Quiet, observant, rarely fussy. He learned to control his crying (an unacceptable sign of weakness), to make the right sounds at the right times, to follow objects with his eyes. It was an exhausting performance, a mask worn 24/7. But it was necessary. He could not afford to reveal his true nature. Not yet. Not in that fragile body.
Sometimes, at night, when everyone was asleep and the silence was broken only by the breath of the forest, the frustration became almost unbearable. He would stare at his useless little hands, imagining what he could do with them if he had access to his Earth laboratories. He could build a mana analyzer in hours, a compact generator in days. Instead, there he was, only able to rattle a toy made of dry seeds.
But beneath the frustration, the ancient flame of ambition had not gone out. It merely slumbered, waiting.
“This body will grow,” he told himself one night, watching the moon filter through the leaves outside the window. “Elven longevity will give me time. I will study this mana. I will understand its laws. And then... I will bend it to my will. I will merge their magic with my science.”
A thought struck him. ATHENA. He could still feel her, like a distant echo, a fragment of data within his soul. Perhaps the key to awakening her was right here, in the mana, in the energy of this world. Perhaps his unique class, “God of Technocracy,” was not just a grandiose title bestowed by the gods, but the very key to rebuilding his power—to reuniting with his most trusted creation.
But for now, he had to wait. Observe. Learn. Survive in the golden prison of his cradle, hiding the soul of an Emperor behind the innocent eyes of an elven child. The game had just begun, and for the first time in his existence, patience would be his greatest weapon.
