*** Magdalena ***

  Something was wrong with this baby. The more time Magdalena spent with it, the surer she became. It cried all wrong. Of course, all babies cry, but not like this. Normal babies cry loudly. They scream, uncaring of whoever hears them. Gods be damned, they want to be heard by everyone and everything in the whole damn world. Their screams are without shame or real sadness, just an expression of something being wrong or simply not to their liking.

  Her daughter’s child was different. It cried. It cried a lot, but the way it cried wasn’t normal. Tears flowed nonstop, yes. Sometimes, it was silently sobbing, but it never really screamed. It cried like someone who had learned to hide their pain from the world.

  And then there were its eyes. Filled with so much sorrow, loss, and regret. It reminded her of the old smith on the day he had carried his son to his grave - hopelessness, loss, despair, and an unnerving emptiness. There was so much emotion in those eyes. At such a young age, no baby should understand tragedy enough to possess eyes like this.

  After having seen her granddaughter for the first time, she had checked the scrolls in her family’s archives. Old crusty rolls written over the decades. Brought with her when she moved to Northwing. Tales of monsters her family had encountered, stories they had heard. She found old accounts of remnants and demons taking possession of small children or even stealing babies and swapping them out with their brood, but she had checked the weaves surrounding her daughter’s house. Twice! They remained unbroken as on the day she had carved them into the stone. The house was protected. There should be no reason to worry.

  However, it had not been enough to calm her nerves. Dreams of her family members slaughtered in their sleep in the old mansion by the lake - the one she only visited in her nightmares – haunted her and kept her awake at night. Her house had been the protectors of the realm. They had done their duty for centuries until the kingdom had decided they were obsolete and had forsaken them.

  The next time she visited her daughter, she put a little something in her tea to help her sleep, and once her daughter Maya was firmly asleep, she enacted her plan.

  The small child or whatever it was did not resist, but its eyes betrayed an intellect impossible for a newborn. Swiftly, the needle shot down and pierced its skin, collecting a small drop of blood from its finger.

  It screamed. She ignored it. Her daughter would remain in the land of slumber. Nothing would wake her for the next hour.

  She took out a small piece of paper. The complex magic circle drawn with Mana conductive ink had taken her most of the day before to construct and draw out. She placed the needle with the blood sample in the middle of the circle and channeled her Mana through it. The circle began to glow in a faint orange shine. The blood started to sizzle and evaporate.

  Different glyphs in the circle glowed, and she studied them carefully, only to be bitterly disappointed. Mana levels in this child were normal, nearly undistinguishable from the ambient Mana around them. There was no special affinity or residues of a magical plane or ritual. It was just a baby. Without any Mana or magical skill whatsoever.

  She looked over to her grandchild.

  No magic meant, no ghosts, no demons, or ancient artifacts had taken hold of her grandchild.

  It looked like a normal baby.

  “Maybe I was wrong? Maybe I am growing paranoid in my old days?” she murmured.

  Then she noticed. The baby’s eyes were glued to the magic circle. It wasn’t just looking at it, it was studying it. Paying close attention to glyphs and following the distinct lines.

  “No, my instincts are right. Something is wrong with the baby. It might pose a danger to my family… or it might not…” She thought, struggling to make a decision on how to proceed. There had been too many tragedies in the last decade.

  “For now, it doesn’t pose a risk, so I can observe and wait.”

  A little bit of Mana channeled into the paper itself, and it went up in flames. She opened a window to get rid of the smell and obscured the magical traces as best as she could.

  To be honest, the only reason she cleaned up so thoroughly was because of her daughter Maya. Not the brightest magic weaver herself, but she knew of her mother’s ways, and if she found even the smallest hint of magic, she would become suspicious that her mother was messing with her child, and there would be hell to pay.

  “Ungrateful brat, that one. You drop her just one time on her head as a baby, and bang, her daughter wants to become an adventurer instead of playing her part in the family legacy,” she grumbled to herself.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The baby continued to watch her, and its facial expression never changed. It wasn’t smiling. It was looking at her with a stern look on its face. Evaluating her and pondering something in this little head of hers.

  It was unnerving! Normally, children smiled, became unsure, their expression would waver, and maybe they would start crying. They did not look like a merchant deep in concentration while checking his books.

  As always, she was only interested in protecting her family and their continued legacy. It seemed the latest addition to their family was very interested in magic. She would have to keep a close eye on the little spawn, but maybe her granddaughter would turn out useful. Only time would tell. Perhaps that was her second chance to do it right?

  *** Kiara ***

  It took quite something to get Kiara out of her sorrow, but today’s event certainly did the trick and pierced the thick fog of sadness surrounding her.

  “Ok, let’s think it through rationally…” she thought her thoughts running at a million miles a minute.

  “On the plus side. Magic was real! Magic was fucking real!!! How?!? And more importantly, what do I need to do to learn it? Maybe I can already do magic if I try hard enough?” She concentrated hard for a second on something, anything really, to happen, but soon gave up.

  “No clue where to even start… but there will be a way to learn. I will just need to be patient. Magic is running in my new family after all. Damn that was a weird thought.”

  She missed her old parents and her little brother… She had lost so much. Her new family still felt foreign and unfamiliar to her. Now, instead of being the older sibling, she was the younger one.

  The thought of annoying her older brother amused her.

  “It is my duty as a second-born brother… Or well, sister now, I guess. Fuck another weird situation” she shook her weak head slightly from side to side.

  “The plus side is that magic is real and might help me find her. Maybe there is a way.” As long as she did not understand magic, she consciously decided to stay optimistic. A lot might be possible that she did not know of yet.

  “On the negative side… My grandmother is apparently an evil witch who likes to torture babies.” She thought solemnly “Damn that needle had hurt like hell.”

  It was just like in her previous life, whenever she had donated blood, the little poke in her finger to determine her hematopoietic iron value had hurt the most.

  “Maybe I just have sensitive fingers? Across two lives seems improbable...” Her thoughts were drifting once more.

  “What’s worse is I have absolutely no clue at all what that woman had done with my blood. For all I know, she might have enslaved my very soul with her strange glowing ritual circle. I guess I would count as a virgin sacrifice right now… Maybe she had cast a spell on me to make me unable to ever refuse any of her requests, or she was siphoning my very soul to regain her fading youth.” Worry was creeping into her thoughts.

  “Damn my luck! Everything might be possible with magic after all. Who knew?” Not her, of that, she was sure. But there was nothing she could do about it right now. She had tried to memorize the complex symbols and geometries in the circle. However, all she could remember was the impression of precisely drawn geometric lines on a piece of paper, before it went up in flames.

  “Seeing it just once, there was no chance to gain any insights into what exactly his grandmother was doing, but with enough repetition, there might be a chance.” She theorized while mustering her grandmother carefully.

  She was an older woman with long, graying red hair and a commanding presence. Her movements and words made it clear she expected others to follow her orders. She was dressed in long green robes with elegant silver lines woven into them. On her hip, she wore a thick leather belt with several pouches hanging from it. She looked remarkably similar to her mother, but was missing her kindness and loving aura.

  The look in her grandmother’s eyes had suddenly changed. A cold shiver had run down her spine. She didn’t move a single muscle. It was as if a predator had suddenly set its gaze on her. Her grandmother smiled.

  “Gods above, that’s one evil smile.” She thought and shivered.

  “Would it be worth it to try to learn magic from such a monster? It would be a dance with the devil, and both sides were only out for themselves,” she pondered. She did not know what this demon, this evil witch, wanted from her, but it was crystal clear to her that there would be a price to pay for every secret she wrenched from her.

  “Love turns even a smart man into a fool,” she sighed internally. “So let us dance, devil! Wait, what style do you dance with the devil? Rumba, Bachata, a Viennese waltz?!? Please don’t let it be a Boogie. I just don’t like that one. On the other hand, at least with a Boogie, I know the basics. If the devil wanted to dance Salsa, I would be completely lost. Again, on the other hand, I always wanted to learn some Salsa, so yeah, let’s dance Salsa. Wait, what?!? What am I even thinking?!?” Confused, her thoughts drifted more and more. Her mind became increasingly sluggish, and soon she drifted to sleep.

  *** Maya ***

  “Something was very wrong!” Maya thought when she entered her living room and saw little Kiara sleeping peacefully in her grandmother’s arms.

  Her lovely little devil, which had kept her up nearly nonstop for the last months and until recently was mostly crying, was sleeping peacefully in another woman’s arms with a slight smile on her face. High treason! How could she?!?

  What was even worse, her mother, Magdalena, was also smiling, and it was her evil, scheming smile. The smile of a fisherman who saw a huge fish struggling on his hook, knew there was no chance for it to escape, and now it was his turn to slowly and methodically reel it in.

  “What the hell had happened here, while I took a little nap?? Petro had not been easy either, but so much more normal. Isn’t the second child supposed to be easier?”

  Slowly and gently, two big arms wrapped around her, and she could feel warm breathing on her neck.

  “Aren’t they cute together?” whispered Sarok, her husband, into her ear before gently kissing her on the cheek. His warm embrace felt comforting and did wonders to ease her tension.

  “Yes, our little Kiara might be a little bit special, but I love her with all my heart,” she thought happily.

  Turning slightly in his embrace, she whispered back, “Yes, we made a beautiful little girl together” before giving him a gentle kiss.

  His chest swelled with pride, and she felt his lips curling up in one of those stupid grins she loved so much.

  “Sometimes he is such a doofus, but he is my doofus,” she lovingly chided him.