Flames at the fireplace spread a calming radiance over the wooden floor, catching up to a bassinet beside a narrow bed in the corner. A baby rested inside the wicker cradle, while the mother slept next to him on the bed.

Countless times during the night, he would wake up, which mostly implied nightly cries that disrupted everyone's sleep in the house, perhaps as a result of hunger, thirst, or a dirty napkin, which he hated the most.

Living as a newborn child had difficulties. He could not take care of even his utmost basic needs, feeling humiliated. To think that he had to put up with this situation for at least a year or two made him extremely frustrated.

He hated kids before getting reincarnated, especially toddlers, thinking of them as dirty little creatures that are solely dependent on the others and can't even control wetting themselves, and now hated them to a greater extent.

Aydem's cries, as usual, awakened the sleeping mother. She immediately came to him, checking if anything is wrong, noticing the dirty mess the baby had made. Her face was not filled with disgust, but rather carried a gentle smile, as she started cleaning her boy and changing the napkins, feeding him milk, like every previous night.

He would not blame her to be disgusted, giving her right to be frustrated and angry. After all, no one wants to be forcefully awakened by the cries of a baby at midnight and have to clean up his mess. However, his mother seemed passionate about anything related to her boy even if it involved such vulgar tasks.

The crying ended as the mother properly took care of him, going back to bed. Aydem, feeling tired, also went into a deep sleep, a one that was different than the ones before.

Opening his eyes, Aydem saw a land of meadow, flat and warm, which pervaded the surroundings under a clean blue sky. A beautiful, peaceful sight indeed. He could see long rivers, splitting the land into four regions, one to the south, filled with blooms and flowers, one to the east, home of playful rabbits and baby goats, one to the west, overwhelmed by a large group of deer grazing on the field, one to the north, dominated by the presence of a gigantic tree that reached the heavens, deep in thickness and everlasting in height, all sorts of colorful birds living on its huge branches, singing songs and flying around.

As a shadow was cast upon the south, the sky turned gloomy, and the big tree grew pitch-dark in shade, overshadowing the entire lands. The limbs of the dark tree fell down, turning into rats once touching the ground, flooding the lands with their numbers. The sky began raining blood, rivers reddened as a result. The plague of rats jumped into the rivers, moving to the other fields and concealing the grassland. First victims were the blooms, then the deer, and rabbits at last.

The rats stopped ravaging the lands and stared at him. A powerful sense of dread brought him out of the dream world and back to the reality. He immediately spotted a shadow, arising from under his cradle to move over the floor to the walls, staying on the ceiling motionless, disappearing after a short moment.

Aydem started crying aloud, forcing the mother to wake up and take the boy in her arms to comfort him.

What was that nightmare?

Shocked and confused, even breathing properly became a hard thing to do. The nightmare had a considerable impact on his mind, although it was all just a dream.

But the warmth of his mother's touch calmed him down, soothing his discomfort, and slowly putting him into another deep sleep. From that night on, he no longer suffered from nightmares.

Nights turning into days, and days into nights, Aydem would be forced to wake up exactly at midnight, the same time every night, seeing the same shapes and shadows appear from the floor and disappear into the roof.

Aydem couldn't tell the passage of time precisely, but he could still tell that the length of each day was identical to that on earth, while also observing the changes in seasons, the leaves falling upon the ground, the snows covering the grassy land, sensing the calming breeze and seeing the trees shining in blossom, or the unbearable heat of the summer, coming straight from the hell.

The winter and spring had ended, so about six months had passed, assuming each season in this new world was roughly equivalent to three months. Aydem decided the time had come to finally walk on his own feet.

With his dad gone, like always, and the mother taking a rest, Aydem left the cradle and started to take steps on the floor, waiting for the mom to get out of bed to see her child's first steps. Of course, for a normal child, that would be a very hard task, but not for the mind of an already adult male.

She was astonished to see her baby walking after just 6 months, running to pull him off to stare at him in delight and surprise, speaking in phrases that Aydem still failed to fully understand, but if he could guess, using the knowledge of the past six months, it would be something along the lines of, "My genius boy!"

Hours later, his dad came back home, bringing the usual keen smell of dirt and soil. The father had the same shocked, but joyful expression as the mother.

The next step was to learn this world's language, starting from understanding what they say, and moving on to abilities such as reading, which would be crucial for self-studying sorcery and magic.

He had to be careful and patient. His family lived in a very small town. Who knows what beliefs they held. For those reasons, he made a promise to not act strange and draw unnecessary attention, like speaking at the moment of birth or in the cradle, which would either result in getting worshipped as a divine entity, or accused of being a demon, or none of those and everyone would accept it as a normal phenomenon.

The risk was high, so he didn't intend to take it in hope of going through a faster route. Moving on cautiously was better than being sorry later.

It could also be the case that the practice of magic didn't align with the local beliefs of the commoners, resulting in a disaster if he asked his parents about those teachings at a young age, making them further suspicious.

Before making any important decisions, having sufficient information was indeed necessary, but in order to achieve that, he first had to learn their language and follow what they do. As a child, he had an enormous advantage to find out people's actual beliefs and true intentions since everyone would lower their guard in a baby's presence. After all, a toddler cannot understand or tell anyone what you have said in front of them. Suffering from a weak memory, they're not going to remember it either in the future.