The name they gave me was Alice.
It could've been worse. I could've ended up as Brunhilda or Gudrun or something equally unflattering. But still—Alice? Really? In a land of roaring fires, horned helmets, and whatever-the-hell creatures probably stalked the forests at night, I got named after a girl who chased a rabbit into a surreal fever dream.
And let me tell you—this was definitely not Wonderland.
No talking animals. No tea parties. Just a perpetually sore body, incomprehensible shouting, and the constant threat of explosive diarrhea.
The first few months were a blur of bodily betrayal. I'd move an arm, and it would flop uselessly. I'd try to sit up, only to fall backwards into whatever scratchy blanket they laid me on. One time, I managed to lift my head an entire inch before gravity won its inevitable battle. I celebrated like I'd just bench-pressed a car. That moment of upright victory might as well have been a triumph of Olympic proportions.
It wasn't just the physical limitations—it was the sensory overload. Everything was louder, brighter, rougher. My ears picked up every creak of wood, every distant shout, every clatter of metal outside our tiny home. My eyes, which were used to glowing screens and fluorescent lighting, now squinted against firelight and sun filtering through animal-hide curtains. Even the smells were too much—smoke, sweat, meat, dirt. The world smelled real, and it was exhausting.
But despite it all, I adapted. Slowly. Painfully.
Ingrid—my new mother— spoke to me constantly, her words warm and patient even when I screamed for no reason or vomited down the front of her dress. She narrated everything. Cooking, cleaning, weaving, even gossiping with the neighbors. I latched onto every syllable, trying to decipher the patterns, the grammar, the strange lilts of the old tongue. It was like trying to solve a thousand-piece puzzle in the dark. My brain, grown soft from convenience and modernity, had no choice but to grind its gears and catch up.
Einar, my new father, was quieter, gruffer, but not unkind. He'd hold me like I might explode, and yet, he'd hum low songs under his breath, always watching me with a guarded curiosity. Sometimes, I caught him staring like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe he was. After all, the priest hadn't exactly handed me over without warnings. Whatever he had been told, he took it with a grain of salt and an axe always within arm's reach.
The first real breakthrough came when I recognized a word.
"Vatn." Water.
Ingrid had said it a dozen times while pouring it into a wooden bowl, and each time, I watched her hands, her mouth, the context. The next time she said it, I knew. A small thing, maybe. But it meant I was getting somewhere. That single word was a pinprick of light in the overwhelming fog that had settled over my mind since arriving in this new body.
My body was finally catching up, too. By my first birthday—if I had the timeline right—I could sit up on my own and scoot across the floor in awkward lunges. My legs were still useless jelly sticks, but I had mastered the art of determined crawling. I was fast, too. Ingrid once said I moved like a hungry badger. I chose to take that as a compliment.
Every day, I pushed myself harder. Trying to stand. Trying to balance. Trying to climb out of the crude wooden crib Einar had built and faceplant into destiny. I treated every bruise as a badge of honor. The world wanted me weak, but I had already died once. I was not going to be defeated by gravity.
The day I took my first real steps was one for the books.
I had been standing—barely, shakily, wobbling like a drunk squirrel—next to the bench by the fire. Ingrid clapped for me every time I managed not to topple over, which only encouraged my dangerously inflated sense of pride. Einar just grunted and mumbled something about me being too stubborn to fall. That day, I took one step. Then another.
And then promptly crashed into the firewood pile.
They both rushed over, shouting, but I was already laughing. Not because it didn't hurt—it did—but because I had done it. On my own. In this strange, cruel world, I had taken the first step.
From that point, everything accelerated.
Words came next. I mimicked sounds, matched them to objects, actions, expressions. I obsessed over it. Every waking moment was dedicated to decoding, repeating, mastering. I was learning not just how to speak, but how to belong. Language meant power. It meant control. It meant that next time someone called me strange or cursed or worse, I would know they had, and I could answer for myself.
By the time I was two, I was holding clumsy, baby-voiced conversations. Broken sentences at first, then full thoughts. Ingrid nearly cried the first time I asked her a question. Einar just muttered something about witches, but he was secretly pleased—I could see it in his eyes. He'd never say it aloud, but the pride was there in how he started handing me tools instead of toys.
And then came the moment I'd been waiting for.
One quiet evening, after they had put me to bed, I sat in the cradle, staring up at the ceiling beams. The fire crackled low. I took a deep breath, focused all my will, and whispered:
"System..."
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, a soft chime—like a harp string being plucked—and a faint blue window shimmered into existence above me.
It was translucent, flickering faintly, written in a strange mix of runes and modern characters. But I could read it.
~~~~~~~~~~~
[Status Screen]
Name: Alice
Age: 2 Years
Race: Human
Class: N/A
Title: Drengr
Attributes:
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 3
Endurance: 2
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 5
Charisma: 4
Luck: ???
Skills:
Language Acquisition [Rank: E+] (47%)
Observation [Rank: E] (31%)
Motor Coordination [Rank: F+] (22%)
Memory Retention [Rank: D] (74%)
Perks:
Reincarnated Soul: Retains memories and reasoning from previous life.
Trickster's Mark: Mild probability shifts in favor of chaos. (Passive)
Rapid Learning (Low Tier): Accelerated growth in cognitive development.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I stared, wide-eyed. Not because it was there—Loki had promised—but because it confirmed what I suspected.
This was just like a game. And I had just found my character sheet.
The stats weren't impressive—not yet—but they were real. Tangible. Something I could work with. Something I could build.
"Language Acquisition... forty-seven percent," I muttered. "Not bad. I wonder if I get a bonus for swearing."
I waved a tiny hand at the screen. It didn't react. After a few tries, I whispered, "Close."
The window vanished with a soft shimmer.
I grinned.
This was it. The beginning. The real beginning.
The first step had been taken.
Next?
I'd run.
And eventually, perhaps I'd fly.