I was falling like a comet into the world, and I was fighting every step of the way. I had been handed my fate, and I resisted.

  I won't do it, you can't make me. I won't kill the child.

  The goddess had taken me from death and launched me into this place. She was whimsical and powerful, and lives existed only for her amusement. Lives like mine. Lives like his. His family, the friends he would make, the loves he would share. The goddess had shown me how it worked, how the souls of the dead would be brought from one world to another to displace the mind of a child. The original soul trapped inside watching as its fate was twisted away from its course, for good or for ill. The way that their body would respond to the wishes of an outsider, an usurper. The child would watch the people who should love them, instead come to know an interloper. And only years later would the displaced soul, the outsider, even find out that the child who had been meant to be- was still in there, watching everything.

  I don't want it, that won't be me. Not that guilt.

  I was falling toward a woman. She was in a bed sweating, surrounded by nurses. The son in her stomach was soon to be. And the goddess had decided that this child would be my home and my vehicle. That my knowledge would look out through his eyes, that my words would fill his mouth and he would never get to ask his own questions or get to know his own parents. Trapped in the truest loneliness in the world, unknown in his own body. The contractions were close together, the duchess was screaming. There were only minutes to go. I could see through the ceiling like a telescope, I could see the path tunneled open in front of me. I was falling towards her, and towards him.

  I refuse. Nathan will live.

  Her power is pushing me, so much of it. Irresistible. It propels me like a fist pushing into my back. I am a naked soul, screaming defiance and incandescent with the heat of atmospheric entry, punching through realms like falling debris. I cannot divert course, I cannot swerve to miss them. I fight to slow myself, and the pressure increases. She has vast powers, greater than worlds, and to pin me into place is a negligible flex of her energies. I am a skydiver, limbs spread to slow my fall, to control my trajectory. She will not allow this. All the motion is in one vector. This is a casual movement for her, but it feels like oceans are pounding me downward, like neutron-star iron is binding my way.

  I collapse my resistance. I point myself like a spear. I dive.

  If I cannot keep myself from falling into this body, into this child, then I will do the next best thing. I will dive too deep and lose myself. I cannot stop the goddess's power from pushing me into him, but I refuse to stand in his doorway and lock him in. I refuse to live as a layer between Nathan and his own world. I will not push him down to live in darkness and silence unknown. I will consign myself instead, living hidden beneath his thoughts, so that his life will be his own.

  I fall into the mother, into the child, into his soul, and I plunge deep like icy water.

  The goddess's power pulls back, no longer propelling me against my will, but it's too late. I had my moment. I refuse the fate she decided for me. The child is breathing air now, Nathan is screaming his birth-cry, and I am not there for it. I smugly drift in darkness. I will not spend my life torturing this boy. And not even a goddess can force me to. If I had fingers, I'd be holding them up just for her while I fell backwards into an abyss that would never let me go.

  The power came for me.

  I thrashed and resisted again. The power flowed at me, tangled around me, pulled me upwards. The goddess was confused, her power was her thoughts and I could feel them. The same energy that wrapped around me and dragged at me also conveyed her mind: surprise, curiosity, annoyance. I could not hear her words, but I could feel her pique. The child's eyes were swollen shut, but light was trickling in, and he was hearing voices. He was joining the world, they could see him and he was gaining experiences. A hundred sensations poured into him, catalogued, to be filtered and ordered and turned into his personality. Nathan was born, long live Nathan.

  The goddess was pulling me up out of his depths. I tried to swim back down.

  "Duke Harigold, it's a son. Have you and your wife chosen a name?"

  "He is Nathan. Prince Nathan Harigold."

  Her thoughts now were resigned, maybe grim. There was a vindictiveness to them, spiteful. She would not let me go, and would not let me have my way, but I had been fast enough, and the boy was no empty vessel for me now. I would not displace him, and she could not make me. But, she was determined, I would not have my way. I had denied her the victory she wanted, but at least I would not be allowed to choose how I defeated her. All that extra power, and she had an idea. She sent me here to amuse her. To be interesting. I thought I could beat her by doing the unexpected, but that is not how one refuses to amuse a goddess. By thwarting her, by trying to beat her, I made myself interesting to her. I raised the stakes.

  She raised them higher.

  "Push, My Lady! Your Grace? I think there is a second child."

  "Is it safe? Can she deliver a second?"

  "She is strong, Your Grace. Our spells are ready in case there is trouble. There is nothing to worry about."

  No. I screamed in darkness. I thrashed. I resisted. But a power that could break worlds down was upon me again, and this time she was paying full attention. Tissue and life were gathered up and shaped, a tiny infant body was joined to the sweating duchess. My thrashing came through these tiny limbs, my resistance pushed its futile muscles. My soul was settled into place, and soon my denials were being sprayed into the air, a tiny mewling voice. My refusals were just a voice now, and there were hands on me, pressing coolly against my heated skin.

  "A daughter, Your Grace. Your son has a sister. Is .. is there a name chosen?"

  "A name, yes, we knew that if there was a son it was to be Nathan, and a daughter would be Natalie."

  "My lord, I present your daughter, Lady Natalie Harigold."

  The goddess's presence retreated, I could feel her withdraw. She was smug and knowing, and she was interested. I was here to disrupt things and change a story. I had changed my own story instead. And rather than set me free, this made me her new prized possession, the most entertaining of her collection.

  Not every fiction is a world. There's a certain amount of narrative density that's required, and a certain amount of attention. It's kind of like forming a pearl. But there are a lot of worlds, and most of them are based on fictions. And the most established of those worlds can in turn spawn more fiction and more worlds. The world I come from is one of the most prolific origins of new worlds. There's so much narrative density built into our cultures that nearly any story that gets written already is leaning on a dozen other stories, and the audience can recognize enough tropes that only a couple of pages are needed to shorthand hours of exposition and background. Enormously complex confluences of ideas can be summed up in just a few words.

  Dating sim, otome, regency romance, isekai, power struggle.

  The goddess explained that it's almost impossible for people or things to be sent back upstream from one world to another, and very difficult to come from one unrelated realm to another. But it was easy to send something intangible, like a mind or a soul, downstream along the same flows of possibility that created a new world in the first place. Because my world created this world, it is possible to send me to here. And in fact it happens rather often. So, you know, I shouldn't feel too special about it.

  The nursery was opulent; Duke Harigold and company clearly had a very John Hammond "spared no expense" kind of mentality for raising kids. Mounds of toys, mountains of fluffy friends. So many layers of careworn blankets laid on the ground that I could not even feel the floor underneath them. The ceiling was painted in bright colors and interesting scenes, and strewn with colorful chandeliers and mobiles. Padded playsets and playpens, and what seemed at first to be an entire brigade of maids, nannies, nurses, and caretakers. But even if you took away every one of those servants, attendants and staff, I was never alone.

  Nathan was much bigger than me. Probably because he was supposed to be here, and the goddess basically assembled me from whatever was available. I'm just lucky she didn't kill our mother just to have enough material to work with. And also, one of the nursemaids has mentioned that it's not uncommon for one twin to be larger than the other, and when it happened it was usually a rather dramatic difference. I should say so, this kid was half-again my size! And he was always right there, usually within arm's reach. My twin.

  Some of the nurses were worried for me. So small. Sickly. But, some pointed out, so alert. I kept turning my head towards sounds, and I was trying to get control over my hands and legs. My nerves were just a big unlabeled switchboard and I had to figure out what I could try that would actually do stuff. It wasn't like I could just move this body like I moved my old body, someone had scrambled the signals. I would need to relearn from scratch. That was annoying.

  Also, they worried loudly about me at first because "she won't take milk!" which is apparently a really terrifying trait in a one-day-old. But, come on, I just got here. And now someone's pushing- well, there's a wet-nurse trying to feed me, to put it delicately. And I'm like hey, how about a handshake first?! But listening to the worry and fear in their voices, I gave in and humored them. It felt really weird. I wasn't sure what I was doing. I needed to get cleaned up a couple times. But I got over it. Amazing what you can get used to when there's nothing else.

  Then the pain started. It shot through my stomach, and I gasped. Fuck that hurt! I knew that babies get gas pains, but you know what? It's a lot different when there's nothing in your stomach and never has been. There's a lot of nerves in the human digestion, and we spend years learning to ignore all the sensations that come from there. But these were brand new systems getting pushed online, new tissues that have never been touched by any matter at all. And also the adjustment of gut flora, bacteria balances... It really sucked. I rolled onto my side, clutched my stomach and groaned, occasionally kicking my feet when it got too uncomfortable to hold in.

  Nathan howled, he yawled, he screeched. I scooted closer, and I put a hand on his shoulder. It took me some tries- I was still figuring out which nerves made my shoulders move, and the shoulder has lots of directions. But when my hand landed on him, Nathan calmed. He breathed hard, and his face was scrunched, but after some minutes he opened his eyes and looked at me. One was a vibrant bright blue and the other was a striking gold color. The first wisps of his hair were firetruck red. Once he finished being such an infant he was going to make a wonderful dating-sim protagonist.

  Damn, presumably I look like a smaller copy of him. Twins. Wait, it just occurred to me to wonder: if he's going to grow up to be famously handsome, love-at-first-sight handsome, then does that mean I'm gonna be really hot?

  I'm two days old, and I'm already thinking about this.

  Nathan was my constant companion but hardly my only one. The nursery was a constant buzz of people in and out. Our parents employed a lot of people. There is no way that this room developed enough dust to justify three shifts of maids coming through with feather dusters, but it made more sense when I saw that none of them ever entered this room without taking plenty of time to lean over our cribs, or the playpen, or even our changing table. We were the stars of the show, and everyone wanted to get a good look at us. Apparently we were adorable.

  It was hard to tell really. My eyes were hard to focus, and sometimes hard to hold them open. Every muscle in my body was out of shape, easily tired, and malfunctioning half the time. Most of what I could see of myself was pink arms and legs that looked like fat little sausages. Nathan was the same, but with a round little face and lots of sleepy noises.

  "Oh, look at this sleepy little man! He's going to be a heartbreaker, just like his dad!"

  "They said she was sickly, but just look at her! So awake, so bright!"

  "So remarkable they have the same eyes and everything, so close to identical!"

  Sure I was tired a lot. Turns out that being born takes a lot out of you. Also, babies have almost nothing for energy reserves. But also infants have no understanding of what 'awake' and 'asleep' even are, let alone having a preference for one over the other. I tried to stay awake when I could, to get a better understanding of what was going on. Also, I hated not having control of my own body. So I practiced a lot, working each set of nerves and muscles until it came easily and naturally. It took weeks to catalog all my parts and how to use them.

  During those weeks, the tummy-aches started to die down. My skin didn't itch so much all the time. The swelling in my eyelids and ears went down some. Nathan, too. He seemed much more able to open his eyes and focus. Sometimes I think he even intended to make sounds when he was making sounds. And, our parents came around to see us a lot more.

  For the first couple days the Duchess just came around when she needed to feed us, apparently we were really exhausting to carry and pass. Giving birth once at a time is enough for most people, she had to deal with a surprise encore. But after she was up on her feet more easily, she was around a lot. Nathan and I had her blue eyes, and our father's hair and gold eyes. And she talked to us both a lot. She had a bright and cheery voice, which tended towards sing-song when she was feeling comfortable.

  "Oh, my Nathan! Already so handsome, we're so lucky to have such a son as you! And little Natalie, growing fast. You look like you want to get up and see the world already!"

  I was able to hold my head up and move it around for a while, and sometimes I could use my arms and legs to position myself. I'd like to be crawling around and investigating, but I only just figured out how to curl the fingers of my left hand without my right knee folding up at the same time. The best news was that I was putting on weight quickly, I might have been born the runt but I seemed eager to catch up.

  It took more than just the Duchess though. There were two of us, and she was lovely but she was not, ahem, a bosomy sort of woman. So a wet-nurse or two was brought in to help. That was where it got really awkward for me. Look, I get that I just got reincarnated as a newborn infant, but I still have my capacity for embarrassment!

  "Oh, Natalie gets bashful for anyone but her mama, it's okay!"

  This wet nurse knew her business. "The child is three weeks old. She shouldn't even tell us apart until the end of autumn."

  "Pssh. My little Natalie's so sweet and smart! She gets bashful, that's all!"

  Yeah, I was skipping over some important developmental milestones. Nathan was just now able to move his eyes towards people. I was working on bowel control.

  I did sleep plenty. Growing is a very energy-intensive activity. And I was exercising constantly. When you've got infant arms, just reaching up, and then down, and then up again is a workout. I was isolating muscle groups and developing them. I slept right through our naming day celebration, apparently we were carried out to a church, wrapped in golden robes, anointed with some pigments and then returned to our parents. I was exhausted and slept right through it all. Moving my head, controlling my arms, shaping my sounds, everything was so damn hard.

  But you know what came easy, every time?

  Status.

  [ Natalie Harigold ] [ Level 0 Sorceress ] [ Rival ]

  [ Strength 0 ][ Stamina 1 ][ Intellect 6 ][ Charisma 3 ]

  [ HP: NA ][ MP: NA ]

  [ Essence Gathered: Nathan, Void ]

  [ Condition: Untethered Essence (can fully bind Essence 100%, can bind Essence more easily) ]