Cradle of Shadows

The world was a blur of soft pastels and muffled voices.

Li Anqi no, Anya, still Anya lay swaddled in a thick blanket, the weight of her own limbs strange and distant. She couldn't move much, couldn't speak, and yet her mind stirred with a quiet fire. The ceiling above her crib shimmered with morning light, and beyond it, she sensed something… else.

She couldn't name it. A feeling. A presence.

When the nurse entered the room to check on her, Anya's eyes fluttered open, tracking the motion. The woman smiled kindly, leaned in to whisper in a language Anya still couldn't fully understand, but the tone wrapped around her like silk.

Soothing. Safe. Familiar in an unfamiliar way.

And then… the lights flickered.

Just for a second.

The nurse didn't notice, humming a gentle lullaby under her breath. But Anya saw it. Felt it. Something in the air had shifted, like a ripple across still water. And it had started from her. From inside her.

Her heart, still so new, beat with a rhythm older than this body.

She didn't cry. Not yet. Not from hunger, not from discomfort. She was too aware, too… awake. She could sense the emotions around her, not thoughts, not words, but vibrations. Echoes of love, fatigue, anxiety.

Especially when her mother came into the room.

Lin Shuang hovered at the door, tired and pale, her hospital gown too large around her shoulders. Her eyes, rimmed with dark circles, watched Anya with an intensity that wasn't just maternal.

It was fear.

But not of the baby.

Of the silence.

"She doesn't cry," Lin Shuang whispered to her husband that night. "Not like other newborns. Sometimes I feel like… she's watching me."

Her husband brushed it off with a tired laugh, saying it was the stress, the painkillers, the hormones.

But it wasn't.

Anya could feel it in her bones ,her new bones, that something was different. A current hummed beneath her skin, quiet as static, invisible but real. She could sense people entering the room before they made a sound. She could mimic the pitch of a cry to make a nurse stay longer, or to summon her mother.

Not deliberately.

Not yet.

But something ancient had followed her into this life.

One night, as the moonlight pooled on the tiled floor and shadows danced across the room, Anya drifted into uneasy sleep and dreamt.

Of feathers.

A sky the color of ink.

Of books that whispered secrets in languages she didn't know, but somehow understood.

And a woman — faceless, floating above a silver lake, who whispered: "You are the echo of two lives. The world will try to shape you. Don't let it."

Anya woke with her tiny fists clenched, her blanket damp with sweat.

And for the first time, she cried... a sharp, keening wail that split the quiet night.

Her mother rushed in, heart pounding. She scooped Anya into her arms, whispering comforts, rocking her back and forth. The fear returned to her face, but this time it was mingled with something else.

Awe.

The baby in her arms had tears like glass and eyes too knowing for her age.

At the edge of life and dream, something had awakened.

And it was only the beginning.