On an unknown place, at an unknown time...
James opened his eyes with a worrying amount of effort. His eyelids felt as heavy as if someone had sewn them shut. And his body was hurting, like suddenly the entire world was freezing. Is this what the process of dying was like? He knew scientifically the body temperature lowered slowly as he bled out, but funnily enough he didn't feel the pain of his wound.
Once he finally managed to open his eyes, the view was... Gorgeous. The ceiling was filled to the brim with pompous decorations, there were pieces of art, paintings he had never seen everywhere, and the ceiling itself had one big beautiful chandelier and was painted with a vibrant red.
What is even happening? Shouldn't I be at a hospital at least? What is the deal with this museum-like building?
Not being able to comprehend what was happening, he started hearing voices and just then, he noticed a beautiful woman, with brown hair and a chubby face, staring at him worriedly, the woman seemed impossible big; he wasn't that tall, he stood at 1'75 and he knew that was on the smaller side, but the woman towered over him and seemed like a giant. He noticed that everything seemed impossibly big, now that he focused a little bit more.
-Fiora, est puer bene?
He immediately recognised the language as latin from the angelic voice that rang behind him, although he couldn't speak it, she was asking about a child and if it was okay. That far he could get. Trying to move his muscles proved to be a fruitless endeavour, and he felt annoyingly hungry. It was cold, he was surrounded by giants and they were asking about a child. Then, everything clicked in his head.
I... Have been reborn!
He arrived at the only logical conclusion: he had been reborn.
He tried waggling around and making some noise so that hey would stop worrying. And they did, the chubby servant (or at least he understood her as such) and the mesmerising ginger woman, with beautiful brown eyes looked at him and smiled. They started speaking Latin again, but his bare knowledge of the language couldn't help him understand what were they saying.
After eating a bit, he was incredibly tired, and closed his eyes once again...
The first three years of Jame's life were quick to pass by, he could now, if for short periods of time, walk around. He learnt that his "house" was indeed a gargantuan palace. There were always servants around him, and he barely saw his parents. Every now and then they visited him, but he was mainly with a nanny (the chubby servant, whose name he learnt was Fiora) and some maids. He managed to look himself at the mirror again: Skin as white as snow, blue eyes and blonde hair.
I... have mixed feelings about this. Sounds too much like a setting, my appearance is too... Perfect. Almost as if I was drawn.
James was no self-deprecating guy, he knew himself to be handsome in his past life, but now his appearance was... Like someone designed him to be a cute doll. And he could say the same thing about the rest of his family: his two sisters and two brothers and even his father, all of them shared this unique blonde hair pale skin and blue eyes to a worrying degree, and everyone seemed impossibly chiseled.
His mother was beautiful as well, but she seemed a lot more average when compared to them, which didn't make a lot of sense to him.
As for now, he was able to communicate and read one of the two languages of the empire: That's right, he was in an Empire! And he was the fifth son of the emperor! Which meant he had become someone fed by a golden spoon and had nothing to worry about.
Even though he could read, he was at an age where it would be highly suspicious if he were to just, start reading 300 pages history books, so he stuck to the child friendly books as to not raise too much awareness. He was already considered one of the biggest geniuses by being able to read and do mathematics at such a young age, he couldn't yet show how smart he was least he proved to be a hindrance to one of his brothers and ended up dead at a young age like in any royal family in history.
But things started to get... Complicated. The official year was the year 3548 after the foundation of Rostdor, the city and Empire which he belonged to, and it was the official global calendar: every country in the world used it.
The official religion of the empire was the Imperial cult: the founder of the city of Rostdor was allegedly of divine blood, and hence the emperor was the divine voice of the chief of Gods in earth. A politheistic religion that made the emperor something of a divine emperor, nothing new but weirdly anachronistic by this world's standard. So, James and his siblings were technically related by blood with uuuh the king of gods, Jupiter.
The prove of their divine birth being, well, their features: every single child of royal blood would have blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes and would be unaffected by common sicknesses like colds and such.
That was nice. Another weird fact is that there was no recorded natural death in the royal house. Technically speaking, once they reached 40 it seemed as if they stopped ageing, but there was no way to know if they were incapable of natural death because all of the emperor's died unnatural ones: betrayed by the nobles, by their brothers, by their sisters or grandchildren.
Non lived past 60, and that was a natural occurrence, some in the empire thought it was the way of the divine blood to test who was the fittest to rule.
-Your Imperial highness, it's time for lunch. This humble servant hopes you can accompany us to the dinning hall.
He heard from an elegant old butler behind him. He had a refined moustache and a long thin beard, almost resembling an eastern philosopher. Which also made James or Caesar Publius Von Rostffen, ponder about the mystery of the new world. In the palace, all of the servants were from different ethnicities and no one seemed to care about it. Although it would be wonderful if racism was just out of the picture, it seemed to hold more of a political meaning rather than pure human empathy. In this world the most predominant ethnicity was the IberoItalian, with people being mostly white/brown, while the absolute lack or the excess of melanins seemed to provoke genuine disgust on people, the only exception being the Royal lineage.
You couldn't be too black, you couldn't be too white, ironic.
The reason all of the ethnicities worked in the palace, however seemed to be for a simple reason: to show that everyone from everywhere served the emperor. A nice reminder that everyone not royal was equally beneath their blood.
-Guide me, butler.
Said Caesar (James), after which he left his room and his books, to take tiny steps in the gigantic palace.