Arcane: Sea of ​​blood

As someone whose name I can't recall once said: "Be careful what you wish for." But if you apply that to me, then who the hell could have wished this upon me?

Right now, as I've gathered from the conversations of the people around me, my situation is extremely unenviable and even absurd. I'm only one year old, and I'm in prison.

To be precise, I'm in the quiet depths of Piltover Prison. In fact, my mother gave birth to me here, six months after she was imprisoned for killing three peacekeepers. This is partly why I'm still here. Had she told the guards about me, I'm sure my situation could have been different. There are several reasons why I'm still here.

First: my mother is damn strong, and the guards don't dare enter her cell. Second: my mother is damn strong, and the other inmates don't dare spread word about me. Third: my mother is damn strong, and by sacrificing the food of other inmates, she gets enough to eat, and I get enough milk.

Piltover Prison isn't just a place to serve a sentence. It's a labyrinth of old stone walls, soaked in despair and pain. But even here, there are rules, hierarchies. And my mother, Laura, is at the top of that hierarchy. She's not just physically strong—she's smart, calculating, and seems to know something that others don't. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that she's not just a thug.

However, my mother isn't the only mystery in this story. Despite my young age, I'm fully aware of who I am and what has happened to me. I'm not an ordinary child. I am someone who once lived another life, in another body, in another world. Transmigration... reincarnation... whatever you call it, the fact remains: I remember everything. My past life, my mistakes, my desires. And now I'm here, in this tiny body, in this grim prison, with a mother who seems to know more than she lets on. She doesn't talk much, by the way, and when she does, it's usually in a commanding tone, often ordering around the other inmates, who avoid her like the plague. Or maybe she's reminiscing about the old days. After all, in a place like this, there's nothing left to do but dwell on memories.

The resettlement itself did not take place without any benefits. I have a "golden finger" that was activated when I was exactly one year old. A lottery wheel filled with various powers from different films and anime appeared before my eyes. The catch was that it didn't even spin, it just appeared with an arrow pointing to the Adapt ability.

At first I felt nothing but a rush of warmth throughout my body, followed by a slight numbness. The ability to adapt began to manifest itself gradually. I could withstand the cold that penetrated the cell at night, and even the hunger that sometimes tormented me when there was not enough food. Thanks to her, my skin did not wrinkle as much from the dampness as other prisoners, and my body did not shake from the cold in this icy cell.

My mother, Laura, seemed to notice this and began to suspect that I'm not quite an ordinary child. She looks at me with the same squint I once used to scrutinize suspicious people in my past life.

Sometimes, out of old habit, I want to swear when I feel her gaze, but my body isn't ready for something as complex as speech. Instead of the curses I almost instinctively want to utter, all that comes out is babbling, and it drives me crazy. How I hate this helplessness! In my past life, I was strong, independent, and now I can't even say that I'm hungry or cold. All I can do is watch, listen, and wait. Wait for this body to grow, wait until I can become myself again.

One night, when the prison had fallen into silence, I heard Laura speaking. Her voice was quiet, and for the first time in a long while, her gaze had a clarity I hadn't seen before. "Damn it, I knew they'd betrayed me."

The silence in the cell was so thick that I could hear water droplets falling from the ceiling somewhere in the distance. Laura sat on the edge of her bunk, her figure outlined in the dim light like a shadow ready to dissolve into the darkness. Her voice, usually so firm and commanding, now carried hints of disappointment and... fear? No, not fear. More like anger, carefully concealed.

"Damn it, how could they do this to me?" she said, and there was so much bitterness in her words that I instinctively tensed up. Who could have betrayed her? And what kind of game had she been dragged into?

I lay in the corner of the bed, wrapped in rags that served as my blanket, trying not to move. My eyes, already accustomed to the dark, followed her every movement. Laura stood up and began pacing the cell slowly, her steps almost silent, like a predator stalking its prey. She was talking to herself, but I felt it wasn't just a monologue. She was addressing someone far away, someone who still had power over her.

"They promised me freedom," she whispered, "but instead, I ended up here, in this hole, with a child who... who was never supposed to be born."

My heart sank. A child who was never meant to be born? Was she talking about me? I always felt that she was there for a reason, but now her words confirmed my suspicions. Laura knew something that she was hiding from everyone.

Laura stopped by the wall, her fingers clenched into fists, and I saw her shoulders tense. She stared into the darkness as if trying to see something beyond the stone walls. "They thought I'd break," she whispered, "that I'd become their puppet. But they're wrong. I'm not someone who can be broken."

Her words were full of determination, but there was also a hint of doubt. Who were "they"? And what did they want from her? I lay there, trying not to breathe too loudly, and listened. Every word she said mattered, every detail could be a clue.

"They thought I wouldn't survive here." She turned to me, and her eyes unexpectedly softened in the dark. "You weren't supposed to be born, but now... you're the only thing keeping me going."