Chapter 2: Family

After minutes of trekking, Oswald finally made it out of the forest and onto a wide cobblestone road.

The road stretched on as far as the eye can see and covered a great distance.

As he travelled along this road, he walked past large tracts of farmland and pastures before eventually he started to see some people appearing.

At first, it was just the occasional traveler that strolled past from time to time.

But as he got closer and closer towards the city, he started to see more and more carriages queued up outside of the City walls.

Oswald carried on his journey and finally arrived at Riverglen City

This was made evident by the giant structures visible from his position.

Because it was getting close to the evening, there were not many people trying to enter the city. There was just a short line of people queuing.

Oswald didn't pay attention to the queue of people and walked straight past.

"Halt!"

A heavily armed guard stood in front of Oswald and scanned him from head to toe. Due to his messy clothes, Oswald looked quite suspicious, but he didn't panic at all. Instead, he slowly removed a pendant from his pocket and showed it to the guard.

Instantly the guard's body froze,as he stuttered.

"No...noble crest!"

Seeing this, the guard's attitude did a swift 180.

"Young noble, forgive me if I came across as rude, but I was only doing my duty. I didn't mean to offend you, but if I did, I am terribly sorry-"

Before the guard could continue speaking, Oswald interrupted and quickly cut him off.

"Well, seeing as this misunderstanding has been cleared up, I presume I'm free to leave?"

"Of course, young noble. It was a mistake on my part that even kept you here in the first place."

Now with the approval of the guard, he didn't stay another second and quickly left the city gate .

As Oswald entered the city, he could finally take a good look at it and the first thing he noticed was, of course, the architecture.

The style of architecture was actually much better than he had expected for the time. The roads were well maintained and clean of sewage that constantly plagued the time period of his previous life.

But when it came to city design positives, that's all Oswald really had.

Narrow roads, leaning buildings, crowded passage ways

His complaints could go on and on, but by then he'd be here till the next day.

Whilst the buildings weren't necessarily ugly, with vintage medieval era design, the only problem was that most of them were awkwardly squeezed together, towering over the edge of the road, creating a strange claustrophobic feeling as you walked the streets.

Oswald slowly walked on as he took the scenes, eventually leaving the rough outskirts and coming down to a much nicer section of the city.

The roads were noticeably wider, and the houses were generously spread out with streets even being lined by gas lamps, making sure the area was illuminated no matter the time.

Using his memory, Oswald struggled as he finally navigated his way to a set of black steel gates.

In front of the gated mansion stood an old man dressed in an all black suit nervously tapping his feet.

The man seemed to see Oswald as his face quickly burst into a relieved smile.

"Master Oswald!"

"Mr..Edgar" stuttered Oswald cautiously trying to retrieve the name of the man from his memories.

Quickly the man rushed towards Oswald as he asked.

"Master Oswald, where have you been the past few days!?"

"Lady Freya has barely eaten since the previous days you've been missing. She was worried that you couldn't take the news of your mental space collapsing and..."

"Mother?!" Replied Oswald in shock.

Before he could even realise it, his body moved without thinking and rushed into the house.

Entering the house, Oswald and walked into the main hall and was greeted by the sight of two people sitting nervously in the chair.

One was a rather short, chubby man in a white shirt and black tailcoat.

His head was already balding with only thin strands of blonde hair that told a tale of his head's past glory, whilst his fat fingers were covered in some expensive ornate rings.

Next to this man was a beautiful woman dressed in a pale blue dressing gown.

She had pitch black hair put back into a ponytail, while a pair of vibrant green eyes darted all over the place nervously. But perhaps most shocking of all was her sickeningly dull and pale skin, showing off a clear lack of nutrition.

Although Oswald was still recovering from a jumbled memory, he recognised the two in front of him instantly.

They were the parents of this body, his new family.

As soon as Oswald saw these people, he froze.

Although he was in the body of their son, Oswald didn't know how to react.

He wasn't truly their son after all. Although he could remember his experience and feelings with them, it was all like strong feeling déjà vu.

A blurred, hazy feeling about how to react and what to feel.

Seeing Oswald standing in the lobby, the beautiful woman rose to her feet as she rushed towards Him

"Oswald! My baby!" cried the woman.

Suddenly, Oswald felt himself in a tight embrace.

The woman tightly held his face, checking all over his body to see if she could find any injuries

As Oswald looked down, he could see tears pouring out of the woman's eyes

"My baby, where have you been?! You've been missing for 3 days. I thought you, I thought you…"

Lady Freya couldn't even bring herself to say the words in her mind.

Just the thought of her baby boy somehow dying was enough to stop her from eating for days and she almost collapsed!

Looking down at the crying woman in front of him, Oswald was in a strange state.

It was what could only be described as a dissonance between mind and body.

The body Oswald was in easily recognised his own flesh and blood mother and wanted to do anything to stop her crying, but Oswald was different.

He knew this wasn't his mother.

For 18 years in his previous life he had been calling a completely different person mother and now to suddenly switch up would be very uncomfortable, no matter who you are.

But after being faced with the overwhelming memories of the previous Oswald and looking at the distraught woman in front of him, Oswald finally gave in.

Slowly lifting his arm, Oswald placed his hand on the woman's and put on an awkward smile as he spoke.

"It's okay mother, I'm fine. Just look at me, I'm doing well."

But unfortunately or Oswald his words didn't have a reassuring effect he hoped