The chosen world was Kimetsu no Yaiba.
*
The sunrise over the village of Kiyomi was a tranquil event. Smoke rose slowly from the chimneys of the wood and clay huts, mingling with the mist dissipating over the rice fields. In a hut set slightly apart, at the edge of the forest, life was already stirring.
Kenta Saito, a man of thirty with the broad shoulders of a lumberjack and smiling eyes, prepared his tools for another day's work. His wife, Yumi, a woman with a gentle face and agile hands, cooked rice on the clay stove while humming softly. The hut was small but full of life. Children's clothes dried near the fire, and crude wooden toys—a cart, a sword—were scattered on the packed-earth floor.
Three children completed the family. The eldest, Hiro, eight years old, helped his father gather kindling. The middle sister, Sakura, five, tried to tie the hair of the youngest sister, little Aiko, three. The baby, Koji, just four months old, slept peacefully in a wicker basket beside his mother.
"Koji slept through the night, Kenta" said Yumi with a relieved smile. "Finally! I think he's getting used to it."
Kenta approached, kissing his wife's forehead. "He's a good boy. He has your eyes, you know? So observant." He bent down to look at the baby. Koji had dark, serious eyes that, even asleep, seemed to absorb the light around him. "It's strange, he hardly ever cries."
Hiro came closer. "When will he grow up, Father? I want to teach him to climb trees."
"In time, son. In time."
The morning routine continued. Kenta left for the forest. Yumi took the girls to fetch water from the stream, leaving Hiro to watch over Koji. The older boy sat beside the basket, making faces at his brother. Koji merely watched him, his dark eyes following his brother's exaggerated movements without blinking.
"You should laugh, Koji!" said Hiro, making a funny sound. "Like this!" He laughed loudly, but Koji remained still. "Alright. You're serious, I get it. Father says serious men are strong."
In the afternoon, the family gathered for their meal. Koji was breastfed, his face impassive against Yumi's chest. She hummed an old song to him about the moon and the fox. Her fingers gently stroked his head, and for a moment, she could swear he snuggled in slightly. A maternal instinct warmed her chest. He was different, yes, but he was hers.
Night fell. The children, tired from playing, were washed and placed on their mats. Yumi rocked Koji until he fell asleep. Kenta checked the door, ensuring the wooden latch was secure. Stories of animal attacks had been circulating in the village lately. Better safe than sorry.
They fell asleep to the sound of their children's soft breathing and the crackling of the fire.
*
Koji (Evandro) - Point of View
Months. It had been months since I awoke inside this tiny, noisy, and irritatingly limited body. Koji. That was the name they gave me. Not that I cared.
Coming from a senile body, rotten inside, with a mind slipping like sand through my fingers… yes, this was an improvement. A vast improvement. Who in their right mind wouldn't trade a rotting brain for a new, fresh one, even if trapped in a faulty motor system? It was a chance to start over. And I, as a principle, take every chance I'm given.
I analyzed my new "family" as I would any biological system. The father, Kenta, a unit of brute strength and provision. The mother, Yumi, a unit of nutrition and maintenance. The older children, units of noise and future reproduction. And I, the most fragile unit, receiving resources purely due to the inefficiency of the parental instinct. I used them, of course. Crying just the right amount to get milk. An occasional facial spasm interpreted as a smile to maintain group harmony. It was simple symbiosis. They gave me warmth, food, protection. I gave… the illusion of a normal baby.
But a persistent question remained in my mind: the powers.
The System spoke of multiversal worlds. Of fiction. Of supernatural powers. But here… everything seemed monotonously normal. Fresh air, hard work, common diseases, banal death. It was Japan, yes. Rural, pre-industrial. Seventeenth, maybe eighteenth century. It smelled of earth, sweat, and burning wood. No mystical energy, no monsters (until that night), no heroism.
Did the System lie? I wondered countless times, trying to move my chubby fingers in a gesture of frustration. Or is this just a random world, a dead-end alley of the multiverse?
I vaguely remembered that roulette of offers. Names. "Sharingan." "Sun Breathing." "Hamon." Words my grandson, Lucas, would babble while watching his cartoons. Dragon Ball. Naruto. I would sit beside him, placing a hand on his soft hair, feigning interest. In truth, I studied him: his expressions of excitement, his emotional investment in ridiculous plots. It was good training for my persona as a loving grandfather. The content itself? Irrelevant garbage. Or… perhaps not so irrelevant after all.
Speaking of them… the old family. Márcio. Carla. Lucas. Célia, dead. Where were they now? Márcio, a middle-aged man, probably bearing the burden of a father who withered and died a stranger. Lucas, an adult, perhaps with children of his own, telling stories of the "sick grandfather." Carla, still chattering. Not that I cared. They were actors who left the stage when my play ended. Their lives went on, or not. It was irrelevant.
The real problem was the silence.
"System."
Nothing.
"Status. Interface. Mission. Alert."
Absolute silence. The sarcastic voice, the constant presence that was my last link to the logic of my rebirth… had disappeared. As if switched off. Why? Did the world suppress its presence? Did reincarnation consume all the connection's energy? Or did it simply abandon me here, considering the experiment a failure before it even began?
The uncertainty was… unpleasant. I operate better with data.
But not all was lost. There was a thread of connection, tenuous but real.
"Inventory."
And there it was. Not a voice, not an elaborate menu. Just a simple, clear image, imprinted on the dark screen of my mind:
[SOUL INVENTORY]
Stone Mask (Incomplete) x1
A mental sigh, something close to relief, passed through me.
At least you are here, I thought, focusing on the grotesque mask's image. You are the tangible proof. Proof that that roulette, that pact, were real. That there is something more in this universe than earth and blood.
The Stone Mask. An artifact from a world called JoJo. Lucas watched it sometimes. Muscular men posing, shouting, using powers based on "life energy." The mask turned humans into vampires. Immortality. Supernatural strength. Regeneration. In exchange for a weakness to sunlight and a thirst… for blood.
*
The routine dragged on for a few more weeks. Koji observed. He learned to roll over, a feat that caused exaggerated celebration. He learned to make guttural sounds interpreted as attempts at speech. It was a fascinating study of the human condition on a micro-scale.
The tension in the hut was a rope stretched tighter and tighter. The night silence deepened. The sweet, rotten smell sometimes came on the wind, and Kenta began sleeping with his axe beside the mat. Yumi prayed in silence, her eyes lost in the void. Even the children spoke less.
Then, one night, the rope snapped.
There was no warning. No howl, no scratch. Just a crash that made the very structure of the hut groan.
The solid oak door wasn't broken down. It was pulverized. Fragments of wood flew like shrapnel, hitting the walls with the force of arrows. In the doorway's void, against the starry night, was the silhouette.
It entered, and the air inside the hut turned icy and heavy.
It wasn't an animal. It was an aberration mocking the human form. Too thin, with arms so long they almost dragged on the ground. Its skin was the color of a waterlogged corpse, pale and shiny under the moonlight. Its face was elongated, its mouth a too-wide slit full of needle-like, pointed teeth. But it was the eyes that held attention. They glowed with a pale, inner light, and in the center of each, etched like a brand of shame, was the kanji for "Lower."
Kenta was already on his feet, the axe held firmly in his trembling hands. "Run!" he shouted over his shoulder, his voice a roar of desperation.
Yumi grabbed Aiko and Sakura, pulling them to the farthest corner. Hiro, petrified, stood frozen beside his father.
The demon laughed. A dry sound, like bones breaking. "Four… plus four…" it hissed, its voice a wet drag. "Sweet… all sweet…"
Kenta charged. It was a lumberjack's blow, strong, direct, meant to split an oak trunk in half. The demon simply raised a hand.
The axe hit the open palm with a dull thud… and stopped. The sharp blade didn't penetrate the skin. It stuck, as if it had struck stone.
The demon's smile widened. It closed its fingers. The wood of the axe handle cracked and splintered under its grip. Kenta tried to pull back, but it was too late.
The demon's other hand shot forward. Its long, black claws, sharp as obsidian blades, pierced Kenta's chest with a wet sound of flesh being torn. The man stood for a second, his eyes wide with surprise, looking at the claw now protruding from his back. Then, the demon lifted him into the air like a skewered fish and hurled him into the fireplace. The thud of bones and the crackle of flames were drowned out by Yumi's piercing scream.
Hiro screamed, a high-pitched sound of pure terror, and ran to hit the demon with his fists. It was a pathetic gesture. The demon didn't even look at him. A casual swing of its arm, and its claw opened the eight-year-old boy's throat from ear to ear. Hiro fell, choking on his own blood, his eyes still open in shock.
Sakura cried loudly, hiding her face. The demon turned to her. In a fluid motion too fast to follow, it grabbed her by the leg. Yumi screamed, lunging forward, but the demon swung the girl like a toy and smashed her against the wall. Sakura's skull exploded like a ripe watermelon, splattering blood, hair, and brain matter across the wooden planks.
Aiko, the youngest, was paralyzed, wetting herself in fear. The demon grabbed her by the face, its long fingers wrapping around her little head. It squeezed. There was a muffled crack, and the small body went limp in its hand. It tossed her aside like trash.
All this happened in perhaps ten seconds.
Yumi was on her knees now, sobbing, her world shattered around her. She crawled to the basket and grabbed Koji, clutching him to her chest with desperate strength.
"No… please… he's just a baby… kill me, but spare him…" she wept, her voice broken and unrecognizable.
The demon looked at her, then at the baby in her arms. Its kanji-marked eyes glinted with perverse interest. "A baby… the softest… the purest…"
It stepped closer, its shadow swallowing Yumi. The claw dripping with Hiro's and Sakura's blood rose.
Koji (Evandro) watched it all.
From the confined perspective of Yumi's arms, he saw every death. He saw the incomprehensible strength, the speed, the deliberate cruelty. It wasn't an attack of hunger. It was a feast. A spectacle.
And as he watched his "father" get impaled, his "brother" have his throat slit, his "sisters" get torn apart, he felt no horror. He felt no sadness.
He felt… confirmation.
This… this isn't natural, his thought cut through the surrounding panic like a blade. That speed, that resistance… the regeneration? Its skin wasn't cut by the axe. And those eyes… symbols. This is systematic. This is… supernatural.
The logical despair he'd felt before evaporated. In its place, a wave of icy ecstasy began to rise. His blood, literally soaked by Yumi's as she trembled against him, seemed to boil with a silent, overwhelming joy.
The System didn't lie! Power exists! It's real! It's brutal, it's visceral, it's everything!
He didn't want that demon to kill him, of course. But seeing that power in action… was the most beautiful proof he could have asked for. This world was worth it. Worth every second of his second chance.
The demon's claw descended toward Yumi and him.
And then, the air changed.
It wasn't a subtle change. It was as if the universe had taken a deep breath.
The air in the hut became razor-sharp. An intense cold, not an absence of heat but an active presence, spread. A sharp hiss, like the sound of a blade being sharpened at full speed, filled the space, coming from outside.
The demon froze.
Its smile vanished. Its kanji-marked eyes widened in instant, profound terror, a fear beyond comprehension. It tried to turn, its limbs moving with the same supernatural speed as before.
A flash of blue-silver light entered through the destroyed doorway.
It wasn't a strike seen. It was a beam of icy light that danced for a fraction of a second. It passed through the demon's raised arm, its neck, its torso, its legs.
For an instant, nothing happened. Then, the demon came apart. Its limbs separated in clean, precise sections, like an anatomical drawing sliced by a divine scalpel. There was no blood. The cut surfaces gleamed for a second before the entire body began disintegrating into foul, black ashes that dissipated into the air like smoke.
In the doorway, breathing deeply, stood a man.
Urokodaki.
The katana in his hand glowed with a remnant of cold, blue light. The air around him shimmered. Each exhalation came out as a veil of cold vapor. He didn't seem large or threatening. He seemed a fact. A law of nature dressed as a man.
He lowered the sword. His eyes, behind the tengu mask, passed over the bodies, the carnage. Stopped on Yumi, who still held Koji, her state of shock so deep she hadn't even realized she was saved.
And then they stopped on the baby.
Koji was looking directly at him. His eyes, clean of the blood that had spattered on him, were completely open. And in them, Urokodaki did not see the emptiness of trauma. He did not see a reflection of death.
He saw interest. He saw a glint of pure, indisputable avidity.
Urokodaki stood motionless for a long second, his controlled breathing the only thing breaking the silence.
He approached, knelt. Carefully, he unwrapped Yumi's cold, stiff fingers from Koji. The woman didn't react. She was there, but she was already gone.
Urokodaki picked up the baby, wrapping him in a clean fold of his happi coat. He wiped a speck of blood from Koji's forehead.
They were face to face. The tengu mask and the baby face with ancient eyes.
"You…" Urokodaki murmured, his voice a low, gruff rasp. "You saw hell. And you…" He tilted his head. "What is inside you, child?"
Koji didn't blink. Inside him, the happiness, the excitement, the hunger for that new and wondrous power was a cold fire consuming everything. He had found it. Finally.
Power. It's real. And he has it. I will have it.
Urokodaki stood, holding Koji against his chest. He looked at Yumi, empty among the remains of her family. There was nothing to be done for her.
"Come," he said to the baby, stepping out of the hut of massacre. "Your world has ended. A new one begins. In the ice and blood of Mount Sagiri."
He would be called Kazuki. And he would learn. Everything.