The accident happened on a day that seemed no different from any other training day. The sun was shining over the Zoldyck mansion, the sky was clear, and the training courtyard was prepared for another session of rigorous physical conditioning. Dean had been expecting a routine sparring match with one of the family's servants, a skilled fighter who had been brought in specifically to test the twins' combat abilities and provide them with opponents who could actually pose a challenge.
What Dean didn't expect was for that servant to completely lose control.
The servant's name was Tomas, and he had been working with the Zoldyck family for nearly five years. He was a competent fighter, disciplined and professional, the kind of person who understood the boundaries of a training match and knew how to push without crossing the line into genuine violence. Dean had sparred with him dozens of times before, and each session had been intense but controlled.
But something was different on this particular day.
Maybe Tomas was having a bad day. Maybe he was trying too hard to impress Silva, who was watching from the sidelines with his characteristic cold expression. Maybe something had broken inside him, some psychological barrier that had been holding back his true nature. Whatever the reason, as the sparring match progressed, Tomas's attacks became increasingly vicious, increasingly personal, increasingly lethal.
Dean noticed the change immediately. The servant's breathing became ragged, his movements more aggressive, his strikes carrying genuine killing intent rather than the controlled aggression of a training exercise. Dean tried to adjust, tried to pull back from the intensity of the match, tried to signal that something had gone wrong.
But Tomas didn't stop.
The servant threw a technique that was clearly designed to be lethal, a strike aimed directly at Dean's heart with enough force to pierce through bone and muscle and tear through vital organs. It was the kind of attack that should have been stopped by an experienced trainer, but in the split second that Dean had to react, he realized that he didn't have time to dodge. He didn't have time to block properly. He didn't have time to do anything except survive.
In that moment of absolute desperation, something awakened inside Dean.
It was like a dam breaking. All the Nen that had been building up inside him over the years, all the power that had been slowly accumulating as he meditated and trained and pushed himself to his limits, suddenly erupted outward in a burst of pure, uncontrolled energy. The power flowed through his body in response to his instinct to survive, responding to his desperate need to protect himself from a lethal threat.
The servant's strike hit Dean's arm, but instead of piercing flesh and bone, it met a barrier of pure Nen. The impact sent the servant flying backward with tremendous force, his body crashing into the stone wall of the training courtyard with enough power to crack the stone and break several of his ribs. He collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath, blood trickling from his mouth.
The training courtyard went completely silent.
Everyone present had felt what had just happened. The explosion of power, the manifestation of Nen, the moment when Dean had transcended the normal limits of human capability and tapped into something far greater. Silva's expression remained unchanged, but Dean could see a flicker of something in his father's eyes. Kikyo tilted her head in that characteristic way she had when she was analyzing something of particular interest. And Illumi... Illumi's entire body had gone rigid, his eyes narrowing as he processed what he had just witnessed.
Dean looked down at his arm, where a faint aura of energy was still visible, shimmering like heat waves rising from hot pavement. Nen. He had finally manifested it fully. Not through years of careful training like Illumi, not through the family's rigid methods and structured techniques, but through a moment of pure desperation, a moment where survival trumped everything else, a moment where his will to live had been stronger than any technique or training.
"Interesting," Silva said, and there was something in his tone that Dean had never heard before. Respect, perhaps. Or fear. Or both. "He's awakened his Nen."
"He's awakened it," Kikyo observed, her head still tilted in that analytical way. "And violently. The manifestation was uncontrolled, raw, more powerful than what we would normally see from someone his age. This is... unexpected."
Illumi said nothing, but Dean could feel the weight of his twin's attention on him. Really on him, for the first time since they were small children. Illumi was finally seeing Dean as something more than a defective failure. He was finally seeing Dean as a potential threat.
Over the next few weeks, Dean's Nen training accelerated dramatically. Unlike Illumi, who had been trained in the family's specific techniques from childhood with careful progression and structured methodology, Dean had to learn everything from scratch. But he had something that Illumi didn't have: the knowledge from his past life, the understanding of how power worked, the ability to adapt and innovate in ways that the family's rigid training couldn't accommodate.
And he had something else too. A Nen type that was different from Illumi's.
Where Illumi was a Transmuter, capable of changing the properties of his aura to create his signature needle technique, Dean discovered through careful experimentation and meditation that he was something different. His Nen didn't seem to fit neatly into any of the standard categories. It was as if his power was designed to adapt, to change, to become whatever was necessary to meet any challenge.
"Specialization," Kikyo said, studying Dean with new interest after he had described his Nen abilities to her. "That's unexpected. And powerful. You could develop abilities that go far beyond what traditional Nen types can achieve. But Specialization is also the rarest and most unpredictable of all the Nen types. You'll have to discover your own abilities through experimentation and training. The family has no precedent for training a Specialist."
"What kind of abilities?" Dean asked, his mind already racing with possibilities.
"That depends on you," Kikyo replied. "Specialization is unique to each user. The abilities that manifest depend on the individual's personality, their experiences, their understanding of power itself. You'll have to discover your own path."
And that was exactly what Dean intended to do. He would discover his own path, develop his own abilities, become something that nobody in the family had anticipated or could control. The awakening of his Nen wasn't just a milestone in his physical development. It was a turning point in his entire life. It was the moment when the defective twin began his transformation into something far greater than anyone had ever imagined.
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