The glass shattered a second before the sound reached him.
Kael opened his eyes.
Twelve figures stood in the observation gallery above, white robes gleaming under harsh lights. The Council of Elders. The people who made him. The people who now wanted him dead.
Behind the glass, alarms pulsed red.
They know.
The first attack came without warning—a Kinetic compression wave meant to crush his skull. Kael caught it with his own power and redirected into the floor. Concrete exploded. The facility shook.
Eight more followed.
Elder Varn led them. Tier 8. Three centuries of killing.
The Tier 7s fell first. Kael tore through them like paper—three, five, seven, eight.
Then Varn stopped holding back.
The difference between Tier 7 and Tier 8 wasn't linear. It was exponential. Kael learned this as Varn's fist caved in his chest. As his leg turned to paste. As his lung collapsed. As his eardrums burst.
He landed blows. Dozens. Hundreds. They meant nothing.
I can't win.
He'd known this for six months. Known it the moment he started building the only escape that existed.
Temporal Displacement.
Not finished. Not ready. But the explosion Varn was building in his palm didn't care about readiness.
Kael activated the move.
Time folded.
Varn's killing blow passed through empty air.
For one perfect second, Kael hung between worlds.
Then his body—broken, bleeding, finally giving out—reached its limit.
Too much power.
Not enough vessel.
He exploded.
Light became darkness.
Not the cold dark of death. The warm dark of flesh. Of fluid. Of growth.
A heartbeat.
His own this time.
He tried to move. Couldn't. Tried to see. Couldn't. Tried to remember—
Fire.
Memories burned through the void: a tank. green fluid. white robes. Varn's face. his leg gone. his lung collapsed. the fold. the—
Explosion.
He was dead.
So why was he breathing?
Light returned—slow, blurry, wrong. Shapes above him. A face. A woman with tired eyes and sweat on her brow. She was crying. Smiling. Holding him.
"A boy," she whispered. "A beautiful boy."
He tried to speak. Tried to tell her who he was, what was coming. Only a cry came out. The cry of a newborn. The only language left to him.
She pulled him close.
He felt her heartbeat—fast, scared, hopeful.
He felt something else too.
Power. Dormant but there. Curled inside his infant skull like a sleeping dragon. Every technique. Every memory of twenty-three years as someone's weapon.
He was still himself.
Just smaller.
Just starting over.
How much time had passed? Days? Centuries? He had no way to know. The displacement could have thrown him anywhere.
The face above him blurred as sleep took him.
But before the darkness claimed him completely, one thought crystalized—sharp and clear and absolute:
This time, I'm not their weapon.
This time, I choose.
Eternal life.
Fifteen years later.
A boy stood in a dirt courtyard behind a small wooden house, pounding his fists into a training dummy until his knuckles bled.
Black hair, long and unbound, reached his shoulders. Black eyes burned with frustration beneath a sweaty brow. Each strike landed with the rhythm of a caged animal throwing itself against bars.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Blood sprayed. Wood splintered. The dummy—straw and hide wrapped around a wooden post—shuddered but held.
The boy didn't stop.
I cannot do anything until I awaken my seed.
He struck harder.
How preposterous.
Fifteen years in this life. Fifteen years of memories he couldn't share, of power he couldn't access, of waiting for a seed that refused to sprout.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
"Eason."
The voice came from behind him—firm, patient, familiar.
The boy stopped. Turned.
His father stood at the courtyard's edge. A tall man with short-cropped hair and calloused hands, wearing the simple tunic of someone who'd never known wealth. Gordon. Tier 1 Swordsman. The weakest of the weak.
"Your knuckles," Gordon said.
Eason looked down. Blood dripped from split skin, staining the packed earth. He hadn't noticed.
"They'll heal."
Gordon walked forward, pulled a rag from his belt, and wrapped the boy's hand with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this many times before. "You've turned fifteen. You know what that means."
The evaluation centre.
Eason had known this day was coming. Had dreaded it. Had dreamed of it. Had prepared for it every morning since he could walk.
"Yes," he said quietly.
Gordon finished wrapping the hand, then met his son's eyes. "You'll go to the centre. They'll awaken your seed. Whatever it is—" he squeezed Eason's shoulder, "—your old man is only a Tier 1 Swordsman. The weakest path. If you awaken a swordsman seed, don't be discouraged. You can still—"
"I know."
Gordon studied him for a moment, then nodded toward the house. "Come eat. We leave at dawn."
He walked away, leaving Eason alone in the courtyard.
Eason looked at his hands. At the blood seeping through the rag. At the dirt and the wooden house and the father who had no idea who he was really raising.
All these years in this life, and I've learned that the descendants of Leo are now called the weakest.
He thought of the legend. The First Swordsman. The shepherd who carved his grief into a blade and cut down psychics who thought themselves gods.
He looked up at the darkening sky. How long had he slept? Decades? Centuries? He still didn't know
The food was simple. Bread. Stew. Water.
Eason ate slowly, deliberately. The flavours were plain—barely seasoned, cheap ingredients—but he savoured each bite.
In his previous life, he'd been numb to such things. The Council had fed him nutrient paste. Efficient. Flavourless. He'd never noticed the absence until he tasted food again in this body.
Strange, he thought. What else did they steal from me?
His father ate across the table, saying nothing. His mother—a quiet woman with kind eyes—refilled his bowl and smiled. Eason smiled back because it was expected.
He didn't care about them.
He couldn't afford to.
In his first life, he'd cared about nothing but survival. That hadn't changed. This family was temporary. A waystation. He ate their food, slept under their roof, let them believe he was theirs.
But his mind was elsewhere.
The seed.
If he awakened a swordsman seed tomorrow, it would be disastrous. The descendants of Leo—once the most feared bloodline in the world—had fallen far. No treasures. No techniques. No respect. Just Tier 1 farmers swinging rusty blades at training dummies.
When he'd first learned he was born into Leo's bloodline, he'd almost laughed at his luck. A legendary lineage! Hidden inheritance! Power waiting to be claimed!
Then he learned the truth.
Descendants of Leo. Now called the weakest.
What cruel fate is that?
But there was another possibility.
Psychic.
His original seed—whatever the Council had planted in him, whatever had given him those paths—had been destroyed when his body exploded. But the power had gone somewhere. He'd felt it curl inside his infant skull like a sleeping dragon.
It moved with me.
He was almost certain. The seed hadn't died. It had simply... waited. Dormant. Patient. Hidden.
Tomorrow, I'll know.
He finished his stew and set down the bowl.
"I'm going to rest."
His mother nodded. His father grunted.
Eason walked to the small room that had been his for fifteen years, lay down on the thin mat, and stared at the ceiling.
If it's swordsman, I adapt. I find another path. I claw my way up from nothing.
If it's psychic...
He didn't finish the thought. Didn't need to.
If it was psychic, everything changed.
Tomorrow.
He closed his eyes and waited for dawn.