The villager didn't speak at first.
He stood near the shelves of records, fingers resting against a tablet cracked down the center, as if weighing whether the truth was worth the damage it would cause.
Kaito noticed.
"You're holding something back," Kaito said.
The old man's shoulders sagged. "I was hoping you wouldn't notice."
Kaito stepped closer. The laboratory-light from the academy windows barely reached this far, leaving the room washed in amber and shadow. "If it has anything to do with me," he said quietly, "I need to know."
The villager nodded once.
"These records weren't only meant to remember you," he said. "They were meant to track what followed after."
He pulled a thin sheet of treated parchment from between two heavier volumes and laid it on the table. The markings were faint—almost erased—but still readable.
Kaito froze.
The symbol etched into the page was unmistakable.
Not the Insect God's.
Older.
Smoother.
It curved like a wave.
"I've seen this," Kaito whispered.
"Yes," the villager said. "Because it was carved beside your name."
Kaito's chest tightened.
"When you fell," the villager continued, "most of your allies were destroyed, scattered, or bound beyond return. History recorded it as the end of the Age of Dragons."
He paused.
"But history lies."
Kaito slowly looked up. "Explain."
The villager met his gaze, eyes sharp despite his age. "One of your companions refused extinction. They chose a different cycle."
The room went silent.
"Reincarnation," Kaito said.
The villager nodded. "Not perfectly. Not immediately. But deliberately."
Kaito's vision flickered.
For just a moment, the lab was gone—replaced by endless ocean, a massive form coiling beneath moonlit waves, laughter echoing through the deep. A presence that had once matched his own strength, not in fire, but in endurance.
His hand tightened on the table.
"You're saying one of my friends is alive," Kaito said.
"Alive," the villager corrected, "but unaware."
Kaito swallowed. "Do they remember me?"
"No," the villager said gently. "Memory is the last thing to return. But instinct—"
He tapped the symbol.
"—instinct never truly fades."
Kaito looked down again.
A friend.
Not a god. Not a myth.
Someone who had fought beside him before betrayal, before flame, before the sky broke.
"Where are they?" Kaito asked.
The villager hesitated. "I don't know exactly. Only that their presence has been recorded recently."
"Recorded how?"
"Disruptions," the villager said. "Energy patterns that don't belong to this era. The same way yours began to surface before you remembered who you were."
Kaito exhaled slowly.
For the first time since his reincarnation, the past didn't feel like a wound.
It felt like a connection.
"But know this," the villager added. "If you can sense them… so can others."
Kaito's eyes darkened.
"The Insect God?" he asked.
The villager nodded. "And anyone who remembers what you once were."
Kaito straightened, lifting the parchment carefully. "Then I won't be the only one searching."
The villager gave a thin smile. "No. You won't."
As Kaito stepped back into the corridor light, the academy felt different—larger, heavier, like it was no longer just a place of training, but a crossroads.
A past that refused to stay buried.
And somewhere out there, a friend who had survived the end of a world.