The boy is three years old when he first speaks in complete sentences.
"Grandfather, the axe is dull. May I use the whetstone?"
Garan nearly drops the firewood he's carrying. He turns to stare at the small child standing in the doorway of their cottage, dark eyes calm and focused. Most children that age can barely string two words together. His grandson speaks like a village elder.
"You... you want to sharpen it yourself?" Garan asks slowly.
"Yes. I've been watching you. The angle should be fifteen to twenty degrees, consistent pressure, circular motion. I can do it."
The old hunter sets down the wood and scratches his graying beard. He raised Leon since birth after the boy's parents—his own daughter and her husband—died from fever. The child is always strange. Quiet. Observant. Never cries unless hurt, never demands attention, never throws tantrums like other children.
But this is different.
"Alright," Garan says carefully. "Show me."
Leon picks up the whetstone with both small hands and sits cross-legged on the ground. He lays the axe across his lap, positions the stone at the correct angle, and begins working with slow, deliberate movements. The motions are clumsy—his hands are too small, his strength insufficient—but the understanding is there.
Garan watches in silence. After a long moment, he kneels beside the boy.
"How do you know this?"
Leon pauses. He doesn't know how to answer. The knowledge simply appears in his mind, unbidden. Like remembering something he always knew but temporarily forgot.
"I just do," he says finally.
Garan says nothing. He simply places his weathered hand over Leon's smaller one and guides the motion, correcting the angle, showing him how to compensate for his lack of strength.
They work together in silence until the axe is sharp.
---
At five, Leon asks to help with the hunting.
"You're too young," Garan says, checking his bow.
"I can carry things. Watch for signs. Be quiet."
The old man looks down at the boy. Leon stares back with those unsettling calm eyes. No pleading, no excitement. Just patient expectation.
"Fine. But you stay close and do exactly what I say."
"I will."
In the forest, Garan learns that his grandson's promise is absolute. Leon moves through the undergrowth without snapping a single twig. When told to stop, he freezes instantly. When told to crouch, he becomes as still as stone. The boy watches everything—the direction of the wind, the patterns of broken twigs, the freshness of animal tracks.
"There," Leon whispers, pointing.
Garan follows the gesture. A deer, barely visible through the trees, grazing in a small clearing. The shot is difficult—partly obscured, at the limit of his range. He draws the bow, takes aim, releases.
The arrow strikes true. The deer bolts three steps before collapsing.
"Good shot," Leon says quietly.
"How did you see it?" Garan asks. "I almost missed it myself."
Leon tilts his head slightly. "The light was different there. Trees cast shadows at an angle, but that space was brighter. Something was blocking lower sun from that direction."
Garan stares at his grandson for a long moment, then shakes his head. "You think like a hunter three times your age."
"Is that bad?"
"No, boy. Just... strange." The old man ruffles Leon's hair—one of the few affectionate gestures he allows himself. "Come on. Help me carry this back."
---
At six, Leon sets his first trap.
He's been watching Garan for over a year, studying every detail. The placement, the bait, the trigger mechanism. Trapping is about understanding animal behavior—their patterns, their instincts, their predictable responses to stimulus.
That night, Leon dreams.
In the dream, he's older—much older. His hands are weathered and strong, moving through a complex series of motions. Not trapping, but something similar. Anticipating movement. Reading patterns. Setting up scenarios where the opponent has no choice but to move exactly where he wants.
He wakes with the knowledge still fresh in his mind.
The next day, he chooses a game trail near the river, a path rabbits use regularly. The trap is simple—a snare made from cordage, positioned at exactly the right height, hidden with leaves and grass. He uses berries for bait, placed just beyond the trigger point.
The next morning, a rabbit hangs struggling in the snare.
Leon approaches slowly, murmuring soft sounds to calm the animal. Its eyes are wide with fear, heart racing. He understands that fear. Life clinging to itself, fighting against the inevitable.
"Thank you," he whispers, and ends it quickly with a knife to the base of the skull. No suffering. The rabbit goes limp immediately.
When he brings it home, Garan examines both the catch and the trap with a critical eye.
"Who taught you to tie this knot?"
"No one. I watched you."
"This is a running bowline variant. I've been using it for forty years, and you copied it perfectly after watching a few times?"
Leon nods.
Garan sits down heavily on the bench outside their cottage. "Boy, I need you to be honest with me. Are you... normal?"
Leon considers the question. The dreams are becoming more frequent. Flashes of knowledge, skills he shouldn't possess, understanding that appears without explanation. "I don't know. Am I?"
"No," Garan says bluntly. "But I don't think that's bad. You're sharp. Too sharp for your age. But you're a good child. You work hard, you don't complain, and you've never lied to me." He pauses. "Whatever you are, wherever this knowledge comes from, you're my grandson. That's what matters."
Something loosens in Leon's chest—a tension he didn't realize he was carrying. "Thank you, Grandfather."
"Don't thank me yet. If you're going to be a hunter, you'll work like one. No special treatment because you're clever. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Now skin that rabbit. Let's see if your knife work is as strange as everything else."
It is.
---
At nine, everything changes.
Garan's been coughing for weeks, but he insists it's nothing. Just the winter cold, he says. It will pass. But Leon watches the old man grow weaker day by day, sees the way he struggles to catch his breath, notices the slight tremor in his hands.
One morning, Garan doesn't get out of bed.
"Grandfather?" Leon stands in the doorway, breakfast already prepared.
"Just tired, boy. I'll rest today."
But one day becomes three, becomes a week, becomes a month. The cough grows worse, wet and rattling. Garan's skin takes on a grayish pallor. He can barely sit up without help.
Leon takes over everything.
He hunts before dawn, checking traps and tracking game with the efficiency of someone twice his age. He forages for herbs, experimenting with different combinations to ease his grandfather's breathing. He cooks, cleans, maintains their tools and cottage. At night, he sits beside Garan's bed and reads from the old man's few books by candlelight.
"You shouldn't have to do this," Garan wheezes one evening. "You're just a child."
"I'm capable," Leon says simply. "Rest, Grandfather."
"Stubborn like your grandmother." A weak smile. "She'd have liked you."
Leon says nothing, but his hand finds Garan's. The old hunter's grip is weak, trembling.
"Listen to me, boy. When I'm gone—"
"You'll recover."
"When I'm gone," Garan continues firmly, "you have choices. The village will take you in. You're strange, but you work hard. They'll find a place for you." He pauses to catch his breath. "Or you can stay here. Live alone. You've got the skills for it."
Leon looks at his grandfather's weathered face. In his fragmented memories, he recalls sitting beside another deathbed. Different time, different world, but the same quiet acceptance. Death is part of the cycle. Fighting it is pointless.
"I'll stay," Leon says. "This is home."
"You're sure? It's a hard life, boy. Lonely."
"I'm sure."
Garan nods slowly. "There's money hidden in the floor under my bed. Not much, but enough. And my tools are yours. Take care of them."
"I will."
"You're a good boy, Leon. Strange, but good." The old man's eyes drift closed. "Your parents would be proud."
Leon sits with him through the night. By morning, Garan is gone.
---
At ten, Leon stands alone beside a river.
He chose this spot carefully—a place where a large tree grows near the water's edge, its roots drinking deep. It isn't a Bodhi tree, but it's close enough. The symbolism matters.
The burial takes most of the morning. Leon digs the grave himself, lowers his grandfather's body wrapped in the old man's best hunting cloak, and fills it again. Now he stands in silence, hands clasped, head bowed.
He should feel something, he thinks. Grief, loss, loneliness. But his emotions feel distant, muted. Is it the remnants of his past life—that disciplined detachment he spent decades cultivating? Or is it something broken in this new existence?
"Thank you for raising me," he says quietly to the fresh grave. "Thank you for accepting me, even when I was strange. Thank you for teaching me to survive."
The wind rustles through the tree's branches. Birds sing in the distance. The river flows past, indifferent to human grief.
Leon stands for a long moment, then turns away. There's work to do. Traps to check, food to prepare, tools to maintain. Life continues regardless of loss. That's one truth that transcends worlds.
He walks back toward the cottage, small and alone against the vast forest.
But not helpless. Never helpless.
---
The years that follow settle into rhythm.
Leon hunts at dawn, moving through the forest like a shadow. His skills grow sharper with each passing season—his aim more precise, his traps more efficient, his understanding of animal behavior deeper. He trades pelts and meat to the village, speaking little, accepting payment, departing quickly.
The villagers call him strange but reliable. The quiet boy who lives alone in the hunter's cottage. Some pity him. Others respect him. None truly know him.
But the dreams continue.
Sometimes he dreams of training—endless repetitions of movements his young body can't yet perform. Sometimes he dreams of reading, texts in languages he doesn't recognize but somehow understands. Sometimes he dreams of fighting, though the opponents' faces are always blurred.
Each morning, he wakes with new knowledge. A different way to position his feet. A more efficient way to draw a bow. An understanding of angles and leverage that goes beyond what Garan taught him.
At night, Leon begins practicing what the dreams show him. Slowly, carefully, in the privacy of his cottage. The movements feel natural, like his body is remembering rather than learning.
At thirteen, his body begins to change—growing taller, stronger, more coordinated. The movements become easier, more natural. The gap between what he knows and what he can do narrows.
At fourteen, he starts experimenting with something he can only call energy. In his dreams, he sees himself directing invisible currents through his body, strengthening strikes, quickening movements. When he tries to replicate it while awake, he feels something—faint, barely perceptible, but real.
At sixteen, Leon stands in the forest clearing behind his cottage and executes a perfect kata. His body moves with absolute precision, every motion controlled, every transition seamless. It matches the movements from his dreams exactly.
He's beginning to understand. These aren't just random knowledge appearing in his sleep. They're memories. His memories, from a life he lived before this one.
But they're still fragmented. Incomplete. Like trying to read a book with half the pages missing.
---
At seventeen, everything changes.
It starts on a cold autumn night. Leon spends the day hunting deep in the forest, returning home exhausted. He eats a simple meal, maintains his equipment, and falls into bed as the sun sets.
The dream that comes is different.
He stands beside a lake, ancient and weathered. His reflection in the water shows a face lined with age—eighty years of life etched into every wrinkle. He knows this face. He *is* this face.
The memory unfolds with perfect clarity.
He sees himself training as a youth, traveling as a young man, teaching as an adult. He sees tournaments won, students taught, wisdom earned through decades of discipline. He sees the books he read, the philosophies he studied, the understanding he cultivated.
He sees the Bodhi tree. The storm. The lightning.
And he understands.
Leon Fury. Master martial artist. Tactical genius. The Sage of Stillness. He lived eighty years, achieved the peak of human capability, and died in perfect meditation.
And somehow, impossibly, he's been reborn.
When Leon wakes, dawn light streams through his window. He sits up slowly, his young hands trembling.
For the first time since birth, he remembers everything.
Every teacher. Every lesson. Every book, every fight, every moment of meditation. Eighty years of accumulated wisdom, compressed into seventeen years of new life. The fragmented knowledge that's been appearing in dreams—it's all there now, complete and accessible.
He stands and walks outside. The forest looks the same, but everything feels different. He isn't just Leon the hunter anymore. He's Leon the master, wearing the skin of a youth, standing at the beginning of a journey he already completed once before.
His hands move through a form—*White Crane Spreads Wings*. The movement is perfect, decades of muscle memory translating seamlessly to his younger body.
He closes his eyes and feels the energy in the air. Not quite qi, not quite prana, but similar enough. In his past life, he spent forty years learning to perceive and direct such forces. Now, with full memory restored, that knowledge is his to use.
A smile touches his lips.
For six years, he lived in this village, slowly building skills without understanding why. Now he knows. It's been preparation—giving his young body time to grow, allowing the memories to integrate naturally rather than overwhelming him all at once.
But that period is ending.
Leon looks toward the horizon. Somewhere beyond the forest, past the hills and valleys, lies a city called Orario. A place where gods walk among mortals. Where dungeons spawn monsters. Where adventurers write legends.
In his previous life, he mastered everything the mortal world could offer. He reached the absolute peak of human capability and found it wanting. That restlessness, that sense of something missing, drove him to seek harmony—the perfect integration of body, mind, and spirit.
He touched it, in those final moments beneath the Bodhi tree.
But he never truly achieved it.
This world is different. Here, gods bestow power directly. Here, magic and monsters are real. Here, there are heights he never imagined, challenges he never faced.
A new journey. A second chance. An opportunity to pursue mastery beyond mortal limits.
"Soon," Leon says quietly to the empty forest.
But this time, he knows exactly what he's preparing for.
Over the following months, Leon's training intensifies. With his full memories restored, he can finally practice properly. The forms that felt incomplete before now flow naturally. The energy work that's been guesswork becomes precise manipulation.
Every morning, he trains his body. Every afternoon, he hunts and maintains his skills. Every evening, he meditates, refining his control over the subtle energies he can now perceive clearly.
The villagers notice the change. The quiet boy becomes even quieter, more focused. When he comes to trade, there's something different in his eyes—a depth that wasn't there before.
Leon doesn't care what they think. He has work to do.
By the time winter arrives, he's made his decision. When spring comes, he'll leave Torren Village. He'll travel to Orario, join a Familia, receive Falna from a deity, and see what happens when eighty years of mortal mastery meets divine blessing.
The night before his eighteenth birthday, Leon stands beside his grandfather's grave.
"I'm leaving soon," he says to the tree above the burial site. "Thank you for giving me time to grow. Time to remember. Time to prepare."
The wind rustles through the branches.
"I don't know what I'll find in Orario. But I know what I'm looking for." He pauses. "The same thing I've always been looking for. Harmony. Completion. The perfect balance between what I was and what I can become."
He bows once, deeply, then turns and walks back toward the cottage.
Behind him, the tree stands silent and strong, watching over the grave of the man who raised a master without ever knowing it.