The first thing Dio felt wasn't air in his lungs but hunger. Not the kind that food could fix, but something deeper. A raw emitness that twisted inside him, as if his very soul was starving.
Then came confusion.
"Where am I?"
He opened his eyes to a ceiling made of wooden beams and paper panels. The sme of tatami and the cool air of mountains filled his senses.
This wasn't Cairo. This wasn't even close.
His body felt wrong smaller, lighter. He raised a hand and stared at it. A child's hand. Pale, delicate, unscarred.
Before he could think further, a voice broke through the haze.
"Ryota-kun, your're awake!"
A woment entered, her voice warm with relief.
She wore a simple kimono, her dark hair tied back neatly. Her smile was soft.
Dio's instincts bristled at the sight. Affection. Care. It was… unsettling.
"You gave us quite a scare," she said, kneeling beside him with a steaming bowl. "The doctor said it was exhaustion, but you've always been such a healthy boy."
Ryōta
The name meant nothing to him, but the way she said it left no doubt it was his now.
He remembered dying. Jotaro. The World. The sun rising over Cairo, his body burning to ash. Then nothing. Until now.
"Mother I'm sorry to have worried you."
Her face brightened instantly. "Oh, Ryōta. Always so polite." She placed the bowl beside him. "You should rest. You're in Ōsaka, our home. It's Taishō 2, and you've been studying far too hard. Your father and I are proud of you, but you mustn't push yourself."
Ōsaka. Taishō 2. Japan. So this was early 1900s an era long before his time. Then she said it.
"You're the eldest son of the Kibutsuji family, remember?"
Kibutsuji.
The name sent a flicker through his mind. Something familiar dark and powerful.
He smiled faintly, masking his thoughts. "Thank you, Mother. I'll eat soon."
But when he lifted the bowl, the scent of miso did nothing for him. The hunger inside him wasn't for food. It wanted something else.
Then pain hit.
A sharp, burning pressure spread through his chest. He dropped the bowl, clutching at himself as if fire was running through his veins. His mother's voice turned panicked, distant. "Ryōta! What's happening?"
He couldn't answer. Memories poured into his mindmemories that weren't his. A boy's laughter. Lessons.
A family. Faces that belonged to this body's life.And beneath it all, something ancient and hungry stirred awake.
When the pain finally eased, Dio sat there, trembling but alive. The woman's worried hands gripped his shoulders, her voice trembling.
"I'm fine," he lied. His voice was steady again, practiced. "It's gone now."
His father arrived a tall man with a merchant's composure. "You're awake, then. Good. Your mother said you were in pain."
"It was nothing," Dio said smoothly. "Just fatigue."The man frowned. "You've always been… different, Ryōta. Don't forget to live like a child once in a while."Different. He almost laughed. If only they knew.
When they left, Dio sat in silence. The room was too quiet. The air too clean. He needed to move. He stood and crossed to the window. The moonlight spilled over him like silver fire, and for the first time since awakening, he smiled. So he had been reborn. His body was new, but the power within it the hunger, the strength felt too familiar
His nails had sharpened briefly during the pain. His body was changing, remembering what it once was. "What are you?" he whispered to his reflection in the windowpane. "Or rather… what am I now?"
And then the name returned to him, Kibutsuji. He'd heard it again in the boy's memories. In stories whispered by servants, about a demon who ruled the night.
Muzan Kibutsuji.
A demon king. Dio's smirk deepened. How fitting. If this world already had a demon ruler, then perhaps fate had a sense of humor.
But thrones were meant to be taken.
He stayed awake until dawn, thinking, plotting, feeling the strange power coil within him.
When the first sunlight touched his skin, it burned. He hissed in pain, pulling his hand back from the window. Smoke rose from his skin, healing almost instantly but leaving the truth clear. The sun was still his enemy.
He shut the window sharply, the light gone. His hand trembled, half in anger, half in exhilaration. "So it's the same, then," he muttered. "Fine. Let the day have its light."
He looked out at the fading night sky, eyes gleaming gold."I will claim the darkness instead."
A knock came at his door. "Ryōta-kun? Breakfast is ready." His mother's gentle voice. So blissfully unaware.
"I'll be right there," he said, his tone calm and polite.When she walked away, Dio glanced once more at his reflection. The boy's face smiled back a perfect disguise. He would play along.
He would wait. Learn. Grow strong again.
And when the time came, this world would bow to him, just as the last one should have.