The first thing he felt was pressure.
Not pain—at least not the sharp kind he remembered from his last moments—but a deep, all-encompassing weight, as if the world itself were pressing down on him from every direction. He tried to breathe and failed. His lungs refused to obey, drawing in only shallow, panicked gasps that burned like fire.
Then came the sound.
A distant echo at first—muffled, distorted—until it sharpened into something raw and overwhelming.
A scream.
Not his.
Someone else's.
The pressure worsened, crushing, squeezing, forcing him forward. Instinct—ancient and unfamiliar—took over. His body convulsed, muscles he did not recognize straining with desperate urgency.
And then—
Air.
Cold, brutal air flooded his lungs. His chest heaved violently as his body screamed for breath, a thin, broken cry tearing from his throat without his permission.
The world exploded into sensation.
Light stabbed at his eyes. Hands—too large, too rough—wrapped around him. The scent of blood, sweat, damp stone, and old incense filled his nose. His senses were overwhelming, drowning him in information he could not yet process.
I'm alive.
The thought came not as joy, but as stunned disbelief.
I shouldn't be.
His crying stopped abruptly.
He couldn't move much—his body was weak, uncoordinated, foreign—but his mind was clear. Too clear. Memories surfaced not as dreams but as sharp, intact fragments.
The hospital hallway.
The flickering lights.
The wheel.
The voice.
Live.
His gaze shifted, unfocused but searching.
Above him was a cracked stone ceiling, dark with age and moisture. Faint runes glowed dimly along the walls, their light pulsing like a sick heartbeat. Iron bars cut across his vision, rusted but thick, etched with symbols that made his skin prickle even without understanding why.
A cell.
"I—I hear him…" a woman's voice whispered weakly. "Lucien… he's alive…"
The voice trembled, fragile but overflowing with emotion.
His eyes shifted again.
There—just beyond the bars—lay two figures.
A man knelt beside a woman collapsed against the stone wall. His clothes were torn and stained with blood, once-fine fabric reduced to rags. His dark hair clung to his face, soaked with sweat, and his breathing was shallow, labored.
But his eyes—
His eyes were fierce.
Alive.
The man looked down at him as if the world had narrowed to this single point.
"He's breathing," the man said hoarsely. "Elenora… he's breathing."
The woman let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. Tears streaked down her pale face as she reached toward him with trembling hands.
"My son," she whispered. "Oh… you made it. You made it."
Something inside the boy twisted.
Mother.
The word surfaced unbidden, unfamiliar yet heavy with meaning.
Father.
Understanding settled slowly, like frost creeping across glass.
This wasn't just reincarnation.
He hadn't been reborn into comfort or safety.
He had been born into captivity.
The days that followed blurred together.
Time lost its shape in the cell. There was no sun, no sky—only the dim glow of runes and the occasional flicker of torchlight when guards passed above. Food arrived inconsistently: stale bread, thin porridge, water that tasted of iron.
He learned early that crying wasted energy.
His body was small, fragile, constantly cold. Elenora—his mother—held him whenever she could, wrapping him in what remained of her cloak, humming softly even when her voice shook from exhaustion.
Lucien—his father—watched everything.
Even weakened, even broken, the man carried himself like a blade forced into its sheath. He never slept deeply. Never turned his back to the bars. When cultists came, his body tensed instinctively, as though muscle memory alone might be enough to fight.
They never touched the boy.
Not once.
"He's nothing," he heard one of them say beyond the cell. "Born here. No awakening. No mana."
They were wrong—but not in ways anyone could see yet.
He grew.
Slowly.
Painfully.
By the time he could sit upright, he had already learned to be silent. His parents spoke in whispers, careful with every word, every sound.
"This place suppresses mana," Elenora murmured one night, her fingers tracing faint symbols on the stone beside him. "Even passive flow is crushed. It's… sophisticated."
Lucien nodded grimly. "Military-grade runes. Old ones."
The boy listened.
Always listened.
Even as an infant, he felt things—pressure in his chest, a strange warmth beneath his ribs that reacted when his mother spoke of alchemy or when his father described sword forms with slow, precise gestures.
Lucien never held a blade again.
His hands shook too much.
So instead, he taught with words.
"Posture," he whispered, guiding the boy's small shoulders when he learned to stand. "Balance. You move before you think—but one day, you'll think first."
Elenora taught differently.
She told stories.
Of mixtures and reactions. Of how intent mattered as much as ingredients. Of how mana responded not to force, but to understanding.
"Remember," she told him softly, pressing her forehead to his, "power without control is noise. True strength is quiet."
He remembered.
He remembered everything.
Years passed.
The boy learned to walk barefoot on stone without flinching. Learned to eat slowly, savoring every bite. Learned that kindness was fragile and time was cruel.
His parents grew weaker.
Lucien's back remained straight, but his steps slowed. Elenora's hands trembled more often now, her breaths shallow, her eyes dulled by constant pain.
Yet they never stopped teaching him.
Never stopped preparing him.
As if they knew they wouldn't be there forever.
Five Years Later
The boy was five years old when he realized something was wrong.
Not suddenly—nothing in the cell was sudden—but gradually, like noticing the silence after a sound had been ringing too long.
His mother slept more.
His father spoke less.
The boy sat cross-legged near the bars, tracing letters into the dust with a careful finger. His writing was neat, deliberate—too precise for a child his age.
Lucien watched him with quiet intensity.
"You're learning too fast," his father said one night, not accusing—wondering.
The boy looked up. Met his gaze.
"I remember," he said simply.
Elenora's breath caught.
Lucien went still.
"…Remember what?" Elenora asked gently.
The boy considered the question. Then answered truthfully.
"Before."
Silence fell like a blade.
Neither parent spoke for a long time.
Then Lucien knelt before him, eyes searching his face with a mixture of fear and awe.
"Who are you?" he asked quietly.
The boy thought of the wheel. Of the void. Of a life where no one had said his name.
"I don't know," he said. "But I'm here now."
Elenora reached for him, pulling him into her arms despite her weakness.
"Then that's enough," she whispered. "For now."
The boy rested against her, eyes open, watching the runes pulse faintly along the walls.
Five years old.
Born in chains.
And already, the world was beginning to feel too small for him.