I was twenty-five when I died.
Not old enough to have reached the empire I once dreamed of, but old enough to know exactly how unfair the game of life could be. Deals failed. Promises broke. The weight of survival never lifted.
The rain fell in sheets that night, streetlights stretching across my glasses into long golden smears. I was thinking about money I didn't have, opportunities I'd missed. The truck came too fast from the left. Brakes screamed, horn blared, and then—
Nothing.
Not pain, not fear. Just a void. A silence endless enough to swallow everything.
And then… movement. Warmth. A rushing current carrying me forward. Light swelled until it filled my vision.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a different world.
A gilded ceiling curved above me, painted in curling gold vines. A crystal chandelier caught the sunlight pouring through ornate windows. My body felt wrong—small, frail, clumsy. My hands curled up by instinct alone.
A woman's voice—soft but firm—spoke near me.
"Robert… my son."
Her face came into view. Long golden hair, deep blue eyes, and a smile alive with pride. Elise Alucard—though I didn't know her name yet—held me with the care of a mother, but there was a sharpness in her gaze that told me she was no stranger to battle.
A tall man stood beside her. Perfectly tailored black suit, posture like a blade, dark eyes examining me as if weighing my worth already. Adrian Alucard—my father, though his look felt like an evaluation rather than affection.
Slightly back, watching without expression, stood an older man in a pristine white coat. His silver hair framed eyes that saw through things, not just at them. Magnus Alucard, my grandfather—a name I would later learn carried immense weight in the world of Pokémon research and politics.
They saw a newborn.
I was something else—someone reborn, mind intact from another life, carrying everything I knew from the Pokémon anime and games. Enough to understand the world I was in. Not enough to know this family's true depths.
Time blurred for the first few years.
Even in the cradle, senses I had no words for stirred. I could feel emotions nearby—ripples of anxiety, bursts of joy—like invisible threads tugging in the air. I reached, and once, without touch, a rattle rolled toward me from across the blanket.
At three, the family's butler and my eventual tutor, Hawthorne, began to "introduce me to manners." In truth, it was much more: posture, observation, how to listen without speaking, how to tell the difference between confidence and pretense.
He'd lean down and whisper during family dinners, "Watch when they smile without showing teeth, young master. Those smiles are never kind."
Scene: The Garden at Age 4
Elise knelt beside me among the hedges, her Gardevoir hovering silently nearby.
"Close your eyes, Robert," she instructed. "Don't look for me—feel for me. Follow the warmth, like sunlight through your skin."
I obeyed. The world was dark, but not empty. Threads of warmth and pressure floated all around. I turned toward one—steady, calm—and opened my eyes to find Gardevoir watching me.
Elise nodded in approval. "That is Aura. It is your birthright. But it's nothing without control."
Scene: Father's Study, Age 5
Adrian was at his desk, maps and documents arrayed around him. I was there to "listen," though I quickly realized this was another test.
"What did you notice in the councilman's tone?" he asked without looking up.
"That he insisted on urgency but never used the word 'emergency,'" I replied carefully.
Adrian allowed the faintest smirk. "Good. Learn the spaces between words—that is where deals are decided."
Aura training blended into the rhythms of my childhood. Magnus introduced me to my first real psychic exercise—levitating a small wooden box across his lab table. It took me an hour the first time.
He said nothing when I succeeded, only handed me another box—this one heavier.
By six, I was absorbing lessons from every angle—battle rhythm from Elise, strategy and politics from Adrian, controlled projection from Magnus, silent social warfare from Hawthorne. I spoke little, listened much, and remembered everything.
And yet… sometimes, in the quiet hours before dawn, something else touched my mind. Not a voice. Not exactly a thought. Just awareness—enormous, sharp, and patient. It would linger for seconds before fading, leaving me with the odd certainty that someone was watching from far beyond the estate walls.
I didn't know who or what it was. But I would.
On the morning of my eighth birthday, the Alucard estate was alive with movement. Servants hurried to prepare a private gathering. I would be receiving my first in-house partner Pokémon to train myself. Three in total would be chosen for me, but one… one would be mine to select.
I looked over them in the stone courtyard—the stubborn, steel-eyed Aron; the calm yet predatory Absol; the jittery, underestimated Weedle. I chose all three, ignoring murmurs about the "oddity" of picking a Weedle. Even at eight, I was already thinking as I had in my old life:
Everyone underestimates the small pieces. That's why they win games.
That night, in a rare moment of direct warmth, Elise placed her hand over mine and said softly:
"Robert, our name can build walls around you—or open every locked door you find. Which it does will be your choice. Remember that."
And in the silence after she left, I felt that presence in my mind again—stronger this time. It did not speak. But I swear it was intrigued.