Awareness returned not with a jolt, but as a slow, suffocating tide. The first sensation was a profound softness, a comfort so alien it felt like a trick. The hard ground, the cold rain, the searing pain in his chest—all were gone. Replaced by… warmth. The smell of clean linen and faint, floral incense.
Saturu's eyes flew open. Panic, cold and immediate, seized him. The ceiling above him was impossibly high, carved from some pale, polished wood. Light streamed through a large window, illuminating a room that was vast, airy, and utterly unfamiliar. He tried to sit up, to reach for a sword that was not there, but his body refused to obey correctly. His limbs were small, weak, flopping against the mattress with a child's helplessness.
He stared at his hands. Small, smooth, unmarked by callouses or scars. A child's hands.
This is a dream. A fever vision before death.
But the details were too sharp. The grain of the wood on the ceiling, the sound of birdsong outside, the overwhelming sense of realness. He pushed himself up, his head swimming. The room was furnished with an elegance he associated with royalty. Silken tapestries depicting blooming plum trees adorned the walls. On a stand across the room rested a single, practice sword, its wood pale and unused.
A memory, sharp as a shard of glass, lanced through his mind. Togi's face. The betrayal. The waterfall. Jonathan's final, desperate cry. The grief was a physical weight, fresh and brutal.
He clutched at the soft sleeping robe he wore, his tiny fingers searching for the wound that had killed him. Nothing. Only smooth skin. The horror deepened, a cold certainty settling in his gut. This was no dream. This was something else entirely.
The door to the room slid open with a whisper. A woman stood there, her features kind, her hair elegantly styled. She wore the same plum blossom crest he saw on the tapestries. Her eyes widened with relief when she saw him sitting up.
"Rael! My little blossom, you're awake!" she exclaimed, her voice a melody he did not know. She rushed to his bedside, her hand reaching out to feel his forehead. Her touch was gentle, maternal. It sent a jolt of revulsion through him. This was wrong. All of it was wrong.
He tried to speak, to demand answers, but all that escaped his throat was a hoarse, childish croak. The sound terrified him.
"Shhh, now," the woman cooed, mistaking his panic for disorientation. "You gave us such a fright, falling from the training yard like that. You've been asleep for a full day." She smoothed his hair back from his face. "You must be hungry. I'll have the servants bring some broth."
Rael? Training yard? Servants? Broth? The words meant nothing in the context of his death. He was a general. He died on a battlefield. Who were these people? Where was he?
As the woman fussed over him, his eyes darted around the room, finally landing on a polished metal shield acting as a decorative piece on the wall. Stumbling from the bed, his legs wobbling beneath him, he staggered toward it. The woman cried out in alarm, but he ignored her.
He stared into the reflective surface.
A stranger stared back.
The face was that of a young boy, no more than five or six years old. Pale skin, wide, confused eyes, and a shock of dark, unruly hair. It was a face of softness and innocence. A face he had never seen before in his life.
A cold, terrifying understanding began to dawn. The voice in the waterfall. The granted "Authority." He had not been saved. He had been… remade. Thrown forward. But to when? And why?
Rael now the age of 11 year old body looking
at the woman who knelt beside him, her arm around his small shoulders. "It's alright, Rael. You're home. You're safe with your family."
Family. The word echoed in his mind, a hollow mockery. He looked from his reflection to the woman's concerned face, then to the practice sword. A deep, unsettling quiet settled over him, smothering the panic. This was not safety. This was a new kind of prison. His war was over, but a new one had just begun. And he was trapped in the body of a child.
---
The days that followed were a lesson in silent observation. He learned the woman's name was Elara, his mother. He learned he was in the Plum Blossom Swordsman Estate, one of the most prestigious martial clans in a land he did not recognize. He was Rael, her son by a first marriage, a fact that seemed to carry a subtle but persistent weight of disapproval. His stepfather was Lord Kaito, the clan patriarch, a man whose presence was like a gathering storm, cold and imposing. He had two step-siblings: Kaon, a boy several years older with a cruel twist to his lip, and Kaya, a girl whose beauty was matched only by the frost in her gaze.
They saw him as a weakling, an embarrassment. The memories of the boy, Rael, confirmed this—a life of whispered insults, of being overlooked, of tripping during basic sword drills to the sound of mocking laughter. The boy had been timid, afraid of his own shadow, a stark contrast to the titan now trapped within his skin.
He was taken to a clan historian, a wizened old man who spoke of the great peace that had reigned for five centuries. Saturu listened, his heart turning to ice.
As I figured, he thought, the general's mind analyzing the information with cold precision. All history of the war between humans and Oni were erased. Including those traitors. Togi, Garrick, Lyra… their betrayal had been so complete they had scrubbed the very reason for his existence from the world. His life's work, his sacrifice, his comrades—all were dust. The knowledge was a hollow, aching void in his chest.
He watched the clan's warriors train in the courtyards. They moved with a fluid, practiced grace, their blades humming with energy. Based on this era, it looks like many humans were able to acquire spiritual manifestation. The arts had evolved, becoming more widespread and refined. The raw, battlefield-tested power of his time was gone, replaced by something more elegant, yet somehow… softer. What has happened to the realm after my defeat? The question was a ghost that haunted his every waking moment. I still can't believe that I have to start over again.
The memories of the previous owner of this body were a litany of humiliation and loneliness. Based on the memories of the previous owner of this body, it looks like I'll have to take care of myself, he realized with cold finality. The lesson of his first life had been brutally reinforced in his second. Trusting anyone may lead to my death. Elara's kindness felt genuine, but it was the kindness for a feeble child, not for a warrior. It was a cage as real as any dungeon.
A new resolve, born of two lifetimes of betrayal, began to burn within him, a cold, blue flame in the heart of a child. The disgraced son of the Plum Blossom estate will evolve. He will become a powerful weapon of raw strength and the mastery of all the authority.
A plan formed, a path of absolute, solitary discipline. First thing first, I'll have to remaster the fundamentals of spiritual manifestation to acquire an attribute to wield a sword. And lastly, I need to evolve this body to handle the authority. This child's form was a prison of fragile bone and soft muscle. He would break it open and forge himself anew.
His quiet assessment was shattered a week later. He was in a secluded courtyard, trying to feel for the spiritual channels in his body, when Kaon and two other boys cornered him.
"Look, the little disgrace is out of his room," Kaon sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. "Think you're a swordsman just because Mother pities you?"
They shoved him, and the child's body stumbled, a flare of old, ingrained fear and helplessness surging up from Rael's memories. But it was met by the unyielding will of the Warrior of Blades. As Kaon lunged to shove him again, Saturu didn't back away. He moved inside the lunge, his small body flowing with an instinct that wasn't his own. He used Kaon's momentum, twisting and leveraging his weight with impossible precision to send the larger boy stumbling past him into a muddy flowerbed.
The other two stared in shock. Kaon rose, sputtering with rage, his face crimson. "You wretch! You'll pay for that!"
But in that moment, as fury consumed Kaon, a flicker of something else crossed his features—not just anger, but a wisp of dark, corrosive energy that felt sickeningly familiar. It was the same taint that had clung to the Grand Oni, a signature of absolute malice. It was gone in an instant, but Saturu had seen it. He had felt it.
The war was not just familial. It was not over. Something far older and more vile had survived, festering in the shadows of this peaceful, ignorant world. And he, the reborn Warrior of Blades, was standing at its very center. The gilded cage had just revealed its true nature: it was a nest of serpents.