Blood soaked the broken marble tiles. Ash danced through the still air, swirling above a world that had long forgotten peace. The throne room—once proud, once untouchable—stood defiled by steel and fire. Massive pillars, split at their base, leaned like dying titans. Tapestries that once bore the lineage of kings now served as funeral veils for the corpses strewn across the floor. Among them lay the final monarch, sprawled across his ruined dais, eyes wide, mouth ajar in stunned disbelief. His crown had rolled from his brow, settling beside his hand, as lifeless as its bearer.
Across from him, a man knelt—no, a specter. His breathing was shallow, every inhale a conquest, every exhale a surrender. His chest was pierced clean through, ribs cracked open like a chest of secrets, muscles torn, arteries drained of purpose.
Victory was his.
And yet, death came.
The swordsman's fingers trembled as he pressed them to the gaping wound that blossomed like a red flower across his abdomen. The warmth that flowed was no longer his—it belonged to the afterlife now, a currency traded at the gates of the unknown.
He did not weep.
He did not rage.
His gaze was fixed upon the corpse of the king. The very same man who, twenty-seven years ago, had cast him down like a shadow at noon, when he was but a boy of twelve. The man who had reigned unchallenged since then. The symbol of untouchable might.
Now, dethroned by obsession.
The swordsman gave a breathless chuckle, blood trickling from the corner of his lips. "It seems," he rasped, "even mountains can bleed."
The silence responded. Cold. Eternal.
He slumped forward slightly, eyes closing not in despair, but in serenity.
"The blade does not seek mercy," he whispered. "It seeks truth."
A final spasm crossed his body, a cough thick and black with blood tearing its way from his lungs. Yet his lips still curled, faintly, as though tasting the edge of something greater.
"To surpass all... even if the heavens themselves resist..." He paused, chest rising for what would be the last time. "Is that not... the oath of the sword?"
The sky beyond the shattered windows dimmed. Not from clouds, but from the fading light of his senses. A darkness thicker than sleep took root behind his eyes. And in that moment, where all should have been stillness, something stirred.
It began not with pain, but with sound.
Unfamiliar.
Alien.
Voices—three of them.
"Puushh! Come on now, puuushh! She's almooost there~!" sang a male voice, too theatrical to be real, too real to be forgotten. Each word laced with a tension that quivered like a taut bowstring.
"You must endure, sweet light," came a second voice, female, but cold and smooth like porcelain bathed in moonlight. Every syllable seemed chosen, deliberate, as though spoken from a throne invisible.
Then a scream.
Not of battle, nor of fear.
But of life emerging from death.
"I-it burns! My soul! AAAH, it's TEARING!"
The swordsman—now a fragment of memory drifting between planes—felt something tug at him. Not upward, not downward, but inward. Pulled by a force that neither invited nor refused.
He blinked.
But there were no eyes left to blink.
A light engulfed him. Not the distant shine of paradise, nor the infernal glow of punishment. It was warm. Wet. Pulsing in rhythm with a heart not his own.
A beat.
A breath.
He was being born.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
He tried to scream—but it came out as a cry. Small. Fragile. Real.
The air struck his skin like blades of cold silk. Arms—giants, unfamiliar—lifted him from blood and flesh and into the world once more. His ears filled with the thunder of voices.
"He's... he's beautiful," the moon-voiced woman whispered, her words curling like mist around candlelight.
"He lives. Thank the stars above... he lives," the man's voice shook, now filled with awe.
The scream-voice, the mother, now sobbed with feral joy. "My son... my boy... my salvation...!"
He could not see clearly. Only shapes. Only light. The warmth of the mother. The scent of birth—iron, salt, sweat, milk, and magic.
And something else.
Power.
The newborn's thoughts—flickering like candlelight in a hurricane—drifted back to the blade. To the cold weight of steel in hand. To the thrill of cutting air, flesh, fate.
'Reincarnation?' he wondered, though he had no tongue to shape the word.
'Am I... returned?'
The cries quieted. The room—though foreign—held the same hush as a battlefield after slaughter.
And within this child's chest, a new heart beat.
But the soul?
Oh, the soul was ancient.
"If a man dies with his blade unsheathed," his mind echoed, "let him be reborn with the will to perfect it."
He had climbed the mountain of swords once before.
Now, he stood again at its base.
Yet it was different.
This world—it reeked of strange forces. Of titles, of divine gifts, of rules not forged in fire and struggle, but born of bloodlines, hierarchies, and monstrous pacts.
He could feel it.
Even in this tiny body, its essence like threads tugging on every breath.
Something... unnatural.
A world of Specifities.
Of Substances.
Of inherited might and cursed glory.
And yet, despite it all, he smiled. Inwardly. As a warrior might smile upon seeing a battlefield greater than he'd ever imagined.
For though his body was small, his will was infinite.
And his blade—his true blade—was not made of steel.
It was made of purpose.