The world was a raw, primal roar.
He stood before it. The lion. Massive, its mane a tempest of gold in the featureless dark. Its eyes, twin embers of burning knowledge, pierced through him, demanding recognition. This wasn't a familiar comfort, a gentle presence from childhood stories. This was the first time it had come with such terrifying clarity. This was final.
He tried to scream, to run, but his body was a ghost in this void. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak.
The lion approached, slowly, with the crushing gravity of an inevitable truth. Then came the sound, ripping through the quiet beyond the roar. Not anger. Not a challenge. A sound of profound, guttural grief.
The beast reared back, its colossal jaws splitting open, revealing teeth like honed blades. It sank them into something pale and soft, something that looked impossibly like a human hand. It didn't tear; it severed it cleanly, in one savage, deliberate motion. Bloodless. Symbolic.
The hand fell, tumbling into the encroaching darkness.
He stretched out a desperate, childish arm, reaching for it, but the void swallowed it whole.
A whisper, thin and cold, echoed through the crushing nothingness. His own voice, yet alien.
"Goodbye."
He blinked.
Once. Twice. The ceiling above was... wood? Not the sterile, fluorescent panels he remembered. No rhythmic beeping of monitors. No antiseptic sting in the air, just the scent of pine and something faintly like woodsmoke.
He tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea rolled over him, pinning him back. His limbs felt foreign, too light, too short. His chest ached, like he hadn't drawn a full breath in days.
What... what the hell?
The last thing he remembered was the cold, unyielding mattress of a hospital bed. Wires taped to his skin, tubes in his nose. The hushed, worried voices of doctors. The distant, flatline hum of machines. And then, a searing pain, a final, suffocating gasp.
Now, he was cocooned in thick, rough-spun wool blankets. The air was sharp, biting with a mountain cold that promised snow, not the stale, recirculated chill of an air-conditioned ward. This was real.
His heart thrummed a panicked rhythm against his ribs.
This wasn't a dream. It couldn't be. If it was, it was doing a damned good job of pretending not to be.
He scanned the small room. Tight wooden walls. A hearth in the corner, a gentle crackle of burning logs. Dried herbs hung from rafters like dormant whispers. Jars filled with roots lined a rough-hewn shelf. Everything felt hand-made, lived-in.
A soft humming began somewhere beyond his sight.
An old woman stepped into view. Her silver hair, long and neatly braided, framed a face etched with countless lines, yet calm. One eye was milky and clouded, but the other held a startling, sharp intelligence. She moved with a quiet grace, her bare feet silent on the wooden floor.
"You're awake," she said, her voice a warm, gentle current in the cold air, as if his sudden appearance were entirely normal.
He stared, his throat dry. "Where... where am I?"
Her lips curved into a soft smile, and she reached out, the back of her hand cool and feather-light against his forehead. "Still a bit warm. That was a nasty fever, little one."
Little one. Me? He looked down... He flinched, pulling back slightly. Her touch wasn't threatening, but the sheer unfamiliarity of it was jarring. He didn't know her. Not at all.
"You've been out for two days," she continued, her voice soft, "We were worried."
He looked down at his own hands. They were tiny. Thin. Childlike. Not his. His breath hitched.
This wasn't his body.
This wasn't his world.
The woman—Kaia—tucked the blankets tighter around him. "Rest. There's warm broth waiting." She turned away, resuming her soft humming.
He sank back onto the pillow, staring blankly at the wooden beams above. He didn't know his name here. He didn't know this place. But one thing was clear: he was no longer where he was supposed to be.
The quiet was broken by a burst of energy. A small girl, no older than himself, flew into the room, tears already carving wet trails down her cheeks.
"Renjiro! You're finally awake!" she cried, launching herself at him, her small arms wrapping fiercely around his neck. Her embrace was so warm, so desperate, that it squeezed the remaining air from his lungs.
Renjiro?
What the hell is going on? This had to be a dream. Some fever-induced hallucination from that damned hospital bed. Was this... some weird afterlife perk for having a terminal disease?
He blinked, trying to make sense of the overwhelming warmth, the muffled sobs, the creaking wood. His mind reeled, grasping for a logical explanation. Best-case scenario... I reincarnated. Worst case? I'm still hallucinating in that hospital, trapped with those repulsive, fake relatives.
"Yurie, mind your manners. He just woke up," another voice chimed in. It was gentle, weathered, and spoke from beside him.
The elderly woman, Kaia, stood by the bedside now, her silver hair neatly braided, her sharp eye fixed on the girl.
"I—I was scared," the girl stammered, sniffling as she pulled back from the bed. "There aren't any doctors in the village... and it's so cold outside."
"There, there. Don't cry," Kaia said, a warm grin softening her features. "It was just a small fever. He'll be right as rain soon."
The girl—about his age, her face still streaked with tears—kept her worried gaze fixed on him.
He groaned softly, attempting to sit up again.
"You ought to take it easy, boy," Kaia said, catching his movement immediately. "Being sick in this season's like buying a free ticket to the next life. The broth's on the fire—don't get up." Her tone was gentle, but her single eye held a firm warning: don't be reckless.
In that moment, a terrifying, undeniable truth solidified. He wasn't in a hospital. There were no machines, no antiseptic, no electric hum. Only a quiet, snow-bitten cottage.
Renjiro Caelin was now a boy living in a small village on the edge of the Sani Athers Kingdom. With a family that wasn't his by blood, but somehow, felt more profoundly real than the one he remembered.
The room grew quiet again as the girl, Yurie, and Kaia left, their warmth fading with their presence. He was alone beneath the thick wool blankets, the air suddenly heavy with his dawning realization.
A soft creak. The door opened slowly, and a smaller boy, no more than three, peeked in, his round eyes wide with timid concern.
"Big brother… um, are you alright?" the boy whispered, his voice thin and shaky. "Grandma said you were still asleep… I'm sorry if I woke you."
Oh, little one. He blinked at Renzo. If you're sorry, then know this: the old Renjiro is gone. He left with a golden lion in some abstract world of light. Now… it's me. Your even more charming, confused, and probably cursed new brother.
Still unsure if he was dreaming or sane, Renjiro sat up, his new, small body surprisingly weak. "It's okay, I heard you. Actually, could you… bring me a decent-sized rock?"
Renzo's face lit up, his worry instantly replaced by childish enthusiasm. "Yes! Lil' Renzo reporting for duty!" He beamed and sprinted out, his tiny feet pattering on the wooden floor.
Renjiro leaned back, exhaling slowly. God, if this really is reincarnation… then please. Please no fantasy stats, no leveling systems, no quests or dungeons. Just let me live a peaceful, boring life with good people and no illnesses.
But the hope was already crumbling, thin as frost.
He was in the One Piece world. A world where justice was twisted, tyrants wore halos, and peace was a lie told by men with power. His own past life's knowledge, once a source of entertainment, now felt like a curse.
Still… he'd landed in a quiet village, far from the chaos. Maybe—just maybe—he could live quietly here.
"Renjiro," he muttered to himself, glancing at his small hands and thinner frame. "Cool name, I guess. Their naming sense isn't so bad… but wow, I'm tiny. Four years old, maybe five. Going from a 16-year-old sickly teen to a feverish toddler… damn. Why does the sickness have to reincarnate too? That's not fair."
The door burst open again.
"I got it!" Renzo beamed, holding up a palm-sized rock like it was the most precious treasure. "It's not that big, but it's heavy! Okay?"
Renjiro managed a weak smile, a small cough catching in his throat. "Thank you, Renzo. That's perfect. You should go now, though. If Grandma sees you here, she'll scold you."
"Okay!" Renzo nodded enthusiastically and slipped out, carefully shutting the door behind him.
Renjiro looked at the rock in his hand. It was decently heavy for a child's size. Heavy enough to leave a bruise… or worse.
"Alright," he muttered, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm. "Time to test reality."
He raised the rock. Was this a dream? A hallucination? Was pain still real in this body?
He gripped it tightly. "Okay… here we go. Please, God. Don't let this be another nightmare."
CLACK!
The rock met his forehead with a nasty thud—a little too hard.
"Ah—!"
His cry echoed in the small wooden room, but it wasn't just from pain.
Because suddenly, it wasn't just his head that hurt.
Memories. They hit him like a crashing tide, overwhelming his senses, flooding his mind with an existence that was not his own, yet was undeniably his now.
The smell of pine smoke drifting from the hearth. The sound of Kaia's soft voice humming in the early morning light. Bram's stern silhouette hammering at the anvil, even with his bad leg. The cold wind of Tundveil whipping through the wooden eaves. The feel of little Renzo's hand tugging at his sleeve, always following close behind. Yurie's bossy scolds and fierce, protective glares.
The laughter. The quiet. The warmth.
The life of Renjiro Caelin—the boy who had lived here before.
It all came flooding back—every smile, every winter, every lesson, every loss. Not of a hospital or a distant, forgotten world. But of this very place.
He slumped onto the bed, breath shaky, eyes wide. Then the tears came. Slow at first, then freely, hot and visceral on his new, young skin.
His small hands covered his face as a flood of raw, overwhelming emotion—both his own and the echoes of the boy he now inhabited—overwhelmed him.
"Thank you… thank you for letting me live again. For letting me stay with them, in this world, even like this."
But as the tears fell, a chill, colder than the Tundveil air, settled into his chest. A terrifying certainty.
"But... why now? Why here, of all places?" His voice was barely a whisper, thick with new, inherited sorrow.
"Why... One Piece?"