Chapter 1: Awakening in the Waves
The boy awoke to the sound of waves.
Not the comforting hum of a beachside vacation or the distant roll of ocean from a modern city. This was different, raw and untamed. The wind howled softly through gaps in the warped wooden walls. His bed was no bed at all, just bundled straw layered atop a rotting mat.
He opened his eyes.
Wooden rafters stared down at him like skeletal arms. His body felt sluggish, heavy, too small. He blinked, then blinked again, lifting his trembling hand to his face.
It wasn't his hand.
It was small. Pale. Young.
"What the…?" he whispered, and even his voice wasn't his own. Higher-pitched. Lighter. Foreign.
He scrambled upright, the motion dizzying. His vision swam for a second before steadying. The shack he was in was barely large enough to fit a single table, a water basin, and a few scattered items: a bamboo broom, a rusted cooking pot, and a small chest pressed into the far corner, locked and covered with dust.
Panic built slowly, not like a storm, but like a rising tide. The scent of salt and humidity filled his lungs. He stumbled toward the door, pushed it open, and stepped out into a world he did not recognize.
A narrow dirt path stretched down a hill toward a village nestled beside the sea. Children played barefoot among rice paddies. Fishermen hauled nets from worn boats. An old woman hung seaweed to dry. There were no cars. No electric poles. No signs of the world he once knew.
In that moment, standing barefoot on the cracked wooden porch, the truth settled in.
He wasn't home.
He wasn't even himself anymore..
...
The first days were a blur of quiet terror.
He learned the village was in the Land of Waves, a small, poor island nation often overlooked by the great shinobi powers. Here, life was slow, fragile, and harsh. There were no ninja clans. No Hidden Villages. Just farmers, fishermen, and tradesmen trying to survive.
The boy, now Hajime, as he pieced together from the murmured names of passing villagers, had no surviving relatives. His mother had died giving birth to him, the midwife said flatly, with no trace of grief. There had been no medicine. No healers. No chakra-infused techniques to stop the bleeding.
His father, a strange man who stayed only briefly in the village before vanishing, had left behind nothing but a name and an old trunk.
"He called himself a wandering shinobi," the village elder had said, stroking a white beard that reached his chest. "Kept to himself. Wore no village headband. Left one day and never returned."
No one knew where he had come from. No one knew where he went. The villagers didn't care, only that he left behind a burden.
That burden was Hajime.
...
On the third night, Hajime had his first dream that wasn't his.
He found himself in an impossible space, vast, dark, and silent. A world of black stone beneath his feet and endless stars above.
And in the center of it all floated a strange object.
A metallic container, about the size of a wine bottle, suspended in midair. Its surface shimmered faintly, as though reality bent around it. It was capped with silver seals etched with script he couldn't read, alien, yet ancient. It pulsed gently, like a heartbeat.
He stepped closer.
Suddenly, a voice, not a whisper, not a sound, but a thought, cut through his mind like a divine sword:
"Contained within: the Gene-seed of the Emperor's Chosen, the Grey Knights."
He froze.
His breath caught in his throat. That name, he knew it.
The Grey Knights. In his past life, in the modern world, he had read about them. Fiction. Lore. Warhammer 40K. An army of psychic Space Marines forged by the Emperor of Mankind to combat the daemonic threats of the Warp. The purest of the pure. Each one a living weapon of unshakable will, trained in both the arcane and the martial. Warriors immune to corruption. Born for war. Sworn to secrecy.
And now, the geneseed of one of them, the genetic blueprint of the ultimate super-soldier, was here.
Inside his mind.
This can't be real, he thought. This is a hallucination… right?
The container pulsed again, responding to the thought.
"This vessel may be brought into physical reality. Once done, it cannot be returned. Choose your moment wisely."
He stumbled back, breath shallow.
It wasn't a dream. This space was real, not just symbolic, but something that bled between the spiritual and material.
He stared for what felt like hours. But in the end, he turned away.
He wasn't ready.
.....
Life went on.
The villagers treated him with passing kindness but no warmth. Some pitied him, others avoided him. He was a boy without parents, without place, without purpose.
But inside him burned a growing flame.
The geneseed. The name Grey Knights echoed like a distant call to arms.
And the trunk left behind by his father, locked but easily pried open, contained several worn scrolls, sealed to keep out moisture and age.
Inside, he found:
Chakra theory: the fundamentals of inner energy, its connection to life force, and how to refine and circulate it.
Control exercises: balancing leaves, focusing while walking, surface adhesion theory.
Basic physical conditioning: stances, breathing methods, strengthening the body.
Two simple ninjutsu: a weak Earth-Style wall and the Clone technique.
The writing was handwritten, rough but dense. His father had clearly intended it as a guide for a child.
And Hajime read it all.
Every night, by candlelight. Every morning, he rose before dawn to practice.
His body was weak. His chakra refined. With his adult mentality he easily refined chakra, now hajime training his chakra control by climbing trees but kept failing, fall and fall.
But he persisted.
Not because he wanted to become a ninja.
But because something far greater waited inside him.
"The Emperor's Chosen."
Weeks passed.
And one morning, standing barefoot on the surface of a shallow stream behind the village, Hajime opened his eyes and realized he was doing it.
Standing on water.
Chakra flowed steadily through the soles of his feet. The surface rippled gently beneath him, but held firm. The village wind rustled his hair. Birds chirped overhead.
He smiled, not the smile of a child, but the quiet, fierce grin of a man who had taken his first step on a long, bloodied path.
He wasn't ready to bring the geneseed into the world.
Not yet.
But someday…
He would be.
And when that day came
The shinobi world would never be the same.