Consciousness was a traitor.
It returned in fragments over the first weeks—brief windows of clarity between endless stretches of sleep that claimed eighteen, twenty, sometimes twenty-two hours each day. Asahi would surface into awareness like a drowning man gasping for air, only to be dragged back under by the relentless exhaustion of an infant's developing body.
During those precious moments of wakefulness, the horror set in.
His mind was sharp. Unnaturally so. Where he should have experienced the foggy, instinct-driven awareness of a newborn, instead he found his thoughts arranging themselves with clinical precision. He cataloged the room's dimensions through limited vision. Tracked the servants' routines by their footsteps in the hallway. Noted the subtle hierarchies in how they addressed each other, filing away names and ranks with perfect recall.
This isn't normal, he thought during one particularly lucid moment. Babies don't think like this. I shouldn't be able to analyze social structures when I can't even hold my own head up.
He tried to speak—to form words with lips and tongue that should have remembered their shape from his previous life. What emerged was a wet gurgle, shapeless and pathetic. His vocal cords were too underdeveloped, his mouth too small, his lungs too weak to push air with the force required for speech.
Frustration built like pressure behind his eyes. The emotion was pure and sharp, but his infant body knew only one way to express it. He cried, and hated himself for crying, which made him cry harder. The feedback loop continued until a servant—middle-aged, competent, named Junko if his memory served correct—hurried in to check on him.
"Shh, young master. You're safe. Everything's alright."
But everything wasn't alright. He was trapped. A fully conscious adult mind imprisoned in flesh that refused to obey, surrounded by people he couldn't communicate with, drowning in needs and instincts that overrode rational thought with humiliating regularity.
Leonardo's modification, Asahi realized with cold certainty during his third week of life. The prodigy wish. He said it would have psychological effects. Is this what he meant? Am I going to lose myself to this... efficiency?
Because that's what it felt like. Liam Bright had been scattered, prone to daydreaming, content to drift through life. But Asahi's thoughts moved like clockwork—precise, calculating, always three steps ahead. When a servant entered, he didn't just see a person. He saw threat assessment, capability analysis, potential utility. It happened automatically, without conscious choice.
What else did he change? The question haunted him through the long nights. What parts of me aren't me anymore?
His mother visited every day.
Shihōin Akane was elegant in the way of old nobility—every movement deliberate, every word measured. She held him with practiced care, dark eyes scanning his face as if searching for something. Her spiritual pressure was carefully suppressed around him, but he could feel the edges of it. Controlled. Refined. The mark of someone who'd spent decades mastering their power.
"You have your father's eyes," she murmured during one visit, tracing a finger along his cheek. "Sharp, even now. You'll be formidable, little one. I can already tell."
She spoke to him as if he understood, which was both comforting and unnerving. Did she suspect? Could she sense that something was different about him?
His father appeared less frequently. Shihōin Takeshi, Captain of the 2nd Division and head of the Shihōin clan, was a man of rigid schedules and formal bearing. When he did visit, it was always in full uniform—white haori crisp over black shihakushō, the 2nd Division's insignia displayed prominently. He would stand at the nursery entrance, arms crossed, studying Asahi with an expression that revealed nothing.
"He's developing well?" Takeshi asked during one such visit, not looking at Akane.
"Better than expected. The midwives say he's unusually alert."
"Good. The clan needs strength." A pause. "I'll speak with the training masters. We begin spiritual awareness exercises at age three. For him, we'll start at two."
Then he was gone, leaving only the lingering weight of his presence behind.
Warm family dynamics, Asahi thought with bitter amusement. At least I know where I stand. I'm an investment. A future asset for the clan.
The cynicism came too easily now. Another symptom of the change in his thinking.
Yoruichi burst into his life like a force of nature during his sixth month.
The door to his nursery slammed open hard enough to rattle the shoji screens. Asahi jerked in his crib—he'd been working on rolling over, a process that took embarrassing amounts of concentration—and looked up to see a teenage girl striding toward him with the confidence of someone who'd never been told no in her life.
She was perhaps thirteen or fourteen, lean and athletic, with wild purple hair pulled into a high ponytail. Her golden eyes gleamed with mischief as she leaned over his crib, grinning widely.
"So you're my baby brother!" She reached down without hesitation, scooping him up with practiced ease. "You're so tiny! Look at these little hands! Can you even see me properly yet?"
Asahi's infant body stiffened. Her spiritual pressure—even carefully suppressed—pressed against his barely-formed reiryoku like a tidal wave against a sand castle. His lungs seized. His vision swam. This was power, raw and vast and barely contained beneath a veneer of control.
"Yoruichi-sama, please!" Junko hurried forward, hands raised in placating gesture. "The young master is still very small. You must be gentle—"
"Relax! Future Flash Step masters need to get used to speed and pressure early!" Yoruichi spun, lifting Asahi above her head. His stomach lurched. "Right, little sun? We're going to make you into something amazing!"
Despite the discomfort, despite the instinctive fear response of his infant body, Asahi found himself... fascinated. This was Yoruichi Shihōin. The Flash Goddess. One of the most skilled combatants in Soul Society's history. And right now, she was just a teenager, grinning at him with genuine delight.
She lowered him, cradling him more carefully against her chest. Her heartbeat was steady and strong, audible even through her clothing.
"You better grow up fast," she said, softer now. "I want someone to spar with who isn't afraid to actually hit me. Everyone holds back because of the clan name. It's boring." Her golden eyes met his. "But you won't hold back, will you? When you're strong enough, we'll fight for real."
Oh, Asahi thought. She's lonely.
It hadn't occurred to him before—too focused on his own situation, his own plans. But of course she was. Heir to a Great Noble House, prodigy in her own right, surrounded by people who saw the title before the person. She wanted an equal. Someone who could stand beside her without cowering or scheming.
He couldn't speak. Couldn't even gurgle coherently at six months. But he held her gaze, willing her to understand.
Something flickered across her expression. Surprise, maybe. Then that grin returned, sharper now.
"Yeah," she said. "You'll be fun."
At eight months, Asahi learned that spiritual power had a mind of its own.
He'd been alone in the nursery—rare, but it happened when servants were between shift changes. His mind had been occupied with darker thoughts, cataloging everything he knew about the next 280 years. The Quincy genocide would happen in his lifetime. So would Kisuke Urahara's experiments and subsequent exile. The Hollowfication incident. The conspiracy that would eventually culminate in Aizen's betrayal.
Can I change it? he wondered, not for the first time. Should I? The butterfly effect is real. If I save someone who was supposed to die, do I erase someone else from existence? Do I accidentally prevent Ichigo from being born and doom the entire world?
The frustration and helplessness built. His infant body tensed, fists clenching in the soft blanket. And his reiryoku—the spiritual power that had been developing slowly, invisibly inside him—responded.
The mobile hanging above his crib swayed. Not from wind. There was no wind. The wooden toys on the shelf rattled. A cup on the windowsill tipped over, water spilling across polished floor.
Asahi froze. No. Stop. Control it.
But controlling it required understanding it, and understanding required practice he hadn't had. The reiryoku leaked out in waves, responding to his emotional state like a child throwing a tantrum.
Footsteps in the hallway. Rapid, heavy. The door opened and Junko appeared, eyes wide.
"Young master—" She stopped, taking in the scene. Her hand moved to her zanpakutō—even household servants in a noble family were trained Shinigami. "It's alright. You're safe. Just breathe."
But he was breathing. That was the problem. Every breath seemed to push out more spiritual power, filling the room with pressure that made the candles flicker despite their protected glass.
Then the temperature dropped.
Not gradually. All at once, like someone had opened a door to winter. Asahi felt it even through his infant body's limited sensory range. His breath misted. Frost crept across the windowpane.
"Move aside."
His father's voice. Command, not request.
Junko practically threw herself out of the doorway. Shihōin Takeshi entered, and his spiritual pressure descended like a mountain settling onto the room. It was immense—controlled with the precision of centuries of training, but undeniable in its weight. Captain-class. This was what a fully realized Shinigami felt like.
Asahi's infant body reacted instinctively. His own reiryoku surged, rising to meet the threat. It was pathetic compared to his father's power—a candle to a bonfire—but it was there, visible and measurable.
The two pressures collided. For a heartbeat, the room trembled.
Then Takeshi pulled his power back, reining it in completely. The temperature normalized. The candles stopped flickering. Only the spilled water and frost-marked window remained as evidence anything had happened.
His father approached the crib, looking down at him with those sharp, analytical eyes. Asahi stared back, unable to do anything else.
"Eight months old," Takeshi said quietly. "Already manifesting reiryoku in response to external pressure." He glanced at Junko, who still hovered by the door. "Inform the training masters. Asahi's instruction begins at eighteen months. Not two years. We can't afford to wait."
"Yes, Clan Head."
Takeshi looked back at Asahi. Something flickered in his expression—not quite pride, not quite satisfaction. Closer to grim acknowledgment.
"You'll be strong," he said. "Whether you want to be or not. The clan demands it."
Then he left, taking his crushing presence with him. Asahi lay in the sudden silence, heart racing, mind spinning.
Eighteen months. They're going to start training me at eighteen months old.
He should have expected it. The Shihōin clan didn't produce weaklings. Yoruichi had been a prodigy, and she'd been pushed hard from the moment her talent became apparent. But knowing it intellectually and facing the reality were different things.
I'm not even one year old and I'm already on the fast track to become a weapon.
The cynical thought came with that same cold precision that frightened him. Liam Bright would have been intimidated. Asahi Shihōin... Asahi was already calculating how to turn this to his advantage.
What am I becoming?
The nights were longest.
Servants dimmed the lamps after sunset, leaving the nursery illuminated only by moonlight filtering through rice paper screens. The Shihōin estate settled into its nocturnal rhythms—Onmitsukidō patrols moving like shadows through the grounds, distant sounds of training from the clan's private dojo, the occasional flare of spiritual pressure as someone practiced techniques.
Asahi lay awake more often now, his infant body's sleep schedule gradually adjusting to something closer to human norms. He stared at the ceiling, watching patterns of light shift as clouds passed overhead.
His thoughts turned dark during these hours. Inevitable, maybe. He knew too much. Saw too far ahead.
The Quincy genocide would happen within the next few decades. Yamamoto would give the order, and Shinigami across Soul Society would hunt down spiritually aware humans until the Quincy race was nearly extinct. Justified as necessary to preserve the balance between worlds. Remembered as one of Soul Society's greatest shames.
Could I stop it? Asahi wondered. If I became strong enough, influential enough, could I change Yamamoto's mind?
But the Quincy were disrupting the balance. Their methods of destroying Hollows rather than purifying them did threaten the cycle of souls. The problem wasn't invented. The genocide was an extreme solution to a real crisis.
Maybe I could find a middle path. A compromise. Teach the Quincy different techniques, convince Yamamoto there's another way.
Except that required political power he wouldn't have for decades. Required trust from people who saw him as a child, no matter how talented. Required convincing Soul Society's oldest and most stubborn warriors to change their minds about threats they'd been monitoring for centuries.
Then there was Kisuke Urahara. Brilliant scientist. Future exile. The man whose Hollowfication experiments would go catastrophically wrong and lead to his framing by Aizen. If Asahi warned him, would Kisuke even listen? Or would he assume it was a trap, an attempt to sabotage his research?
And Aizen. The name sent ice through his veins. What do I do about Aizen?
Sōsuke Aizen wouldn't even become a threat for more than a century. Right now, he was probably still a student at the Shinigami Academy, or maybe a fresh graduate assigned to some low-ranking position. Unassuming. Patient. Already planning centuries ahead.
I could kill him. The thought came with disturbing ease. Find him before he becomes too powerful and just... eliminate the threat.
But that was murder. Preemptive execution based on crimes he hadn't committed yet. Could Asahi live with that? Could he look someone in the eye and take their life because of knowledge from a future that might not even happen?
What if I change too much? What if my existence here means Ichigo never gets his powers? Never saves Soul Society? The Wandenreich wins and everyone dies?
The uncertainty was suffocating. Every choice branched into infinite possibilities, each carrying consequences he couldn't predict. One wrong move and he might doom the world he was trying to save.
Maybe I shouldn't interfere at all. Just live my life, get strong, survive.
But that felt like cowardice. Like wasting this second chance on safety instead of making a difference.
The shoji screen slid open with a soft whisper.
Asahi's eyes snapped toward the sound. His infant body tensed, reiryoku beginning to rise in instinctive defense.
"Easy, little sun. It's just me."
Yoruichi's silhouette moved through the darkness with predator grace. She crossed the room silently—no footsteps, no rustle of clothing, just fluid motion from door to crib. She leaned over the railing, her face partially illuminated by moonlight.
"Couldn't sleep either?" She reached down, adjusting his blanket with surprising gentleness. "I felt that earlier. Your spiritual pressure. Father's too. The whole estate did." A pause. "You scared the servants, you know. They're whispering about how the young master is marked by destiny."
Great. Just what I need. More expectations.
"Don't let it get to you." Yoruichi's voice was softer now, lacking its usual playful edge. "They put too much weight on things like that. Prodigy this, chosen one that. It's all nonsense." She sat on the floor beside his crib, back against the wall. "What matters is what you make of yourself. Not what they expect you to be."
Her golden eyes caught the moonlight. For a moment, she looked older than her years. Tired.
"I've been where you are," she continued quietly. "Well, not exactly. But close enough. Everyone watching, waiting to see if you'll live up to the name. If you'll be worthy." She smiled, but it was bitter. "Some days I want to run away. Just leave the estate, the clan, all of it, and see what happens."
You will, Asahi thought. In a few decades, you'll be exiled and spend a century in the human world. And you'll be happier for it.
"But I can't. Not yet. Too many responsibilities." Yoruichi stood, stretching. "So I'm stuck here, being the perfect heir, training until my body gives out." She looked down at him, and that sharp grin returned. "But you, little brother? You're going to have options. I'll make sure of it."
She leaned over the crib, reaching out to tap his forehead gently.
"Don't worry. I'll make sure you grow up strong. Strong enough that you can choose your own path, no matter what Father or the clan elders say." Her eyes gleamed with determination. "That's a promise."
Then she was gone, sliding the door closed behind her with the same silence she'd entered with.
Asahi lay in the renewed darkness, her words echoing in his mind.
Strong enough to choose my own path.
That was what he wanted, wasn't it? Not to be a piece moved by fate or prophecy, but to have genuine agency. To make choices that mattered.
But looking at the long road ahead—280 years of history he knew was coming, tragedies he might prevent, people he could save or doom with a single decision—he couldn't shake the feeling that choice was an illusion.
That's what I'm afraid of, he thought, answering her promise with his own silent truth. I'm afraid that no matter how strong I become, I'm still just following a script. Just playing my part in someone else's story.
Outside, clouds covered the moon. The nursery fell into complete darkness.
And Asahi Shihōin, six months old and already burdened with the weight of foreknowledge, closed his eyes and tried not to think about the future he couldn't escape.