Aizen woke with a start, short of breath, heart pounding with a regularity he hadn't felt in a very long time. For a fraction of a second he still thought he could feel the crushing pressure of his sealed reiatsu, the invisible chains of Kisuke Urahara's seal, the weight of the eternal silence that had followed his defeat.
Then the sensation vanished, swept away by the tangible reality of the room.
The raw wooden ceiling of his bedroom definitively replaced the darkness of Muken prison. Rays of rising sun filtered between the slats of the blind, drawing dusty lines of light across the bare walls. It was a simple, functional room, without excessive luxury: a bed, a low wardrobe, a desk piled with scrolls.
He slowly brought his hand to his chest, fingers lingering over his muscled torso.
The Hōgyoku was gone. The perfect fusion, the transcendence he had so desperately desired and that had ultimately betrayed him.
Memories came flooding back…
The anger Aizen had felt at that moment, mixed with an incomprehension he had never admitted. How had Ichigo been able to destroy a plan that had matured over centuries?
And above all, he saw Kisuke Urahara again.
Aizen closed his eyes for a few seconds, letting the contrast between past and present impose itself on him.
"That will teach me never to underestimate an opponent."
He slowly sat up on the bed, joints supple, and observed his hands in the nascent light. They were finer, younger, without the specific calluses of centuries of combat with a Zanpakutō.
"Sixteen years, in this world."
Sixteen years since his unconscious rebirth, his soul washed up in the body of a newborn orphan.
"Sōsuke Aizen, captain of the fifth division…"
He let out a faint breath, a laugh without warmth.
"now, I am simply Aizen. Ninja of Konoha. ANBU medical, official disciple of Orochimaru, one of the Sannin."
He stood up and placed the soles of his feet on the cool wooden planks. His body was different, lighter, less dense in spiritual power, but the fundamental sensations remained familiar. Muscular discipline, absolute control of breathing.
He walked to the oval mirror fixed to the wall near the sink. Brown hair, slightly tousled, cut short on the sides. Features still youthful, but where the roundness of childhood had given way to sharper angles. A lean silhouette, honed by daily training. The glasses were still there. Simple, thin-framed, resting on the bridge of his nose. A deliberately ordinary accessory, apparently harmless, reinforcing the image of the young intellectual.
"It's just me but younger…"
'I failed once,' he thought. 'Because I wanted to be seen, recognized, feared. Because I let my arrogance, born of my superiority, override my strategy and expose me.'
'This time, the approach will be radically different.'
He adjusted his glasses with the tips of his fingers, a gesture that had become habit, a tic that was part of his mask.
His gaze, in the mirror, hardened, losing all trace of feigned gentleness.
"But here, in this world ruled by chakra, no one knows who I really am."
He turned his head slightly, scanning the room. Rolls of fuinjutsu scrolls were neatly lined up on a shelf, their copper clasps gleaming faintly. Medical notes in tight handwriting covered several pages on the desk, describing toxin analyses or circulatory system diagrams. In a corner, a training shinobigatana, blunt blade, rested in its scabbard; he almost never used it, and never in public. He didn't need it.
His true talent here did not lie in brute strength or frontal combat.
But in the mind. In the understanding of the mechanisms of thought and perception.
In illusion. Not the crude genjutsu that overwhelms the senses, but subtle, environmental, contextual illusion.
In manipulation. The kind that steers choices while making people believe they are acting freely.
The whole village knew him this way: an orphaned genius, a promising anomaly. A prodigious medical ninja, already integrated into ANBU for his medical skills. Competent in fuinjutsu for medical sealings. Capable of breaking down a jutsu or an organic malfunction with almost disturbing precision. Orochimaru himself, fascinated by the extent of his theoretical knowledge and his apparent lack of moral boundaries, had taken him under his wing.
No one, not even the Sannin with infinite curiosities, suspected that his true field of excellence, patiently developed in secret, was genjutsu.
He walked toward the adjoining bathroom, his calm and measured steps echoing faintly on the floorboards. The village was beginning to wake; one could hear the distant shout of a merchant, the sharp clack of taijutsu training on a square. The massive silhouette of the Hokage building stood out in the morning mist that still clung to the roofs.
The Third Great Ninja War was raging beyond the borders. Reports arrived daily, speaking of skirmishes, ambushes, human losses every day.
At the precise moment his foot crossed the threshold of the bathroom, a foreign, radically new sensation ran through his mind. It was not chakra, the energy he had learned to master here.
Aizen froze instantly, one foot suspended above the tiles.
[AWAKENING OF THE YANDERE KUNOICHI HAREM SYSTEM!]