Dean was fourteen when the dreams became more than just fragments. They transformed into vivid, detailed sequences that felt more real than his waking life, as if he was remembering actual experiences rather than imagining them.
At first, the dreams were just glimpses. A city with buildings of glass and steel reaching toward the sky. A world where people used devices to communicate across vast distances. Faces of people he'd known in that other life, though their names and identities remained frustratingly out of reach. But as time went on, as his Nen grew stronger and his consciousness expanded, the dreams became more coherent. They began to tell stories. They began to teach him things.
In one dream, he was in a dojo, learning martial arts from a master whose face he couldn't quite remember. The master was teaching him about balance, about the flow of energy through the body, about the way that true strength came not from rigidity but from flexibility and adaptation. The lessons were being delivered in a language he didn't speak in his waking life, yet in the dream, he understood every word perfectly.
In another dream, he was studying ancient texts in a library filled with books and scrolls. The texts were written in languages he shouldn't have been able to read, yet somehow he understood them. They spoke of a power that flowed through all living things, a power that could be trained and developed and mastered through discipline and understanding. The descriptions sounded eerily similar to what he was beginning to understand about Nen.
In yet another dream, he was fighting an opponent whose face remained shrouded in shadow. The fight was intense, brutal, testing every skill he possessed. But what fascinated Dean about this dream wasn't the combat itself, but the way he fought. He used techniques that seemed to come from nowhere, combinations of martial arts styles that shouldn't work together but did. He moved with a fluidity and precision that was almost supernatural. And when he woke, he realized that he could remember the techniques. He could practice them. He could integrate them into his own fighting style.
Dean began to apply these dream-memories to his training. He developed techniques that drew on knowledge that seemed to come from his past life, combinations of martial arts styles that the Zoldyck family had never encountered before. Strategies that seemed illogical until you understood the deeper principle behind them. A way of fighting that was fundamentally different from the Zoldyck way, yet somehow more effective in certain situations.
And it worked.
By the time Dean was fifteen, he was no longer the defective twin that everyone had written off. He was becoming something else entirely. Something that even Silva and Kikyo had to acknowledge, even if they didn't understand it. His combat abilities were improving at an accelerated rate. His Nen control was becoming more refined. His understanding of power was deepening in ways that went far beyond what the family's traditional training could provide.
"Where are you learning these techniques?" Silva asked one day, watching Dean train with a level of intensity that was unusual for him. The training ground was empty except for Silva, Dean, and several training drones that had been set up to test Dean's combat capabilities. Dean was moving between them with a speed and precision that was almost hypnotic to watch.
"From experience," Dean replied, which was technically true, though it was a heavily edited version of the truth. He couldn't exactly explain that he was remembering techniques from a past life that nobody would believe he had.
"From your brother?"
"No," Dean said. "Illumi's techniques are different. His style is built on precision and efficiency within the family's framework. I'm developing my own style. My own way of understanding power."
Silva was quiet for a long moment, and Dean could see the calculation happening in his father's eyes. Silva was trying to determine if Dean's deviation from the family's teachings was a strength or a weakness. Was this a sign that Dean was developing into something powerful, or was it a sign that Dean was becoming unreliable, unpredictable, potentially dangerous to the family's interests?
"Continue," Silva said finally. "But remember that you are a Zoldyck. Your loyalty is to the family first. Your strength should serve the family's interests, not your own personal philosophy."
"Of course," Dean said, bowing respectfully. But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. His true loyalty was to himself, to his own path, to the knowledge that was slowly returning to him from his past life. And that path was diverging more and more from what the Zoldyck family expected of him. He was beginning to understand that his destiny lay not in becoming a perfect assassin for hire, but in becoming something far greater. A Hunter. Someone who pursued their own goals, who didn't blindly follow orders, who used their power to shape the world according to their own vision.
Illumi knew it too. Dean could see it in the way his twin watched him now. Not with the dismissal of before, but with something closer to wariness. Illumi was beginning to realize that Dean was becoming a threat to his position as the family's strongest. And that realization was beginning to breed resentment and fear in equal measure.
The hidden knowledge from Dean's past life was surfacing more and more frequently now, not just in dreams but in moments of intense concentration. When Dean meditated, when he pushed his Nen to its limits, fragments of understanding would suddenly appear in his mind. Knowledge about power, about the nature of strength, about the way that true mastery came not from following rules but from understanding the principles behind the rules and then transcending them.
And Dean began to understand something crucial: his past life hadn't been random. He hadn't been just anyone. He had been someone who had studied power, who had learned from masters, who had developed his own understanding of what it meant to be strong. And that knowledge was now his to use, his to build upon, his to transform into something even greater than what it had been before.
The defective twin was becoming something that nobody in the Zoldyck family had anticipated. He was becoming a bridge between the ancient knowledge of his past life and the modern understanding of Nen. He was becoming someone who could synthesize different approaches to power into something entirely new.
And nobody knew it yet. But they would soon.
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