Chapter 1: The Rebirth
There is no concept of time in the void. After my original world was destroyed and I was dragged into the bloody arenas of that interdimensional colosseum, I lost track of how many centuries I spent fighting. I was Syrn, a professor, a man of science. In those arenas, I was forced to become a mechanical survival monster. But now, the only thing left of me was the echo of the explosion I triggered to escape.
I had defeated my captors, but the cost was high. My soul was shattered, drifting through the cosmic ether like dust in the wind.My mind was failing. The fragments of my scientific thoughts flickered and died out like burnt-out lightbulbs. I knew, with mathematical precision, that only a few minutes remained before my complete extinction. I needed, with metabolic urgency, to find something to bind myself to.
A vessel. An anchor that would stop my essence from evaporating into nothingness.That was when my psychic senses collided with a brand-new atmosphere.Below me, spinning in the vacuum, was a different world. A beautiful blue planet whose rotation and color spectrum painfully reminded me of Téia, my homeland. But I had no time for nostalgia. There was so little left of me that falling toward that ground felt like a headlong dive toward ultimate death. I had to find a body.
Now, My mental filaments shot down like lightning toward a stone garrison-house in a small town along the road — one of the waystations where traveling nobles sheltered for the night, in a distant corner of that medieval world. What my spectral eyes found was a frequency of pain I knew all too well. A woman wept, on her knees beside a narrow inn bed. A man in rough armor pounded his fist against the wall, tears cutting through the grime on his weathered face. At the center of that borrowed room, a small child — no older than six — was drawing his last breaths, his blood still carrying the cold bite of poison alongside the wound from the arrow that should never have reached him.How many times had I seen that exact same scene in the arenas of the Astral Plane? Powerful beings crushing the weak. Yet, even after enduring so much cruelty, that image still stung. The human side of the geek professor that I tried so hard to suppress inside myself was still breathing.“Maybe I can bind myself to him... and save this child,” I thought, my scientific logic dueling with the desperation of survival. “Is his soul still in there? It's worth a shot. If I fail, this will be my final act in the universe, and I will simply cease to exist.”Diving into the biology of that tiny body, my psychic diagnosis was grim.
There were heavy traces of poison in his bloodstream—a dense, magical, destructive toxin. Healing that young flesh would require monumental effort, but what truly worried me was the spiritual side. I could find no consistent traces of the boy’s soul. The tether was weak and damaged, as if a curse were intentionally ripping the life out of him.
Who would do something so cruel to such an innocent child?I was exhausted, almost completely out of strength, but I channeled the very last scrap of my cellular telekinesis to try and rebuild the tissues of the boy's heart.At that exact moment of fusion, I saw him.
The child’s soul manifested before me on the spiritual plane. He wasn't afraid. He only held a profound sadness that was far too mature for his young age. The little spirit stepped closer to my chaotic vastness and, with a voice that echoed in my mind, pleaded:
— Please... take care of my parents.The shock of that request completely paralyzed me.
— Why aren't you staying?
— I countered mentally, trying to use my energy to push him back into his body.
— Fight! I can help you rebuild this vessel!The boy shook his head timidly.
— My time has come... there is nothing more I can do. The tether has been broken.I didn't have any strength left either. My Mental energy was completely drained, my mind failed entirely, and darkness swallowed me whole.
When the light finally returned, the impact was surreal. The stone ceiling above me looked impossibly vast. My hands, when I tried to lift them, were tiny, weak, and trembling. The smell of sweat and iron, and the bitter taste of bile and poison, flooded my mouth. A sharp, phantom ache throbbed in my chest — the ghost of the arrow wound that had torn through this small body only moments before. I dragged in a ragged breath, these six-year-old lungs expanding under my control for the first time, filling with the air of this world.
I was inside the child's body.
The binding process should have made me nothing more than a support — an invisible symbiote keeping the boy alive. But his soul had already left. I was not a guest. I was now the master of Kaelen Vance’s body. And his assassin was still out there somewhere.
I felt the immense weight of my new body even before my vision could fully focus. My chest burned, a phantom remnant of the agony that had paralyzed this tiny heart just minutes ago.
When my new eyes finally adjusted to the flickering light of the torches, I saw the faces of the two people who would reshape my destiny.The woman threw herself over me. Her embrace carried a desperate affection, a human warmth I hadn't felt in centuries within the freezing arenas of the Astral Plane.
She wept loudly, sobbing against my small shoulders while whispering repeated thanks to the gods for the "miracle of healing."Healing... I thought, feeling a sharp pang of irony and guilt. It wasn't exactly a healing process.
It was an emergency scientific possession. My heart grew heavy. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I was only meant to be a support, a silent spectator in the boy’s mind, but now I was wearing his identity.
As the woman held me tight, tiny static shocks fired inside my brain. They were fragments of the original Kaelen's memories beginning to merge with my mind of Syrn.
Flashes of a sweet smile, the scent of lavender, a calloused hand holding a wooden toy. Through this echo of recollections, names surfaced in my consciousness: the woman hugging me was Sylvia. The armored man beside her, whose face overflowed with raw relief, was Arl, the border lord.I tried to focus on their conversation, but the language of this material plane still sounded strange and distorted to my foreign ears.
They were talking about magic or rather, the complete lack of it. Arl was cursing under his breath, muttering that the Magic Weave of the region seemed to have failed or been blocked right when they needed it most. From what I could piece together from the remaining words, they were returning from a major political gathering or celebration when their carriage was ambushed by bandits on the road.
Bandits attacking a noble carriage... Seriously? I grumbled mentally, a bitter taste of cliché hitting my mouth. I definitely should have read fewer manga and focused more on survival literature during my youth on Téia.
I had to strictly police my own facial expressions to make sure the disdain of a university professor didn't show on the face of a six-year-old child.
Arl and Sylvia stared at me, their eyes filled with intense expectation, repeatedly asking if I was alright, if I felt any pain, or if I remembered anything.
I stayed silent, pretending to be disoriented, picking up the details of the tragedy through their worried tones. They explained to one another how coordinates for the attack had been planned. The assassins didn't just want to steal; their goal was the death of Sylvia and myself. The family's personal guard had acted quickly, positioning himself as a living shield to protect Lady Vance. But for little Kaelen, time had already run out.
A black arrow, soaked in a magical toxin that paralyzed all vital functions, had flown straight toward the child’s chest, piercing his heart.I could identify only a few isolated words from that explanation, but the context was crystal clear.
I decided that the best scientific survival strategy would be to pass myself off as a child who was simply in deep shock and disoriented. However, looking at Sylvia’s tear-stained face made my stomach churn with guilt. I was deceiving these people.“I am so sorry,” I thought, talking mentally to the boy’s soul that had already passed on.
“But I promise you, little one... I am going to protect them. You gave me a second chance to live, and I will not waste this vote of confidence.
”The carriage continued to push forward, rattling violently over heavy wooden wheels. When I peeked through the slit of the leather curtain, I swallowed hard.
We had entered the gates of a border city. Forget the sanitized, pretty medieval villages from the animations I used to watch. The reality here was raw. The streets were deep ruts of packed dirt, mud, and dust. The air smelled of horse manure, charcoal smoke, and sweat. Inside the dark wooden taverns, heavy-eyed men carried battle-axes and short swords.
Worse than the humans, the whispers of the crowd on the streets spoke of "monsters" roaming the nearby woods. Real monsters. Hostile biological creatures. That was a completely new concept for a scientist from Téia, where the only monsters were politicians and corporate greed.The danger was real, and the assassin who orchestrated the black arrow was still out there, probably waiting for the report that the Vance heir had died. I needed to stay on high alert. Kaelen’s body was far too weak, malnourished by the poison's fever.
I needed to secretly initiate a cellular strengthening protocol. By my mental calculations, I should start with psychic isolation exercises. If I could activate Psychometry and Telekinesis first faculties closely tied to mechanics and reading matter
—I would have a baseline defense. Precognition would have to wait; reading timelines demanded a neural stability that this six-year-old brain didn't yet possess. The same went for the thermal fluctuations of Pyrokinesis and Cryokinesis, expanding or cooling atoms in this tiny body right now could simply blow up my own veins. I needed to understand the physical rules of this world. I needed to study.
I looked at Sylvia, who was trying to clean up the black puddle of poison I had vomited into the corner of the seat. I tried to formulate my first sentence in this rustic language.
I gathered the sound frequencies in my throat, but the muscles of my vocal cords still wouldn't properly obey my adult mind's commands.
— S... stu... dy, — my voice came out weak, clumsy, and high-pitched, like the chirp of an injured bird.
— Study...Arl and Sylvia froze. They exchanged wide-eyed looks of surprise, and then an even greater wave of emotion washed over the couple. Sylvia pulled me into another tight hug, caressing my sweaty hair.
— Oh, my darling... — she said, her voice cracking as she exchanged hurried words with her husband.
— The poison must have affected his little head, Arl. He’s delirious, saying things that make no sense...Arl smiled, trying to look strong, and gave my leg a gentle pat.
— Stay calm, little Kaelen. We are almost safe. As soon as we get home, Mama will have them make lots of sweets so you can forget this scare, alright?I stared at the roof of the carriage, feeling a pang of comedic despair. Sweets? Oh, boy... I walked right into that one.I wanted books, grimoires, geography treatises, or any written scrap of paper to decipher this world, and they thought I was traumatized and craving sugar.
I tried not to sigh. Forcing the issue now would only make them call a cleric or a medieval doctor with leeches to treat my head, and that was the last thing I wanted.I would have to give it time. Swallow my professor’s pride and accept the sweets. I rested my head on Sylvia's lap, closing my eyes to continue mapping my brain's energy channels as the carriage rolled through the inner gates of a massive stone fortress.We were arriving. It was time to see "our home" and plan my counter-attack.
The carriage finally stopped with a metallic screech. When Arl carried me in his arms out of the vehicle, I caught a glimpse of the imposing Vance Stronghold. It wasn't a marble palace, but a construction of war: massive blocks of dark stone, towers with arrow slits, and a noisy courtyard full of soldiers cleaning swords and tending to horses.
The scent of iron, manure, and woodsmoke hung heavy in the air. It was a frontier outpost, the final line of defense against neighboring nations.I was quickly carried through the cold stone corridors to my bedroom. Sylvia insisted on tucking me beneath heavy bear furs, kissing my forehead multiple times before Arl convinced her that I needed absolute rest. When the heavy oak door finally closed, silence descended upon the room.I was alone.I held my tiny hands up to my eyes.
Kaelen’s body was still trembling, a biological reflex of the stress and the poison I had burned out of his veins. I needed to test my psychic capabilities immediately. In this rustic world where safety was an illusion, knowledge would be my only weapon.I dragged myself out of bed, my bare feet touching the ice-cold stone floor.
My eyes swept the room until they landed on a small wooden table beside the unlit fireplace. There lay a silver ceramic bowl turned on its side, with a metal spoon fallen on the floor. It was the remains of the last meal little Kaelen had eaten before falling ill on the road.I stepped closer and extended a trembling hand. I was going to test Psychometry, the ability to read the past engraved in matter. I concentrated my mind, forcing this child's neurons to channel the psychic energy I used to command in the arena. My temples throbbed with a sharp pain, and my fingers touched the metal handle of the spoon.
The world around me vanished.A burst of mental static exploded behind my eyes. The colors of the bedroom were replaced by a grayscale vision, an echo of the recent past recorded in the molecules of that object.
In the vision, I saw this very room, just a few hours before the ambush. The door opened silently. A man walked in.He wasn't a noble in fine clothes. He was a robust man, wearing a battered leather coat and boots caked in mud and hay. The scent of a stable seemed to emanate from the vision itself. It was the Vance family's coachman, the trusted man who guided the carriage on the dangerous frontier roads.He looked around nervously.
From inside his boot, he pulled out a small vial of dark glass and poured three drops of a thick, black liquid into the soup on the table.While bathing the tip of an arrow. As he did, he muttered under his breath, a whispered confession that my Psychometry captured perfectly:
— May the gods forgive me... but the Baron across the border pays better. Without the heir, the Vance lineage dies here. The lands will be his... and I will be a rich man in the neighboring nation.
The vision dissolved like smoke. I was hurled back to reality, falling to my knees on the stone floor, my heart hammering wildly in my six-year-old chest. Cold sweat trickled down my face.The piece of the puzzle snapped perfectly into my scientific mind. It hadn't been a random bandit attack on the road. There was a war of interests underway.
The Baron of the neighboring nation had made a blood pact: if he couldn't eliminate his political adversary, Arl Vance, he would destroy the family's continuity by eliminating the heir. Without a male successor in the medieval age, the dynasty would collapse, opening the doors for the neighboring Baron to arrange strategic political marriages with the daughters and take control of the entire border indirectly over the long term.And the informant who sold out the convoy's route to the bandits was out there, right now, in the courtyard, tending to the horses.I took a deep breath, feeling a cold, calculating fury rise along my spine.
I looked at my child's hands. The enemy thought they had killed a fragile, defenseless heir. They had no idea that, in the boy’s place, the 100-Handed Warrior now dwelled.The coachman thought his betrayal had been perfect. He was about to find out that the past leaves tracks that all the magic in the world can't erase
