I remembered dying.

  Not the pain—no. Pain is fleeting. It burns, it blinds, it screams until it’s forgotten. But what lingered was the silence that followed. That sickening quiet, like being dropped into a void with nothing but your own thoughts for company.

  Then came the cold. The wet. The sound of air crying through lungs too small for a warrior.

  My first memory—this time around—was of screaming. Not in battle. But in a cradle.

  A second life. Not earned. Not chosen. Given.

  I spent months trapped in flesh that couldn’t hold the weight of memory. I could barely hold my own head upright. I couldn't speak. Couldn't move. But I could see. My eyes, the same red mirrors that once made monsters tremble, bloomed open on the third day. The Sharingan—still mine. Still burning. But dulled. Not in power… in purpose.

  Chakra was gone. Hollowed out like a cave scraped clean by time. What remained was something else. I felt it in the air, thick like static, tasted it in the milk they forced down my throat. Magic. A new system. A new nguage. One I had to learn if I wanted to walk again as something more than a ghost in a child’s body.

  They named me Caelum Rosier.

  My father, Cassian Rosier, was sharp as polished steel. He wore tailored robes like armor, spoke slowly, and looked at everything like it might betray him. He never raised a hand against me, but he never smiled either. Not at me. He called me “son” the way a king might call his heir—heavy with expectation, not affection.

  My mother, Anna Rosier, was made of softer things. A Muggle. A brilliant one, though her brilliance made her a curiosity in her own home. Her hands smelled like ink and chamomile, and she read books that had no spells in them. She didn’t speak magic; she spoke reason. I liked her for that. She didn’t try to control me. She tried to understand me.

  When I was three, she gave birth to a girl. Lyra. My sister.

  She cried too much. She gripped my finger like it was her st tether to the world. I felt something strange the first time I held her.

  Not love.

  Something close.

  I grew faster than before. Not in height, but in thought. The Sharingan absorbed everything. Facial twitches, the inflection of spells, the quiet shifts between my parents when they argued te at night. I learned early that magic wasn't just spells and lights—it was power disguised as pedigree. The Rosiers were Old Blood. Proud. Poisoned by it. I was expected to become the next scion of their line. They didn’t know the irony of pcing such hopes on the reborn corpse of a man who once tore down dynasties.

  By four, I could read. I devoured magical theory in secret, sneaking into Father’s study te at night. Wands. Core materials. Spell structure. Magical ws. There was elegance here—a kind of brutal logic dressed in ceremony. Chakra was primal. Magic, here, was civilized. It wore gloves while gutting you.

  Still, I searched for chakra. For signs of what I had lost. But there was nothing. My tenketsu were empty. The gates sealed. My strength… neutered.

  I had to start again.

  But I wasn’t alone this time. There were rules to learn. Teachers. Books. And above all… patience.

  Then came the summer of 1945.

  I had just turned six. Lyra was three, still clutching dolls and trying to braid my hair while I read. That day, Father came home earlier than usual. Mother was listening to the wireless in the drawing room, sipping tea as a man’s voice crackled through the speaker.

  It was news. Not Muggle news. Wizarding.

  "Grindelwald defeated. Captured in Nurmengard by Albus Dumbledore. Duel said to have shattered half of the Schwarzwald... No survivors in the inner sanctum..."

  The room went still. Even the shadows held their breath.

  Father said nothing. He just sat down, slowly, pouring himself something strong and dark. I watched him closely. His jaw twitched once. Fear. He wouldn't say it. But it sat heavy on his shoulders.

  He had known Grindelwald. They all had.

  I leaned back against the wall, processing the ripple. A titan had fallen. Not unlike the ones I once felled myself. But this wasn’t my war. Not yet. I was still just a boy in a world that had no room for Madara Uchiha.

  Later that night, when the house slept, I climbed onto the roof, barefoot and quiet. I stared at the moon and whispered to it—not for comfort, but for calcution.

  So… there are men of that scale here too.

  Dumbledore… you interest me.

  Not because he defeated a monster. But because he did it quietly. He didn’t take the throne. He didn’t burn the world to make a point. He just went back to teaching.

  That, I had to understand.

  The next morning, I asked my father what the Unforgivable Curses were.

  He stared at me long and hard. Then walked away.

  A few weeks ter, I started showing signs. Accidental magic, they called it. A vase cracked when I got annoyed. A chair floated when I was bored. Lyra giggled and cpped her hands.

  Father smiled for the first time since I was born.

  Mother looked worried.

  I knew then: I would get my wand. I would enter the world of true magic. But I wouldn’t just study it.

  I would dissect it.

  And if it failed me like chakra once did... I would rewrite it.

  [End of Chapter 1]