The steady hum of machines filled the hospital room, broken only by the slow beeping of a heart monitor. Dawit Mekonnen lay on the narrow bed, his body frail, his breath shallow. Age had reduced the once-fiery historian to little more than skin and bone. The ceiling above him was pale white, yet in his dimming vision it blurred into the past.
He had lived nearly eighty years, but Ethiopia's story had weighed on him like a second lifetime. His mind wandered, not to family or personal triumphs, but to the nation that had shaped him and broken his heart.
As a boy, Dawit had been in the crowd—too young to understand fully, yet old enough to never forget—when soldiers of the Derg paraded Emperor Haile Selassie through the streets, stripped of dignity. He remembered the hush of disbelief among the people, the shame that settled on Addis Ababa like a burial shroud. The Lion of Judah, humiliated before the eyes of his subjects. Dawit's young heart had burned with confusion, and later, with grief.
Then came the Red Terror. He still heard the gunfire at night, the whispers of neighbors disappearing, the blood in the gutters. Dawit had buried cousins and friends, victims of revolution that devoured its own children. Hope in the republic had soon soured into disillusionment. Ethiopia, ancient and proud, had been reduced to fear, poverty, and silence.
And after the Derg? Democracy, they called it. But Dawit saw the same corruption, the same hunger, the same betrayals dressed in new slogans. He had devoted his career to teaching history, to reminding his students of the heights Ethiopia had once reached—resisting colonial conquest, standing as the beacon of African independence. Yet each lecture left him with a bitter taste. What good was remembering greatness if the present was only ruin?
A cough rattled his chest. His vision dimmed, but his thoughts grew sharper, cutting him open from within.
If only Haile Selassie had known what I know now. If only he had seen the storm that was coming. The Italians, the fascists, the League of Nations' betrayal. If only he had prepared differently. If only he had guided Ethiopia into true modernity, not just ceremony. Could he have saved us? Could we have been more than this?
Dawit's lips trembled. He wanted to curse, to cry, but his strength failed him. He had lived long enough to see his nation stumble from empire to republic, from terror to fragile democracy. Yet he had never seen her truly free, truly strong. His heart clenched with regret.
The monitor beeped erratically now. Nurses rushed, voices urgent, but Dawit heard them as if from a great distance. His last breath was a whisper not to his family, not to God, but to Ethiopia herself.
"We could have been so much more…"
Darkness folded over him.
And then—light.
A warmth unlike the sterile chill of the hospital. A soft rhythm, a heartbeat not his own. He gasped for air, but only a high-pitched cry emerged. Arms lifted him, gentle yet firm. A woman's voice sang to him, soothing in its cadence of old Amharic.
Dawit blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust. The world was massive and strange. He was being held close, his tiny hands clenching helplessly. In that instant, realization struck him.
He was an infant. Reborn.
The woman gazed at him with tender pride. "Tafari," she whispered, "my little Tafari Makonnen."
The name exploded in his mind. Tafari—who would be Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, the Conquering Lion of Judah.
Dawit's historian's heart thundered. He remembered the textbooks, the speeches, the downfall, the wasted opportunities. He remembered Ethiopia's agony, the humiliation he had witnessed as a child. And now, impossibly, he was here, at the beginning.
His mind, aged and sharp, trapped in the body of a child, formed its first vow:
This time, we will not fall. This time, I will change everything.