I opened my eyes to a world that was not mine.
The first sensation was cold: a steady, indifferent wind brushing against a fragile, newborn body. My mind, however, remembered everything — a lifetime of strategy, calculations, and victories I had long since outgrown. I was older than anyone could ever imagine, trapped in the fragile form of a child whose cries barely disturbed the silence of a small coastal village.
I studied the sound of my own wails, noting the lack of control in the infant vocal cords. How laughable. Yet every sound carried information: the pitch, the rhythm, the response it elicited from others. I cataloged them, stored them for later. Everything in this world was data. Everything could be leveraged.
From my crib, I sensed them: my family. The adults, my father and mother, radiated calm authority and restrained tension. A faint, bright pulse from a more petite body nearby — my sister. Her chakra, unrefined but lively, was almost garish in its simplicity.
I flexed my awareness like a blade. Chakra — the world's energy, the essence of life — flowed through all of them. And through me. Already, I could feel it, raw and untrained, like a storm held in a fragile vase. I examined it without wonder. Observation was more valuable than emotion. Emotion was weakness.
I did not cry because I needed comfort. I cried because I needed information. And yet, even that was unnecessary; I had already learned more in the first moments of my life here than most could in decades.
The people who would call me "child" could not comprehend what they had been given. A predator does not announce itself. It observes. It waits.
My father's voice entered the room, steady and unremarkable. He spoke to my mother, unaware of the silent observer in the crib. I cataloged everything: cadence, breath control, posture. His chakra signature was dense, turbulent — a man trained for conflict but restrained by loyalty. My mother's pulse was fluid and subtle, healing in its rhythm, yet buried under worry. And my sister… she radiated unfiltered potential, chaotic and shining.
I began to formulate the first of many rules I would follow in this life:
Rule One: Observe first. Act second. Emotions are liabilities; power is eternal.
The sound of footsteps outside my cradle drew my attention. A midwife, a seemingly unremarkable woman, checked my breathing and pulse. I remained motionless, yet I cataloged her heartbeat, her subtle manipulations of posture, the hidden tension in her fingers. Everyone carries a signature; everyone leaves a trace.
It occurred to me then — as clearly as a blade sliding through silk — that death was not an abstract concept. It was data. It was power. And it was manipulable. I did not fear it. I embraced it as a tool, even as a newborn, because I already knew the first truth of this world: survival belongs not to the strongest or the fastest, but to the cleverest.
I further tested my awareness, focusing on the faint currents of life within me. Even in this infant body, chakra — the life essence of this world — hummed through my veins. Not strong yet, but present. Raw, chaotic, but mine. I flexed control over it in small pulses, feeling the tiniest responses. An imperceptible spark danced along the edges of my awareness. The thrill was not emotional; it was factual. I understood the potential. I understood the first taste of power.
My family fussed over me, speaking words I cataloged but did not understand fully yet. They marveled at my cries, my motions, the way I seemed "alert" for a newborn. If only they knew. They had no idea that the infant before them was already a lifetime ahead in cognitive development.
I did not feel affection. I did not feel fear. I did not even feel curiosity in the human sense. I cataloged, analyzed, and predicted. Every flicker of an eye, every twitch of a muscle, every subtle shift in breathing — it was all data. It would be helpful someday. Everything would be beneficial someday.
And yet, even as I lay there, wrapped in the blanket of mortality, one thought crystallized like ice:
To live without weakness is to live without emotion.
To live without emotion is to live forever.
I would not squander this form. I would not squander the life of a child, fragile as it seemed. I would watch. I would learn. I would refine.
The first day passed in silence. The wind drifted across the water, carrying scents of salt and algae from the coast. My father paced in the courtyard, my mother murmured soft words in the nursery, and my sister cooed in the small corner of the room. All of them were unaware that one among them was already awake in ways they could never perceive.
I closed my eyes, not to sleep, but to sharpen my mind. I reviewed everything I had already learned: the currents of chakra in my body, the signatures of my family, the patterns of sound and motion in the room. Even at this early age, I began building the first scaffold of what would become a lifetime of planning.
Observation. Calculation. Refinement. Power.
I was not a child. I was not a man. I was neither predator nor prey. I was an intelligence unbound by form, a mind awake in a world that slept.
And I would not waste a moment.
The world could wait. I would wait — but not idly. The first of many steps had already been taken.
The seed had been planted. The path was silent, and it began here.