The clock on the monitor read 9:47 p.m.
Not the fierce red digits of a countdown, but a dull, indifferent grey—just another number in the quiet hum of a lifeless room.
Kenji Tanaka's shoulders sagged forward, the curve of his spine a confession of exhaustion. Fifteen years old, and already he moved like someone who had spent decades chasing deadlines that never mattered. The glow of the screen painted his pale face in sterile light, bleaching away whatever warmth remained in him. His eyes, rimmed red and half-closed, followed the endless columns of figures with the weary rhythm of someone running on habit alone.
Click. Clack. Tap.
The sounds of his keyboard filled the empty classroom-turned-lab, bouncing weakly off the cold white walls. Every other chair had been pushed in, every other terminal dark. The rest of the students had long gone home, laughing, shouting, or complaining about exams. Kenji stayed behind—not because anyone asked him to, but because home meant silence, and silence meant thinking.
And thinking hurt.
He blinked at the screen again. A spreadsheet. Always a spreadsheet. School project, club data, another task that no one would notice if he simply didn't finish. He pushed through anyway. Because doing something—anything—felt safer than stopping.
The room smelled faintly of dust and burnt circuitry. A single fluorescent light flickered above him, buzzing like a trapped fly. His mug of convenience-store coffee sat forgotten by his hand, a thin film of oil glistening on its cold surface. He drank it anyway. The bitterness scraped down his throat like guilt.
For a moment, his reflection in the dark window caught his eye. A boy stared back—thin, unremarkable, black hair sticking out in random directions, uniform tie loosened, eyes dull as stagnant water. If not for the faint shimmer of the city lights behind him, he might have mistaken himself for a ghost.
He leaned closer.
"Is this… what I turned into?" he whispered. His voice sounded alien, cracked from disuse.
He remembered being different once.
A boy who dreamed about heroes and magic circles, who used to swing a broom like a sword in the narrow hall of his apartment. That version of Kenji believed the world was waiting for him to awaken, that some hidden spark inside him would burst out one day and make sense of it all.
That was before reality started teaching him how small people could be.
A flicker of color broke the monotony of his cubicle-desk. A poster—creased at the edges, fading where sunlight had touched it too often—of Satoru Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen, blindfolded grin and all. Gojo stood there, arms crossed, arrogance incarnate. Limitless. Unshakable. Free.
Kenji smiled weakly. "Must be nice," he murmured. "Being the strongest."
He imagined standing like that—shoulders back, unbothered by the weight of the world. A boy who could look at his life and laugh, not out of madness, but of power.
He had memorized every one of Gojo's quotes. Sometimes, when the loneliness pressed too close, he would slip a black sleeping mask over his eyes, stand before the mirror, and recite:
"You're right. I am arrogant. But I'm not conceited. I'm just superior."
He had laughed the first few times. Later, it stopped being funny.
It became a prayer. A charm against disappearing.
He exhaled softly, turning back to the spreadsheet. Numbers blurred. Columns bled together. His temples throbbed.
The doctor at school had called it "migraine from stress."
The pamphlet said rest and hydration.
Kenji took two painkillers and kept typing.
Outside, the city blinked lazily—distant towers glowing like stars swallowed by fog. The world felt far away, unreachable. Somewhere out there, kids his age were singing karaoke, holding hands, arguing over snacks. Kenji's phone, face-down beside his keyboard, remained silent. The only message unread was from his mother, sent two days ago: Eat properly. Don't stay up too late.
He hadn't replied yet. What was there to say? "I'm fine"? That lie had lost its meaning years ago.
He dragged his hands over his face and pressed his palms against his eyes until colors danced in the darkness. He let himself imagine those swirling fragments were something else—threads of power, like the cursed energy in anime. For a heartbeat, he could almost believe it.
Then the pain behind his eyes flared.
A pulse—sharp, insistent.
He winced, leaning back. "Not again…"
The light above him buzzed louder, flickered once, then twice. The edges of the room warped as though underwater. The walls seemed to breathe. The air thickened until it clung to his lungs.
"What… the hell…" His voice trembled.
His heart raced. His breath came shallow. Panic attack?
No—this was different.
Reality itself began to tremble.
The poster on the wall rippled. Gojo's blindfolded head tilted ever so slightly.
Kenji froze.
A voice echoed—not through the air, but inside his skull.
"You can see it, can't you? The seams of the world."
He jerked upright. "Who's there?"
No answer. Only that growing vibration, like invisible strings pulling apart.
And then he saw them.
Lines—threads—beams of impossible light stretching through everything. The air was woven like cloth; every object shimmered with patterns of energy. The world was not solid but stitched together by something vast and fragile.
Awe replaced fear. He reached out instinctively, fingertips trembling. The thread nearest him quivered in response, humming softly, alive.
"What… is this…"
He felt the rhythm of the planet, the breath of atoms, the heartbeat of space itself. He wasn't supposed to see this. No human was.
The pressure inside his head swelled until it roared. Blood dripped from his nose. His body convulsed.
"Stop… please—"
But the light did not stop. It consumed everything—the desk, the walls, his body, the sky.
His final coherent thought was strangely calm:
"How ironic. I wanted power, and it's killing me."
Then, like a voice from the edge of eternity, something whispered the same words he once mocked in jest:
"Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the honored one."
The universe shattered.
Silence.
Not the silence of peace, but the silence before creation.
Kenji drifted weightless in the dark. No sight, no sound, no body. Only awareness, floating through warmth and pressure. Then, slowly, sensations returned—muffled heartbeats, rushing liquid, the rhythm of breath not his own.
He couldn't move. Couldn't speak.
Only exist.
"Is this… hell?"
His thoughts echoed back, smaller, swallowed by fluid and heartbeat.
But then came voices, faint but clear, vibrating through the darkness around him.
"Push, My Lady! I can see the head!"
"Kaelen—our child—she's strong!"
"You are stronger, Elara. Just a little more!"
Names. Words. A language he had never learned, yet he understood perfectly.
Something deep inside him translated them effortlessly.
He realized with awe—and dread—what was happening.
Birth.
The pressure increased. The walls closed in, forcing him downward. Pain and force pressed from every side. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't even think.
And then—air.
Sound exploded around him: screaming, crying, hurried footsteps.
"She's out! A daughter! A beautiful, healthy daughter!"
Elara's sobs of relief filled the chamber.
Kenji tried to make sense of it all. He wasn't the daughter. He was still inside. The realization hit him with absurd clarity.
Twins.
Another contraction gripped the world.
"Another child! Twins! I can feel the second one!"
He could have laughed if he had lungs. Twins. He was the second. Always second.
A strange defiance burned in him. He had spent his first life overshadowed, unseen. Not again.
The force pulled him forward.
He fought—not with muscles, but with something deeper, a will that refused to fade.
Light.
Cold air sliced across his skin. He gasped—his first breath, raw and painful.
Cries filled the air—his and everyone else's.
Hands lifted him, rough yet reverent.
"Another one! A boy! We have a son!"
Voices blurred together. He couldn't focus on the words. His entire being was sensation—sound, light, heartbeat, warmth. He blinked, eyelids fluttering open.
And then he saw.
Color.
Not as mortals saw it, but as rivers of living energy weaving through the world. The room was awash with luminous threads—blue veins of mana coursing through the stone walls, green tendrils swirling around the healers, red embers dancing over a tall man's shoulders.
The man—his father, by the rhythm of connection—stood beside the bed, tears glimmering in eyes the color of molten copper. His aura burned like a storm, fierce and steady.
Beside him, the woman on the bed—the mother—shone brighter than all. Hair the color of frost framed a face radiant with both exhaustion and love. Her energy was gold, pure and immense, like sunlight made flesh.
She reached out, trembling hands taking him from the midwife.
"My baby… my Kaizel," she whispered. Her voice quivered with awe and disbelief.
Kaizel.
A name not his, yet it resonated deep in his soul.
For the first time in years—perhaps lifetimes—Kenji felt warmth that was real. A mother's embrace. Tears welled in his newborn eyes, confusion and peace tangled together.
Mother, he thought. So this is what it feels like.
But before he could drown in that feeling, the world shifted again. Something awakened behind his vision—an awareness expanding outward like a star igniting. Information, knowledge, comprehension poured into him, faster than thought.
Every thread, every particle, every fluctuation of mana became visible. He saw how space bent and folded. How reality curved.
And within him, words formed—not heard, but known.
Celestial Eyes — The All-Seeing.
Two innate authorities granted at birth:
Mana Manipulation (Advanced): command of raw mana at the molecular level.
Spatial Sensitivity (Passive): perception and influence over the fabric of space itself.
He understood instinctively. He could not call fire or summon storms—but he could reshape the very stage upon which such forces danced.
Limitless.
A wild laugh tried to escape him, emerging instead as a gurgling cry. Inside, he shouted:
Mwahaha! Finally! Broken from the tutorial world straight into god-tier perks!
Sorry, old man upstairs, I take back every insult!
Out loud, it was only "Waaah!"
Yet the sound froze everyone in the room.
Because when Kaizel—when Kenji—opened his eyes, the world itself seemed to look back.
Twin irises of silver and deep indigo, swirling with constellations. Galaxies moved within them, slow and infinite. Light refracted across the chamber like the reflection of starlight on water. The healers gasped. Even Kaelen, the warrior-father, stepped back.
"By the gods…" whispered one of the attendants. "What kind of child bears eyes like those?"
The midwife crossed herself with trembling hands. "An omen… or a blessing."
Elara only smiled faintly, clutching her son closer. Her golden aura flared, meeting the cosmic light in his gaze without fear.
"No," she said softly. "Not an omen. A miracle."
For an instant, the threads of mana bent around them, forming a halo of radiant geometry.
And deep within his tiny chest, Kaizel's heartbeat aligned with the pulse of the world itself.
Somewhere beyond the mortal veil, unseen by all, two colossal eyes opened in the void and turned toward the newborn.
The temperature in the room dropped. Candles flickered.
Every adult present felt a presence brush against their souls—vast, cold, ancient.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "Elara… did you feel that?"
She nodded, but her gaze never left her son. "He's looking back at them," she whispered. "Whatever watches us… he's watching it."
The moment passed as quickly as it came. The light dimmed. The midwives resumed their work, murmuring prayers under their breath.
But in that brief silence, Kaizel—once Kenji—understood one thing with absolute clarity:
His eyes did not merely see the world. They defined it.
And far beyond the castle walls, beneath the endless night, stars shifted in their courses, realigning around a single newborn soul.
The heavens themselves had taken notice.
The boy who saw the seams of reality had been reborn into a world of mana . And his eyes… had already begun to open.