The rain fell like lead bullets on the Colombian jungle, each drop exploding against the dense canopy above. Mateo Reyes pressed his back against the rough bark of a ceiba tree, his breathing controlled despite the burning in his lungs. Blood—his own—mixed with the rain, creating crimson rivulets that disappeared into the mud beneath his boots.
Twenty-three hours into the operation. Four hours past extraction time. No backup coming.
His earpiece crackled with static, then silence. The communication network had been compromised six hours ago. He was alone now. Truly alone.
Mateo was twenty-nine years old, though his eyes carried the weight of twice that many years. Seven years with the Colombian Special Forces, three with the elite CCOES—the Joint Special Operations Command. He'd seen things that would break most men. Done things that haunted him in the rare moments when sleep came.
But he'd always come home.
Always.
His fingers trembled as they touched the blood-soaked pocket over his heart. Inside, protected by a waterproof sleeve, was a photograph. He didn't need to look at it to see her face. Catalina. His fiancée. Dark eyes that held the warmth of the sun, a smile that made him believe there was still good in the world.
"Three more months, mi amor," she'd said the night before he deployed. "Three months and you're done. No more missions. No more waiting. Just you, me, and the rest of our lives."
Three months.
He'd promised.
Another promise he was about to break.
The sound of boots splashing through water snapped him back to the present. They were close now. Too close. Mateo checked his rifle—half a magazine left. His sidearm had two rounds. One grenade remained clipped to his vest, but using it would only announce his position to the dozen other hostiles searching the jungle.
Tactical assessment: his mind worked automatically, a habit drilled into him through countless operations. Twelve confirmed hostiles. Maybe more. Wounded—left shoulder, two broken ribs, possible internal bleeding. Ammunition critical. Extraction impossible. Survival probability...
He didn't finish the calculation.
He already knew the answer.
The mission had been simple on paper: infiltrate a guerrilla compound, extract intel on a planned terrorist attack in Bogotá, exfiltrate without engagement. Clean. Surgical. Routine.
But someone had talked. Someone always talked.
The compound had been waiting. His team—Martinez, Gonzalez, Ruiz, good men, brothers—had bought him time with their lives. He'd heard their final transmissions. Heard the gunfire that followed the silence.
Now it was just him, the intel drive in his vest pocket, and the men who wanted him dead.
Was it worth it? The question surfaced unbidden. Was the information worth their lives? Worth mine?
He pushed the thought away. That wasn't his call to make. He was a soldier. Soldiers followed orders. Completed missions. Died if necessary.
But God, he didn't want to die.
Not here. Not like this. Not with a promise unfulfilled.
Movement. Thirty meters to his left. Two hostiles, moving in a practiced sweep pattern. Professional. Cartel sicarios, probably. Well-trained. Well-armed.
Mateo's breathing slowed further. His heart rate dropped. The pain in his ribs faded to a distant ache. This was the zone—the place where his body became a weapon, where thought and action merged into pure reflex.
He could take them. Two rounds, two targets, center mass. But the sound would bring the others. He'd have seconds before—
A branch snapped behind him.
Instinct saved his life. He rolled left as the burst of automatic fire tore through the space where he'd been standing. Bark exploded. Leaves shredded.
Mateo came up firing. Three rounds. The first hostile dropped. The second dove for cover.
Then the jungle erupted.
Muzzle flashes lit the darkness like lightning. The air filled with the crack of rifles, the whistle of rounds passing too close. Mateo moved on pure training, his body navigating the terrain while his mind calculated angles, distances, threats.
He dropped behind a fallen log. Rounds chewed into the wood. He fired blind, forcing them to keep their heads down, buying seconds he didn't have.
The magazine ran dry. He dropped it, reached for a fresh one.
His hand found only empty pouches.
This is it, then.
Strange, how calm he felt. How the fear that should have paralyzed him was absent. Perhaps he'd used up his capacity for fear years ago. Perhaps he'd always known it would end like this—in mud and rain and blood, far from home.
His sidearm cleared leather. Two rounds left. He'd make them count.
A hostile appeared to his right, rifle raised. Mateo fired. The man's head snapped back.
One round left.
Three more rushed his position. He aimed at the closest—
Pain exploded through his chest. Once. Twice. Three times.
He looked down. Red flowers bloomed across his vest. The armor had stopped some rounds. But not all.
Not enough.
Mateo's legs gave out. He collapsed against the log, the pistol falling from nerveless fingers. His vision blurred. Cleared. Blurred again.
The hostiles approached, weapons trained. One kicked his rifle away. Another grabbed the intel drive from his vest.
Mission failed, some distant part of his mind noted. They died for nothing.
But that wasn't what consumed his final thoughts.
Catalina.
Her face filled his fading vision. Not the photograph, but the real woman. The way she looked that last morning, sleep-soft and warm in their bed. The way she'd held him at the airport, her face buried in his chest, her body shaking with silent tears she refused to let him see.
"Come back to me," she'd whispered. "Please, Mateo. Just come back."
I'm sorry, mi amor. I'm so sorry.
The wedding was supposed to be in January. She'd already bought the dress. White, she'd told him, with lace sleeves. Traditional, but with a modern cut. She'd been so excited describing it, her words tumbling over each other.
He'd never see her in it.
Never dance with her at their reception.
Never wake up beside her for fifty years.
Never give her the children she wanted.
Never grow old together, sitting on a porch somewhere, watching grandchildren play.
All the futures they'd planned. All the promises he'd made.
Gone.
The physical pain was fading now, replaced by something worse. The soul-deep agony of leaving behind the person who made his life mean something. Of breaking the one promise that mattered more than any mission, any duty, any honor.
"I'll come back," he'd said. "I always come back."
Liar.
Coward.
Failure.
The rain intensified, washing the blood from his face. The hostiles were arguing above him, their voices distant thunder. They'd probably leave his body to rot. Maybe animals would scatter his bones. Maybe no one would ever find him.
Maybe Catalina would spend years waiting, hoping, not knowing.
That thought hurt worse than dying.
If there's anything after this, he prayed to a God he'd stopped believing in years ago, let her know I'm gone. Don't let her wait. Don't let her suffer more than she has to.
His vision darkened at the edges. Cold seeped into his limbs despite the tropical heat. He recognized the signs. Shock. Blood loss. Organ failure.
Minutes left. Maybe seconds.
I'm sorry, Catalina. I'm so sorry. I love you. I love you. I love—
The world faded.
The rain stopped.
The pain disappeared.
And Mateo Reyes died in a Colombian jungle, holding the ghost of a promise he couldn't keep.
[ELSEWHERE]
In a place beyond places, a being older than worlds observed.
Not a god in the way mortals understood gods. Not benevolent. Not malevolent. Simply... aware. A consciousness that spanned dimensions, observing the infinite threads of cause and effect that mortals called fate.
It watched Mateo Reyes die.
It saw his life unfold in reverse—every mission, every kill, every life saved and taken. It saw the child in Medellín he'd pulled from rubble. The family in Cali he'd evacuated under fire. The suicide bomber he'd tackled in a crowded market, absorbing the blast meant for dozens.
It saw the darkness too. The interrogations that crossed lines. The executions without trial. The compromises made in the name of the greater good.
Balance. That was what defined Mateo Reyes. Not perfect. Not evil. Human in the truest sense—flawed, struggling, trying despite knowing he'd probably fail.
The being calculated. Measured. Weighed.
Karma. Souls. Rebirth. These were real forces, tangible as gravity to eyes that could perceive them.
Mateo Reyes' soul held a peculiar quality. Potential. The rare capacity to look at a broken world and still believe it could be fixed. To fight not from hatred, but from love. To kill because he must, not because he wanted to.
Rare. So very rare.
The being made a decision.
Not mercy. Not reward. Something else.
Opportunity.
A thought rippled across dimensions. Probability matrices shifted. Reality bent.
And in a world of chakra and ninja, of endless war and child soldiers, of a cycle of hatred that had ground on for centuries...
A space opened for something new.
[THE VOID]
Mateo's consciousness flickered like a candle in infinite darkness.
Am I dead?
The question had no answer. Or perhaps it had too many answers.
Then, presence. Vast. Incomprehensible. Looking at him with attention that felt like standing in the sun—not warm, but undeniable.
"Mateo Reyes."
The voice didn't speak. It existed. Meaning transferred directly into his awareness.
"What—" His thoughts were sluggish, scattered. "What is this?"
"Judgment. Opportunity. Choice."
"I'm dead."
"Yes."
The finality of it should have broken him. Instead, he felt... relieved? No. That wasn't right. But something close. The weight lifting. The missions ending. The fear, the pain, the impossible decisions—all of it over.
"Catalina—"
"Will mourn. Will heal. Will live a full life. This is not her story."
Something twisted in his chest. Not pain—he no longer had a chest—but something worse. The knowledge that she'd cry for him. That he'd added to the world's suffering instead of reducing it.
"I failed."
"In what?"
"My promise. My mission. My team. Everything."
"You fought to protect, not to conquer. You died for information that would save hundreds. Your team chose their sacrifice knowing the cost. Where is the failure?"
"I left her alone."
"Yes."
No comfort in that word. No absolution.
"What happens now?" Mateo's consciousness steadied. Soldier training reasserted itself even in death. "Heaven? Hell? Nothing?"
"Another question: What if you could try again?"
Silence. Or what passed for silence in a void without sound.
"What?"
"You lived. You fought. You died with honor if not success. Karma accumulated. Balance maintained. Most souls dissolve, reincarnate without memory, scatter into the cosmic cycle. But yours... yours has potential."
"Potential for what?"
"To build what you couldn't in your first life. True peace. Not the absence of war, but the presence of something better."
Mateo's thoughts raced. "You're offering me... what? Reincarnation?"
"Rebirth. In another world. Another time. With power to make the difference you couldn't make before."
"Why?"
The question that mattered most.
"Curiosity. Testing. Perhaps mercy. Perhaps cruelty. Does the reason matter?"
"What world?"
"One much like yours. But where children become soldiers at six, not sixteen. Where villages are destroyed, not for resources or ideology, but for ancient grudges passed down through generations. Where the cycle of hatred is so deeply rooted that peace is considered naive fantasy."
"Sounds worse than Colombia."
"It is. Which is why it needs someone who understands war's true cost. Someone tired of fighting but unwilling to surrender to violence. Someone..."
The presence seemed to study him.
"Someone like you."
Mateo considered. Should he? Return to life meant returning to struggle. To pain. To the weight of impossible choices.
But it also meant a chance to do what he'd always wanted: end the fighting not by winning, but by making war unnecessary.
"What's the catch?"
"Three conditions. First: you will have power—significant power—but your body remains human. Mortal. Fragile. The disconnect will be... challenging."
"Second?"
"You cannot change who you are. Your memories, your training, your trauma—all remain. There is no fresh start. Only a new battlefield."
"And third?"
A pause. Heavy with meaning.
"If you fail. If you become the very thing you hate—a tyrant, a warmonger, a monster—you will be erased. Not death. Not rest. Oblivion. As if you never existed in either life."
"No pressure then."
Was that humor? In the face of cosmic judgment? Perhaps his mind was breaking. Or perhaps it was the only sane response to insanity.
"I don't want to fight anymore," Mateo said quietly. "I'm so tired of fighting."
"Then don't fight. Build. Protect. Create something worth living for instead of dying for."
"And if I refuse?"
"Rest. Dissolution. Peace. You've earned it."
Tempting. So tempting. To just... stop. To let go. To finally rest after so many years of war.
But then he thought of Catalina. Of the love he'd known. Of the life they should have had.
And he thought of other Catalinas. Other families. Other children in worlds where war never ended.
Could he do it? Could one man, even with power, change an entire world?
Probably not.
But he had to try.
Because that's what soldiers did. Not because they loved war, but because they loved what war protected. And if he could protect without war...
"What kind of power?"
"Everything needed. And nothing more."
Cryptic. But honest in its own way.
"If I do this," Mateo said slowly, "and I fail... at least I tried. That's better than dying with nothing."
"Is it?"
"I don't know. But I'd rather die trying to build something than rest knowing I could have helped."
"Even knowing you might never see her again? Never have that peaceful life you craved?"
Mateo's soul ached. That was the real price, wasn't it? Not danger. Not struggle. But giving up the dream of home.
"She'd understand," he said finally. "She'd hate it. Hate me for choosing it. But she'd understand."
"Very well."
The void shifted. Reality bent.
"Wait!" Mateo called. "What's the world called? Where am I going?"
The presence answered, already fading:
"They call it the Elemental Nations. A world of shinobi. Of chakra. Of gods and monsters wearing human faces."
"And what will I have? What power?"
"Everything you need to succeed. Everything that might destroy you. The power of Rimuru Tempest—a being who consumed a world and remade it."
"I don't—"
But the void was collapsing. Light bleeding through cracks in reality.
"One final warning, Mateo Reyes: Power does not corrupt. It reveals. The question is not whether you'll have strength to change the world."
"Then what is the question?"
"Whether you'll recognize yourself when you're done."
And then—
LIGHT.
[END CHAPTER 1]