The sensation of being pulled through an impossible void was unlike anything Dean had ever experienced, though he couldn't quite remember experiencing anything at all. There was a moment of absolute darkness, a stretching sensation that seemed to tear at the very fabric of his consciousness, and then—
Pain.
Not the sharp, localized pain of physical injury, but something deeper, more fundamental. It was as if every cell in his body was screaming in protest at being forced into a form it wasn't designed for. His lungs burned as they drew their first breath in this new existence. His heart hammered against ribs that felt too small, too fragile. His mind reeled from the sudden influx of sensations his new body was feeding to his consciousness.
Dean's eyes snapped open to a white ceiling, sterile and cold. The light was harsh, clinical, designed to illuminate every corner of the medical chamber without mercy. He tried to move, but his small body—how small was it? Five? Six years old?—refused to obey with the precision he expected. His muscles were weak, underdeveloped, nothing like the strength he vaguely remembered having.
Two sets of memories collided in his mind, creating a sensation like vertigo even though he was lying perfectly still.
The first set was new, fragmented, dreamlike. He was in a mansion perched on a mountain. There was a family of assassins. His name was Dean, and he had a twin brother named Illumi. A younger brother named Killua. Parents named Silva and Kikyo. The name Zoldyck echoed through memories of stone corridors and training grounds. This life felt real in some ways, but it was like watching a movie he'd already seen a hundred times. The emotions were there, but they felt borrowed, as if they belonged to someone else.
The second set of memories was vivid, powerful, undeniably real. A different world. Tall buildings of glass and steel reaching toward the sky. Devices that could communicate across vast distances. A life where he'd been someone else entirely, where he'd spent years learning about combat, strategy, psychology, and the nature of power itself. That life was fading now, like a dream upon waking, but the knowledge remained crystalline and sharp.
"He's awake," a woman's voice said. It was cold, clinical, devoid of maternal warmth. Dean somehow knew this was his mother, Kikyo Zoldyck, but there was nothing in her tone that suggested she felt any emotional connection to the child before her.
"Finally," a deeper voice replied. Male. Older. Authoritative. This was Silva, his father. "The twins should be developing together. There's already a gap forming."
Dean's vision cleared, and he saw the two figures looking down at him with expressions that were difficult to read. Their faces were composed, emotionless, as if they were examining a piece of equipment rather than their own child. Silva was tall and imposing, with the bearing of someone accustomed to absolute authority. Kikyo was elegant and precise, with eyes that seemed to calculate and analyze everything they perceived.
"How do you feel?" Kikyo asked, tilting her head slightly in a gesture that suggested genuine curiosity, though her voice remained emotionless.
Dean tried to speak, but his throat was dry, raw from the trauma of breathing for the first time in this body. He coughed, and the sound seemed to echo in the large medical chamber. The walls were white and sterile, filled with equipment he didn't recognize but somehow understood the purpose of. Medical equipment. Monitoring devices. Technology designed to track and measure every aspect of a human being's physical condition.
"Water," he managed to croak, his voice thin and childish in a way that made him feel profoundly uncomfortable.
Silva brought a glass of water, and Dean drank greedily. The water was cold and clear, and it helped settle his racing mind. As he drank, he took the opportunity to observe his surroundings more carefully. This was a medical chamber, yes, but it was also something more. It was a place of precision and control. Everything had its place. Everything served a purpose. This was the home of people who valued efficiency above all else.
"Your name is Dean," Kikyo said, her voice carrying a weight of finality, as if she was pronouncing a sentence. "You are the second-born twin. Your brother is Illumi. You will be trained as a Zoldyck, as all our children are trained. Do you understand?"
Dean nodded slowly. Yes, he understood. The knowledge was there in his mind, layered into his consciousness like it had always been there. He was Dean Zoldyck. He was an assassin's child. He was meant to be trained in the family business of killing. But something was wrong. Something deep inside him was screaming that this wasn't right, that there was a better way, that the knowledge from his past life was telling him something crucial.
"You will begin training tomorrow," Silva said, his voice carrying the weight of absolute authority. "Like your brother. You will learn to kill. You will learn to survive. You will become strong. The Zoldycks have no use for the weak."
There was a threat implicit in those words, and Dean understood it perfectly. If he didn't become strong, if he didn't prove himself worthy of the Zoldyck name, he would be cast out. Discarded like a broken tool. The knowledge from his past life whispered warnings about the dangers of this family, about the cruelty they were capable of, about the emotional and psychological damage that came from being raised in an environment where love was conditional on performance.
"And if I don't?" Dean asked, the words coming out before he could stop them. It was a dangerous question, a challenge to his parents' authority, but something inside him needed to know the answer.
The room went silent. Kikyo's expression didn't change, but something flickered in Silva's eyes. Anger, perhaps. Or disappointment. The look of a man who had just realized that his second son might be defective in some fundamental way.
"Then you will be cast out," Silva said coldly, his voice carrying no emotion, no hesitation. "The Zoldycks have no use for the weak. If you cannot become strong, if you cannot embrace what it means to be a Zoldyck, then you have no place in this family. You will be abandoned, and you will have to fend for yourself in a world that will show you no mercy."
Dean said nothing more. He understood the stakes now. In this world, in this family, there was no room for weakness, no room for doubt, no room for anything except the relentless pursuit of strength. He would have to become strong, or he would die. There was no middle ground.
As his parents left the medical chamber, Dean lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. The memories from his past life were already fading, becoming dreamlike and indistinct, like details from a book he'd read years ago. But the knowledge remained. The understanding of combat, of strategy, of how to read people and situations. The knowledge that there was a power called Nen, a force that flowed through all living things, a power that could make an assassin truly deadly.
And most importantly, the knowledge that he could use all of this to forge his own path, to become strong not through blind obedience to his family, but through his own will and determination.
The Zoldyck family had no idea what they had brought into their home. They had no idea that they had given shelter to someone who carried knowledge from another world, someone who understood that there were paths to power beyond the narrow confines of their family's philosophy.
Dean closed his eyes and began to plan. Tomorrow, his training would begin. And he would show them all what it truly meant to be strong.
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