The next few days passed in quiet repetition.
Wake up before dawn. Slip out of the house. Train with mana. Return before his parents noticed.
It was a rhythm Ji-hyeon had mastered. But something in the world around him was… shifting.
The trees no longer felt silent.
The wind carried whispers—not words, but impressions. As if the mana itself was watching him back.
---
One morning, while crouched near a stream, Ji-hyeon opened the old book again. The pages, filled with ancient runes and diagrams, had once been meaningless scribbles to a child.
Now, they made too much sense.
> "The soul remembers the shape of power it once held," he whispered, tracing a glyph.
"But the body must be taught, one nerve at a time."
He could feel it: a faint current beneath the surface of his skin, like electricity flowing slowly. Dangerous. Fragile.
---
Back in the village, life continued.
The harvest neared. His parents grew busier. Neighbors gossiped. Children played.
But Ji-hyeon remained… distant. Kind, polite—but always thinking. Always calculating.
He didn't mean to be cold.
He just had too much to carry.
---
Then, one night, something new happened.
As he lay in bed, eyes closed, trying to meditate through the pain in his veins, he felt a strange sensation.
Not mana.
A presence.
Watching.
It wasn't human. It wasn't animal. It was ancient. Cold. Familiar.
A sliver of his past, calling from beyond the veil of this life.
---
He sat up, heart pounding.
For the first time since his reincarnation, he felt fear.
---
Meanwhile, far across the continent, deep in a marble tower hidden from mortal eyes, a council of robed figures gathered around a glowing orb.
> "His mana signature has returned," one said.
"Impossible. That bloodline was destroyed," another growled.
"No," the eldest among them replied, voice like cracking stone. "It was reborn."
Outside, thunder rumbled.
The world did not yet know it—
But a storm was coming.