Some time had passed since I had registered as a reincarnator, and the world around me had settled into a rhythm I could almost call ordinary. The manual that I had been given was surprisingly helpful, even more so than I had expected. Within the short time that I had owned it, the book had already updated itself twice. One of the enchantments woven into the cover allowed it to fill with new information whenever the guild released revisions. It was a marvel of modern practicality, nothing flashy, just quietly efficient. Every few days, the symbols on the first page shimmered faintly and rearranged themselves. The sections on posture had expanded, and new illustrations appeared: stick-figure adventurers bending and stretching in exaggerated ways. It made me smile. Whoever enchanted it had understood the needs of beginners. The explanations were kind, almost conversational, with cheerful little reminders like remember to breathe! scrawled in block letters. It was oddly comforting.

  I practiced the exercises within the book daily, building a schedule that I followed with almost religious devotion. Sit-ups, wall stances, balance training, and a few push-ups filled my mornings. I favored planking most of all; it quieted my thoughts and taught me to breathe through the strain. Cross-legged push-ups were the worst. I realized quickly how hard proper form was as my small body trembled with the effort. I grew good at stretches, too good, maybe. My body became lean and flexible, but I was thinner than most children my age, a little ghost with too much energy and too little weight. I burned through food as though the act of living was its own kind of fire. No matter how much I ate, it was never enough to keep up with how fast I was growing and training. Children my age should not have been exercising like this at all. We were meant to grow, not to refine.

  Even though I devoured every meal my mother placed in front of me, I could feel myself hollowing out. Sometimes, after a long session, the room tilted and the edges of my vision went dark. My stomach twisted from emptiness, a constant ache that no amount of bread or stew seemed to satisfy. My mother worried constantly. She would scold me when I pushed myself too far, pressing a hand to my cheek and muttering that I looked pale. I could feel her fear when she said it. She wasn’t wrong. I was starving myself without realizing it, burning through food faster than she could feed me. She finally forbade me from doing anything too strenuous until I learned moderation. For a while, I hated that word. It felt like a leash. But after I spent a full day too weak to stand, I understood what she meant. Even Iron required tempering.

  I was not a student of the body in my previous life. I had heard the words of the Priest of Iron, but I had not understood them. I thought I could capitalize on my time by working harder, longer, faster than the manual advised. That was my mistake. Now I see the truth of it as I lie still, feeling like a sack of jelly unable to move. The Tenets were right. Pain is a teacher, and I had much to learn. My arms ached for days. My joints felt like they had been carved from glass. Yet underneath the exhaustion there was a strange satisfaction. For the first time, I understood what the Priest had meant about the body being a temple. Even broken, it was sacred.

  More time passed as I grew. I played games. I laughed more. I grew as a child did in some ways and as a person in others. I taught my mother how to play Weave, one of the most complicated games built on the simplest of rules. The board was circular, fifty-nine pegs across its diameter, the same number used in standard magical diagrams for symmetry. The goal was to complete a circuit, a loop that represented the flow of mana. Weave had originally been a teaching tool for non-mages, showing them what spell circuits looked like when drawn in motion. Over centuries, it had evolved into a contest of precision and patience. In my time, tournaments were legendary. The final matches between grandmasters could last months, sometimes an entire season, each move taking days to plan as both players studied every line of tension and flow. A single pull could alter the entire board, snapping threads in ways that changed the outcome completely. Other times, when two prodigies met, a match could be over in minutes, both minds moving too fast for the spectators to follow.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  My mother indulged me. She was good, remarkably good for someone who had never played before. There were many things she could improve, but for a first-time player I didn’t have to slow down much. Some of the more complex maneuvers were beyond her, so I simplified my strategy, just enough to keep the game fun. She laughed when she made mistakes, and I found that I didn’t mind losing to her on purpose sometimes. The sound of her laughter was worth the loss. Our games became a nightly ritual. She would light a candle, and the threads glimmered faintly as we played, red and blue weaving between the pegs like veins of living light. It was peaceful. It was comforting. For a few hours each evening, I forgot about vengeance, gods, and the weight of rebirth.

  I had stored the mana potion away beneath a floorboard in my room. It remained my promise to the future, a relic of what I intended to build. The little vial shimmered softly in the dark whenever I checked on it, a reminder that power waited for me if I survived long enough to claim it. I had asked my mother about the vials, and it seemed they were not as expensive as they had once been. In my previous life, they had been prohibitively rare, reserved for priests, nobles, or licensed wizards. Now they were still costly, but attainable. Even a small household like ours could save for one if they were determined. The funds I had once hoped the glass would provide were unlikely to appear anytime soon, yet that no longer mattered. What mattered was progress, and I could feel it in every breath, every stretch, and every game of Weave I played. My body grew stronger, my mind stayed sharp, and for the first time since my rebirth, I felt balanced between the two.

  My father came home fairly infrequently, but whenever he did, he brought treats and surprises that filled the house with laughter. He was what people called a defender, not an adventurer in the usual sense. His duty was to hold the walls. The kingdom’s northern border pressed against an open dungeon called the Sea of Trees, a vast and living labyrinth where roving monsters tested the kingdom’s strength. That was where he was stationed, at a fortress known simply as Northland.

  Northland stood half within the dungeon and half outside it, a bulwark against the wild. The defenders there did not delve into the depths like adventurers did. They held the line, protected the roads, and ensured that nothing monstrous spilled into the villages beyond. My father said the Sea of Trees was beautiful; terrifying, but beautiful. A forest so dense that light could vanish within three steps, yet alive with a quiet hum that made even soldiers lower their voices when they walked beneath its canopy.

  He had asked my mother once if he could take me there, to see the dungeon for myself. She refused. Not until I had finished my trainee courses with the Adventurer’s Guild, she said. I had been deeply disappointed. I wanted to see it, the shifting lights, the living shadows, the walls of breathing bark. I wanted to see what danger looked like now, what the world called wild. But Mother was firm. The dungeon was too dangerous. If I could not yet fight a basic slime, I could not go. Father agreed, though I could see in his smile that he wanted to bring me all the same.

  Instead, he surprised me. When he asked if there was anything I wanted, anything that might help me follow the path to becoming an adventurer, I told him quietly. I wanted training weights. Small ones. Enough to start shaping my body properly. He laughed at that, proud and amused, and promised to have a set commissioned for me. They would be scaled to fit me in two years’ time, he said, once I had grown enough to wear them without harm. Wrist and ankle weights, simple but sturdy. The first true tools of discipline. Then he patted my head and added, with a grin, that as soon as I had proper knees, I could start using them properly.

  It was strange, being a child again, waiting for my own bones to finish forming before I could train the way I wanted. I didn’t mind. I would be ready when the time came.