The morning sun stretched across the small room, casting long shadows over the cracked floor.
Rudra stood motionless before the mirror.
A ten-year-old boy stared back at him.
Yet behind those young eyes lived forty years of blood, ambition, betrayal, and loss.
He slowly lifted his hand and touched the cold surface of the mirror.
For a moment, the reflection split in his mind.
One face.
Two lives.
In one, he was a child in an old rented room.
In the other, he was the sovereign who had stood alone beneath a red sky while the world burnt.
His jaw tightened.
The memories came again.
Not in fragments.
Not in flashes.
In full.
Sharp.
Merciless.
Like a floodgate breaking open.
He closed his eyes.
And the past swallowed him.
Rain.
Cold.
Unforgiving.
A much younger Rudra sat beneath the broken shade of a tea stall, drenched from head to toe.
He could not have been more than six.
His stomach twisted with hunger.
Three days.
It had been three days since he had last eaten a full meal.
A group of boys walked past him, laughing.
One of them threw half a piece of bread into the mud.
"Take it, street dog."
Young Rudra stared at it.
His fists clenched.
Pride warred with survival.
Then hunger won.
He bent down.
Before his fingers could touch it, a boot crushed the bread into the mud.
Laughter.
Cruel.
Sharp.
That laughter stayed with him for years.
The memory shifted.
He was twelve.
A computer repair shop.
Dim yellow lights.
The old owner, Mr Khanna, stood beside him, staring at the monitor in disbelief.
"How did you fix that virus?"
Rudra, still a child, looked at the screen.
"I guessed."
A lie.
He had not guessed.
He had understood.
Even then, his mind had moved faster than anyone else's.
The scene changed again.
He was sixteen.
A hospital corridor.
White lights.
A dying patient.
Doctors are shaking their heads.
Rudra stepped forward with steady hands and knowledge far beyond his age.
The first life he saved.
The first time the world realised he was not ordinary.
Then—
another shift.
The boardroom.
Forty floors above the city.
Glass walls.
Night skyline.
His empire.
Global cybersecurity.
Medical research.
Financial institutions.
Cultivation of resource networks hidden beneath legitimate corporations.
He had built it all.
Every brick.
Every deal.
Every victory is earned through sweat and ruthless precision.
And yet—
The final memory returned.
The battlefield.
Ten stars are dying one by one.
His throat tightened.
He opened his eyes.
The small room returned.
The cracked wall.
The old table.
The hanging calendar.
He slowly exhaled.
"All of it…"
His voice was barely above a whisper.
"I remember everything."
This was not a blessing.
It was a burden.
Forty years of memories pressed against a ten-year-old mind.
Every betrayal.
Every face.
Every mistake.
Every death.
He walked toward the bed and sat down.
Then he began organising it.
Like files in a system.
His hacker instincts returned.
He divided his memories into paths.
Path One: Family
The Desai pendant.
The crest.
The Witness's vision.
His mother is crying.
Seven sisters.
The family mystery had to come first.
He could not wait until forty again.
Path Two: Revenge
Varun.
Elena.
The alien collaborators.
He knew their future rise.
This knowledge was his greatest weapon.
But he could not act recklessly.
Not yet.
Children who hate too openly attract attention.
Path Three: Power
Cultivation.
Medicine.
Hacking.
Divination.
Wealth.
These were the pillars of his empire.
And he would rebuild all of them.
Faster.
Better.
Stronger.
Path Four: The Ten Stars
Luna.
Aria.
Mira.
Selene.
Nyla.
And the others.
His chest tightened.
He whispered their names one by one.
Each name felt like a vow.
This time, he would find them early.
This time, he would never allow them to die for him.
A cold determination settled in his heart.
He rose from the bed.
His young body was weaker than he remembered.
His muscles lacked strength.
His spiritual veins were dormant.
His dantian was empty.
But his knowledge remained.
That alone made him terrifying.
He crossed his legs on the floor.
Hands resting on his knees.
Eyes slowly closing.
The first cultivation method he had ever created surfaced in his mind.
Void Thunder Breathing Art.
A technique no one on Earth would discover for another fifteen years.
His lips curved.
"This life…"
His voice was calm.
"I start from the beginning."
He inhaled.
The air in the room shifted.
A faint purple spark appeared between his fingers.
Then another.
And another.
The fan above him suddenly stopped.
Electricity crackled in the air.
Dust trembled.
The room grew unnaturally silent.
Rudra opened his eyes.
Purple light flickered in his pupils.
The first strand of spiritual energy had entered his body.
A terrifying achievement for a ten-year-old.
His smile turned cold.
Thirty years before the war.
Thirty years before betrayal.
Thirty years before fate.
He had time.
And time was the deadliest weapon.
Outside, the city continued as normal.
No one knew.
No one could imagine.
That inside this tiny rented room, the most dangerous man in the world had begun his rise once more.