Greetings, readers:
Thank you for reading this fan-made work...
"I hope you enjoy today's chapter." I, Wissumi Wizaki, wish you a happy reading
...
Year 1049 B.N.
July 7th...
Time did not simply pass. It passed carrying weight.
Weighted with negotiations, calloused hands, short nights, and dawns that arrived before one had even finished closing their eyes. Takeshi's integration into the circle had been more natural than expected: the merchant's son possessed the rare quality of fitting in without any apparent effort, like a missing piece no one realized was absent until it was finally in place.
The dealings with Eichi flourished slowly, putting down deep roots. The iron discovered in the riverbed had been a stroke of fortune. But fortune alone builds nothing that lasts.
What built something enduring was knowledge.
The forging technique lived somewhere deep within the shared memory, in that territory where Luciano and Giotto overlapped without erasing one another. It was not a clear memory but something closer to instinct: the hand that knows before the mind does. Giotto translated it little by little, with the patience of a craftsman, until it became farming tools that the village had once been forced to import from neighboring lands at prices that quietly bled families dry without anyone calling it by its true name. Plows. Hoes. Well-tempered blades that cut cleanly.
And weapons, too.
Because peace, he understood very early on, always requires someone willing to uphold it with their own hands.
Prestige arrived without anyone proclaiming it. First came the merchants from nearby villages, who began diverting from their usual routes just to pass through. Then came the rumors, which travel faster than any merchandise. No one in the village announced anything. They did not have to. That is the only kind of prestige that truly matters: the kind people perceive before anyone opens their mouth to describe it.
Training his five administrators was an entirely different matter.
Calling it intense would be a generous description. He pushed them until they were drenched in sweat, until they failed, got back up, and failed again with more knowledge than before. Not out of cruelty, nor from the empty satisfaction of discipline for discipline's sake, but because of something Luciano would have recognized immediately: the cold certainty of someone who had already lived through the consequences of another person's negligence. A weak advisor protects no one. An advisor who cannot read a room before opening their mouth is, at best, useless—and at worst, dangerous.
They studied strategy. The management of scarce resources. The arbitration of disputes between families who hated each other with the particular intensity of people who had lived too close together for far too long. They learned to recognize when someone lied out of fear and when they lied out of calculation, because those are not the same, and they should not be treated the same way.
They will be my voice where I cannot be, Giotto thought as he watched them, and within that thought was something that went beyond strategy. It was the awareness that no man, no matter how many lives he had accumulated, could be everywhere at once. True power was not measured by what one could accomplish alone. It was measured by what one could accomplish through others who understood why they were doing it.
That was the difference between a boss and a founder.
Giotto knew it.
Luciano had learned it the hard way.
Together, within that small body and that chest far too full of history, they were building something different from what either of them had built alone.
Something that, perhaps, could endure.
They were studying to become capable Consiglieri. Even though Giotto would be the one giving them counsel, they would be his voice wherever he could not be, entrusted with the responsibility of guiding those beneath them.
The following year arrived in a hurry and without warning.
The rain did not ask for permission. It fell for days with the relentless determination of phenomena that do not negotiate, toppling trees that had stood for decades, overflowing the river until its banks became no man's land, and reducing the family's crops to a landscape of mud and loss that was painful to look at.
The weeks that followed became an exercise in collective determination. Debris cleared away by hand, room after room converted into shelter, muddy roads patrolled by villagers who still remembered who had pulled them from the water when the river rose and no one else was watching.
The mansion endured. It sheltered the orphans, took in those who had been left homeless, and silently proved that it had been built for exactly this: for the moments when the world refuses to cooperate.
Good, Giotto thought as he walked through the hallways crowded with people and the smell of damp clothes. This is exactly why we built it.
But prosperity carries its own kind of danger.
It does not arrive with noise or declarations. It comes the way shadows arrive at dusk: gradually, without anyone being able to point to the exact moment when the light changed. The village had grown. The markets attracted more traffic. Its name spread farther. And with that name came the attention of those who preferred taking over building.
At first, they were only minor incidents. A villager robbed on the road at dawn. A merchant whose cart was emptied before he could even cry out. Things that could be attributed to bad luck or the scattered opportunism of unorganized individuals.
But Giotto recognized the pattern far too quickly to pretend otherwise.
They were not opportunists. They had enough organization to be dangerous and enough discipline to avoid revealing themselves more than necessary. They appeared along the roads like a constant pressure, probing the edges, measuring responses, calculating just how far the reaction capability of this village—one that had suddenly become worth robbing—could reach.
They're evaluating us, something registered deep within his consciousness, that part Luciano had trained for decades in modern Italy to read intentions before they became actions. They're not attacking with everything yet because they still don't know what they're going to face.
Giotto felt something old and familiar settle in his chest with the uncomfortable familiarity of a tool he had hoped he would never need to use again.
They're about to find out.
…
There was something different about the smell of the morning.
It was not the river, whose murmur reached him muffled through the trees. Nor was it the wet earth that the previous week's rains had left dark and heavy beneath his feet. It was something else: something stiller, more deeply woven into the air, like a warning the body recognizes before the mind finds the words to name it.
Giotto identified it after he had already taken several steps into the forest.
Death.
He stopped. Not out of fear, but because of the sudden realization of what he had forgotten. And what stopped him was not the smell itself, but the understanding of what that lapse meant: it had not been distraction, nor simple negligence. It was the kind of oversight committed only by those carrying too much at once. The mansion. The crops devastated by the rain. The five administrators. The orphans. The roads. The merchants ambushed along the trade routes. Everything had continued pressing forward with the relentless inertia of urgency, while what had been left behind had been buried without ceremony beneath the weight of the present.
The prisoners.
He let out a carefree sigh and kept walking.
The old solitary oak still stood where it always had, with the indifference of things that have existed for ages. Around it, bound by the ropes Giotto himself had tied far too many days ago, the men remained exactly where he had left them. Filthy. Exhausted to the marrow. Their eyes still blindfolded, their lips cracked and dry, their bodies slumped into that particular posture of someone who has stopped hoping without quite finishing dying.
Almost all of them.
Giotto crouched before the first man in line and removed the blindfold with slow, unhurried movements. What he found required no diagnosis: the skin had the grayish color of old wax, the eyes were open and fixed on nothing, the jaw hanging slightly in that final relaxation the body assumes when it has nothing left to hold together.
"He's dead," Giotto said quietly.
It was not a lament. It was a statement, spoken with the same neutrality one might use to report the weather. Yet beneath that calm, somewhere without a clear name, Giotto recognized something Luciano would have identified immediately as discomfort at his own oversight.
Not because of him, he told himself as he stood and moved on to the next one. But because of what it means that I forgot about him.
He removed the blindfolds one by one in silence. Some groaned as the light reached them, a weak, directionless sound like that of small animals. Others made no sound at all. They all bore the same signs of prolonged starvation: collarbones protruding beneath filthy clothes, hollow cheeks, neck tendons standing out like taut ropes on the verge of snapping.
When he reached the man in the center, he stopped.
He was a man of sturdy build, reduced by days of captivity but not completely diminished. His face had been carved by years that had shown little kindness, the sort of hardness born not from discipline but from surviving the same struggle over and over again. And he carried the gaze of someone accustomed to others looking away first, only to discover now, with unsettling slowness, that the child standing before him looked away from nothing.
A child.
But with something behind his eyes that belonged to no child.
"You're still alive?" Giotto asked.
There was no cruelty in the question. Nor was there compassion. It was pure indifference, the most honest kind—the kind that needs no disguise because it simply is what it is.
The man raised his head with an effort that took several long seconds. Hatred and fear coexisted in his eyes without ever reaching an agreement, struggling for the same space.
"You little bastard..." he muttered, his voice cracked from dehydration. "If you don't let us go, I swear I'll—"
"Are there more bandits in the region?" Giotto cut him off without raising his voice even a degree. "Do you know of any other groups operating nearby?"
The man hesitated. It lasted only a second, the amount of time it takes someone to decide which part of the truth they can surrender without losing what matters most to keep hidden. But Giotto felt it with the clarity of a finely calibrated instrument: that space between question and answer where everything a person chooses not to say resides.
"We're all here," he finally muttered. "I don't know anything about any other groups."
A partial lie. His perception activated effortlessly, that intuition inherited from being a Vongola, one that could not be turned off even if he wanted to. He's hiding something. Not everything. But something he considers valuable.
Giotto changed his approach without warning.
"Where is the capital of the Land of Lomo?"
This time, there was no hesitation. The man answered with the fluency of someone reciting something he knew by heart.
"Half a day's journey east along the main road. Follow the river. Two days."
Truth without a single crack. Giotto registered it and gave a single nod, barely a movement of his head.
"Do you enjoy stealing?"
The silence that followed had a different texture from the previous ones. The bandit clenched his jaw. He looked away. He did not deny it.
"...Yes."
"No! That's a lie! We never robbed anyone! Let us go, you little monster!" a voice exploded from the end of the line, shrill and broken, carrying the unmistakable tone of panic that can no longer distinguish between strategy and desperation. It was the youngest of the group, his eyes wide and his lips trembling. "Let us go!"
Giotto did not even look at him. His attention remained fixed on the leader with the unwavering focus of something that cannot be distracted by peripheral noise.
"Have you killed anyone?"
The man swallowed. His eyes dropped toward the ground before he could stop them.
"It was... self-defense. The first time."
He said it like someone accidentally letting go of something they had been holding onto for a long time, wearing that faintly bewildered expression of someone who does not understand why their own words have betrayed them. And the weight of that involuntary confession carried more than the words themselves revealed: the first person he had killed had been the group's former leader, the man who had tried to eliminate him for considering him a traitor. A story of violence feeding upon itself, like nearly every story of violence.
"Boss, don't tell him anything else!" another one cut in from the side, wearing a smile that did not match either the situation or the condition of his body. "He's just a kid! Are you really afraid of a brat?"
"Don't believe him!" the coward shrieked, his voice breaking apart. "He killed his own parents when he took over the gang! He murders children for fun! We weren't saints, I know, but this... this monster has nothing inside!"
"You filthy traitor," the sadist growled, his voice hoarse from too many days without enough water. "You were always scum. Giving information to a child. What a disgrace."
For a moment, the forest turned into a cockfighting pit. Voices overlapped, accusations collided, pleas competed with insults, each man pushing in whatever direction best served his own survival. Giotto watched them in complete silence. He measured their tones. He noted which muscles tensed with every word. He cataloged the small, involuntary betrayals the body commits once the mind no longer has enough strength to keep both under control.
The chaos revealed more than any orderly interrogation ever could.
When the noise finally began to fade from sheer exhaustion, when the voices died out one by one like candles extinguishing in a closed room, Giotto asked the final question.
The shortest one.
The simplest one.
The heaviest of them all.
"Have you ever raped anyone?"
What fell then was not ordinary silence.
It was the kind of stillness that occupies physical space, that has weight and temperature. No one raised their eyes. The leader lowered his head toward his chest in a slow, irreversible motion, like something finally giving way. His fists, bound behind his back, trembled with a tension Giotto recognized immediately. It was not remorse. It was the fear of someone who knows there is nothing left to deny because the answer has been written for days in every gesture of his body.
His intuition flared with a clarity that required no verbal confirmation.
Guilt without remorse.
A truth that wished to remain hidden.
Giotto needed nothing more.
He slowly rose to his feet.
He took two steps back. Not to move away from the man, but from what he was about to become. He needed that tiny space between decision and action, that brief moment of distance that changed nothing but at least still belonged to him.
He inhaled.
Deeply.
Steadily.
And from his right palm, the flame emerged.
It was not the one he used during training, that warm, embracing variant his administrators had already learned to recognize as the signal that work was about to begin. This was something else. Denser. More concentrated and more powerful. It carried a distinct weight that could be felt in the surrounding air as a pressure that pushed inward instead of spreading outward. The Hard Sky Flame: offensive in its deepest nature, stripped of the protective warmth of its soft, diffusive counterpart. It possessed a dual coloration, crystalline orange along the edges with a reddish-orange core that cast light without heat into the damp forest air, like something that illuminated without ever intending to comfort.
"I don't need another mouth to feed," Giotto murmured, and his voice sounded strangely calm even to his own ears. "Nor another shadow waiting for tomorrow."
The leader raised his head.
Just in time.
His eyes met the flame at the exact moment it condensed, when it ceased being scattered energy and became something with direction and purpose. Giotto extended his arm and drove his fist forward in a single, continuous motion. The energy shot forth compressed, silent in its speed, and pierced the man's forehead with a sharp, final crack—the unmistakable sound of something ending beyond any possibility of reconsideration.
The body jerked once.
Then it became still.
"You killed him!" one of the others howled from the end of the line. "He forced me into it when I was a child! I never wanted to! Please, let me go! I didn't—"
"Calm down," Giotto said.
And there was something in his voice that was neither cruelty nor calculated coldness, but something far more difficult to name: the stillness of someone who had already made his decision and had no intention of reliving it aloud.
"As I said. I don't need any more mouths to feed. They will all die."
Panic spread through the group with the speed of something that encounters no obstacles. One began murmuring prayers through dry lips, broken words directed toward gods who perhaps had never set foot in this forest. Another cried without making a sound, his shoulders trembling as tears fell onto a ground that owed him nothing. A third pulled at his bindings with the futile desperation of someone who knew they would never give way, yet could not stop trying.
Giotto lowered his arm.
And then he felt it.
The trembling began in his fingers. It climbed up his wrist with methodical slowness, crossed his elbow, and reached his shoulder before he could do anything about it. His body—this six-year-old body that was still learning its own limits—protested in the wordless language of reaching its limit: not exactly as pain, but as a structural warning, the signal of something stretched as far as it could go and no farther.
I'm not ready to sustain this flame any longer, he realized, and within that realization there was no frustration, only something colder and more useful. Not in this body. There is still too great a distance between what I am now and what I need to become.
But beneath that physical realization lay another layer.
Older.
Darker.
The echo of Luciano Gravina moved through the depths of their shared consciousness like an underwater current: always present, usually silent, and sometimes, in moments like this, louder than everything else. A man who had lived with judgment for decades. Who had known execution as a tool, as a necessity, as a language. Who had never trembled before either, because to him they had never been abstractions.
Scum, that part of him murmured as it looked upon what remained beneath the oak.
And it was not wrong. That was why death had visited the forest this morning. Not out of cruelty, but because of the cold logic of what these people had chosen to become and what they had chosen to do with that choice.
Giotto slowly closed his hand into a fist until the trembling subsided, whether from exhaustion or sheer willpower, he was not entirely certain which. He took a breath. He looked at his own hands for a moment that lasted longer than it should have.
The hands of a child.
With another man's memories engraved within them.
"I can't let that side control me," he said quietly, to no one in particular—not even to those who could no longer hear him. "But I can't deny it either. It's a part of me now. We both are."
It was not a declaration of internal war. It was something closer to an agreement: the recognition that Luciano and Giotto were not opposing forces that needed to be resolved, but different perspectives that needed to learn to consult one another before taking action.
We're still learning, he thought.
Both of us.
He raised his eyes.
The morning light filtered through the branches with the unmistakable honesty of the early hours, before the day had gathered its weight and shadows. The forest smelled of wet earth and something he chose not to name. Beyond the oak, the village was beginning to awaken: the distant sounds of tools, voices, and the smoke rising from the first fires.
His legacy still had to be built.
And he still had to decide, more carefully than he had this morning, with what materials he wanted to build it.
The work did not end with the last question.
Giotto knew that before taking his first step back. The bodies could not remain where they were: they would attract animals, then disease, and they were also too tangible a reminder of what had happened that morning beneath the oak. Some things are easier to process when there is no physical evidence anchoring them to the present.
He spent the following hours in silence.
He dragged each body, one by one, toward a natural fissure he knew of north of the forest, a deep crevice between ancient rocks that descended into a darkness without bottom or name. The effort was disproportionate for the body of a six-year-old: his muscles protested, his breathing grew short, and sweat glued his clothes to his back. But Giotto did not stop. There was something almost ritualistic about that physical exhaustion, as though the body needed to pay with something tangible for what the mind had decided.
Those who were still breathing received a precise blow to the back of the neck with the hilt of his sword before he brought them to the edge. Quick. Without drama. Without prolonging what no longer had a solution.
"May the darkness receive their sins," he murmured as he cast the last one down.
The echo of the fall disappeared into the depths for longer than he had expected.
Then, nothing.
Deep within the shared consciousness, something settled with a weight that was not exactly guilt, yet was not peace either. Every fall had echoed as a double reminder: of who Luciano Gravina had been, and of who Giotto Vongola needed to become now. Not an executioner who found pleasure in judgment. Not a savior who lied to himself about the price of protecting others. But something more difficult—and more honest—than either.
A man building something from the ruins of what others had destroyed.
He allowed himself a moment of stillness at the edge of the crevice. He closed his eyes. The northern wind arrived cold and clean, free of the smell from before, and that was enough.
Then he turned around and walked back.
The sun had fully risen by the time he reached the mansion. Its light fell upon the top of the hill with the uncompromising clarity of late morning, illuminating every crack in the stone, every detail of the work that still remained to be done.
Sana was waiting for him near the entrance. She looked him up and down with her usual economy of gestures, without asking the obvious question, and then asked the only one that mattered.
"The bandits?"
Giotto stopped in front of her. He looked at her seriously without averting his gaze, yet there was neither hardness nor pride in his expression. Only something resembling the pity one feels for someone who made the wrong choice and paid the price for it.
"They were men with no road left to return to, Sana. They stole, they killed, they ruined lives that did not belong to them." He paused briefly. "Sometimes, executing those who perpetuate injustice is, in itself, the only act of justice available."
She lowered her eyes.
She said nothing.
She was not convinced.
But neither did she have the words to argue otherwise.
...
Even after life in the mansion returned to its normal rhythm, Giotto did not lower his guard.
Captain Bravar's reports arrived punctually every morning, and he read them with the attention of someone who knew that peace was often nothing more than the interval between two problems. So far, nothing new had happened on the roads. But that did not mean danger had lost interest. It meant it was still measuring.
What occupied his thoughts the most, however, was not the external threat.
It was something more strategic.
More structural.
They needed to establish themselves for real.
And to do that, they needed scale.
...
He announced it on an ordinary morning, while the five of them ate rice with boiled roots and the steam rising from their bowls traced fleeting shapes through the cold air of the dining hall.
"In a few months, we'll begin establishing our presence in the capital of the Land of Lomo."
Haru immediately looked up, his eyes shining with the curiosity he always had for the unknown.
"The capital? Is it very big?"
Giotto considered the question with genuine honesty.
"If it has more than a thousand houses, I'm already being generous by calling it a city. Where I grew up, we would call it a village. A large one, perhaps, but a village nonetheless."
Reijiro let out a brief laugh, as restrained as everything else about him. The others assumed, as they always did, that their leader was speaking from some kind of experience they did not fully understand, but that had never once led them astray.
"Are we all going?" Sana asked.
"Yes. For now, I'm not leaving anyone behind." Giotto set his chopsticks across the rim of his bowl. "This mansion isn't prepared to withstand larger-scale attacks, nor is it large enough for the ambitions we have. Takeshi will leave ahead of us with a small unit to oversee the construction of a base in the capital. The resources and the money will go with him."
Takeshi nodded without asking unnecessary questions. That was what Giotto appreciated about him: the ability to accept responsibility without needing it explained twice.
"There's another factor," Giotto continued, speaking with the tone of someone informing rather than debating. "The local farmers all agree that an even greater storm is coming. We need to be prepared for more destruction. What we've built so far cannot be lost through carelessness."
Haru frowned over his bowl.
"Boss... can't we really stay? This land is fertile. You yourself said business is important."
"It is," Giotto admitted. "But where we're going, we won't be conducting ordinary business." He paused, choosing his words with the precision of someone who knew these particular words would be remembered. "We need to be at the center of the country if we want to grow from the ground up. In the capital, we could begin something..." He spread his arms in a gesture that encompassed far more than the dining hall could contain. "...something very large."
Internally, he silently thanked the System for what it had done with his five administrators. Without that accelerated maturity, implanted with the delicacy of someone who understood the limits of a young mind, this conversation would have been impossible. It would have sounded like the fantasy of a child with too much imagination.
Reijiro leaned back slightly, wearing the serious expression that rarely left him.
"What kind of organization, exactly?"
Giotto did not answer immediately. He rose from the table and walked toward the window, watching the guards making their morning rounds through the courtyard with the discipline he himself had instilled in them week after week.
"Imagine a network," he finally said without turning around. "One that controls trade from the shadows. One that imposes order where the powerful lords of the land cannot reach and where the official guards do not dare to look. A name people respect. Not because of the law, but because of loyalty. And when loyalty is not enough, because they know the consequences."
The silence that followed held a different texture for each person within it. Haru stared with wide eyes. Takeshi wore a smile he could barely suppress. Daiki leaned forward, processing the idea. Reijiro remained motionless, calculating.
And Sana frowned with the expression of someone recognizing something she should not recognize.
"That sounds like the Mafia," she said.
Giotto turned toward her. A brief, genuine, ironic smile crossed his face before he suppressed it.
Of course she recognizes it, he thought, caught somewhere between pride and guilt. I'm the one who taught her that word.
"The Mafia?" he repeated with the carefully practiced innocence of someone pretending not to have heard correctly. "What a... picturesque term."
"We can't do that!" Sana straightened in her chair. "It's immoral. It's manipulation. It's a veiled threat. It's—"
"Calm down." Giotto raised a hand, and there was something in his voice that soothed without commanding. "Our version will be different. More ethical. Without unnecessary cruelty, without deaths that have no justification. Only discipline. Order. Justice for criminals. Evil will always exist as long as it has no one to restrain it, but it needs control, Sana—applied by those who truly understand what that word means."
Reijiro let out another laugh, this time less restrained. The others exchanged glances that mixed doubt with something close to complicity.
Sana remained unconvinced. But she did not have enough words to argue against her leader.
Giotto observed them in silence for a moment, his hands clasped behind his back. Five children gathered around a rough wooden table, bowls of rice before them, with the morning sunlight slanting through the window. His family, in the only sense that truly mattered to him.
"Reijiro," he said as he resumed walking toward the door.
"Yes?"
"From now on, I'm entrusting you with field operations. Minor meetings, reconnaissance missions. I want you to learn to read every situation before acting. To observe. To judge."
Reijiro nodded only once, with the exact weight of someone who understood what had just been entrusted to him.
...
Three days later, the storm arrived.
It was not gradual. The sky shifted from gray to black with the speed of something that never asks permission, and the clouds gathered above the Land of Lomo like a dome of fury sustained by lightning. The winds howled against the mansion's walls, bending the younger trees to their limits, tearing away leaves and branches with brutal indifference. The rain began gently, only to become violent within minutes, hammering rooftops and earth with a rhythm that was anything but random.
Inside the dining hall, Giotto and the five of them were eating together as a family.
The candle at the center of the table flickered.
The poison was still coursing through my veins when, in a moment of epiphany, my existence once again brushed against the mortality of flesh and the forgotten rhythm of breathing.
...But that had only been a few hours ago. Now, the world was beginning to tremble once more.
We were inside the house, sheltered from the storm raging outside. Daiki, one of the boys who had followed me even into this absurdly small new life, pointed toward my pocket with wide eyes.
"Boss... something's glowing red in there."
Time stopped.
My hand moved before my mind had fully processed his words. I pulled out the source of that crimson light: the Storm Seed. It shone with an intensity I recognized in the deepest part of my soul, a familiar pulse that had crossed centuries and death itself.
I froze for only a second.
Then my entire being reacted.
I dashed out of the house with a speed I hadn't expected from this childish body. My small feet pounded against the muddy ground, devouring the distance so quickly that the surprised shouts of the others were left far behind. Rain lashed against my face, cold and sharp, but I barely felt it. The Seed burned in my palm, sending images directly into my mind.
Hill.
High ground.
Now.
I ran toward the top of the nearby hill, barely visible through the curtains of rain and wind. My cloak—far too large for this body—whipped violently behind me like a battle standard amid the chaos. My heart pounded against my ribs.
Already?
So soon?
The Seed flew from my hand toward the storm-covered sky, merging with the darkest cloud overhead. The clouds began to revolve around it in a furious vortex. The entire storm seemed to be drawn toward that single point of light, contracting with a deafening roar. Lightning danced within the whirlpool, illuminating the rain-soaked landscape for an instant.
Then everything contracted violently.
And suddenly...
Silence.
The clouds vanished as though they had never existed. The sky opened, clear and filled with stars, almost unreal after the fury that had come before. The Seed slowly descended, now far larger, nearly as tall as I was in my current body. Its surface glowed with veins of crimson energy.
A figure emerged from within it.
A boy with light red hair, soaked by the rain that had already ceased. His eyes, a deeper and more burning shade of red, slowly opened. On the right side of his face, a flame-shaped tattoo burned with a light of its own, marking him as the Guardian of the Storm.
G.
My Storm Guardian.
My right-hand man...
G.
I recognized his presence even before his eyes settled on me. He looked back at me as well, frozen for a brief instant, and then a knowing smile—far too knowing for that childish face—curved his lips.
"Hey, Primo," he said in that raspy voice I remembered so well, now softened by youth. "I'm here for you once again. To serve, protect, and look after my leader... and my childhood friend."
His words struck something deep within my chest. A lump formed in my throat. This five-year-old body trembled, not only from the cold or the run, but from the overwhelming weight of a loyalty that transcended entire lifetimes. My small hands clenched into fists at my sides.
How can you look at me like that?
I'm still the same person...
And yet I'm so fragile now.
G took a step forward, his eyes scanning my childish form with a mixture of amusement and something gentler, almost protective. He extended a hand and rested it firmly on my shoulder, despite his own youthful appearance.
I could only look back at him in silence, trying to process everything.
The storm had passed.
But I knew, with a quiet certainty born from two lifetimes, that this was only the first of many yet to come...
...
We returned to the abandoned mansion beneath a sky that still retained the unnatural clarity the Seed had left behind. My small feet, still unaccustomed to this fragile body, splashed through the puddles the storm had left behind. G walked beside me in silence, his presence steady and familiar despite the childish body he now possessed. His light red hair shimmered with moisture beneath the moonlight, and the flame-shaped tattoo on his right cheek emitted a faint glow that only I seemed able to notice.
The atmosphere inside the mansion changed the moment we crossed the threshold. Haru, Sana, Daiki, Takeshi, and Reijiro were waiting for us in the main hall. Their faces reflected a mixture of curiosity, surprise, and uncertainty. The air smelled of damp wood, old dust, and the faint smoke from the candles we had lit before everything began.
"Boss... who is this boy?" Daiki asked, tilting his head as he openly stared at the red tattoo on G's cheek.
Sana, as straightforward as ever, spoke without beating around the bush.
"He's the reason you ran out into the middle of the storm, isn't he, Giotto?"
I nodded.
I felt the weight of every gaze upon me. I stepped forward, fully aware of how strange I must have looked: a five-year-old child speaking with the authority of someone who had lived several lifetimes.
"This is G," I said calmly, even though my mind was still reeling from the magnitude of what had just happened. "My right-hand man, as if I had lived another life. He was my childhood friend in that previous existence. He will represent me whenever I cannot be present. His duty will be to carry out my orders and protect the future of our organization. He will be the example of loyalty I hope for... although I only expect fifty percent of that loyalty from the rest of you," I added, correcting myself with a faint smile. "I don't want you becoming too attached to me."
The boys broke into restrained laughter. Even in this small body, my sense of humor still seemed to reach them. G remained unmoved, wearing that calm, slightly arrogant expression I knew so well. In his deep red eyes, I saw quiet satisfaction. He knew his loyalty belonged to an entirely different category, and he was at peace with that.
When the laughter subsided, Reijiro—the most mature of the group—spoke with a firm yet respectful smile.
"So, Giotto, you're saying G will be in command whenever you're not here? Does that mean he'll be our second-in-command?"
I slowly shook my head, organizing my thoughts. The hierarchy had to be clear from the very beginning.
"Not exactly, Reijiro. You, Haru, Sana, Daiki, and Takeshi will continue to serve as the organization's direct administrators and as the pillars of this family's order. For now, some of you will be assigned missions. G will be a vital source of support, and before long, five more Guardians with the same status as his will appear. They..."
...will also hold important roles, and together we will form the true shield of the Vongola Family... my personal guard. First me, then the Guardians, and after them, all of you: the third tier in the hierarchy.
The children nodded, their expressions shifting from initial confusion to quiet determination. I could feel their enthusiasm, that youthful fire which had yet to be tested by the true weight of the world. As for me, I reflected in silence on the path we were beginning.
Everything is starting over.
Slower.
More fragile.
But this time, with knowledge.
The following day, we gathered in the mansion's backyard. The afternoon sun filtered through the leaves of the trees surrounding the estate, warming the damp stone beneath our feet. The air smelled of wet earth and fresh grass. The five children, together with G, stood silently, watching me with full attention.
"I want to show you something special," I said quietly. "A mysterious power, just like mine."
G concentrated deeply. His small hands stretched out before him. A faint crimson glow began to emanate from his palms. Then, a core of flame appeared between them: a deep red, almost scarlet, surrounded at the edges by a pale pink hue that radiated a dark, vibrant light.
The Storm Flame.
"Look," I murmured. "That is the Storm Flame. But it belongs to G alone."
To demonstrate its power, G launched a small portion of the flame at a nearby tree. The impact was instantaneous and brutal. The trunk crumbled into dark, cold dust, as though the tree's very vitality had been drained away. The crash of its fall echoed throughout the courtyard, leaving behind a chilling silence.
"Wow!" Sana exclaimed, her eyes wide with amazement. "That was incredible, G."
But G did not celebrate. He looked down at his hands with a slight frown, wearing the thoughtful, frustrated expression I knew all too well. I walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder, feeling the tension in his still-childish muscles.
"What's wrong?" I asked softly.
G sighed, his voice low and raspy.
"Primo... I feel strange in this body. The Storm Flames come from my soul, but this body doesn't absorb them properly. It's as if they don't fit... just like in my previous life."
I nodded in understanding.
I had gone through the same thing.
"At first, I felt something similar. My body couldn't produce the Sky Flames the way it used to. That's when I realized I had to adapt and evolve. That's why I use the Template System: to gradually unlock my powers and recover my true strength."
G frowned, trying to process the information.
"Template System?"
"Yes," I explained patiently. "It's a mechanism that allows me to obtain rewards, abilities, and powers by completing missions and challenges. That's how we grow stronger. You can use it as well, G. You're not alone in this."
A spark of conviction shone in his red eyes. His posture straightened slightly.
"Then, Primo, I'll fight to regain my strength and help you restore the glory of the Vongola, just like in our other world."
I smiled and gripped his arm firmly.
"That's the spirit, brother. Together, nothing will stop us."
That night, while the mansion slept beneath a star-filled sky, G and I sat beside the fireplace in the main hall. The fire crackled softly, casting dancing shadows across the cracked walls and reflecting on our childish faces. Its warmth was comforting against the cold that still seemed to cling to my bones.
"G," I began quietly, "do you remember when we were children and ran through the forest without fear?"
"Of course," he replied with a nostalgic smile, resting his elbows on his knees. "You were always the leader. I only wanted to follow you and protect you."
I laughed softly, an unfamiliar sound coming from this young throat.
"And you always protected me, even when I didn't understand the danger. I'll never forget when we faced that creature in the forest, fighting side by side without hesitation."
G nodded, his eyes reflecting the flames.
"That was the first time I felt the power of the Storm. It was as if nature itself had called me to protect you."
"I felt the same way about the Flames," I said, staring into the fire. "Sometimes I think our bond is stronger than any magic or power."
"It is," G said with quiet conviction. "We're family, beyond time and space. That's why I'll fight with everything I have to make the name Vongola shine once again."
Our conversation continued for hours, filled with quiet laughter, shared memories, and silent promises. The weight of two entire lifetimes rested upon our small shoulders, yet for the first time since my rebirth, I no longer felt alone.
Even so, as the embers slowly faded, a contemplative question lingered in my mind:
How long would it be before the outside world realized that the Vongola was being reborn?
...
Author's Note:
"Please excuse my erratic posting schedule. I am currently in the final stages of my university degree, and it has been quite challenging to keep up with regular updates. On top of that, I've been dealing with some writer's block and a bit of frustration, as I feel like I might be stretching the story out, yet I'm struggling with how to pace it properly.
To be honest, I sometimes find these things difficult; my TDAH can make it hard to maintain a sharp focus, leading to these creative blocks. I have many other responsibilities and so many ideas swirling in my head at once, but as a creator with a polyglot and multifaceted mind, I find it hard to execute everything simultaneously.
That being said, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Thank you for your patience, and stay tuned for the next one!"
To be continued...
Until the next chapter!