Conqueror Reincarnated in Middle Class Family

Morning light was pitiless.

It cut through the shattered slats of the window blinds and etched across Vijay's face, too bright, too warm, too. alive. Slowly, he blinked it away. Arm protesting, he hefted himself up to sitting.

Each muscle ached in protest.

Not ache — punishment.

His ribs warbled with bruises, his knuckles were clenched with dried blood, and one eye was only just starting to purple by the edge. He might be able to lie still, possibly, and breathe through the pain.

But he didn't.

He moved instead with caution. Mechanical, almost. Like every step was that of someone who had charted their pain and made peace with it.

From the doorway, a smaller voice chimed in:

"Did you get in a fight again?"

Vijay half-turned, half-startled. His small brother, Ayush, stood by with a spoon in his hand, wearing his half-buttoned school shirt. He gestured to Vijay's elbow.

A bandage had slipped off. Bruising spread out like a flower.

Vijay blinked.

"Nah," he said too hastily. "Just skinned it on a railing."

Ayush furrowed his brow. "Looks like Mom's chana dal skinned you back."

"Go eat," Vijay grumbled, pushing past him gently, fighting down a wince.

In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face, grasping the sink as if it would drag him back to the present.

For a flash of time, the reflection wasn't his.

It was another's — a man standing knee-deep in sand, armor smeared with blood not his, and a warhammer made of obsidian.

He blinked. The water ran clear. The mirror stilled.

School felt different.

Not dramatically — no throng parted, no teachers spoke in hushed tones. But the world around him vibrated more slowly, as if his senses had expanded and everyone else remained small.

He walked past the corridor where the fight-that-wasn't almost occurred. The scuff marks remained. Someone had mopped the blood, but not the cracked tile where a foot had come down too forcefully.

In class, as Mr. Tamhane began droning about Faral gas decay rates, Vijay stared at the whiteboard but saw nothing.

His wrist still ached from the mop handle.

A faint buzzing behind his ears — from the embedded disc? Or just memory?

You're not prey, something echoed.

When the bell rang, the screech of chairs against tile made him flinch.

Just a breath. A half-second.

But enough.

Saniya Krishna shifted in her seat. Her gaze flashed at him. Not suspicious — inquiring. 

Vijay didn't greet them.

In the headquaters of krishanvanta dynamics 

The elevator whirred upward through the 200th level of the Krishnavant Dynamics Central Spire, a razor-sharp monolith of engineered metal and smart glass that pierced the core of New Govardhan like a cloud-scissors cut through a nether veil.

Saniya Krishna did not pace.

She did not fidget.

She stood rock-still — straight back, crossed arms behind her, a scarlet insignia glinting on the cuff of her uniform jacket: Cadet Prime, Class Sigma-One.

Alongside her stood Kavya, the only one in the whole tower who still referred to her as "child."

"You're clenching again," Kavya murmured, not raising her eyes from her wristpad.

"I am not," Saniya said.

"You are. Right thumb is twitching. You always do that when you're anxious."

Saniya released a slow breath. "It's not nerves. It's irritation. Father won't reveal the trainer's name."

Kavya gave a noncommittal hum. "When the Chairman withholds information, it's usually because he believes you'll object."

Saniya rolled her eyes. "Fantastic. So it's either a former Armscor reject or another egomaniac from the Chimera Belt."

The lift pinged.

The doors opened to a wide hexagonal room lined with screens. Holo-maps flickered, each showing threat zones outside the Kalām Containment Ring. Red blips. Purple swarms. The crawl text along one edge read:

DEFENDER CASUALTIES: 3,118 (Month-to-Date)

ACTIVE MISSIONS: 11,932 | IMMUNE STATUS: STABLE

A high-backed chair stood in the middle of the room, turned away from them. A wall was occupied by a live-feed of the Ringwall Breach Map. Gas lay beyond it — rippling, dancing, waiting to consume.

Saniya looked around.

"Where's the so-called trainer?"

"Out there," a voice said. Male. Crude. "Running drills."

The chair rotated.

Standing alongside it was a small, unassuming man in a combat-weight Defenders jacket, rolled sleeves to the elbow, one eye shaded by a low-glow tactical lens.

Saniya's brow furrowed. "You're my trainer?"

The man did not blink. "I'm your last trainer."

Kavya's brow shot up. "Big talk."

The man nodded once. "I trained three Tier One Vanguards. Two didn't make it through their first decade. One commands the Polar Reach now. That one still sends me letters."

Saniya folded her arms. "Impressive. But legacy doesn't impress me. If you're Tier Three or lower, we're wasting time."

The man smiled. "You believe Tier rankings matter? That they keep you safe?" 

Kavya cut in, her voice steady: "She's worked for it. Fifth youngest Cadet to finish Red Simulations in this sector. Honor distinction."

"I read her file." The man's voice dropped lower. "I also read the part where she's never faced a live Faralized alpha."

Saniya's eyes narrowed.

The man continued. "You want the hierarchy? I'll give it to you, Krishna."

He walked to the edge of the map display, gesturing as he spoke.

"Tier Five — Civilians. Disposables. They live in domes and die if a purifier breaks down. They make noise, vote in sham elections, and imagine their voice counts."

"Tier Four — MedTechs, Support Staff, Internal Defense. The ones who make the domes work. No dome, no oxygen. Easy enough."

"Tier Three — Immunes. Anyone able to walk outside the dome without bleeding out. Recruited, monitored, listed. Some become Defenders. Others become meat."

"Tier Two — Defenders. Operatives. Warriors. You. Soldiers who stand the line. The blade that bites back."

He spun completely to face her.

"And Tier One — are the ones who don't take orders. They issue them. They are elite not because they were born into money, but because they made it through things the rest of us refer to as extinction events."

Saniya didn't blink.

"And you?" she asked.

"I'm not on the list," he replied. "I don't need to be."

A beat of silence stretched long.

Then, with careful calm, he deposited a sealed visor on the table between them. It hit the surface hard.

"You want to graduate? You wear this and come with me. Outside the dome. Real terrain. Real threats."

Saniya raised an eyebrow. "That's illegal without clearance."

Kavya scowled. "She's not scheduled for active deployment for another six months."

"I have override," the man replied, flinging a black hex-badge onto the table. Tier-One override, burn-coded.

Saniya gazed at the mask. Then at him.

"Name?" 

He hesitated. Then replied:

"Call me Instructor Shivraj."

Sector 9A's streets were vacant by 01:46.

After curfew, the checkpoints dimmed to minimal watch, and the drones tracked only alerted targets. Vijay was aware of this. He'd learned their sweep cycles. Plotted them out. Computerized his paces in the mirror of his room with toy soldiers and school textbooks.

He moved swiftly now, hood up, sneakers quiet on wet pavement.

The building in front was skeletal — a concrete and rusty beam frame, originally a hospital addition project when the Catastroph resurgence scare caused it to be stopped mid-construction. Now it stood abandoned. The ideal type of location for what he required.

He slid through a hole in a broken grate and ascended a warped service stairwell, two stories to the flat surface of a vacant rooftop. The air here smelled of ionized air and metal wear.

He dropped his bag. Unzipped the old mat he'd salvaged from school PT storage.

He did not stretch. Did not warm up.

He just stood in the middle of the rooftop and attempted again.

That motion. That crouch. The pivot, the roll. He attempted to recreate what his body had instinctively done that night in the clinic — to feel that snap, that flow, that rhythm of control.

But something was off.

Too rigid. Too robotic. His shoulder over-rotated. His stance wavered.

He moved like a kid playing at fighting. Not like the man he'd been there.

He attempted it again.

Nothing.

Teeth clenched, he inhaled deeply and attempted blind movement — shut down the din of his mind, tried to allow his body to override. Flow, not force.

Still—no instinct appeared.

Only muscle and guess.

"Pathetic," he growled.

He wiped sweat from his forehead, looking over the city lights through the cracks in the outer shell of the dome. Somewhere out there in the darkness past the skyline, something had awakened within him. That beast, how his blood had been pumping. it had been real. Now? Gone.

"Who was I?"

The question did not reverberate. It was flat.

He bent to retrieve the towel when something changed.

The sound was soft. Like cloth on concrete.

He stood still.

Not wind. Not water.

A presence.

Slowly he stood up. Gazing to the darkness where the columns of the old steel towered like bony ribs. His heart pounded faster — not out of fear, but recognition.

He was not alone.