Fast asleep in the embrace of silence, Natsu remained oblivious to the extraordinary changes unfolding around him.
As Igneel’s physical form dissolved into motes of warm, crimson light, the soul of the Fire Dragon King slowly seeped into the child’s chest.
This assimilation not only transferred the dragon antibodies but also ignited a massive surge of magical energy within Natsu’s small body.
The dense, primordial energy crashed into Natsu’s magical circuits, flooding directly into the core of his consciousness.
The sheer force of this impact inadvertently shattered the mental barriers within his mind—the memory seals that had long been tightly locked away in his subconscious.
In his deep slumber, Natsu’s consciousness was hurled into an endless void.
The darkness, however, did not last long.
Suddenly, the space erupted in a brutal onslaught of visuals and emotions.
Three distinct streams of life surged forward, aggressively demanding to be acknowledged all at once.
The first fragment of life pulled him in by force.
He was no longer in the forest or with the dragon; instead, he was sitting in a cramped room with concrete walls and artificial lighting.
He saw everything through the eyes of a young adult man in a country called Japan, on a planet named Earth.
A chronic, agonizing exhaustion weighed heavily on his shoulders, the remnants of a monotonous and demanding work routine.
His life was painfully mundane, spent merely surviving from one paycheck to the next.
Amidst this physical and mental exhaustion, his only escape was the world of fiction.
He clearly remembered the sensation of sitting for hours in front of a glowing monitor in a pitch-black room.
He immersed himself in reading dozens of manga and comics, and spent his weekends marathon-watching anime episodes.
That was where he found true freedom—within stories of magic, heroes, and adventures that never existed in his real world.
But that exhausting life came to an abrupt end with an excruciating pain in his chest one cold night.
Pitch darkness swallowed his monitor’s glow, bringing his ordinary life to a tragic, sudden halt.
Before his mind could even process that lonely death, the second fragment of life crashed into him like a tidal wave.
The concrete-filled modern world shifted into a peaceful rural landscape, surrounded by green meadows swaying in the wind.
In this life, he was a cheerful young child.
He remembered the laughter of the villagers and, most prominently, the presence of his raven-haired older brother who always looked at him with profound affection.
Zeref.
The love and sense of security he felt toward his brother were entirely pure.
However, that little paradise was shattered in the blink of an eye.
The blue sky suddenly morphed into a sea of fire.
The sound of massive wings blotted out the sun, followed by a bone-rattling roar.
A dragon was attacking their village.
Paralyzing terror gripped his soul as he watched the buildings crumble into dust.
Then came the heat.
The dragon’s breath swept across the land, incinerating everything it touched.
Little Natsu felt his skin blister, an unimaginable agony, until eventually, everything returned to ash and eternal darkness.
He had died, mercilessly slaughtered by a dragon.
The searing pain of that brutal demise still lingered when the third fragment of life exploded before his eyes.
Death, it seemed, was not the end.
He awoke inside a glass tube filled with a thick, magical fluid.
As his eyes fluttered open, the first thing he saw was his brother’s face.
But this Zeref was different.
Gone was the warm smile; all that remained was a look of desperate, suffocating sorrow.
He remembered his utter confusion upon realizing he was no longer just human.
He had been resurrected from the dead, stitched back together using the darkest of magic, reborn as the strongest demon from the Books of Zeref: E.N.D.
Etherious Natsu Dragneel.
And the sole purpose of his resurrection was single-minded: to kill his own older brother.
The horrific weight of his existence crashed down on him.
Yet, the memory then whisked him away from Zeref.
He was handed over to a colossal figure that should have been his natural enemy—a dragon.
Igneel.
Beside Igneel, his confusion and emptiness were gradually filled.
Instead of treating him like a demon, Igneel raised him like an ordinary human child.
Those massive red scales provided a warmth that chased away the coldness of Zeref’s death magic.
He learned how to read, write, and survive.
He was taught Fire Dragon Slayer Magic, an ancient art designed specifically to fell his adoptive father’s own race.
The times he spent training, laughing, and bickering with Igneel felt incredibly precious.
Now, within the confined space of his consciousness, those three lives—the overworked young man from Earth, Zeref’s tragic little brother, and E.N.D., the Dragon King’s adoptive son—collided head-on.
Millions of fragments of information, emotions, and memories violently overlapped.
The ego of the young man from Japan scrambled to rationalize the situation, while the survival instincts of Zeref’s little brother screamed in terror, and the demonic instincts of E.N.D.
lashed out wildly.
The clash of these three identities forged an excruciating pain in his head, as if his skull were being crushed from the inside out.
His identity was ripped apart, melted down, and reforged within mere seconds.
Until finally, everything converged.
Natsu jolted violently, gasping for air in utter desperation as if he had just breached the surface of the water after drowning.
His dark eyes snapped open, staring directly up at the canopy of giant trees whose leaves completely blocked out the sunlight.
The air around him felt remarkably heavy, saturated with terrifyingly pure energy particles.
His chest heaved rapidly.
Cold sweat drenched his entire body.
His head throbbed intensely, leaving behind the lingering echoes of his colliding memories.
Trembling, he pushed himself up and sat on the damp earth.
He raised his small hands, staring intensely at his pale skin, before tentatively reaching up to touch his own face.
His signature pink hair fell loosely over his forehead.
The turbulent memories gradually settled, piecing together a staggering, complete picture.
The fragments of knowledge from his first life on Earth acted as a master key, unlocking the mysteries veiled within his second and third lives.
Natsu fell silent.
The forest breeze blew gently, brushing against a face that was still paralyzed by shock.
Everything made perfect sense now, yet at the same time, it felt absolutely insane.
His knowledge as a human from Earth allowed him to instantly grasp the reality of where he was.
He knew about Zeref, he knew about Igneel, and he knew exactly who he was.
He hadn’t simply reincarnated.
He realized, with absolute certainty, that he was now living inside an anime world called Fairy Tail, and he—Natsu Dragneel—was the protagonist.