Chapter 1

There was nothing but murky darkness.

Then suddenly, a path appeared.

It was straight and stark white.

...

Twinkle.

Zoro opened his eyes.

Blink, blink.

His two grey pupils appeared and disappeared with the movement of his eyelids.

The bright lights, a swaying mobile, and a ceiling with bland patterns came into his still blurry vision. The room was filled with warmth, making it cozy.

'Was it a dream?'

What dream was it? Zoro briefly wondered before giving up. If it was important, he'd remember it later.

'I'm thirsty.'

He tried to get up, but his body wouldn't move. Zoro frowned as he only managed to roll his legs while lying down. Seeing his hands, now too small to even hold a sword handle, he finally realized the situation.

'Ah, that's right.'

Roronoa Zoro had become a baby.

To be precise, he was reborn as a baby.

How, you might ask? Zoro himself didn't know. In his last memory, he had lost consciousness from bleeding too much. When he came to, he was in a baby's body inside his mother's womb. Not long after, he was born into the world.

For Zoro, who had roamed the Grand Line encountering all sorts of incidents, this was absurd. However, he had a vague idea of what might have happened.

'Reincarnation.'

It meant that Roronoa Zoro had died from his injuries and was reborn in the body of a baby.

'Sigh.'

He sighed inwardly. It wasn't that he had never seen someone come back to life. But he had never imagined he would be that person.

Why had this happened? Zoro pondered for a moment.

'It's not the power of a Devil Fruit.'

Brook, who had consumed the Yomi Yomi no Mi, was still alive, so it couldn't be another user of the same fruit. Even if there were other Devil Fruits that interfered with life and death, none of the beings Zoro encountered that day possessed such powers.

So, it must be...

'The whims of the Grand Line, after all.'

The world's greatest, most dangerous, and most mysterious sea, the Grand Line. Nothing that happens there is ever surprising. Especially not in the latter half, the 'New World', as opposed to the relatively peaceful first half, 'Paradise'.

'I should have been more careful.'

It was a meaningless thought after the fact. Zoro reaffirmed the vow he had made time and again to become stronger.

After all, it was merely speculation, the truth remained unknown.

'I'll have to figure it out when I grow up.'

Even if Zoro had been a swordsman with no equal in his past life, he was now just a newborn baby. It was difficult to do anything in such a state. Growing up was the immediate priority.

Thump, thump.

Someone was walking towards him. Then suddenly, a face appeared in Zoro's field of vision.

Zoro stopped thinking and stared intently at the face. His vision was still blurry, but he could make out that it was a woman with messy black hair.

"Are you awake, Zoro?"

A gentle voice spoke, and the face changed subtly. The woman was smiling at Zoro. Even without using Observation Haki, he could tell.

"Let's eat."

The woman's name was Chie.

She was Zoro's birth mother in this life.