Prathero

A stray dog dies in Tokyo saving the only boy who ever loved him, and wakes up as a human infant in a world that is not Earth.

Rex spent five years learning to be invisible, because a stray that draws attention draws the boot. Then a lonely boy named Derek held out a shaking hand in an alley, and took him home, and gave him a name that meant you are wanted in this room. For one year Rex was fed, and warm, and kept. Then a riverbank gave way under Derek’s foot, and Rex — who had always been the thing that moves before it decides to move — threw the boy clear and went into the water in his place.

He is reborn as Remi, and he remembers everything.

His second life sets about taking everything from him too: the house, the street, and finally the mother who spent herself down to nothing to keep him fed. By eight years old he has learned what the world kept trying to teach him, and he finally accepts it.

Alone works. Alone is safe. Never again.

He runs into the mountains, and he survives, and he would have gone on surviving in the dark forever — except that behind years of unexplored stone there is a door of grey steel, and behind the door is a maze, and inside the maze is an old man named Darius who has been waiting a very long time, and who intends to take a boy who has sworn off people and make him into something the world has never seen.

Three years. Three impossible paths. A thousand years of knowledge poured into a child who does not know why he was chosen, or by whom. And in the deepest of them, in a white room, a boy Remi buried in another world is waiting to say goodbye properly — and to tell him one last thing.

Don’t forget to make some friends and live well yourself.

Remi walks out of that mountain at eleven, armed, changed, and carrying a promise made to a dead boy across two lifetimes.

He believes he has been taught. He has been aimed.