The Sword Saint's Second Apprenticeship

At sixty, Garran Ost was the Sword Saint, the highest-leveled man alive, and he died of poison served by a student he trusted. He opened his eyes nineteen years old, back in his first dormitory, level 1, on the morning of his academy entrance exam. Every technique he spent a lifetime perfecting is locked behind levels he no longer has. He has the knowledge of a forty-year career and a nineteen-year-old's arms. He could rise fast, the way he did the first time — step on the same classmates, take the same shortcut through the crown's war. Or he could do the work again, slower, and save the people he buried the first time. The Swordhall is still a factory for the crown. The poisoner is still an elder with a kind smile. Garran has three years before the day he died.