"To awaken is to remember what the soul once forgot."
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[Scene: Kaliyun Village – edge of the Great Azure Forest | Midnight | Storm Approaching]
The sky churned like a cauldron of roiling ink, thunder growling low like the breath of an ancient beast. Lightning carved ghostly veins across the dark clouds as wind howled through the thatched roofs of Kaliyun Village. Yet amidst the chaos, a boy stood alone — arms outstretched to the heavens, as if trying to catch the lightning itself.
Max.
Sixteen winters old. Orphaned. A helper in the fields by day, a dreamer of stars by night.
The rain hadn't started yet, but the air shimmered with a strange pressure. The villagers had long fled indoors, muttering of ill omens. But Max remained on the hill, barefoot on damp grass, clutching the old pendant that had hung around his neck since he could remember — a dull jade disc, cracked in the center.
Tonight, something was changing.
His fingers tightened around the pendant.
Suddenly, the wind stilled.
No rustling leaves. No howling gale. No breath.
Then—
CRACK!
A blinding bolt of lightning struck the ground just meters from Max. He stumbled back, heart hammering. The impact scorched the earth and left behind… nothing. No flame, no crater — only stillness.
The pendant grew warm.
Then hot.
He gasped, trying to pull it away, but it had fused with his skin. In panic, he stumbled backward — and his world went dark.
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[Scene Shift: Within the Soul]
Max floated.
Not in air, nor in water — but in something else entirely.
Endless space stretched around him, filled with swirling stars, wisps of galaxies, and the beating pulse of some unseen rhythm. A vast lotus bloomed beneath his feet, its petals made of stardust. At its center floated an orb — cracked, ancient, and glowing faintly with purple light.
"A fragment of the Origin… hidden within a dying world…"
The voice echoed everywhere and nowhere, neither masculine nor feminine.
"You… are chosen not by fate… but by consequence…"
The lotus pulsed.
Max reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the orb—
BOOM!
A surge of heat, pain, light — then, silence.
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[Scene: Kaliyun Village, Dawn]
Max gasped awake, drenched in sweat and lying in a circle of burned grass. The pendant was gone. In its place on his chest was a faint mark — a swirling spiral, glowing with faint purple light.
Around him, villagers whispered. Fear in their eyes. Reverence in some.
Old Wu, the village alchemist, crouched beside him, eyes wide in disbelief.
"You… You awakened Qi Sense on your own?"
Max sat up slowly, the storm now gone, the world eerily calm.
He didn't understand what had happened.
But something deep inside him had shifted.
The ember had been lit.
And soon… it would blaze.
⸻
[End of Chapter 1]