He didn't remember falling. Only the pressure. The way the trees tilted. How the sky fractured into too much light.
He had run until the wind tore blood from his throat, until the breath left him like a promise broken mid-word. His body carried him forward. His mind remained behind—burning, buried under white fire.
The shard hadn't calmed.
It consumed.
And the forest smelled it.
That's when the beasts came.
They were half-silhouettes between trees, shapes slinking through old mist. He couldn't name them. He didn't need to. Every spiritual instinct he possessed screamed with ancient fear. They weren't hunting for food. They were answering a signal.
He fought—barely.
The first beast lunged and was blown backward by an aura flare he didn't remember creating. A second skidded to a halt mid-pounce, confused by the sudden fracture in the ground beneath Jalen's feet. He threw raw power, blind and sharp, as if swatting at nightmares with lightning.
But every time he struck, the shard inside him responded. It pressed back harder, sinking deeper into his core.
He couldn't stand. He couldn't breathe.
Until he crawled into a hollow beneath the cliff's edge—a gnarled nest of roots and stone, saturated in an aura he couldn't decipher. The moment he crossed its threshold, the forest paused.
The beasts stopped.
Watched.
And… receded.
They wouldn't follow.
Jalen collapsed.
And the agony began.
—
The light came from inside him.
Not warm. Not divine. It was metallic. Cold. Alive.
It threaded through his veins like molten wire. His bones throbbed—splintered. Reforged.
He screamed once.
Then again.
Soon he couldn't tell if he was screaming aloud or inside his mind. His own qi fought back, trying to isolate the shard's energy, trying to suppress it. But every push only caused a deeper pulse in return. It answered aggression with growth.
He slammed his fist against the ground hard enough to break skin. Clawed at his ribs. Bit down to stay conscious.
He passed out. Woke. Screamed again.
The sun rose behind the trees. His eyes didn't register it.
The light overhead filtered through the canopy, but to him, it was meaningless. Time collapsed. Hours staggered past like dying breaths.
By afternoon, there was blood beneath his nails. His robes were shredded. His body—bruised and torn from his own violence—twitched with every internal shift.
Sunset bled across the forest in gold.
That's when the pain receded—not all at once, but like a tide retreating from shore.
He was lying on his side, one cheek pressed to cold stone, drenched in a mix of sweat, dirt, blood, and something thicker.
It was quiet again.
His heartbeat slowed.
He rose in slow increments, dragging his arms under him.
His muscles responded. Strange, but steady.
His fingers no longer trembled. He stood—barefoot, shredded, and new.
His bones no longer felt like his. They hummed with density. Power. He tapped his ribs—metallic, faintly.
But within his dantian, an unfamiliar rhythm echoed—slightly offset, deeper, quieter. It didn't interfere. It didn't mimic. It simply existed. Separate. Steady.
He stilled his breath and turned inward, tracing the flow of qi through his meridians. It wasn't just movement—it was structure.
To his surprise, two spirit cores pulsed within his dantian.
The first—his own—was familiar. Forged through silent cultivation—not long in years, but heavy in effort. Shaped by wind—his chosen art—and erosion—the grind of discipline and pain. It pulsed with the rhythm of the Spirit Wind Art, refined and precise.
But the second… was blank. No elemental signature. No affinity. Just raw, condensed qi—stable, silent, and unaligned. That shouldn't be possible.
Spirit cores didn't form spontaneously. A cultivator had to ascend through stages: first the Perle Realm, where qi condensed into motes and formed the Embryotic Core. Then came the Amethyst Realm, where the core crystallized—dense, refined, and aligned to an elemental path. Only upon reaching the Gold Realm did the core complete its transformation into a true Spirit Core. From there, it grew stronger as the cultivator climbed higher realms.
But this second core had skipped everything. No Perle motes. No embryotic stirrings. No crystallization. It had simply… appeared. Whole. Blank. Silent.
And the Spirit Shard—now dormant—rested between them. Not fused. Not absorbed. Just nestled in the space between cores, like a breath held in silence. It pulsed faintly, not with power, but with presence.
He didn't know what it meant yet. But he knew no one else had it.
And that meant no one could predict what it would become.
Jalen reached the edge of the hollow and looked into a pool of still water.
What stared back wasn't what he remembered.
His face was familiar, but his eyes weren't. Once a rich, earthy brown—now an unnatural, radiant blue, glowing faintly even in shadow. And beneath his skin, qi channels pulsed faintly—silver-threaded and alive, but hidden from sight."
His voice, when he spoke, cracked with hoarseness. "What... did you do to me?"
But the shard—now settled deep within—offered no answer.
Only a slow, pulsing rhythm that beat with his own.
—
He wasn't sure how long he stood there.
The pain was gone.
But exhaustion replaced it.
He sat beneath the twisted roots for a long while, wrapped in silence that wasn't peaceful, only empty. His body no longer trembled, but his mind couldn't settle.
He thought of the shard.
What is it? And why had it taken root inside him like a parasite?
But he was still himself.
Whatever it had changed, he was still here. Still Jalen. So there was no use worrying now.
His thoughts drifted—to his father.
The last time he saw him, the old man had been curled in his cot, breath shallow from a core-damage backlash. And now, more than a day had passed.
Jalen didn't know if the tonic had held. If the fever had broken. If his father had eaten. Or if he'd simply lain there, waiting, breath thinning by the hour.
The thought gnawed at him—not guilt, exactly, but something colder. A fear that he'd return too late.
So he didn't hesitate.
He moved—fast, quiet, deliberate.
This time, the forest didn't resist him. The beasts stayed hidden. The shard inside him was quiet, pulsing in rhythm with his breath. He was in control again.
And control meant he could hide again.
With his aura masked and steps soft as wind, he passed through the outer ridge—and past them. He saw the glint of posted cultivators. Silver-lined robes. Watching.
But he was smoke between trees. Mist among roots. Gone before they even knew what passed by.
Jalen didn't look back.
He had someone waiting.