K-8, Madar Star System. 36th Imperial Generation, Year 67,827
A slight buzzing, slowly growing in volume, rings in Caleb's ears, waking him from sleep. Squinting his eyes, to avoid being blasted with white light shining down from the ceiling, Caleb slowly wakes to a new day.
Today is a special day; it's the first day of the new year, also known as, the day of talent awakening. On this day every year, a ritual will be used to determine if a person has the innate talent to cultivate. Knowing, that possibly his entire future might be decided within a few hours, Caleb becomes filled with a nervous dread. Trying to escape reality for a little bit longer, he covers his face in a soft white pillow. Hoping, that this is just a dream, and there are a few more hours of sleep to look forward to before morning.
The regular wake-up call of his mother ruins such dreams. "Caleb Dorian, get up from bed. You can't be late today!" echoes from downstairs, as more morning alarms ring throughout the house.
Still half awake, Caleb waves his left arm around, trying to slam the alarm clock on the bedside table. Only to completely miss the targeted alarm clock and roll out of bed onto the hard grey metal floor, landing with a bang. Terra Dorian, peeking in from Caleb's slightly open bedroom door, giggles at the idiocy of her brother. "Shut up, Terra," the 16-year-old yells, before struggling to get up from the bedsheets that fell down with him.
Caleb quickly scrambles to his feet once he finds freedom from the sheets. With rushed movements, he slips into his academy outfit. It's a pair of black jeans, with two blue vertical stripes running down the sides, a white and dark blue shirt, with a small whale emblem on the front of the shirt just below the left shoulder. The final piece to the uniform, a dark blue jacket with black cuffs. He quickly steals a glance at his mirror hanging on the closet door, to make sure his short black hair and his outfit aren't a mess, before dashing straight into the hall.
Rushing past his half-awake younger brother James, almost knocking him over in the process, Caleb flies down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Once down the stairs, he sweeps around a corner, darting between his father and a grey wall of the complex into the kitchen.
Breakfast is waiting on the simple metal island high table stationed right in the middle of the kitchen; a pack of instant fruit and yogurt is waiting in a bowl. Taking a seat at the table, Caleb for a moment feels slight disappointment that nothing more extravagant is prepared for breakfast, but the feeling quickly vanishes.
"Mother, it's instant packaged food again? Is something going on? Is there some way I can help?" Caleb offers while picking at the food in the bowl before taking a mouthful.
"Real food is too expensive, that's all Caleb. Plus, we are saving as many qi stones as possible for your father's breakthrough attempt." Mother replies, "Your father is soon going to attempt to enter the 6th body refinement stage; any qi stone we have will be needed for breaking through."
Looking down while chewing, Caleb slowly nods his head in understanding. Every single level increase brings new status to a cultivator, along with more power. Power is the foundation of today's society; it has been for billions of years. The more strength Father has, the safer the family will be. Almost anything else compares very little to that fact.
While Caleb is devouring his meal, his father, Ernest, captain of the Fourth Guard Squad, walks in the kitchen. Ernest goes around the chair Caleb is seated in to grab a cup of coffee that's resting in the kitchen. He takes a sip of coffee, then asks, "So son, are you nervous about today?" With a full mouth of fruit, Caleb lies through his teeth. "Not at all, it's just another day at the academy."
Hoping his father didn't catch on to the lie, Caleb stuffs another spoonful of fruit into his already full mouth, trying to finish the bland food as fast as possible. Terra erupts in laughter at the sight, almost falling off her chair at the table. "That's a complete lie, Dad! Why else would he be eating like a scared silver hamster?" She shouts while spitting out bits and pieces of fruit and yogurt.
Pamella looks sternly at her daughter before scolding her, "Manners, young lady.". "Your older brother finds out his talent today; let's not stress him out."
Mother has a broken constitution, which has left her unable to cultivate all her adult life, and she worries Caleb will share the same fate. Though she doesn't speak of her worries, they can be seen on her face; her actions and voice are noticeably more irritable and nervous than normal.
Pamella lucked out by marrying a cultivator, Ernest, which has given her more status and protection than a traditional mortal has. This was especially true after Ernest was made captain of a guard squad and the family moved from living in one of the underground cities to the surface. Pamella's destiny has never been in her hands since the moment she learned of her broken constitution, leaving her completely reliant on Ernest.
Gulping down the last of his food before washing it down with a chug of water, Caleb shouts, "I'm not nervous!" while rushing to the door to leave.
Caleb pauses, when he is about to exit the doorway to put on his exosuit. The exosuit is a tight-fitting, size-adapting, whitespace suit, with a red headlight on the helmet. The suit is made solely to account for the absent sunlight, zero atmosphere, and minimal gravity of K-8. It's the only thing that will protect him from the cold, desolate space, that will greet him once outside the door of his family's two-story house.
Once the suit is finally put on, Caleb slowly opens the door and enters the decompression chamber, listening to the goodbye shouts of good luck from his family.
Upon closing the entrance to the decompression chamber, Caleb silently stands still in the cold white room, waiting for the house door to lock shut. Unable to leave the chamber until the overhead red warning light disappears, Caleb closes his eyes to do a combination of meditating and praying, resulting in him losing his sense of time.
Standing silently in the decompression chamber, keeping his eyes closed even once the overhead warning light disappears; the prayer of 'today will not be a day of disappointment', repeats over and over again in Caleb's head.
Taking a little too long, lost in thought, his mother's voice comes over the comms: "Get moving, or you will miss the transport."
Listening to his mother even when he doesn't feel mentally ready, Caleb steps out and is greeted with the familiar red milky stone that covers the surface of K-8, in addition to the yellow floodlights lighting up the scattered surface settlement.
K-8 is an asteroid owned by the Acker cultivation family, an asteroid that orbits the twin stars in the Madar outer solar system. The Madar star system is managed by the Madar family, hence why it carries the Madar designation.
The Madar family is the highest-ranking family in the star system, with a cultivator in the void-forging stage, or a 5th-stage cultivator. The Acker family is just one rank below, with a chaos formation stage cultivator, the 4th major stage cultivator of the origin system. The origin system is the cultivation method that allowed for humans to reach the stars; it's been humans' main path of cultivation for billions of years.
K-8 is a temporary colony, that is only in place until all the qi stones from the asteroid are mined and shipped back to Madar M-4, the moon where the Acker family's main stronghold is.
The colony was created over a hundred years ago, shortly after the Acker family found K-8, and rumors say it will be here for a hundred more with how big the mine is. Supposedly the Ackers hit it rich with the K-8 asteroid mine, with the vein producing ten thousand stones yearly. Some even say it's the reason why the family was able to raise a fourth chaos formation cultivator. Well, those are the rumors going around the settlement, at least.
Walking along the barely lightened red stone path, embedded slightly into the surface of the asteroid, Caleb passes the local pub, Scarlet Bell. Though it's not much of a pub, considering there is barely anything to drink inside. It's basically a rundown, large, three-story, metal, cube-shaped house with rust and space debris decorating the outer walls. Inside isn't much better, with brownish rust metal covering the interior walls and scattered wood tables placed around the first and second floors.
While The Scarlet Bell can barely be called a pub, it does serve the purpose as a gathering point for cultivators from the three different occupations following the origin path to meet and trade services.
Each occupation uses origin energy differently. There are warriors, who incorporate elemental qi into their bodies, magi who externally control elemental qi, and finally alchemists, who engrave elemental qi onto objects. In addition to the three main occupations of the origin systems, there is the mythical fourth occupation called "origin tinkerer." They are cultivators that have multiple occupations, an example being a magi who is also a warrior. However, not a single origin tinkerer has ever been seen on K-8 or even in the Madar solar system.
After ten minutes of walking, Caleb finally arrives at the collection point for the surface crawler that will take him to one of the academy entrances. Standing next to the collection sign, accompanied by dark empty space, the glowing blue sign marks the only sight of civilization, except for Scarlet Bell in the distance and the red stone path.
Waiting for the mechanical beast to arrive, Caleb slips back into his morning thoughts that seem more like a prayer. 'Don't let me have a broken constitution; don't give me a mortal's fate,' an order of words stuck on repeat in his mind, until a soft, mellow voice in the comm channel interrupts.
"Flying comet to Caleb, you in there?" Startled by the sudden pleasant but broken-up voice in his helmet, Caleb stares at the source of the disturbance. Standing slightly to the right side of the collection sign is Lizzy Horton, daughter of Luke Horton. Luke is the squad lieutenant of guard squad four, the same squad Caleb's Father commands. Giving a slight nod to the blue-eyed brunette before replying, "Yeah, I'm here, Liz; I just didn't get enough sleep, that's all."
Lizzy giggles at the cranky voice in her exosuit helmet. "No one did, dummy; every 16-year-old on the asteroid didn't sleep well, I bet."
Caleb stares at the only person he doesn't mind calling him "dummy" on this desolate rock, wondering if she will have the talent to cultivate. There is a decent chance she will because, just like him, she is a child of a cultivator. Any child who has at least one parent as a cultivator will have a higher chance of becoming a cultivator when compared to a child born from mortal parents. It's rumored to have something to do with the innate physique of a cultivator being passed down through generations.
"You know me Liz; I'm desperate to get off this red rock, to explore this solar system and beyond, but the only way I will be able to do that, is if I become a cultivator." No matter how much it can suck, sometimes a person's entire future will ride on a single moment in life, and today will have one such moment for Caleb.
Just as Lizzy was about to reply, a reflection of a red metallic 18-legged transport vehicle, scurrying along the surface of the asteroid shines onto both of their helmets. Ending the conversation as they both mentally get ready for the stressful day ahead.