The shimmer pulsed again, threading around his tiny body like faint ribbons of wind. Han-woo's limbs twitched almost on their own, responding instinctively to the rhythm, the push and pull of currents he could not yet name. Each tiny movement—fingers curling, toes flexing, chest rising and falling—left a trace in the air, a subtle distortion that bent the light-threaded currents toward him.
He did not know why. He could not understand it. Yet, in some deep, instinctual way, he felt the connection forming: that movement and pulse, touch and shimmer, were part of the same pattern.
The sounds beyond the crib—the scrape of sandals, distant wood striking wood, faint shouts—layered over the currents. And Han-woo, helpless and infantile, responded. His tiny fists twitched, almost mimicking the rhythm of the world outside. His legs kicked, small arcs and curves that folded naturally into the shimmer. The world touched him, pressed against him, and he pressed back—without understanding, without choice.
His mother's hands, gentle and careful, guided the smallest motions. When she shifted him or hummed softly, the currents coiled around him, folding to match his tiny, instinctive responses. It was subtle, imperceptible, yet undeniable: the external care shaped the internal stirrings, pressing the sparks of awareness closer to recognition.
Colors shimmered in fragments: pale golds, faint blues, threads of green. They bent with his movements, pulsing more vividly with each twitch. Han-woo could not name them, could not control them—but he felt them. Felt their rhythm, their flow, the gentle insistence that they responded to him.
And in the gray half of his mind—the echo of the life he had lived before—something flickered. A memory without clarity, a shadow of structure, a spark of pattern recognition. The old self stirred, brushing against the new, infantile body, lending a faint rhythm to his instinctive movements.
He was still helpless. He was still overwhelmed. He could not act, could not understand, could barely even perceive himself as separate from the currents pressing against him.
But the tiny, fragile sparks that had been ignited in the previous chapter were no longer single, isolated flickers. They were connecting. They were bending. They were forming the first, trembling foundation of something larger: a recognition that movement, sensation, and rhythm were one.
And though he could not yet control it, though he could not yet name it, Han-woo was beginning—slowly, primitively, almost imperceptibly—to step onto the path of cultivation.
The sparks did not fade.
They came and went, like tides lapping against a shore too young to know the sea. Sometimes faint and nearly gone, sometimes bright enough to overwhelm his infant senses, they lingered, weaving themselves into the background of his small world.
When Han-woo's mother shifted him against her shoulder, her warmth pressed the shimmering threads closer. His tiny body responded before thought could form, curling toward the sensation. A hand twitched, and the faint golden line bent, flickering as though it recognized him. The more she soothed him, the more the rhythm gathered—gentle, protective, and strangely resonant.
At other times, when his father's shadow fell across the crib, the air seemed heavier, darker, the shimmer thickening. Han-woo would whimper, small chest heaving with helplessness, and then the currents broke into fragments, scattering like leaves in wind. His father's voice—low, measured, carrying that tension he could not name—always pulled the currents taut, as though the very air listened to him. Han-woo did not understand, but he felt it: a difference between touch and distance, between warmth and command.
The sounds outside grew clearer with each passing day. The thud of wooden practice swords striking, the snap of voices calling patterns, the muffled footsteps pacing over stone. Han-woo's tiny fists clenched to the rhythm. His feet kicked, not yet with intent but with something deeper: instinct aligning to a pulse.
It was not cultivation. Not yet. It was only the first stirring of body and world moving together. But each twitch, each cry, each motion drew invisible threads tighter, weaving the child and the air around him into the same fragile cloth.
Colors came and went. In dream-sleep they washed over him—blue arcs like rivers, green coils like grass swaying in unseen wind. Awake, they dimmed, retreating to the edges of awareness. But even then, faint traces lingered. He would blink at the ceiling and see the pale crack in the plaster shimmering, as though the world itself breathed.
Sometimes, in those drifting twilight states, the memory of gray stirred. Not color, not rhythm—just the faint echo of who he had been. It gave no clarity, no answers, but it wrapped him like a shadow, holding the fragile sparks in balance. Without it, perhaps the shimmer would have swallowed him whole.
His parents never noticed what he felt, not fully. But they moved as though they did. His mother sang softly when the sparks grew too wild, her voice smoothing the rhythm into calm waves. His father lingered at the door at night, silent, watchful, as if guarding against something unseen.
Their presence shaped the sparks. Without knowing, they guided them. And Han-woo, though helpless, absorbed it all.
The sparks did not remain mere fragments anymore. Slowly, imperceptibly, they began to strengthen—shaping a fragile thread of continuity through his tiny, overwhelmed existence.
A foundation was forming.
…
One night, as twilight deepened and the lantern in the hall dimmed to its final glow, Han-woo stirred in his crib. His breathing came uneven at first—short whimpers, tiny gasps. The air shimmered faintly, threads of Qi brushing against his skin like cold silk.
Then, a sound carried through the walls.
Outside, in the courtyard, a wooden blade struck with steady rhythm. Thud. Thud. Thud. Each beat was clear, measured, relentless. The world itself seemed to fall into its cadence.
Han-woo's small body shuddered once—then, without thought, his breath slipped into the same rhythm. Chest rising as the blade lifted. Falling as it struck. His tiny fists curled and uncurled, clumsy yet strangely timed, as though some hidden part of him recognized the pattern.
For a moment, the sparks of Qi within him aligned with the pulse outside. Fragile, faint, but real. A trembling harmony, born not of choice but of instinct.
It passed quickly—his infant lungs faltering, the thread snapping into chaos again. He whimpered, the rhythm broken.
Yet something had shifted.
Later, when his mother lifted him close and pressed him to her chest, the beat of her heart filled his ears. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Slow, protective, endless. Again, his breath struggled to follow, tiny body rising and falling in sync. Again, the sparks stirred, gathering into a single fragile line.
It lasted only as long as his awareness held—and then it was gone. But the world had given him rhythm, and for the first time, he had answered.
The sparks no longer drifted as strangers. They had found a pulse to echo.
The foundation deepened.