The pounding at the door did not stop. It came in sharp succession, then the shrill vibration of the bell—again and again, without rhythm and patience.
Yohan's eyes snapped open. His thoughts lagged behind, sluggish and disoriented. Sleep still clung to him. For several seconds he lay there until another blow struck the door below.
He forced himself upright. Every muscle in his body protested; the exhaustion from earlier had not left him, only settled deeper into his bones.
The floor felt colder than it should have. He stepped into the vestibule, fingers brushing the wall as he moved down. His vision felt unreliable and slightly delayed.
The air inside the house felt altered.
The darkness carried a faint undertone of red, barely perceptible yet undeniable, as though the night itself had been stained. It reminded him of looking through closed eyelids against harsh light—except his eyes were open.
As he descended the stairs, the knocking began to change. It did not grow distant, it grew weaker.
Each step he took seemed to subtract force from it and by the time his feet touched the final step, the sound had thinned into hush.
His heart did not race, it beat slow and heavy, each pulse landing with a dull weight against his ribs. A pressure gathered in his chest, not sharp enough to be panic, not clear enough to be fear.
He did not want to open the door.
He also did not stop himself.
His hand reached forward with a strange detachment, as though obeying an instruction issued somewhere beneath conscious thought.
The latch turned.
The door creaked inward.
The world beyond looked distorted—edges softened, colors muted except for that same faint crimson wash. There was no visible moon, yet a red glow lingered across the pavement and walls. Shadows stretched in elongated forms that did not quite align with their sources.
Three figures stood at the threshold.
They were shaped like men—height, posture, clothing—everything aligned with normalcy. Yet their faces refused to resolve.
It was not simply darkness obscuring them. It was as though his mind rejected their details. Features blurred into shadow, only their mouths were visible.
They were smiling.
The man in the center tilted his head and spoke and the moment his voice slid into Yohan's ears— something inside him recoiled in recognition before understanding could form.
His subconscious identified him instantly: the neighbor from the house across the street.
The man whose abusive arguments with his wife leaked through closed windows late at night. The same man who greeted everyone with composed politeness in daylight.
But the tone was wrong.
It carried the loose, unsteady drag of alcohol. The three of them swayed faintly, movements half a beat too slow. Beneath it, something abhorrent lingered—hostility without disguise.
The neighbor said something again.
Yohan heard every syllable but none of it made sense. The words seemed to dissolve before it could form into a meaning. Language felt distorted, like trying to read through warped glass.
Then all three of them smiled wider and wider.
A suffocating pressure settled against Yohan's chest, as though an invisible palm had pressed against his sternum and begun to push inward. Fear did not arrive as a scream—it arrived as paralysis. It spread from his lungs to his fingertips, stiffening muscle and thought alike.
He tried to speak. He tried to shout for his family.
Tried to shout for his father. For his mother. For anyone.
But nothing came.
His throat locked and tongue felt too heavy. When he forced sound outward, it broke apart into uneven fragments—garbled, unintelligible even to himself. Panic clawed through his ribs. His heart pounded violently, as if attempting to break free from the cage of his chest.
The men did not move, they simply watched with a grin.
As the pressure intensified, his vision tunneled and the red hue thickened at the edges of his sight. He felt as if his chest might rupture under the weight of something unseen. A strange certainty gripped him—not that they would hurt him, but that something irreversible was already happening.
He could not breathe nor think. And before he could reclaim even a shred of control, the darkness surged forward and swallowed him whole.
—!
Flick—
'Hah—!'
Blink...
Yohan opened his eyes in a haze, his chest rose and fell in uneven interval.
'What... What was that?!' His eyes slid toward the front wall, then to the dim outline of the clock.
' 3:00 a.m.?!' He rubbed his left eye firmly with index finger. Then swallowed wryly, "It was a dream right? Who cares, I'm not curious about this one."
He turned onto his side and dragged the blanket over himself, sealing his head in borrowed darkness. He shut his eyes and waited for sleep to reclaim him. However, it didn't. Something persistent scratched at the back of his mind.
After a minute of pointless stillness, he exhaled sharply and swung his legs off the cot.
"Ugh, fine..." He muttered. "I'm thirsty anyway."
He grabbed the empty water beside and stepped into the dark vestibule, the floor cold against his soles. The house lay submerged in shadow, familiar furniture reduced to vague silhouettes. The vestibule felt narrower at this hour.
He kept his gaze fixed ahead, cautiously and almost stubbornly.
Don't look at the door.
Yet something in him—older than logic, older than pride—insisted. A quiet primitive, animal instinct that insisted on peeking outside the door once.
'Why the hell am I hesitating? Stop acting like a scared roach.' Annoyed at himself more than anything else, he flipped on the vestibule light and unlatched the door. The corridor filled with a pale, clinical glow that made everything look smaller, less threatening.
His eyes scanned methodically—left along the empty street, right toward the silent row of houses, then straight ahead at the neighbor's gate. Finally, he tilted his head up. The sky hung still and indifferent, then he blinked once, twice.
Ahem.
A slow breath slipped from his lungs. Simultaneously, he shut the door as he turned back.
"Wha—aaa...." The cry strangled itself in his throat. At the edge of the light—just beyond the vestibule, where brightness thinned into shadow—a figure stood still. Hair hanging loose and uneven, obscuring the face.
For a fraction of a second, his mind detached from his body. It felt as if his soul had stepped back, leaving his flesh to deal with whatever this was. His pulse dropped, then slammed against his ribs.
"What on earth happened? Why are you shouting like that?"
Yohan pressed a hand to his chest, trying to shove his heart back into rhythm. "Mom… one day I'm genuinely going to die because of your talent for materializing at 3 a.m."
"Stop being dramatic," she dismissed flatly. "I was checking the main door. Why are you awake?"
He exhaled through his nose. 'There is no winning against my mom who treats midnight patrols as a hobby.'
"I... I just came down to refill my bottle, that's it. I'm going back."
"You weren't asleep, were you?"
"Uh... I dunno, I woke up, I'm sleepy, I can't talk straight. Thanks for the jumpscare."
She gave him that look—the one that suggested she saw more than she said—then turned back toward the room.
Yohan filled his bottle at the sink, the steady rush of water grounding him along with the faint hum of the refrigerator, then replaced it with another cold water bottle in the fridge.
Yohan shook his head at himself, and headed upstairs.
So, that was just a dream?!
He sat on the edge of the bed, bottle still in hand, thoughts assembling themselves like broken glass.
I only knew the one person among those three — our neighbour at front door. He said something to me...uh... What was that? It's all fragmented in my head... I think I told them to go, but they… they said something threatening and that neighbor's face… it became so twisted and wrong, I couldn't even look at it. I couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't call anyone.
He let out a dry breath.
Ridiculous… what a half-baked dream!
His mind stalled for a second.
Wait, what if— No, no, nah, this can't happen again. Sleep, just sleep.
He laid back, cocooning himself in the thin woolen blanket, however the sleep didn't accept him.
I can't fall back asleep... But I can't go for running at this hour either. Ah, damn, my whole upper body is killing me from yesterday's workout. Really pathetic. My core's still dormant, and I haven't even started seeking appropriately. No wonder this body's like a rusty machine.
He glanced at the ticking clock again, sliding into a cross-legged position, he brought his fingertips together, forming a loose triangle hovering just above his solar plexus, below the hollow of his chest.
'I shall start to seek the essence of my Core and shape it… and along the way, I can recuperate my body sooner too.'
The gesture was both ritual and anchor, a tether to himself amid the fatigue and lingering unease. In the silence, Yohan could almost feel the dormant energy stirring, faint and hesitant, like a shadow of a river waiting to converge into its flow.
Awakening the Core wasn't just a matter of relentless practice. It was more than struggle—it was negotiation.Yohan could use his dormant Core to recover physical fatigue, but finding its essence, the spark at the heart of it, was the real trial.
When a Core matures, it is shapeless at first, amorphous. Its energy seeps unevenly through the body, scattered across organs, limbs, and mind, even if the Core itself sits between the solar plexus and chest. If the essence drifts too far into consciousness, it remains unreachable.
Seeking required extreme care and measured focus. One had to shape the irregular Core, coax it into a perfect, unhindered alignment with the mind. But it was never unilateral as the body fought back. Scholars called it the Reflexive Defense Mechanism, an intrinsic safeguard meant to reject interference.
Even though the Qi was his own, his body treated the process as intrusion.
At birth, every person carries Primal Resonance—a baseline energy the body instinctively knows. When the Core matures, Qi emerges from this Primal Resonance. But it comes entangled, chaotic and unrefined.
The body perceives the shaping of Qi as a threat to the integrity of this original energy. Muscles tighten without reason, nerves fire micro-alarms, reflexes flare, thoughts stumble etc. The Primal Resonance resists, not with malice, but with instinctive precision—like a circuit refusing to be rerouted until it's safe.
Careless cultivation or seeking shatters more Cores than external assault ever could. A misaligned intention, a hurried breath, an impatient push—any of these can sever the fragile connection between Qi and consciousness before it ever stabilizes.
The mechanism wasn't something one could fully grasp. The interactions of Primal Resonance, consciousness, and reflexive defenses were as intricate as molecular biology, as precise as a machine whose blueprints were written in a language too fine for ordinary minds. Yohan only had surface knowledge. Enough to avoid obvious mistakes but not enough to master the Core without paying its price.
To ease the torment of Core awakening, seekers often relied on awakened mentors—veterans of the inner struggle. These guides could mediate the Core's resistance, temper the Primal Resonance's instinctive defenses, and shape the flow of Qi without the student breaking under the pressure. With their guidance, the process became faster, safer, and far more efficient.
The wealthy, ambitious, or resourceful took it a step further. Qi-amplifying minerals—crystals, shards, and refined ores—were sculpted into artifacts, heirlooms, and high-grade weaponry.
These elements didn't just store Qi; they resonated with it, guiding, amplifying, and focusing a seeker's energy. A Core could stabilize faster and recovery became smoother. And, in rare cases, a seeker could surpass natural limits by using such tools.
This practicality gave birth to an international hierarchy for artifacts and weapons, categorized from G-1 to G-9 and so on. The lower grades are simple—shards embedded in rings or staffs, conduits for basic Qi alignment. The higher grades are intricate, fused with multiple minerals, sometimes linked to bloodlines or legendary craftsmanship. Each tier increases the efficiency of cultivation, elevates power thresholds, and pushes the boundaries of what a seeker can achieve.
As technology evolved, so did the gear. Engineers and artisans experimented with new alloys, Qi-infused crystals, and hybrid artifacts, constantly climbing the ranks. Each innovation reshuffled the system, producing tools capable of unlocking previously unattainable potential.
For those who could afford it, the line between natural talent and engineered advantage blurred, and Core awakening became a dance between biology, skill, and technology.
''Tsk... Haa... It's not easy, not even a bit.'
The words scraped out of his throat. Seeking the core was like groping through fog with bare hands. A silent war fought in a space no one else could see. A dull numbness spread behind his eyes along with his limbs, the kind born from overexerted focus rather than physical strain, mind feeling bruised.
Yet he pushed until his thoughts blurred and that invisible wall loomed before him again—that same suffocating wall he could not cross.
He stopped only long enough to breathe.
Then tried again.
And again.
Gradually, the sky beyond his window slowly paled as dawn thinned the darkness. He let himself fall backward onto the bed, chest rising and falling heavily, staring at the ceiling with sluggish thoughts.
"Crap... Should I try that strange ritual?!