Kaelen stared at his own hand. The chubby, uncoordinated fingers twitched above the straw mat, rising and falling as though disconnected from the rest of him. His mind commanded precision: curl the thumb, extend the index, grip the edge.
The result was a clumsy spasm that barely brushed the mat before collapsing again.
Useless, he thought bitterly. On Earth, I could lift boxes, type, even write essays in the dead of night. Here, I can't even grab a piece of straw.
But he refused to give up. The humiliation of Chapter One of his new life — helpless crying, choking in the straw, being carried like a sack of grain — still seared into him. His spirit burned with the same stubbornness it always had.
So, every day, when the sun slanted through the cracks in the hut's walls and his mother left him alone for a few breaths, Kaelen tested himself.
He focused first on rolling. He shifted his weight, pulling at his shoulder, arching his back in awkward jerks. The motion was graceless, exhausting, and more often than not left him panting face-down in discomfort. But slowly — painfully slowly — his body began to obey.
One afternoon, he managed to flip entirely onto his belly. The world looked different from this angle: floor rough beneath his cheek, straw prickling his skin, the dim light slanting lower than before. He stayed there, gasping, triumphant despite the drool running from his mouth.
Progress. Pathetic by any measure, but still progress.
---
His body betrayed him constantly. When he tried to crawl, his arms buckled under his weight. His legs kicked without order, sending him in circles instead of forward. More than once, he ended up stuck with his bottom in the air, forehead pressed into the mat.
But something changed each time he failed. Beneath the soreness and exhaustion, he felt the furnace in his chest stir. That quiet warmth spread outward, knitting the fatigue away faster than it should. His tiny muscles hardened, his bones firmed with each night's sleep. The villagers called it growth. Kaelen knew better.
The soul mutation… it's training this body whether I will it or not.
Where another child would take months to crawl, Kaelen felt strength blooming in mere weeks. Still clumsy, still weak, but undeniably faster than normal.
---
The world outside the hut did not pause for his struggles. He learned this each day, listening to voices drift through the walls.
"The harvest failed again," one man muttered, voice bitter.
"Rot's spreading. If the gods don't grant mercy, half the fields will die."
Kaelen's mother sighed often, her voice heavy. "We'll manage. We always manage."
He understood enough to know the village lived on the edge of survival. Disease, hunger, the whims of weather — these were their enemies long before cultivators came into stories.
And those stories came often. Around the fire, he heard the fragments that shaped his understanding of power.
"…they say a true cultivator can take a plague and burn it from the air itself."
"…or summon rain when the rivers turn dry."
"…but they don't come here. Why would they? We're nothing. Just Ashwood folk, scratching dirt for grain."
Each fragment lodged in Kaelen's mind. Destruction and creation. Fire to cleanse, rain to heal. But such powers were far away, belonging to sects and cities. Here, survival meant only enduring.
And that's exactly why I can't stay weak, Kaelen thought, eyes fixed on his stubborn hands. In a world where survival hangs on powers like that, being ordinary is a death sentence.
---
His first true crawl came unexpectedly. His mother had left him on the mat while tending the cookpot. The smell of broth reached his nose, rich and strange, making his stomach clench with hunger.
Driven by instinct, he planted his elbows beneath him and shoved. His legs kicked, pushing against the mat. Somehow, his body lurched forward — one shaky, wobbling inch.
He froze, stunned. Then again, another shove. Another inch.
It was ugly. It was exhausting. But he was moving.
His mother turned at the sound of rustling straw. Her eyes widened, then softened with pride. "Look at you, little Kaelen. So soon…"
To her, it was the simple joy of a child growing. To Kaelen, it was victory, the first tangible proof that his will could bend this frail body.
That night, as he drifted to sleep, the warmth in his chest pulsed stronger than ever. His dreams once again filled with clashing halves of the world — ruin and growth — but this time, he felt himself crawling through them, inch by stubborn inch.
---
The frustrations did not vanish. His attempts at speech were still pathetic gurgles. His bladder betrayed him at humiliating times. His strength was laughable.
But each day, each failure, each fall into the straw was another step. Another inch forward.
Kaelen was no prodigy chosen by heaven. He was only a man with a stubborn will, trapped in a baby's body, driven by the instinct to survive.
And survival, in this world, meant moving forward — no matter how clumsy, no matter how small the step.