The staff shook violently in the chamber. A sudden pulse split the air, and reality itself cracked.
Kiasin and Asaira froze where they stood, their breath stolen. The world blurred and bent. Light folded inward like paper curling over fire. Their bodies stood in place, but sensation dulled, vision slowed, and action fell away. They could see, but not move. Hear, but not act. Time had ceased to belong to them.
Even Kiasin's Holy Armor faltered. The ancient symbols that had resisted battlefield storms flared briefly, then dimmed, as if bowing before something greater. No resistance remained.
Kiaria floated in the center of the chamber. His small body was lifted from the ground by no hand, limbs loose and helpless, yet his presence drew every eye. His healing aura – the gentle white sparks that had cradled the mansion for months – flickered once, and then vanished. The air went still. The groan of wood, the whisper of wind, even the heartbeat of the city outside–all fell silent.
Then came the hum.
The fractured staff vibrated in response to the child. Its purple-red crystal pulsed violently, bleeding waves of light into the stillness. The glow seeped into the illusion, turning it crimson at the edges.
The boy's body lifted higher. His lips parted, but no sound came. The staff surged forward faster than thought, halting only an inch before his chest. Then, impossibly, its rhythm synchronized with his own heartbeat. Each thrum of his tiny heart called an answering pulse from the crystal, until their cadence became one.
Light burst outward.
From the scar upon his forehead seeped a wisp of darkness – not vapor, but a palpable nothing, a shadow thicker than air itself. It grew, curling like smoke yet heavier than stone, and wrapped itself around the staff. Slowly, inexorably, the weapon was drawn into the mark.
The staff disappeared. Completely swallowed, as though the scar itself had become a portal.
Kiaria collapsed.
His body lay still upon the floor, small chest rising faintly, no sound escaping his lips. But what Kiasin and Asaira could not touch, could not stop, had already begun within. His soul had descended.
In the vast sea of consciousness, Kiaria awoke.
The child's body lay limp in the chamber, but within his sea of consciousness, a vision opened.
Kiaria appeared there – not grown, not transformed, but as he was: an infant's fragile soul, small and helpless, barely able to lift its gaze.
Before him floated the fractured staff, its crystal bleeding wild, ancient light that shook the waters. And beside it stood another figure.
The Primordial Spirit.
A man shaped like twenty-four years of age, but blurred, ungraspable, his face hidden as though veiled by eternity. He did not speak. His presence alone anchored the chaos, holding back the eruption that would have destroyed the child.
Without him, Kiaria's weak, infant body would have torn itself apart under the surge. But the spirit acted – silent, precise.
With no motion but his gaze, four pillars rose from the deep. Reddish-golden, translucent as crystal, blood and thunder moving visibly within their veins. They ascended until they towered around Kiaria, encircling him, anchoring his fragile soul to stability.
The staff stilled. The chaos subsided.
Then the spirit moved at last. One arm lifted, forefinger pointing forward.
At his gesture, the waters of the sea split. From beneath, a flame appeared – green as jade, fierce as earth's molten heart. The Earth Core Green Fire rose and folded itself into form, hardening into the shape of a cauldron. Its surface glowed with runes, its frame settling within the four pillars' embrace.
The staff shuddered, its condensed energy unraveling. Streams of raw essence poured into the cauldron, spilling over into Kiaria's sea of consciousness.
For the first time, he was no longer merely a child. He had become a practitioner.
The awakening began.
Lines appeared across his form – faint at first, then glowing bright. Meridian openings. One by one they lit, each flare a thunderclap in the stillness.
First.
Second.
Third.
The count climbed, each opening another foundation carved into his body. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
Geniuses of the empire had opened twelve in the whole of their youth, their names etched into history as unparalleled. Twelve was the mark of heaven's favored.
But here, the thirteenth ignited.
At the center of his brow, above the scar, a new meridian blazed into being. The Celestial Meridian.
Its light poured through him, a path unseen in any record, a channel unimagined even by sages. Legends had whispered, scholars had speculated, but none had ever seen it. It was not royal, not common, not divine in the way courts proclaimed divinity. It was other.
Thirteen cycles of Body-Soul awakening surged through him in a single breath.
The tide did not stop.
The purple-red crystal, still trembling within the sea, was seized by the Earth Core Green Fire. Flames licked it, burned through its impurities, and purified it to ninth-tier essence. The energy funneled into Kiaria, reshaping every thread of his being.
Bloodline awakened.
Not of one element. Not of two. But Five.
The Five-Elemental Bloodline - rarest of the rare, spirit-born, bound not to a single path but to the entirety of existence. Where others would fight against the limits of their nature, his nature was boundless, his attraction to spiritual energy vast as the heavens, his condensing capacity wider than rivers.
His body surged. Power roared through him, tearing down walls.
Five stages of Body-Soul realm shattered in succession, each collapse a detonation. He did not stop. His soul surged upward, piercing into the Natal-Soul realm. One level, two, three – shattering like glass under a hammer. Only at the mid-fourth stage did the tide still, leaving him suspended between ruin and perfection.
The sea of consciousness glowed with his triumph, but the silence of the pillars remained. The Primordial Spirit did not speak, did not reveal his face, did not explain. He lowered his hand, and the cauldron steadied. The pillars continued to thrum, holding back collapse.
The Celestial Meridian continued to pulse, its light fierce and untamed. No record, no scripture, no elder's scroll had named such a path. What it meant, no one could say. Its future lay hidden, its danger incalculable.
Yet it was his.
In the chamber of the mansion, Kiaria's small body lay unmoving. His chest rose, shallow but steady. Kiasin and Asaira stood frozen still, their eyes wide, hearts clenching as though the silence itself weighed upon them.
Each realm is parted into five tiers, each tier a cycle of seventy-two minor meridians. To open even ten of these channels demands months, sometimes years of toil. Yet the child leapt five cycles in a breath, as though time itself had bent before him.
When the last ripple of power faded, when the world stitched itself back together, they staggered free of the illusion. The morning light streamed again through the lattice windows. Sounds of the city resumed, carts rattling and children's laughter distant, as if none of it had broken at all.
But within the chamber, a truth now lived that could not be hidden.
Their son had awakened – not as a blessed child, nor as a royal pawn, but as something unseen in all of history.
The silence afterward pressed like a held breath.