Time is invisible to immortals, but it leaves shadows in the heart.
Centuries had passed since Dave last looked inward, though for the world inside him those centuries were ages beyond counting.
The mortals of his creation had changed. He had felt their prayers rise like soft ripples of karmic mist from within his chest, and sometimes in sleep he heard their languages—no longer grunts and laughter, but verses half resembling the incantations of cultivators.
He had not answered.
He feared that even a whisper might burn them again.
Outside, Cloudmarket City was still half‑asleep in mist.
Stalls of spirit fruit lay closed; beggar‑immortals lounged beneath glazed eaves. Dave, now older in mind if not in face, still dwelt in the outer ring. His cultivation remained at Lowest Immortal, late stage, enough to survive the streets but nothing more.
He had spent the centuries wandering the city, mapping the nature that others ignored—writing quiet scrolls about the radiance of moss or the vibrating tones of immortal dewdrops.
A few collectors in the middle rings had begun whispering about him: the scholar‑beggar who sold words instead of wares.
The karma drift he earned from sincere observation barely covered his rent, yet it left a golden peace in his soul.
That morning, while sweeping fallen petals from his doorstep, he felt his chest stir as though the world inside had exhaled.
A faint string of karma brushed his mind, silver‑white and unfamiliar—it carried the taste of worship.
Dave froze. "They remember."
He sat cross‑legged, slowing his breathing. The street's noise folded away, its mist thickened, and the inner sea opened beneath him.
The World WithinHis miniature realm glimmered with evening.
Three suns hovered on the horizon, soft as pearls behind smoky clouds. Seas stretched farther than sight, dotted with islands alive with lights.
Where once had been tents and fire pits now stood walled cities crowned by smoke and incense.
The mortals had learned to write symbols upon stone and silk. He could sense their records: epics of creation, of the Quiet One who brought fire and vanished.
His first emotion was pride; the second was guilt.
He drifted invisibly above a vast valley where thousands had gathered.
They sang before an altar carved from dark rock—five torches blazed in a semicircle, mirrors of the five he had once killed by mistake. Every torch bore a name: Luma, Seth, Iria, Horan, Bale—names chosen by descendants.
They prayed not for gifts, but guidance.
And in their midst stood figures emitting faint spiritual ripples.
Cultivators.
Not many—perhaps a few hundred, all low‑level, yet real.
They called themselves Seekers of the Dawn.
Their leader, a woman draped in white furs, lifted her staff. "The heavens stir," she said. "The Quiet One gazes anew."
Her words reached him like soft thunder. For the first time, he felt them sense his attention.
He descended.
The Avatar ReturnsHe took form beside a river outside the city—a mortal body fashioned of wind and thought, matching the world's current energy.
The water glowed faintly as if greeting an old friend. He stepped barefoot onto the mud, marveling at how heavy the world felt when stripped of immortal vigor.
Mountains stood where he had once left plains.
Forests he'd known as saplings now formed labyrinths whose leaves whispered subtle songs of qi—not the boundless energy of immortality, but the first pulse of spirituality, tender and uneven. Evolution was awakening by itself.
He walked for days, studying everything new: the weeds that sparkled when broken, the blue‑veined fish that released soothing light upon death, the way human bakers mixed ash and seed to make bread resembling the texture of cloudfruit.
Every observation became a verse muttered to himself.
"Stone remembers flame.
Flame remembers pain.
Pain remembers learning.
Thus even ashes teach."
At night he sat under firelight with travelers.
They spoke of the Five Lights as if they were ancestors who bargained with the gods to gift humanity wisdom.
They told legends of the hermit sea‑savior who walked upon waves and taught men to fish—his rumor, distorted through ages.
He listened, smiling quietly, never confirming nor denying.
Among them was a child apprenticed to a healer. She stared at him boldly. "Are you from the West Continent? You talk like the old tales."
"I come from far," he said.
"Far as the stars?"
He hesitated. "Perhaps."
"Then tell me, Lord Traveler, does Heaven still shine at the center of the sky?"
He looked up. The three suns hung dimmer than he remembered. "It shines," he said, "but Heaven forgets."
The girl pondered as if trying to understand forgetting itself.
Echoes of the Five LightsWeeks later, news reached towns throughout the valley: the Anniversary of the Lights would be celebrated in the holy city of Lumara, with offerings of song and poetry.
Dave headed there, curiosity leading.
The streets were lined with banners depicting radiant silhouettes with halos shaped like flames—the first cultivators he had slain by accident.
Instead of mourning, the festival celebrated their transcendence.
Artisans recited verses—language born centuries after his last visit, filled with musical cadences, more beautiful than any he could have taught.
He stood among the crowd unseen, an ordinary traveler clutching parchment notes.
A hymn rose:
"Five blades of dawn
split shadow to teach warmth.
Quiet One, we keep your silence holy."
Karmic clouds stirred inside him. He felt threads of destiny weaving between himself and these people. The Dao approved not of power, but of connection.
As dusk fell, acolytes released floating lights onto the river.
He followed them to the outer quarter, where old monks tended shrines to small spirits: ants, birds, rain.
The humility made him smile—the world had remembered his foolish love of tiny life.
The Teacher's ImpulseThat night he wandered the temple grounds and found the woman in white furs—the leader he had seen from above—kneeling before five empty pedestals.
She sensed him immediately. "Traveler," she said without turning, "the winds say you come from beyond. Are you sent to judge us?"
"Why would I judge you?" Dave asked.
She looked over her shoulder. Her eyes glimmered like half‑formed spirit stones. "Because gods often return before calamity."
"I am no god."
"Then what are you?"
"A gardener."
She studied his worn clothes, his bare feet, his tranquil eyes—the eyes of someone who had seen too much sky.
"A strange gardener to walk without tools."
"I plant words. They grow slower but live longer."
She smiled sadly. "Then plant one for us."
He crouched and drew a small circle in the dust. Inside it he wrote a simple mark — a spiral resembling an ant's tunnel. "This is balance," he said.
"When rain falls, rivers swell; when rivers dry, roots seek deeper. Neither is evil; they only cycle."
Her pupils widened, as though the truth snapped quietly into place.
The karmic mist drifting around them shimmered gold for a breath—then stilled.
She bowed. "Thank you, Quiet One."
Dave's heart froze. "How—"
"No traveler teaches balance that way unless he knows the soil of beginnings," she said. "We are not blind, only polite."
He couldn't help laughing. "Then your eyes are better than Heaven's."
She glanced up, half afraid of blasphemy, but he merely smiled.
When she looked again, he was gone—wind scattering through temple corridors, whispering new verses that no one fully remembered.
Between Two WorldsBack in Cloudmarket, a few breaths passed. Perhaps a thousand mortal years had passed below. He opened his eyes to dawn identical to the one before.
Yet something had shifted: within his chest, golden karmic light condensed into a single High Crystal Coin, warm and weightless, proof of pure teaching.
He placed it on his palm, watching it spin like a miniature sun. "So even a fool's lesson can be worth a coin," he murmured.
Outside, Old Qiu still slept by the wall, muttering through dreams of forgotten vintages.
The street vendors began unpacking. Mist moved exactly as it always had.
But Dave no longer felt the same.
Inside him, mortals had discovered balance.
Outside, immortals still wandered without direction.
For the first time he saw clearly that the endless world of beggars might need the same lessons as the mortals once did: warmth, patience, humility.
He looked at the broom leaning by the door, lifted it to sweep fallen petals, and whispered, "Teaching begins again."
As he swept, the petals swirled into spirals like the mark he had drawn in the dust of Lumara.
A small wisp of karma curled upward, pale gold, and dissolved into the dawn.
Morning in Cloudmarket had the same taste as all mornings—spirit dew and faint incense—but to Dave it felt sharper, newly cut.
He let the broom rest and studied the small coin turning in light.
A harmless swirl of cotton mist still clung to its surface, golden‑white, almost playful.
One High Crystal Coin—to the city, nearly worthless, yet to him it was more than treasure: it was proof that meaning could bloom even inside perfection.
He closed his fingers over it.
A soft pulse answered from within his chest.
The miniature world called.
Echo of BalanceThrough meditation, Dave's mind spread like evening rain across both realities.
In the miniature world, centuries had passed.
The Circle of Balance—the spiral sign he had drawn in dust—had become an emblem carved into temples, banners, and coinage.
Children traced spirals in sand when learning to write.
Across the valley kingdoms, rulers swore peace in its shape; wars ceased quicker, villages shared harvests longer.
Balance had become belief, belief had become Dao.
He drifted invisibly over mountains shimmering in new qi.
The world's air gleamed as if it had begun tasting immortality itself.
Grasses exuded faint auras; streams hummed. Seeds of cultivation had sprouted naturally from faith.
Near a mountain called Horan's Spine, he watched farmers meditating under a simple breathing technique—three beats inhale, three exhale—a rhythm matching the wind and water.
They had discovered Qi Refinement by mimicking nature.
Dave smiled. "They found it themselves."
Every breath they took birthed threads of karmic light, drifting upward into his soul—a slow rain of gratitude that warmed him to the bone.
The Beggar ScholarsOutside, Cloudmarket's outer ring remained the same: broke, endless, timeless. Yet perhaps because Dave's heart had shifted, small details began to compost into meaning again.
Beggars still fought over karmic crumbs, yet each dawn he swept, and each dawn they paused to watch the spirals he accidentally drew in dust.
Old Qiu finally asked one day, "Why sweep in circles, boy? Straight lines clean faster."
"Because dirt never ends," Dave said. "Circles remind the broom why it tries."
They stared at him like he'd sprouted vines.
By evening, two beggars and Qiu himself had copied his movements, laughing at first, then unexpectedly calm.
Something in the rhythm smoothed the edges of their minds. Their shoulders eased; small karmic wisps rose unnoticed.
Word spread that Orphan Dave had invented lazy meditation.
No one took it seriously, which suited him fine.
Yet within months, half the district warped their morning sweeping into spirals. Some did it for humor, others because it made their hearts oddly quiet.
The outermost slum of the immortal world had discovered balance without knowing its name.
And above them the karmic mist looked faintly brighter.
The Scroll of PetalsDave began writing again—not treatises on qi or enlightenment, but simple observations.
Each petal falls as if guided by memory, he wrote.
Perhaps things drop where they once rose.
He compiled hundreds of such thoughts on spirit paper scavenged from discarded ledgers, binding them with reed twine. The beggars named it "The Scroll of Petals."
Copies drifted inward through markets, changing idle hands into minor fascination.
Some inner scholars dismissed it as superstition; others whispered that even petty truths might shimmer under the Dao's dust.
Karmic energy trickled from readers' quiet smiles back toward its absent author.
One morning the poet woman who sold bottled verses bowed when he passed. "Your words make better poems than mine," she said.
"I only describe what stays still long enough to see," he answered.
"And people pay for stillness now," she laughed.
Storm Over LumaraIn his miniature world, time surged ahead.
The Kingdom of Lumara, cradle of the Balance Doctrine, faced its first true trial: over‑harvest and pride.
Rulers who once preached restraint began hoarding sacred herbs, forcing devotion into taxation. The symbol of the spiral appeared on their war banners, turned from circle to noose.
Dave felt the discord hours before mortal thunder began—a pressure in his chest like disharmony in music.
He glimpsed battlefields forming: spears bound with spiritual branches, soldiers chanting mantras of balance while slaying each other.
He entered as an avatar again, lowering himself to mortal level.
Rain fused with blood.
He wandered among the wounded like a nameless monk, pressing water to lips, whispering to anyone still breathing the simplest truth he knew.
"Balance does not choose sides."
A young commander bled by a banner snapped in the wind. He clutched Dave's sleeve. "Are you… the Quiet One? Then why watch us destroy your peace?"
Dave looked at him. "Because peace can rot if never tested."
The soldier blinked, life fading with understanding half formed.
When at last the storm cleared, Dave walked out of the valley, his robe soaked crimson from other men's lessons.
Above him five rainbows arched across dark clouds—five lines of light echoing five ancient souls.
Karmic AccountingUpon returning to consciousness in his hut, karmic mist whirled around him so densely that neighbors thought the place aflame.
He gathered it carefully, condensing each particle into coins until silence returned.
By count: three High Crystal Coins gained from teaching compassion to mortals who would never record his name, one from the sweeping meditation, one from a poet's honest joy.
Five small glimmers—equal in number to the first five lives he'd once taken.
He laid them in a circle on the mat. The air grew warm; a faint humming rose, harmonic and low.
Old Qiu shuffled in doorway half asleep. "You meditating again, boy? Your house sings."
"Only remembering," Dave said.
"Remember quieter; you'll wake the dust spirits."
They both laughed.
Dialogue Under MistLater that day, sitting on the same stoop he had as a child, Dave watched Cloudmarket breathe in its endless loop.
Elites still preached, beggars still swept, karmic chimes still rang toward heaven.
Yet he felt a current slowly reform beneath monotony, like river water realigning after centuries of silt.
Another beggar approached—young, hopeful-eyed. "Master Dave," he said shyly, "they say your spiral sweeping brings luck. Can you teach me properly?"
Dave looked at the boy's broom and smiled. "There's no proper way. The dust is the teacher."
"But how will I know I'm doing it right?"
"When dust stops shouting and starts listening," Dave said.
The boy frowned, puzzled, then tried anyway.
By sundown, all along the outer streets, new spirals patterned the stone—some crude, some graceful—but together they formed a living mandala only Heaven could see from above.
Karmic clouds swelled gently over the district.
ReflectionThat night Dave reclined, gazing at the mist drifting through the eaves.
He wondered if the mortals below looked up at their stars the same way, if they too sensed someone somewhere trying to listen.
In both worlds, ordinary people were moving a little closer to balance without knowing whose whisper guided them.
He picked up one of the High Crystal Coins, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
Inside the translucent surface shimmered faint silhouettes: ants, petals, children, spirals.
This is what karma looks like when it dreams, he thought.
He breathed softly onto it; the light pulsed once, content, and dimmed.
Then he set it beside the broom and let sleep carry him toward another century.
The Dream of Two WorldsHe dreamed—for immortals seldom did.
In his dream, the miniature world and Cloudmarket rotated like twin lanterns sharing the same wick.
Between them hung a tiny loop of gold thread tightening, tightening until the light of both merged into one large halo.
When he reached toward it, voices whispered from both sides: mortal and immortal, beggar and king, repeating a single phrase.
"The Wheel spins. The Quiet One sweeps."
He woke at dawn drenched in calm. Rain outside mirrored the chaos he'd left behind and washed the streets clean again.
Morning RitualDave walked out beneath the eaves.
Old Qiu waved from a distance, too lazy to rise. "The world still turning, eh?"
"Yes," Dave answered, raising his broom. "And it knows how."
He began sweeping.
Each motion drew faint concentric sigils that glowed briefly before fading.
Low‑born immortals paused, watching the trail of light form circles inside circles. Some joined without asking why.
Above, sunlight finally pierced the mist.
The city chimed—slowly, softly—as if echoing the rhythm of their strokes.
And unseen beyond the veil, his miniature world breathed with the same measured sweep: tides matching the motion of his broom, mountains breathing in time with his heart.
For the first time in immeasurable years, both worlds moved together.