Akira didn't know what woke him. One moment, he was deep in evening meditation, tracking the subtle web of ki threading through a shrine lantern. The next, the sky split open.
A sharp pull tore at the space around him, and before he could react, a terrible presence descended. The courtyard exploded in blinding light, and out of it stepped Mara, no longer bound by her illusion of serenity. Her skin shimmered with serpentine gold, her many arms now unhidden, each hand clutching a weapon of shadow and flame. Her smile was a jagged.
"You thought I would just walk away," she whispered.
Before he could speak, a chain of dark energy burst from her palm and wrapped around him like a noose of molten steel. Akira gasped, he couldn't move, couldn't breathe. The qi inside him twisted in resistance, but it was scattered, unfocused.
Mara yanked.
Somewhere Else
They didn't teleport. They didn't travel. They tore through the membranes between realms. Akira's senses turned inside out. He saw time as color, smelled sounds that had no names, felt his own soul unspool across a million mythologies.
Then. impact.
They landed in a barren wasteland, beneath a crimson sky torn by black lightning. The ground was cracked obsidian, jagged. Floating monoliths drifted in the sky, covered in runes he couldn't read.
"This place...is not Hindu," Akira choked, struggling against the chain.
"No," Mara said, expression unreadable. "But it's where you'll stay. The forces in you are too dangerous. You attract attention from beings who should never notice you."
Akira's body screamed as the chains tightened. His qi thrashed. The Hindu prana surged, seeking divine release. The Chinese qi centered, desperate to anchor him. But it was the Japanese ki, quiet, flowing, ancestral, that whispered to him.
Connect.
His eyes opened wide, and a surge of silver-blue energy exploded from within. The chain shattered. Mara recoiled, one arm scorched by raw kami force.
"You—!" she snarled, eyes wide. "You haven't even begun training. How—?!"
Akira didn't wait to find out. He turned, instincts guiding him, and ran. Not away, but toward a crack in the obsidian plain, where strange energies pulsed.
Mara shouted something ancient and terrible behind him, but it faded as he dove through the crevice.
The Arrival..
He hit the ground hard. His body tumbled through wet grass, moss, and fog. Everything had changed again.
He sat up, gasping.
He was in a dense, otherworldly forest. Trees twisted upward in strange spirals, their leaves glowing blue. Giant mushrooms glowed with eerie green light. Rivers of floating fireflies danced through the air in perfect geometric patterns... Then the screaming began.
Not his. Others. Approaching fast.
Akira barely got to his feet before the first one arrived, a blur of black and silver, crashing toward him.
A man? or what used to be one. He wore ragged armor covered in bones and sigils. His eyes were pitch-black, and he wielded a jagged spear of what looked like petrified fire.
Akira had no time to ask questions.
He dodged the first strike, qi flaring instinctively. His movements were clumsy but enhanced, driven by raw instinct and survival. The second attacker came in from behind, smaller, faster, her face hidden by a mask shaped like a screaming bird. She threw twin daggers charged with swirling green smoke.
He raised his arm, and to his shock, a barrier of golden ki flashed to life, blocking the strike.
"Whoa," he muttered.
But they weren't done. More attackers emerged from the trees. A seven-foot man with glowing antlers and a warhammer. A girl made of vines and stone. A robed figure floating a few inches above the ground, chanting in a language that made Akira's bones hurt.
He was going to die.
Then-
"ENOUGH!" came a voice.
Everyone froze.
A new figure stepped into view. He wore robes of blue and silver, a stylized sun tattooed across his bare chest. His eyes glowed faintly, and as he looked at Akira, something in the boy's soul vibrated.
"Stand down," the man commanded. "He's not corrupted. He's...new."
The attackers hesitated, then backed off. The antlered giant snorted. "He reeks of divine energy."
"He reeked of three kinds," the masked girl muttered.
"I am Solan," the man said, addressing Akira. "High Warden of the Pantheon Confluence. You are not in your world anymore."
Akira, panting, lowered his guard slightly. "Where...am I?"
Solan gestured around them. "The Fringe Realms. A borderland between broken mythologies, places discarded by gods, stolen by time, or lost in battle. You've crossed mythic thresholds."
"I was dragged," Akira muttered. "Mara—"
Solan's eyes hardened. "Then you were targeted. That confirms it."
He turned to the others. "Bring him to the Circle. He must be tested."
They moved fast through the forest. Strange glyphs and ancient sigils lit the paths. Akira struggled to keep up, but his qi responded, enhancing his stamina.
They arrived at a stone amphitheater half-swallowed by vines. Eight figures waited, each impossibly different. One was clearly Egyptian, covered in gold and linen. Another wore Norse leathers and bore a massive axe. A third floated with six wings and skin made of starlight.
Solan addressed them. "He has manifested hybrid energy. Three origins, unified. He escaped a mythic predator unaided."
The starlight being tilted her head. "That...should be impossible."
"It is," said the Norse woman. "Unless he's one of the—"
"Convergents," Solan finished.
Akira felt the weight of a thousand eyes on him.