The fire that lingered in Revyn's chest did not fade with the morning sun, continuing to weigh down his heart. Ash still clung to the sky, veiling the borderlands in a choking grey haze. The hermits had left before dawn, gathering herbs and wood for the storm they believed was drawing near. But Revyn knew something deeper stirred. The dream he experienced hadn't ended. It had simply stepped behind the veil of waking.
He crouched barefoot on the edge of the ruined temple, its stone steps eroded by decades of wind and silence. Beneath him, the valley writhed with seemingly lifelike mist, a phenomenon the elders called "God's Breath," though no god they spoke of had breath so cold.
Revyn reached for the sensation pulsing in his core. It wasn't warmth. It wasn't pain. It was grief, old and foreign. Tears welled up in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, his pale skin reflecting the morning sun as he felt the weight of loss pushing down on him.
'The Ashlight.'
He whispered the word to himself. It was not something he had been taught. It had been carved into his very soul.
He exhaled slowly. Qi answered, not from the world, but from within his heart. A thread of smoke, pale and luminous, curled from his palm and flowed into the wind.
He stared at it, heart pounding.
"I didn't gather Qi intentionally, I don't even have a divine spark. What's happening to me?" he murmured.
"I don't understand how I could become a Qi gathering cultivator! Master told me nothing about this!"
Behind him, one of the temple dogs approached, growling a low, uneasy sound. Revyn turned, only to see the dog quickly backing away, tail between its legs and yelping. It stared not at him, but at his shadow.
His shadow was moving. It morphed across the stone unevenly, delayed from his movement. Then, like water filling a vase, it shifted. For a breath, it looked like him. Then not. Taller. Hooded. Wreathed in fire that did not burn, yet seemed to burn brighter than any flame he'd seen.
Revyn stumbled backward. Tears continued to stream down his face.
The illusion collapsed. His shadow returned to stillness, but the dog had already fled into the lower halls.
A hoarse voice behind him spoke, "You invited that thing in, didn't you?"
Revyn turned. Elder Themn, the oldest of the mountain hermits and his master, stood there with a bundle of roots in his arms and a face like cracked rock.
"What did you see?"
Revyn shook his head. "I… I don't know. It's… something was inside me."
Themn dropped the bundle and walked slowly to him, peering at his face seemingly deep in thought. "You've been marked. It's not just Qi. It's older than that."
He lowered his voice. "The Ashborn! I cannot believe this. I thought they were lost to time."
Revyn blinked. "You know that name? Please! Tell me what's wrong with me!"
Grief radiated from his body, nearby plants began to wither, and the wind seemed to cry with him, piercing the soul of the ancient hermit.
"An old tale. Forgotten by most, remembered only by a few select lineages. Beings born when heaven is blind and the stars weep dust. When light burns wrong." Themn stepped back. "If you've awakened something. A memory of the lost god, you won't be safe here."
Revyn felt the cold again. Not from the air, but from deep beneath the stone.
"What do you mean I won't be safe here? Can't you and the other hermits protect me?" Revyn stood, staring deep into his master's eyes.
"We are not a fighting band of mercenaries. We are simply Qi Unity level hermits. If someone strong truly comes intending to take you, we will not be able to stop them. I'm sorry, my disciple." His teacher spoke solemnly.
Turning his back, he spoke for a final time.
"We will give you a cultivator's manual, with your current strength, you shouldn't have any problem finding your way to a city nearby. A powerful sect might even take you in and give you the protection you need. By the time you wake, you should leave and discover yourself."
As he watched his mentor and only family left, abandoning him.
That night, he waited until the other hermits slept. He sat by the altar where they stored broken relics of forgotten sects, old scrolls, rusted weapons, and stones with unfinished glyphs.
He placed his hand on the cold stone, welling up all the qi he could from his skinny body.
"Show me," he whispered.
The Ashlight flared through him, rushing from his heart to his fingertips. The stone beneath him cracked in a perfect ring. His vision turned black, then white.
And he was elsewhere. Memories of a distant past flooded his mind like an unstoppable storm.
A field of charred bodies stretched to the horizon and beyond. A sky of black glass, shattered and falling. A throne made of swords, all broken, stood on a hill where nothing grew. Upon it sat a figure of ash and silence.
It looked at him, staring through his body deep into his consciousness.
Revyn opened his mouth to speak, attempting to question the being why it chose him. Suddenly, the dream shattered.
He woke gasping, hands scorched with white hot marks forming into glyphs he could not read, yet he felt familiarity from.
From the edge of the room, something crawled back into the shadow. Watching, judging, waiting.
High above, beyond cloud and storm, the Immortal World shimmered, a realm of swords and jade, a place where cultivators littered the sky flying across countries within seconds, and a place of cities that floated atop rivers of lightning.
And farther still, beyond the screaming edges of what the cultivators dared to map, a crack shimmered across the veil of the Outer World.
A forgotten presence stirred in the dark.
The voice buried beneath time, if he could still be called that, watched.
He had no eyes. Yet he saw through the Ashlight. Through instinct. Through dreams and memories.
When Revyn touched the altar, something ancient shuddered, eyes beyond time and space stared, unable to intervene, watched.
The god's essence recoiled, a tether burned by the curse that held him. He could not reach the boy directly. Not yet. But he felt the echo ripple through the Hollow throne like a bell struck in the dark.
A weapon had stirred.
Not by will. Not by guidance.
But by memory.
The first had awakened.
And the others would follow suit.
Revyn's breathing had barely steadied when he felt it.
A presence. No longer hiding. No longer watching.
It was approaching.
From the far side of the broken hall, where ancient tapestries fluttered in a wind that should not have existed, the darkness thickened.
Revyn stood slowly, every hair on his body raised. The glyphs on his hands pulsed, faintly glowing like embers floating in a clear sky.
Then came the sound.
Not a growl. Not a hiss. But a low, grinding scrape as metal dragged against stone.
From the shadow behind the altar, a shape emerged. It moved like a man, but too tall, its limbs too thin, its head crowned by broken antlers that bled dust.
Its chest was hollow and cracked. Its eyes were vacant, the soul that once lived inside had long been chased out by time.
Revyn froze.
The creature charged.
He barely threw himself aside in time, crashing into a broken pillar as the thing's blade tore through stone like wet paper.
Pain shot through his ribs.
He coughed, blood mixing with Saliva.
"Why?" he gasped. "Why now?"
The creature turned. Slowly. Deliberately.
It stepped toward him, and the temperature dropped. The glyphs on his skin flared again, and this time, the Ashlight responded.
A rush of Qi ignited in his chest.
He didn't know the name of the technique. It came to him subconsciously.
Smoke coiled around his arm, hardening into a blade of hazy light.
Revyn raised it, hand trembling.
The thing stared, cold and glassy.
Then lunged.
The ruined temple echoed with the sound of combat and ashlight.
Revyn's blade met the creature's strike with a burst of soundless force, like steel clashing against water. The spectral steel splintered, not from weakness, but to form branching threads that tangled around the creature's sword, cracking and disintegrating the ancient blade.
The creature shrieked, attempting to pull its sword from the mist. Its antlers split and reformed like smoke, lashing out toward him. Revyn ducked, instinct giving speed to limbs still uncertain. He rolled beneath the altar's shattered frame, breath ragged, the blade fading from his grip.
"More"
The whisper wasn't his voice. It echoed through the glyphs etched on his palms, burrowing into his thoughts. He gasped, clutching his chest.
"More power. More grief. Make them feel regret and loss buried deep in their psyche"
"No!" he said aloud. "It's not mine to control!"
The creature answered his cry with silence. It lunged again, slicing through stone like mist. Revyn dove backward, striking the ground with both palms. The cracked ring of the altar pulsed once more.
Ashlight erupted from his palms not as a weapon, but as a wall. Pale fire surged upward, separating them in a crescent arc. The creature hissed and recoiled, its shadowy form burning at the edges.
Revyn stumbled to his feet, vision waning more and more as the fight grew longer. The glyphs across his body flared, then dimmed to dull flickering lights. His Ashlight was weak and had limits.
The creature did not press forward. Instead, it knelt at the edge of the flames, tilting its head as if studying him. Then it began to hum.
A mournful, deep sound. A song for something long buried.
It raised its sword to its chest, where a hollow burned with faint violet light. Then it pointed at Revyn.
The meaning struck like thunder.
"You're bound to it too," Revyn whispered. "You were… like me."
The creature's head twitched once. Then again.
Then it screamed.
The wall of flames cracked. The hymn became a shriek. Shadows peeled from the walls and slithered into its form, rebuilding what had been burned.
Revyn turned and ran. Through the ruins. Down the broken stairs. Into the mist-choked valley below.
God's Breath swallowed him, numbing his skin, blinding his eyes.
Still, he ran.
Branches tore at his robes. Rocks bit into his feet. His lungs ached, and the glyphs flared hotter with every step.
When he finally collapsed beside the dry riverbed at the forest's edge, the mist parted momentarily, just enough to reveal stars overhead. Not stars as mortals knew them, but distant scars across the firmament.
Revyn curled into himself, trembling.
Not with fear.
With grief.
Whatever lived inside him had known that thing. Whatever cursed him was part of that legacy.
He had touched something ancient. And it had touched him back.
Far above, in a place not touched by mortal air, the Immortal World churned.
A single cultivator, seated in a jade pavilion, opened their eyes, their face pale.
"The Ashlight has awakened yet again."
Across the sea, in a sect buried beneath obsidian cliffs, a bell rang without hands.
"They run from what they are. But they will remember."
Revyn's eyes fluttered open, gaze clouded with tears. He didn't know if it was dawn or dusk. He only knew that he had begun something that could not be undone.
A new journey had started.
Not toward power.
But toward the truth.