In many Realms, and in a minor one called Aedra, spiritual energy flows through all living things—from beast to plant, soil to sky. Cultivation exists, and countless souls chase power, immortality, or something more profound. But not all who cultivate seek war, glory, or fame. This is the story of one such soul.
The boy lay broken beneath a sky that did not mourn him. Blood matted his robes, leaking into the earth behind the outer sect fields. His fingers twitched, dirt-stained from days of tending spiritual herbs—his last assigned punishment. A task meant to shame him.
He had always been weak.
The inner sect disciple had made sure of that.
Cracked ribs, ruptured spirit channels, a crushed dantian. There was no hope of recovery—not with his cultivation level. Not with his lack of background. He had been born in the gutters of a great city, pulled into the world of cultivation by a wandering old master who pitied him. He scraped into the sect by miracle and remained an insect in the eyes of stronger disciples.
Now, abandoned and punished for a crime he hadn't committed, he lay discarded in the fields. Fading.
His body, broken and fading, was dragged from the spiritual herb fields to the outer sect infirmary—where the boy breathed his last.
In the final moments of his life, memories surfaced. Regrets. Longing. Faint desires to escape, to be free. Perhaps those final wishes brushed against something greater… or perhaps it was simply coincidence.
When the soul entered, it found a body barely alive.
The pain came first.
Burning. Suffocating. Distant screams echoed somewhere, or perhaps they were only within his head.
The man—no, the soul—gasped as he awakened in someone else's dying flesh.
Then came the memories. A flood of emotion, broken fragments. Shame. Duty. Loneliness. A name.
Shen.
He didn't know why he had ended up here—wherever here was. One moment he had been falling asleep at his desk, worn down by years of modern life, and the next he was drowning in blood and pain.
The emotions weren't his… and yet they were. Disorientation clouded his thoughts. He didn't belong. This wasn't his body. These weren't his memories. But something lingered—faint urges, a vague pressure guiding him.
Panic surged.
The surroundings were unfamiliar. The sky looked wrong. The scent of air strange and heavy with something unnatural. And his body—gods, it hurt. Every breath dragged fire across shattered ribs. He tried to sit and nearly blacked out.
Memories clashed and tangled. Of another life. Of discipline. Of modernity. Of streetlights and elevators—now clashing with the flicker of qi threads and the stench of crushed herbs.
And beneath it all, like an echo: You cannot stay.
That thought repeated, whispered like a dying chant. Leave the sect. Leave the sect.
Perhaps it was instinct. Or the last flicker of will from the soul before him. Either way, Shen moved.
Staggering from the infirmary before anyone could notice, still weak and half-conscious, he fled. The sect gates were distant and guarded, but not during the dawn hours when outer sect disciples moved herbs and supplies. He slipped out, unnoticed.
His body felt like it had already died once. Perhaps it had.
But something in him clung to life.
And so Shen walked. Past stone paths. Past spiritual farmlands. Past forests and quiet towns. He walked until the memory of violence faded into the horizon behind him.
And before him stretched the land of Ashenreach—a place desolate, barren, and free.
But even as he traveled, at night when he slept under stars unfamiliar, something stirred in his dreams.
A screen. A presence. Not a voice, but a sensation. Gentle. Watching.
And then:
[System Task Registered]
Save a spirit beast from death.
Reward: Unknown.
He awoke with a start, dew in his hair and the scent of damp grass in his nose.
"What the hell…?"
But there was no one there. Just the rustling wind. A silent land.
And so his story began.
✧ End of Chapter – Prologue: Ashes of the Past ✧
A soul falls.
Another stirs.
And in the ashes of failure, something unknown takes root.
He does not wake with rage or vengeance.
Only pain.
And the faint whisper of a future waiting to be grown.
The land ahead is dry.
But somewhere, it remembers rain.