The people of Earth awoke to find their skies different.
The constellations they knew no longer matched. The stars themselves had changed places.
But few questioned it.
All across the continents, the news was dominated by one thing, the return of the Celestials.
It eclipsed everything else. The strange stars, and even the faint shimmer in the night sky that was not the Moon, but another planet orbiting close by.
They did not yet know that their world was no longer where it used to be.
That Earth now rested beside the heart of the Origin Capital.
The truth would unfold slowly in time.
...
The next day, within the Origin Construct, the clan hall pulsed with quiet energy.
Adrian stood before the core members of the clan, the twelve Celestials, his parents, Kael, Varik, and Selena.
He'd assembled them together because he wanted to take his first step towards the decision he had made recently.
He raised his hand, and dozens of white-grey spheres emerged from his palm.
They drifted toward the gathered members.
"These contain the knowledge of every galactic concept I've comprehended," Adrian said. "Even advanced knowledge I have. Fire, Ice, space, shadow, and gravity."
He paused, meeting their eyes one by one.
"Even if it isn't your affinity, we now know affinities are not fixed. You can wield more than one. Comprehend what resonates with you."
The spheres spread through the hall, settling before each of them.
Draven grinned as he caught his. "Then I'm learning fire. I've got a century of payback to give Elliot for burning half my robes."
Elliot groaned. "No. Don't you dare!"
Laughter rippled through the hall.
Adrian's father smiled faintly as one of the spheres settled in his hand, while Elara held hers with quiet reverence.
She had long reached the peak of SSS-rank, yet on the galactic scale, she was considered weak. Even Adrian had not yet comprehended light enough to create a domain, so she was stuck.
Now, with a single gesture from her son, the path before her opened again.
Elara closed her eyes as the sphere dissolved into her, filling her mind with light and warmth.
Beside her, Thomas watched his wife with pride, then glanced at Adrian.
"You've done more than I ever imagined."
Adrian's expression softened. "I'm only beginning."
...
Later that day, Adrian stood alone atop the terrace of the Origin Construct, overlooking the blue arc of Earth from here.
He had brought his planet here, to the heart of his capital. To safety.
But now, that decision brought another question.
What happens next?
Because inside that planet… was a secret that could shake the galaxy to its core.
The Blackwood Ink.
It had been hidden all this time. He had kept it secret because, back then, he was weak. Now, even with his strength, he knew better than to overestimate himself.
After deciding to create a path where everyone could ascend, he began to see countless possibilities, and the Ink would play a vital part in them.
And so he decided to use it out in the galaxy, but not to the point of revealing the skill scrolls or even the rune tattoos. This would be something internal in his clan, and it would come at a later time.
For now, he needed to figure out other things. He gave the knowledge spheres to others today, but he was just one person and could never do this alone for all his people.
"What if I made the idea of multi-affinity as something normal?"
So he decided to create a new galactic cultivation path, one that would be different from what the galaxy follows.
"Let's start from the basics," he whispered.
Before anything, the first thing he did was to take care of a fault in Earth's cultivation path.
On Earth, the so-called "potential" determined one's worth.
It had been created out of necessity. When the Celestials first sent the planetary volumes back home, humanity had tried to decipher them, but they couldn't understand everything to create skill books for every affinity.
And so, affinities that produced powerful results, fire, lightning, metal, were labeled "High Potential."
Affinities like stone, mist, or plant were labeled "F" or "E." Children born with them were excluded from academies, denied the right to cultivate.
Adrian remembered those children. How they looked up with envy.
It was never their fault.
It wasn't that those affinities were weak.
It was that no one on Earth had ever discovered how to unlock their deeper truths.
Sentinel had done what he could with limited knowledge. The system wasn't wrong, it was incomplete.
But now Adrian had seen the truth. Potential was an illusion.
"No more," he whispered.
"From this day forward, there will be no such thing as potential. No affinity will be called lesser, and no child will be told they were born weak."
That night, Adrian erased the concept of potential from Earth's registry.
And then he created a new cultivation path, which depended on the knowledge spheres. This would be circulated freely, not just depending on one's affinity.
Even if someone had fire affinity, they could still choose a different affinity and get a knowledge sphere on it to comprehend it.
A child with stone affinity could now comprehend earth concepts. A child with Ice affinity could learn water or any other concept that suited them.
With his new path, he erased the rule that stated affinity was fixed and made multi-affinity the very basics of his new cultivation path.
And this new path was not just for Earth. Adrian made this for all of his Origin Clan and all the planets in it.
The new Origin Path was born.
Multi-affinity was just one aspect of this; Adrian's goal reached even farther.
Not everyone wanted to be a warrior. Most of the galaxy's population, by far, were civilians. And some even just wanted peaceful lives.
For them, cultivation was not needed.
But what if power could exist in everyday life? What if even an artist, a craftsman, or a farmer could ascend, not through combat, but through knowledge and harmony with essence itself?
Adrian envisioned a path where cultivation was not a weapon, but a way of being.
Even if someone never fought, their understanding of concepts could extend their life, refine their mind, and connect them deeper with the world.
The origin path would not just be a cultivation path for warriors; it would be for everyone.
One day, if a child raised in the Origin Clan went to the galaxy and heard about the common galactic path, it would make them think that the galaxy was following a backwater path…
Asking why they limited themselves?
What Adrian didn't know was, the empires and top clans had already experimented with this, but just comprehending one's own affinity was hard, so how could they focus on training anyone in multi-affinity?
So if they heard about his path now, they would even laugh.
But Adrian's thoughts on this path were different, "Even if it's going to be harder in the initial stages, it's better than spending a lifetime bound to a single truth."
He knew it wouldn't happen overnight. Maybe it would take centuries. But it would happen.
He looked up at the stars above the Origin Capital, and softly, to himself, he whispered, "The Origin Path… begins today."