Rain whispered against the glass of a small apartment window.
Neon lights painted the streets below, reflecting in puddles that shimmered like dying stars.
A teenage boy sat quietly by the window, one hand resting against the cold glass. His name was Arion Vale—a name ordinary enough to blend in, yet when spoken aloud, it carried an inexplicable echo, as if the world itself remembered something.
He didn't.
He was just a boy. Or so he thought.
---
A Normal World
It was the year 3127, an age of neon and steel.
Cities hovered on energy spires, data flowed like rivers through the sky, and humanity's greatest invention—the Quantum Core Network—linked every mind, machine, and soul.
To the world, cultivation was mythology.
Qi was a fairytale, karma a forgotten superstition.
But Arion… sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could feel it — something vast, breathing beneath his skin.
It wasn't electricity. It wasn't energy. It was existence itself, whispering faintly in his heartbeat.
> "One pulse to move galaxies… one breath to awaken eternity."
He didn't understand where the thought came from. It was like a half-remembered dream from another life.
---
Anomalies
Strange things followed Arion.
Machines would flicker when he passed.
Random strangers would trip into fortune after brushing against him.
And every night, his dreams were painted with worlds collapsing into light — empires rising and dying, systems rebooting, and a lone figure standing in the void, whispering into the silence.
> "Find me."
He always woke up before seeing the man's face.
---
The Hidden Core
That evening, as he walked home through the rain, he passed a collapsed digital billboard. Sparks hissed around him like fireflies. The moment he stepped near it, every spark froze midair. Time itself… stopped.
The rain was suspended, droplets like jewels in the sky.
The neon hum fell silent.
And a voice—not from outside, but within his own mind—spoke for the first time.
> [System Core Detected… Access Incomplete.]
[Initializing Reboot Sequence—Origin Signature: The First God.]
Arion froze, his pulse echoing in the still air.
The raindrops began to move backward.
The city lights pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
> "What… what is this?" he whispered.
> [Reconnection Protocol Engaged.]
[Hello, Creator.]
And then the world roared back to life.
The billboard exploded in light. Cars honked, rain fell again, and Arion stumbled backward into the street—his mind blank, heart racing. The voice was gone, but deep inside, something ancient had stirred.
---
The Pulse Returns
That night, Arion couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard it again—soft, steady, like a heartbeat resonating across galaxies.
> "You wished to live as a mortal… but eternity never forgets its maker."
For the first time, he realized something terrifying.
He didn't just dream of other worlds.
He had made them.
And now, one by one, those worlds were calling him home.
---