The cave was damp and smelled of wet stone. Outside, a heavy rain had started to fall, masking the sounds of the forest night.
Kaelen sat by a small fire he had managed to kindle. The flickering orange light cast long, dancing shadows on the walls. He held the Starlight Soul Grass in his hands. It pulsed with a soft, purple light, warm to the touch.
This herb could change his fate. It could push him to the Fourth Level of Body Refining instantly. For a boy who had been called "trash" for sixteen years, this was everything.
He looked down. The little white Spirit Fox was lying near his feet, shivering. Its breathing was shallow. The wound on its leg was deep, and the poison from Jareth's dirty blade was spreading slowly.
If Kaelen did nothing, the fox would die before dawn.
Kaelen stared at the fox. In his past life, he would have ignored it. 'The weak die. It is the natural order,' Emperor Valerius would have said. Why waste precious spiritual energy on a beast?
But then, the fox opened its eyes. They were glassy and full of pain, yet it didn't look away. It looked at Kaelen with a strange, quiet trust. It had sensed that Kaelen saved it from the hornets.
Kaelen's heart tightened.
"You look like me," Kaelen whispered, his voice soft in the quiet cave. "Alone. Hunted. Dying in the dark while the world celebrates."
He remembered Varian, his 'brother', stabbing him in the back. He remembered the coldness of betrayal.
'I am no longer the High Emperor sitting on a golden throne. I am Kaelen. And I know what it feels like to have no one.'
With a heavy sigh, Kaelen made a choice.
He crushed the Starlight Soul Grass in his palm. The purple energy swirled out. Instead of absorbing it all, he guided a small, concentrated stream of the energy toward the fox.
"Drink," he commanded gently, placing his glowing hand over the fox's wound.
The fox whined, its body convulsing slightly as the potent energy entered it. The purple light knit the flesh back together, pushing out the black blood of infection.
Kaelen watched as about 20% of the herb's potency was used up to heal the creature. That 20% could have made him stronger. It was a waste.
Yet, as the fox's breathing stabilized and it nuzzled its wet nose against his palm, Kaelen felt a warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with cultivation. It was a warmth he hadn't felt in five hundred years.
"Sleep now," Kaelen murmured, stroking its soft ears. "We both have a long road ahead."
He consumed the rest of the herb.
As the energy flooded his body, Kaelen didn't scream. He gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his face, enduring the bone-cracking transformation in silence, guarded by a small white fox in a lonely cave.