The moment I woke on my seventh birthday, I knew something had changed. The world felt louder, heavier. Even the silence held weight. I sat cross-legged in my chamber, the constellations painted on my ceiling flickering faintly, as if responding to the slow rhythm of my breathing.
Aether didn't drift past me anymore. It spiraled into me.
At first, it trickled, a soft thread winding down into my core. Then it surged, and my chest tightened, not from pain, but from awe. My dantian pulsed once. The next breath I took, I felt it bloom.
My Star Seed ignited. Not like a spark, but like a sun catching flame.
The light poured through me. My skin glowed faintly. My bones buzzed. My veins carried more than blood. they thrummed with raw celestial essence.
I was no longer a child with sealed power. I was cultivating.
But the joy barely had time to settle before pressure bloomed in my mind. My soul, it felt too large, too loud. Echoes rang across my thoughts, fragments of knowledge, images of a world I hadn't yet remembered. I clutched my temples, struggling to breathe. It wasn't pain exactly, but it was overwhelming.
The next hour passed in a blur of cold sweat and ringing ears.
When I opened my eyes, Astoria stood at the threshold of my chamber, tense, eyes wide.
"Your mother requests your presence," she said quietly.
I rose slowly, my joints aching from pressure I had not noticed before. I followed her to the ancestral sanctum beneath the Astral Spire. Only a handful of people in the clan could enter this space.
My parents waited. My mother regal and calm held a small jade basin filled with water that shimmered with crushed starlight. My father, silent, stood beside her. Behind them, cloaked in shadows and memory, were the ten ancestors.
They were already awake. They had felt it.
"The seal over his cultivation has weakened," Ancestor Marvion said. His voice was like stones grinding under pressure. "And now, the soul begins to stir."
One of the ancestors stepped forward and studied me. "His soul is still too vast. If we unseal it all at once, he will shatter."
Another nodded. "We must begin soul tempering. A bath and pills forged for this alone."
I sat in silence as the bath was prepared, liquefied herbs mixed with lunar resin and crushed void blossoms, their petals harvested from the edges of the Aether Sea.
I slipped into the basin. My skin burned. Not from heat, but from resonance. My soul twisted, stretched. I gritted my teeth. They did not warn me it would feel like drowning inside my own mind.
I don't know how long I endured it. Hours, maybe more.
But when I rose from the bath, my soul had changed.
One-fourth of it had been unsealed.
And the world responded.
Aether rippled outward from the Astral Spire like a tidal wave. The winds howled across Aether Reach. Cultivators across the region stumbled or fell to their knees, gasping. Space itself wavered.
My body trembled, but I stood.
"They will suspect," Ancestor Rhel said, eyes narrowed.
"They will guess," Ancestor Vex added. "But they will not know."
"Let them wonder," my father said at last. "We will not speak of it."
As the pressure subsided, my mother walked to the ancient shelf at the back of the sanctum. She retrieved a tome bound in silvery hide, old enough that the air around it shimmered.
The ancestors watched.
My mother opened the book and began to read aloud:
"The Chrono-Cosmic Paragon Physique. Born from the union of aether and time, it is the only known vessel capable of withstanding direct exposure to both. Its bearer exists outside linear causality, resonating with the primordial breath of the cosmos. This physique creates a mirrored flow of time within its host and manipulates aether on a scale unseen since the age of Eldar Ascension. Only one has been recorded… and their name is lost."
Silence fell.
"It is what you are," my mother said softly.
The ancestors didn't bow. They didn't speak praise. They only watched. Ten ancient beings who had seen ages rise and fall, now gazing at me like they had no idea what I might become.
The mole beneath my right eye ached then, the teardrop-shaped mark that had drawn so much attention over the years. I remembered hearing the whispers.
Intersex.
I hadn't understood what it truly meant back then. But I did now.
"It's the mark," Ancestor Saen murmured. "The tear beneath the right eye. The celestial mole. Intersex children often carry it."
"She was born beneath dual stars," my mother whispered, "as was he."
My father didn't speak. He only placed a hand on my shoulder.
I was something rare, something powerful, something dangerous because of the sheer amount of power my body was carrying.
And for the first time, I felt it.
Truly felt it.
This was only the beginning, then it started.
The pain began at my spine.
First a dull pressure, then a jolt, like lightning unraveling inside my bones. I collapsed to my knees beside the empty basin, gasping. My hands clawed at the marble floor as if grounding myself would stop the unraveling. It didn't.
My muscles tore themselves apart and reknit. Bones cracked and splintered, rearranging under skin that burned with silver flame. I saw the threads of time around me, bright, thin lines weaving through everything, trembling at my presence.
The ancestors stirred.
"This is it," Ancestor Marvion said.
"The transformation," murmured another.
I couldn't scream. My throat had locked, my jaw clenched. Inside me, a furnace roared. The aether was no longer content to flow—it rushed, surged, exploded, demanding to be wielded.
The bath hadn't only unsealed a portion of my soul. It had triggered something else.
I felt every nerve raw and open, my awareness stretching farther than it ever had. I could hear the heartbeat of my mother, steady and calm. I could feel the temperature shift behind my father's stillness. I could taste the dust in the ancient tome before me. My thoughts moved faster than speech. My body had entered the Chrono-Cosmic shift.
They said the physique mirrored time and aether.
They were wrong.
It didn't mirror—it dominated.
The world slowed. Every movement crawled. I could have counted the blinks of the ancestors if I wanted to. But all I did was breathe. Long, slow, deep.
The pain passed.
And when I stood, my vision shimmered. I could see beyond walls, past barriers. I could sense the movement of stars, the shift of the Void between heartbeats.
I looked at my parents.
My mother's eyes glistened. My father's hand, still on my shoulder, trembled.
"How long has he been enduring this?" she whispered.
"Too long," he said, voice raw. "He is only seven."
Behind us, one of the ancestors let out a breath that sounded like a prayer and a warning all at once.
"We must begin the search," Ancestor Saen said finally. "The mole… the physique… he is intersex and this clan has no one equal to him."
"Not in cultivation, not in legacy, not in soul," Ancestor Rhel agreed. "Who in the bloodline could stand beside him as a match?"
My father's eyes darkened. "There may be no one."
"Then we may have to make one," Ancestor Vex said, voice cold.
They began speaking all at once names, bloodlines, forgotten experiments, sealed children too dangerous to raise. Their voices echoed like chimes of fate.
I stood in the center, silent, listening.
They spoke of my future like it was a formula to solve. A war to prepare. A weapon to refine.
But my soul was no longer quiet.
It whispered to me.
Remember. Reclaim. Return.
The Aether Reach still trembled with the aftershock of my transformation.
And above us, far above the roof of the sanctum, the sky shifted.
Constellations flickered. A single star pulsed red once then vanished.
Something had seen me.
And it was watching.