The world around thirteen-year-old Kai Valeria trembled like a heart caught between breaths.
He stood barefoot in his Core World, the inner realm shaped entirely from his soul and cultivation foundation. Everything around him was wrong wrong in a way that should have terrified a child his age, yet somehow he couldn't look away.
The sea beneath his feet was not water.
It was black fire vast, silent, and endless. The flames moved like waves, rising and falling with a soft cracking sound, licking upward but never burning him. They curled against one another like living shadows, swallowing the horizon.
In the center of that black-flamed ocean were the two statues:
One was whole tall, pristine, and eerily crafted to look exactly like him.
The other was broken shattered from the neck down, its head resting on the ground like some ancient dead oracle.
And that broken head was the one speaking.
Its stone lips did not move, yet the voice echoed everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Name: Kai Valeria," it announced, tone mechanical, timeless.
Kai small, thin, far younger than the weight of this world required stood before it with wide eyes glowing faintly red, listening as his fate was read to him like a divine script.
"Stage: Awakening
(Would you like to proceed to evolve into an Awakening?)
Element: Fire
Blood Lineage: Crimson Eyes of Truth
(Would you like me to read you the details?)
Affinity Rank: Unknown. ????"
Kai swallowed hard.
It was strange enough that his sea was black flames.
Stranger that his affinity rank read as "Unknown."
Even stranger that the second statue the broken one was the voice of judgment.
But none of that compared to the next line.
"Curse: Echo of Truth
(Would you like me to read the meaning?)"
Kai hesitated.
He already knew what came with possessing the Crimson Eyes of Truth.
His sister told him her curse affected her bloodline first, not her core, because the curse of their lineage was ancient, older than cultivation itself.
Still, he nodded. "Just read it."
The statue obeyed.
The description was clinical, cold, and terrifying in its ordinariness.
A curse that punished him for seeing too deeply.
A rebounding wave of truth.
Emotional resonance.
Mental shock.
Headaches.
Vertigo.
Bleeding eyes.
Echoed memories of things no human should ever witness.
Kai didn't understand half of it.
He was only thirteen.
All he really heard was.
My eyes hurt when I use them.
It didn't sound legendary.
It didn't sound divine.
It didn't even sound like a real curse.
It just sounded painful and annoying.
Then came the final reward.
The broken statue spoke again, its voice echoing like gravel rolling down a tomb.
"Final reward: A weapon. The Flaming Dagger."
A crimson ember flared beside Kai's feet.
It rose, swirling upward, stretching into shape until a dagger beautiful, deadly, and burning faintly appeared hovering before him.
Kai's eyes widened.
He reached out and grasped the hilt.
It felt warm, as if it were alive.
A child shouldn't have been trusted with that kind of weapon.
A child shouldn't have been standing in a world made of black fire.
A child shouldn't have been reading his own curse.
But Kai had never lived the life of a child.
And now came the last question.
"Would you like to become… an Awakening?"
The broken head tilted slightly, waiting.
Kai looked up at the intact statue of himself, tall, unmoving, expression unknowable. He looked at the flames beneath his feet, at the skyless void above, and then at the dagger in his hand.
He took a breath.
"Yes," he said. "I want to become an Awakening."
And the world responded.
Awakening
The ground hummed.
The sea of black flames began to pulse in slow, thunderous waves, the rhythm deep enough to shake Kai's ribs. The flames dimmed then brightened then dimmed again, as if inhaling.
Then,
Tiny particles rose from the ocean.
Not sparks.
Not ash.
They looked like snowflakes.
But each one carried power raw, elemental, ancient.
They floated gently upward and drifted into Kai's body.
The first one entered.
Then the second.
Then the twentieth.
Then the thousandth.
Each particle burrowed deep into his stomach, gathering in a single point as if drawn to a magnet in his soul. There, the energy twisted rolled folded into itself compressing into grains the size of rice.
Rice-grains of pure elemental essence.
They fused.
Merged.
Compressed again.
Kai sucked in a breath, back arching slightly as heat surged through him. His stomach tightened painfully as if something inside him was being forged in a furnace.
The world shook.
The flames rose higher.
More particles flooded in a torrent now, not a snowfall.
Kai gritted his teeth.
His fingers trembled.
His knees bent, but he refused to fall.
His insides felt like molten metal.
His stomach felt like it was being stabbed from within.
He remembered what he'd studied.
The process of becoming Awakening:
Core Change
A tiny core forms, pulling the world's energy and compressing it into a spark.
Body Change
The body becomes capable of holding elemental essence safely.
Element Behavior
The chosen element begins appearing naturally sparks, embers, flames.
Abilities Gained
Conjure small amounts of element
Sense the world's energy weakly
Manifest affinity
Receive curse
This was the birth of a conjurer.
A miracle, A nightmare and A storm inside a child's body.
Kai clenched his fists as another surge of energy stabbed through his stomach.
"It hurts…! Ah!"
He wasn't trying to be brave.
The pain was simply too much for silence.
Kai dropped to one knee, fingers digging into the black-flame surface that somehow felt solid. His stomach felt like it was splitting open.
And then.
BOOM
The core formed.
A single spark ignited inside him small as a star, bright as a sun, burning like a piece of living fire.
Kai gasped.
The world breathed with him.
The black flames of the sea heaved upward, mirroring the pulse of his newborn core. Everything connected his body, the sea, the air, the world.
He felt power.
Real power.
The flames didn't burn him; they greeted him.
He stood slowly, breathing hard, trembling.
His body felt new.
Stronger.
Sharp.
Alive.
He raised a hand, and a faint ember shimmered at his fingertips tiny, weak, but real.
A smile tugged at the edge of his lips.
He had done it.
He had broken through.
Status Check
Kai turned toward the broken statue's head.
"Read my status again," he said, still panting.
The head paused, as if recalibrating.
Then it spoke.
"Name: Kai Valeria
Stage: Awakening
Element: Fire
Blood Lineage: Crimson Eyes of Truth
(Would you like me to read you the details?)"
Kai nodded impatiently.
The statue continued.
"Affinity Rank…"
It paused.
Longer than before.
Much longer.
Kai blinked. "What's wrong?"
The statue's voice echoed:
"Affinity Rank: Tainted."
Kai froze.
"…What?"
The statue repeated, emotionless and merciless:
"Affinity Rank: Tainted."
Kai's heart dropped into his stomach.
"Tainted…? No no repeat it! What did you say?!"
The statue answered immediately.
"Affinity rank: Tainted."
His breath stopped.
His mind blanked.
His sea was black flames.
His affinity had been "Unknown."
Now it was "Tainted."
The lowest.
Below everything.
A mark of corruption.
A stain.
Wait wasn't tainted for corrupt beast.
Kai felt something cold spread through his chest something worse than pain.
"Why…?" he whispered.
But the statue merciless as truth had no answers.
Only verdicts.