A story. A story so absurd I thought she was mocking us. A story about a man stranded with a… what did she call it? A volleyball? A ball with a face?
But the way she spoke… the way her spirit flared…Her power rolled across the room like a silent storm. Not mana. Not blood magic. Not runic resonance.
Spirit Qi.
Ancient energy so old that only chiefs were taught about it through half-remembered prophecy. A force that predates mana. A force that could resist runes, bend magic, and defy frozen structures.
She had it—unrestrained, wild, bright.
My seer once spoke of a Spirit Bearer. One born outside our land. One who would enter the eternal rift not by accident… but by fate.
I was a skeptic. I always have been. But when she told her stories—when she cried out in that odd human language when she gestured wildly when her Qi shimmered like sunlight beneath the frost—I knew.
She was the one. The person our ancestors foresaw. The one who could break the rift.
