He died quietly.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel, no voice calling his name—only the dull weight of exhaustion and a sense of something unfinished. His last memory was of staring at a ceiling he could no longer afford, wondering when effort had stopped meaning progress.
Then the ceiling shattered.
Cold air rushed into his lungs. Pain followed—sharp, overwhelming, real. He gasped and curled inward as unfamiliar sensations crashed into him, flooding a body that was not his own.
When he opened his eyes, he saw sky.
Not the gray, polluted sky of his old world, but something vast and terrifyingly beautiful. Clouds drifted like slow-moving continents, tinted faintly gold and violet, as if the heavens themselves were breathing.
He lay on cracked stone at the edge of a mountain platform. Below him stretched endless peaks, jagged and ancient, half-hidden by rolling mist. Above—
Above was a veil.
It spanned the sky like a wound in reality, a translucent barrier of pale light that shimmered and pulsed. It did not feel distant. It felt close. Watching.
His heart pounded.
Fragments of memory collided in his mind—names, places, sensations that did not belong to his former life. A boy. Seventeen years old. Born without talent. A failed outer disciple. Cast aside, injured, left here to die after falling from a broken stairway during a sect trial.
"So… this is how it is," he whispered, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar.
Reborn.
The word settled into him with strange calm. Panic tried to rise, but it found no fuel. He had lived once already. Struggled. Failed. If this was another life, then fear was a luxury he could not afford.
He pushed himself up and immediately hissed in pain. His body was weak—dangerously so. His meridians felt clogged, brittle, as if they had been shattered and poorly glued back together. Cultivation memories surfaced naturally now, as if they had always been his.
Qi. Spirit roots. Realms.
He checked himself instinctively.
Nothing.
Not even the faintest circulation of spiritual energy answered his call.
A broken foundation.
In this world, that was a death sentence far crueler than execution.
He laughed softly, the sound almost lost to the wind. "Figures."
In his old life, he had been average. In this one, he was worse than useless.
The platform trembled slightly, pebbles skittering toward the edge. He looked up again, eyes drawn back to the veil in the sky. As his gaze lingered, a pressure pressed against his mind—not painful, but vast. Like standing before an ocean and realizing it could swallow you without noticing.
Understanding surfaced unbidden.
The Heavenly Veil.
A boundary imposed on the world itself. Mortals lived beneath it, cultivating borrowed fragments of power. Beyond it lay true heaven—real ascension, real immortality. No one below could cross it by force. Only those acknowledged by the heavens were permitted through.
Acknowledged.
He didn't know why, but the word made his chest tighten.
In his memories, cultivators sought strength to dominate, to survive, to stand above others. Bonds were liabilities. Emotions were impurities to be refined away.
Yet as he sat there, broken and alone, it wasn't ambition that kept him breathing.
It was the memory of wanting something more.
Footsteps crunched behind him.
He turned slowly, body tense despite its weakness.
A girl stood a few paces away, her robes dusty, her hair loosely tied as if she'd rushed after him without care for appearances. She looked relieved—and angry—and frightened all at once.
"You're alive," she said, breathless. "Idiot. Absolute idiot."
Another memory slid into place.
Her name. Her presence. The only person who had spoken to him kindly in the sect. Someone as overlooked as he was.
She knelt beside him without hesitation, pressing two fingers lightly to his wrist. Her brow furrowed.
"Your foundation…" she began, then stopped.
He met her eyes. There was no pity there. Only worry.
"I know," he said.
Silence stretched between them, filled by the wind and the distant cry of something flying far below. She helped him sit up, careful, steady. The simple contact grounded him more than anything else had.
"They won't take you back," she said quietly. "Even if you recover."
"I figured."
"And if you stay here—"
"I'll die."
She exhaled shakily. "Then come with me."
He blinked. "What?"
"I'm leaving the sect," she said, as if the decision had already been made. "There are other paths. Smaller ones. Dangerous ones. But staying here is no different from waiting to be buried."
He looked at her, really looked. At the dirt on her sleeves. The tension in her shoulders. The resolve in her eyes.
In this world, talent decided everything.
Yet here was someone choosing to walk away anyway.
Slowly, painfully, he stood. His legs trembled, but he did not fall.
Beyond them, the Heavenly Veil shimmered, distant and unreachable.
For now.
"Alright," he said at last. "Then let's go."
He didn't know how he would cultivate. Didn't know how to fix what was broken. Didn't know what waited beyond the veil or whether he would ever be worthy of it.
But as they turned away from the platform together, one thought burned steady in his chest:
If the heavens demanded strength without humanity—
Then he would carve a path that defied them both.
And one day, he would stand beyond the veil—not alone.