The moon hung low over the jagged cliffs of the Iridescent Expanse, its pale glow spilling over the ancient runes carved into the blackened stone. Somewhere beneath that ghost-lit sky, the boy walked — silent, barefoot, the wind a whisper against his cheeks. His name was Ashvara.
Tonight, he was no longer a student of Hollowroot Monastery.
He was something else.
He had crossed the Scarlet Vale with little more than bruised feet and the memory of a name long whispered in dreams — the name of the mother he had never seen. The whisper had returned again and again in his sleep. "To the Mirror Temple, beneath the stars… there lies your samsara."
Now, he stood before it.
The temple was a ruin.
Jagged arches stretched like broken ribs toward the heavens, and a thousand mirrors lay shattered in silence, their shards glittering like fallen stars across the marble floor. The air was still — too still — and yet in that silence, something ancient stirred.
A voice called, not from the world around, but from the marrow of his bones.
"Ashvara... bearer of forgotten blood. Are you ready to remember?"
He stepped forward.
The broken shards crunched underfoot as he approached the altar. Upon it lay a mask — ivory and gold, shaped like a celestial fox. It radiated a subtle qi, the kind he had only read about in forbidden scrolls.
As his fingers brushed it, visions erupted in his mind:
A sky set aflame.
A woman wreathed in white lotus petals, screaming his name.
A hand outstretched across time, covered in stardust and ash.
Then darkness.
And in that darkness… something watching.
Ashvara gasped and fell to one knee, the mask clutched to his chest. His breathing was ragged. He felt something inside him unravel — not pain, not fear… but memory. Ancestral. Cosmic. Forbidden.
"Awaken," the voice whispered.
He put on the mask.
Suddenly, the shattered mirrors on the floor shimmered and rose, reassembling themselves in impossible patterns. The temple trembled. Across the marble floor, runes lit up in violet and blue, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He could feel it now — not just spirit qi, but something deeper: Samsaric Flame.
His cultivation had stirred.
Not through pills or swordplay, but memory.
And behind him, from the shadowed doorway, a girl's voice broke the silence. Cool, poised… with the weight of forgotten centuries in it.
"So… the Fox has awakened."
Ashvara turned slowly.
She stood draped in silver moon-silk, eyes the color of dusk. Her presence was quiet, but the pressure in the air shifted around her like wind circling a storm.
"Who are you?" Ashvara asked, breath still trembling.
She smiled faintly.
"Your name is a curse, Ashvara. And mine… is the one that b
roke it."
She stepped into the light.
"Call me Caelira."