Jalen glided across the terrain, silent as mist over stone. In his arms, the youth remained unconscious, breath steady but shallow. Faint light essence danced along his skin—a shimmer not just of life, but of something awakening.
Inside Jalen's chest, the Origin Shard pulsed with restless energy. Not pushing him forward—but pulling him back.
Back toward the temple.
The mountain still stood in the distance—unchanged, unreadable. From the outside, it looked like jagged stone lost in mist, silent and unremarkable. But Jalen knew better. Beneath that illusion lay the subspace that had already judged him once. And now, it stirred again.
Jalen's eyes narrowed.
"You dragged me in there once," he muttered, voice sharp with suspicion. "Now again?"
No answer. Just a flash of inner light—quick, stubborn, defiant.
Moments later, Jalen stepped onto the obsidian isle once more. The instant his boots met the stone, the entire temple shuddered. Carved runes ignited. Ancient glyphs pulsed. Spirit-text walls trembled under unseen command.
And from the pedestal, the Light Spirit Seed surged.
It didn't hesitate.
Like an arrow drawn for millennia, it launched into the air—pure, radiant, and purposeful. It ignored Jalen entirely and shot toward the unconscious youth cradled in his arms.
Jalen gasped. He understood.
The Origin Shard had used the boy as bait. Not just to lure the seed—but to provoke its descent.
The shard responded instantly. A brilliant surge of energy coiled outward from Jalen's chest, reaching to intercept the seed mid-flight. It twisted with hunger, desperate to detain and fuse the spirit seed with Jalen.
But it failed. Well, partially.
The Light Spirit Seed dove into the boy's chest—merging with him like lightning pulled into the earth. Light threads coiled around his ribs, spiraling across his heart, burrowing deep into his dantian, trying it's best to fuse with his crystallized core.
The Origin Shard snarled. Its energy whipped around Jalen's body, trying to tear the seed from the youth's spirit. It gripped like a predator—but the seed held firm and took root.
Yet under the shard's pressure—no longer just greedy, but invasive—the seed fractured. A split born of force, not choice. What came next defied intent: a fragment tore loose, veering toward Jalen with raw, relentless light.
More than half of the seed bonded with the youth.
But a fractured piece curved back—straight into Jalen's chest, or rather, into his dantian. But even there it put up an even more aggressive fight against the origin shard; it rebelled.
Jalen screamed.
It felt like swallowing molten metal wrapped in lightning. Heat raced through his lungs, burning its way into every meridian, every vein, and every corner of his cultivation structure. His dantian felt like it was going to explode from the expansion of light qi. His Shadow Physique and second spirit core made up of pure shadow qi recoiled violently, pushing back with corrosive pressure, threatening to snuff it out of existence.
But the light didn't yield.
It wanted space. It wanted dominance.
His knees buckled. His skin split.
Golden arcs of light erupted from his pores as the light qi within him attacked his second core—which countered it by flailing shadows. Qi erupted in competing waves. Black and white. Silent and blinding. His cloak was shredded. His back cracked. Silver-tinted blood sprayed from his spine like mist caught in hurricane winds.
He dropped the young man.
Then he staggered backward—trying to create distance before he tore apart.
The temple trembled. Soul-text floated from the walls like dying embers. The obsidian stone cracked beneath him.
Shadow wanted purity. Light demanded cleansing.
Neither would bend.
Jalen's body contorted unnaturally—one shoulder rolling backward, ribs warping. Beams of light carved spirals into the ground while shadow tendrils rose from his spirit points, dripping with essence.
His flesh didn't burn—it unraveled.
And just as his second core was about to destroy the source of light, the Origin Shard pulsed again.
A brilliant surge exploded outward—not to fuse, but to dominate. The Origin Shard seized the fragment of light spirit qi before the shadow core could destroy it, wrenching it into the wind-bound primary core. The fusion wasn't harmonious—it was forced. Subjugated.
And now, impossibly, one of Jalen's spirit cores held two elemental forces: wind and light. A dual-element core. Unheard of. Unstable. But real. And it was his.
The moment the light was subdued, the second spirit core retreated—not in surrender, but in silence. Dormant again. Not under control, just waiting.
These two just do as they please, Jalen thought helplessly.
Then he crumpled.
His body steamed, spirit veins bruised from within. Muscles twitched. His breath rasped like wind scraping stone. Burn marks spread down his spine. Qi faded into silence.
Across from him, the youth lay still. But he glowed now—fused entirely with the remainder of the seed. His skin no longer bled. His spirit core shimmered with radiant threadwork. The wounds were gone.
His light physique had awakened.
Jalen lay beside him, weak.
Then, bitterly, he laughed.
"Damn you… Origin Shard."
But the shard did not answer.
Instead, a figure appeared in Jalen's mind.
Not in reality—but in consciousness.
He was young but carried a presence older than mountains. Robes woven from glyph light. Eyes calm, knowing, weighted with memory.
"Finally," the voice echoed. "After ten thousand years, two heirs have finally arrived."
Jalen blinked through his exhaustion.
"This was not how the master Raphael Litchi had designed things to be; there should be one heir, but fate seems to have other plans. The seed has chosen one of you, while the other demands approval.
"It is my duty to give the cultivation technique of my master to his heir, or rather heirs. However, the unconscious heir, though suited for the technique, his realm and body are too weak to contain what must be learned. So I'll pass it only on to you, Jalen Hewitt, and you will in return teach it to Lloyd Reynolds."
The figure raised a hand.
Before Jalen could object, light exploded into his spirit sense. Fifteen layers of knowledge, cultivation models, and elemental matrices—runes unfolded inside him like petals opening under moonlight.
It didn't ask permission.
It simply entered.
The transmission took a full day.
When the last line finished anchoring into his soul, the figure returned.
"My duty ends with this transfer."
Jalen nodded faintly. "And the supreme-grade lightsaber?" He recalled two men whispering about it in a hidden archive—their words etched into memory.
"It will reveal itself once the techniques are mastered. But you already wield a supreme-grade shadow weapon—one born from my master's nemesis. You cannot claim both. The saber is meant for him—the true heir of the light."
Jalen scoffed. "So I got him in here, and I get nothing?"
It's obvious that if it wasn't for Jalen's ability, Lloyd wouldn't be able to find this place. And even if he did, the formations protecting this place would shred him to dust.
"You have until six months to master the techniques and retrieve the saber. If you fail to do so before then, the Vault Realm will collapse, and everyone here will be expelled, and you will lose your chance of getting the saber."
It's not mine anyway, so why bother?
Jalen sulked. Then asked aloud, "It took me over three hundred years to master the Shadow Art… all inside a spirit realm where time barely ticked. How can I master something this complex in half a year?"
"You're a sixteen-year-old Spirit Fusion Realm expert who holds the fate-defying Origin Shard and a second spirit core with unknown origin and powers that seems to be able to rival the Origin Shard."
The figure's gaze lingered. "You will figure it out. Until then... protect Lloyd. What he becomes may shift this age."
Jalen glanced at the unconscious boy and sighed.
How did I end up in this mess?