It was still night.
Everyone was sleeping, and there were no sounds. The village had settled into that particular stillness that comes only in the deepest hours, when even the insects seem to have exhausted their nightly chorus.
Cold wind blew in through the window, drifting over Shree Yan's face and body, carrying with it the faint, mineral scent of distant rain that hadn't yet decided whether to fall. The window stood open, curtains stirring faintly against the sill.
Still, Shree Yan remained calm, sitting motionless on the bed, his breathing slow and even.
He turned his focus inward, trying to merge the saangee worm's night vision into his eyes, working with the same disciplined stillness he'd used to stabilize the rana only hours earlier.
Energy surged through his veins, rising to his eyes with a heat that seemed to press against the backs of his sockets from the inside. The pain came sharp and immediate. He endured it anyway, jaw tightening, sweat gathering along his hairline. This kind of pain couldn't shake him, not after everything his body had already learned to withstand in this short new life.
He succeeded. He exhaled slowly as the burning sensation finally receded into something manageable.
Now I have two eye abilities, he thought. First, Rana. Second, saangee. And one more I still need to find.
He rose from the bed with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd done this exact thing, in some form, many times before, and made for the window. The wooden floor was cool beneath his bare feet. He climbed out and dropped to the road below, knees bending easily to absorb the impact.
His house stood at the center of the village, surrounded on all sides. To the north lay forest, dark and dense even against the already-dark sky. To the south, west, and east stretched countless houses, most gone dark for the night, a few still flickering faintly with the last embers of banked cooking fires.
He leapt from the ground in a single fluid motion. A gust swept through the trees ahead, and his robes streamed out behind him as he moved, the fabric snapping sharply against the night air.
I have to go now, he thought.
A sharp rush of wind, and he was into the forest, gathering star energy into his feet as he ran, the ground blurring beneath him in a way that would have been impossible for an ordinary child his age. He moved without a sound, the skill honed through long experience in his previous life, muscle memory settled deep enough to survive even reincarnation.
He landed and activated his night eyes, and the world sharpened instantly into crisp, silver-edged clarity. Every leaf, every root, every shadow came into sudden, distinct focus.
A thick mist covered the forest floor, curling low between ancient tree trunks, muffling sound and softening the edges of everything it touched. Ordinary wild beasts stirred among the trees, the faint rustle of something small darting through underbrush, the distant, low call of a night bird. Otherwise, the forest stayed silent. There was an old saying: if you didn't hurt them, they wouldn't hurt you. Shree Yan moved through the trees with the deliberate calm of someone who trusted that wisdom completely.
Back in my previous life, he thought, my Master told me a story. A story of how our ancestors began, and how astral energy came to be. The origins of the mystical worms, and the astral worms before them. How they were created. How the astral worm first came here. He said there was a story behind all of it.
Shree Yan pressed deeper into the forest, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch heavy with dew, letting the story unspool slowly behind his eyes as he walked. He left the wild beasts alone, and in turn they left him alone, a pair of deer lifting their heads briefly to watch him pass before returning, unbothered, to their grazing.
***
The story of the Mother of Humanity, Miima, and the Father of Humanity, Rimi. The first ancestors: Rimi-Aba and Miima-Aama.
At first, there were no humans. Somewhere in space, an astral essence had wandered off his path, drifting without purpose through the vast, silent dark between stars. By accident, he found Earth, its blue-green curve rising suddenly into view like something unexpected and precious. He liked what he saw immediately: the beautiful places, the atmosphere, the blue sky. So he entered, breaking through Earth's barrier in a burst of light no living creature witnessed.
For days he explored the world, drifting formlessly over oceans and mountain ranges alike. He saw amazing mountains, rivers, great waterfalls, wondrous rock formations, each new sight pulling something like delight from whatever passed for his heart. But after ten days, despite all that beauty, he grew bored. The vastness of his own solitude finally caught up to him.
He stood on a rock above the water and looked down at his own reflection as a cloud drifted over, covering half the sun, dimming the light into something softer, more contemplative. A shadow moved across the water's surface, the shadow of an astral essence, and the sight of it gave him an idea. He watched a female fish and a male fish circling lazily beneath the surface, studied their bodies, the way they moved together, and it gave him another.
So he made two humans, shaping them from something between clay and starlight, and said, delighted, "You are the humans I've made. Now play with me!"
"...."
They didn't answer. They stood motionless, blank-eyed, beside him on the rock. He had given them everything: a face, skin, a nose, a mouth, a full human body, even wisdom. But he had forgotten one thing. Emotions. Without them, the two could not speak, think, feel, or offer him any comfort at all. They simply stood there, beautifully rendered statues.
"Oh, fool. I forgot the emotions." The realization landed on him with an almost physical weight. He gathered astral energy above his palms, the light pulsing faintly, and sent two currents of feeling into their bodies.
"Ahem. Creatures, I made you with my astral energy," he said, suddenly self-conscious in a way he hadn't been a moment before. "I made you because I was lonely. I need friends to play with me."
"Creatures? What a shameful title," they both replied at once, annoyed, their voices sharp with newly formed indignation. Then they looked at each other and realized, in the same instant, with the same horror, that neither of them was wearing any clothes.
Miima raised her hand and slapped Rimi across the face, the sound cracking sharply through the still air.
"Ouuuuch!" Rimi roared, clutching his cheek.
Miima ducked behind a rock, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Rimi retreated into the water, submerging until only his eyes showed above the surface. The astral essence couldn't hold back his laughter at the sight. He laughed and laughed, the sound echoing strangely across the empty landscape.
"Don't laugh, you brat," Miima snapped, peering out from behind her rock. "Give us clothes."
"Okay, okay, don't be angry." He stifled his laughter, still shaking faintly with the effort, and clothed them both, the fabric materializing from nothing in a soft shimmer of light.
The clothes weren't anything special, rough-woven and simple, the kind of thing you might expect from the Stone Age, but they were good enough.
"I don't like the title you gave us," Miima said, hands planted firmly on her hips now that she was decently covered. "Change it."
Rimi waded closer, water still dripping from his hair. "Don't fight over it. Be grateful we have a title at all, and remember, he's the one who made us."
Miima turned on him, incredulous. "What? Are you out of your mind? That name is disgusting." She stared at him as though he'd lost the very sense he'd just been given.
The astral essence considered the matter with sudden, unexpected seriousness. "Okay. I'll give you two different titles, ones you'll recognize, ones you'll actually like. Hi... hu... me... u... me... hah... human! How's that?" he said, testing the sound of it against the quiet air.
Something about the word settled comfortably on Miima's tongue, and she liked it at once. "That's the title. Now what about our names?"
"Your names? Umm. Miima-Aama and Rimi-Aba." The syllables rolled out easily, as though he'd been holding them ready all along.
"What do these names mean?" Miima asked quickly.
"They mean First Woman and First Man, since I made you two first," he answered smoothly. He didn't mention that Aama also meant Mother, and Aba meant Father, that together the names meant First Mother and First Father: the mother and father of all humanity. Watching how she'd reacted to something as simple as "creature," he decided the fuller truth could wait for some safer, later moment. That moment never quite arrived.
At last Rimi stepped fully out of the water, water still dripping steadily from the hem of his new clothes. "Creator, please. Tell us your name. And how is it you can speak, see, hear, and feel with us, when you have no human body, no ears, no mouth, no eyes? How do you manage all of this without them?" He asked it politely. Whatever else he lacked, foolish and stubborn as he sometimes was, curiosity set him apart from the others: a genuine desire to know everything.
Miima rolled her eyes where she stood, watching him as though he were a fool, someone who asked foolish questions and, in her estimation, deserved the foolish answers he got.
"Foolish human," the astral essence replied coldly, some old, ancient impatience surfacing briefly in his tone, "you owe your very existence to me, and still you ask such a question? My name is Rana. I can hear, see, feel, and speak because I am no ordinary essence. I am an astral essence who can give life, and give death."
Cold as the answer was, Rimi bowed slightly at the waist. "Thank you, Creator, for your answer."
Miima gritted her teeth, watching him. What's wrong with him? Why does he keep answering so politely? She sighed and shook her head. "This guy is crazy."
Rana began gathering astral energy above his head, the light building steadily brighter, casting long shadows across the water below. It coalesced into a giant, pulsing ball, barely containing its own power, and Miima and Rimi instinctively moved back to back, some shared, wordless understanding passing between them. "What are you doing?" Miima asked, her voice edged with sudden alarm.
He gave no answer.
A great, brilliant light erupted across the world, washing out sky and sea and stone alike in a single, blinding flash that seemed to last far longer than any single instant should.
Then nothing.
Rana was gone.
In that moment, his astral energy spread across the earth like something poured rather than exploded, seeping down into rivers and soil alike, and from it, astral creatures stirred to life beneath the water, deep in the dark, silted depths.
That first burst of released energy stayed at its peak for only three generations. After that, it grew weaker and weaker, diluting slowly across centuries like ink dispersing through water, and the creatures born from it grew smaller with each generation, until almost nothing remained of their original, staggering scale.
Today, that same astral energy is called star energy, and those same creatures are called mystical worms. Once, they had been far stronger, far larger, towering things that modern imagination can barely reconstruct.
So that's what happened, Shree Yan thought. Ancient astral energy became today's star energy, and those ancient creatures became today's mystical worms.
***
At last he reached the cave, its mouth yawning dark and silent before him, the mist thinning slightly at its threshold. The story of Miima and Rimi faded from his mind, the final image of that ancient, blinding light dissolving slowly into the present moment. Ahead of him waited the worm he'd come searching for, its presence already faintly perceptible through the enhanced clarity of his borrowed, night-adapted eyes.