Pain was the second thing Kael noticed.
Not sharp—no, it was dull, omnipresent, woven into every breath and movement like a punishment that had long since stopped trying to teach a lesson. It lived in his joints, in his spine, in the hollow ache behind his eyes. Pain that didn't demand attention because it had always been there.
He understood it instinctively.
This body had never known comfort.
Kael stood at the edge of the village for a long moment, letting unfamiliar sensations settle. Mud clung to his bare feet. His clothes—rough, threadbare, patched beyond dignity—hung loosely from a frame that had been stretched thin by hunger.
The village ahead looked worse up close.
Huts leaned against one another like drunks sharing secrets. Smoke rose weakly from a few chimneys, carrying the smell of burnt grain and spoiled fat. Children with hollow cheeks stared openly at him, their eyes sharp with suspicion despite their age.
No one greeted him.
No one ever had.
Memory surfaced, unprompted.
This body—his body now—was known here. Known and dismissed. An extra mouth. A burden. Someone whose absence would be noticed only briefly, if at all.
So that's how it is, Kael thought.
He didn't feel anger. Not yet.
Anger required energy.
Right now, he needed information.
He walked into the village.
Conversations faltered as he passed. A woman tugged her child closer. A man spat onto the ground and turned away. An old crone muttered something under her breath—half prayer, half curse.
Kael cataloged it all dispassionately.
Fear. Disdain. Indifference.
Good. Predictable emotions were easier to manage.
His feet carried him toward a sagging hut near the village's edge. The memories guided him, unerringly, to a structure barely standing, its door hanging crookedly from one hinge.
Home.
He stepped inside.
The interior was dim and smelled of damp wood and mold. A single straw mat lay in the corner. A clay bowl sat empty near the wall. Nothing else of value.
This body's mother had died two winters ago. Fever, untreated. Buried without ceremony beyond the eastern fields.
The man who had once been his father—if the title applied—had left not long after.
What remained was this.
Kael sat on the mat slowly, feeling the strain in muscles unused to rest. His breath came shallow. Weak.
He closed his eyes.
Assessment, he told himself, slipping into a familiar mental rhythm. Panic helped nothing. Emotion could wait.
First: physical condition.
Severe malnutrition. Muscle atrophy. Blocked or damaged meridians—he could feel them now, faint lines of resistance beneath the skin, like clogged channels refusing to flow.
Second: environment.
Low-technology settlement. Agrarian. No visible guards. No obvious cultivators—but that meant little. Power hid itself in places like this.
Third: resources.
None.
Fourth: threats.
Everyone.
A faint pulse echoed in his chest—not his heart, but deeper.
The Eclipse Core stirred, responding to his focus.
Kael shifted his awareness inward.
The void returned instantly, vast and silent. The black-and-white core rotated slowly, its opposing halves chasing one another endlessly. He felt… connected. As if the thing had always been there, waiting for him to notice.
What can you do? he wondered.
The answer came not in words, but sensation.
Potential.
A terrifying amount of it.
But locked. Restricted. Constrained by the fragile vessel he inhabited.
"This body won't last," Kael murmured.
The Eclipse Core pulsed once, almost approvingly.
Balance was everything.
He needed strength—but not recklessly.
A sound interrupted his thoughts.
Footsteps.
Heavy. Uneven.
The door creaked open.
A man filled the doorway, broad-shouldered and thick-necked, his face flushed red from drink. His eyes swept the hut, then fixed on Kael with open irritation.
"So you're back," the man slurred. "Thought the woods finally took you."
Memory identified him instantly.
Garron.
One of the village hunters. Strong. Cruel. Fond of taking out frustrations on those weaker than himself.
This body had known his fists well.
Kael stood slowly.
Garron sneered. "Look at you. Still breathing. That's unfortunate."
He stepped inside, looming close, the sour stench of alcohol thick on his breath.
"You owe grain," Garron continued. "For last winter. Elder says debts don't vanish just because you're too useless to pay them."
Kael looked up at him.
And something shifted.
It was subtle. A tightening behind the eyes. A narrowing of focus so intense the rest of the world seemed to dim.
Garron hesitated, frown deepening. "What're you staring at?"
Kael didn't answer immediately.
He was listening.
Not to Garron—but to the Eclipse Core.
It responded to intent.
Not action. Not emotion.
Intent.
The thought of taking—just a fragment of Garron's vitality—brushed against the core.
The response was immediate.
A warning sensation lanced through Kael's chest, cold and sharp.
Insufficient stability.
He exhaled slowly.
Too soon.
Garron scoffed, misinterpreting the pause. "That's what I thought."
His hand came up.
Pain exploded across Kael's face as Garron struck him, sending him sprawling into the dirt floor. The world rang. His cheek burned.
Old instincts screamed to curl up. To endure.
Kael forced them down.
He pushed himself to one knee, wiping blood from his lip.
Garron blinked. "Huh. Still getting up?"
Kael met his gaze again.
"No," he said quietly. "I'm remembering."
"Remembering what?"
Kael smiled—thin, humorless.
"This," he said, and collapsed forward.
Garron laughed, turning toward the door. "Useless trash."
He left.
The door swung shut.
Silence returned.
Kael lay on the floor, breathing shallowly, pain blooming anew.
Not yet, he reminded himself.
Power wasn't free.
Not in any world.
Night fell quickly.
The village quieted, save for distant coughing and the occasional raised voice. Kael sat hunched on his mat, chewing on a piece of stale bread he'd scavenged earlier. It barely dulled the hunger.
He waited.
When the moon climbed high—pale and unfamiliar—he rose.
Outside, shadows stretched long and deep. The air carried the scent of damp earth and distant trees.
Kael slipped from the village like a ghost.
The woods loomed ahead, dark and tangled. The memories warned him away—beasts, they said. Monsters.
Good.
He needed solitude.
Branches clawed at his skin as he moved deeper, guided by instinct and stubborn will. Every step hurt. Every breath rasped.
At last, he reached a small clearing.
Kael sat cross-legged, mimicking postures dredged up from fragmented memories. Crude breathing techniques followed—nothing refined, but enough to begin.
He focused inward.
On the Eclipse Core.
On the sensation of flow he barely understood.
Qi—though the word felt foreign and familiar all at once—existed here. Thin, wild, unrefined. It brushed against his skin like a current, elusive and sharp.
Kael reached for it.
Pain erupted instantly.
His meridians screamed as foreign energy forced its way through channels never meant to carry it. Blood trickled from his nose. His vision blurred.
He nearly lost consciousness.
The Eclipse Core reacted.
Black and white light surged, stabilizing the influx just enough to prevent catastrophic collapse.
Kael gasped, sucking in air greedily.
So that was it.
Cultivation.
Not meditation and enlightenment, but violence—against the body, against the limits imposed by birth.
He laughed weakly.
"Of course," he whispered. "Nothing worth having comes gently."
He tried again.
This time, slower.
Careful.
Hours passed.
Qi trickled in, drop by agonizing drop. Each breath was measured. Each cycle deliberate.
When dawn's gray light finally pierced the canopy, Kael slumped forward, drenched in sweat, shaking violently.
But something had changed.
He could feel it.
A faint warmth settled in his abdomen, like an ember struggling to ignite.
Not power.
But the promise of it.
Kael smiled despite himself.
As he staggered back toward the village, exhaustion dragging at his limbs, one thought anchored him.
This body is broken.
Good.
Broken things could be reforged.
And this time—
He would be the one holding the hammer.