Aria Chen's POV
The wolf was already in the air when the pendant exploded.
Not exploded like fire and smoke—exploded like a sun being born inside a closed fist. White light ripped through the cave so bright it had weight, had heat, had sound—a high, clear note that Aria felt in her back teeth and the base of her spine.
The wolf twisted mid-leap, crashing sideways into the cave wall instead of into her. The impact shook the ground. Loose rock rained from the ceiling. The wolf scrambled upright, shaking its massive head, confused and snarling—its yellow eyes had gone white from the flash.
Aria didn't waste the second she'd been given.
She ran for the back of the cave, grabbed the sharpest rock she'd spotted earlier, and spun around.
Narrow space, her brain fired. Use the narrow space. Make it a bottleneck. Don't let it get beside you.
Ten years of boardroom warfare. Outmaneuvering competitors twice her size with half her budget. She'd never thrown a punch in her life, but she understood angles. She understood how to control the shape of a fight before it started.
The wolf's vision was clearing. It locked eyes with her again—that flat, ancient predator stare—and lowered its head.
Come on then, Aria thought.
It lunged.
She threw herself left, slamming her shoulder into the cave wall, letting the wolf's momentum carry it past her. Its jaws snapped shut on empty air, inches from her face. She could smell its breath—blood and rot and something dark.
She drove the rock into its flank as it passed.
The wolf yelped—sharp and high, nothing like its growl—and spun on her. Now it was angry. Before, it had been patient. Hunting. Now she'd made it furious, and furious things made mistakes.
But so did people fighting a horse-sized predator with a rock.
It caught her on the second lunge.
One massive paw swept sideways, catching her left arm. The claws opened her skin in four clean lines from elbow to wrist. The pain was immediate—white hot, breathtaking. Aria staggered back, blood pouring fast, too fast, soaking into the fabric at her sleeve and dripping from her fingers.
She hit the ground on one knee.
Get up, she told herself. Get up, get up, get—
Blood dripped from her fingertips onto the jade pendant.
One drop. Just one.
The world stopped.
Heat.
Not pain—heat. Starting at the pendant, spreading outward through her chest, her arms, her throat, the backs of her eyes. The rock dropped from her fingers. She couldn't hold it. She couldn't feel her hands anymore, not because they were numb but because something else was filling the space where pain used to be.
Power.
Images detonated through her mind like camera flashes.
A vast empty space—fields wide enough to lose yourself in, warehouses stacked floor to ceiling, a cottage with warm light in the windows, and a garden—a massive garden, glowing in colours that had no names in any language she knew. Plants labeled in an ancient script that somehow rearranged itself into words she understood perfectly. Moon Lotus. Dragon Root. Spirit Basil. Shadowmend.
A voice—not the thin whisper from before, but full and clear and unmistakably female—poured into her skull like warm water.
Blood recognized. Ownership transferred. Spatial dimension: unlocked.
Aria gasped.
The wolf lunged again.
She moved without deciding to.
Her body dropped sideways, fast—impossibly fast for someone who had never trained a day in her life. Her arm stopped bleeding. She could feel it stopping, the torn skin pulling together, not completely but enough. Enough to stop the dizziness. Enough to let her think.
The wolf overshot her again.
This time she didn't just avoid it.
She grabbed its ear as it passed—this enormous, terrifying creature—and yanked with every bit of weight she had. The wolf stumbled, neck twisting. She drove the rock she'd somehow picked back up into its eye socket.
The sound it made wasn't a snarl.
It was a scream.
The wolf collapsed against the far wall, thrashing. Aria followed it, her hands shaking but her mind frighteningly clear, and drove the rock into its throat once. Twice. Three times.
It went still.
The cave went silent.
Aria stood over the body, chest heaving, blood drying on her skin in dark lines. Her arm was half-healed—the slashes still visible but no longer bleeding, edges already closing like a mouth being sealed. She looked at her hands.
They were glowing.
Not brightly—just a faint shimmer beneath her skin, like moonlight trapped under glass. Moving. Pulsing. Alive.
"What..." She turned her hands over. Turned them back. "What am I now?"
The pendant answered.
It pulsed—one long, slow, deliberate beat—and the female voice came again, warmer this time, almost gentle. Like it had been waiting a very long time to say this.
Welcome, new Master. Your spatial dimension awaits.
Aria's knees finally buckled.
She sat down hard in the dirt, back against the cave wall, a dead monster the size of a horse cooling three feet from her, and she started laughing again. But this time it sounded different. This time it didn't bounce back hollow.
This time it sounded like the beginning of something.
Spatial dimension. She pressed her palm flat over the pendant. She could feel it now—the shape of the space inside, like a room she'd always known existed but never been given the key to. Fields. Herbs. Resources. Power she hadn't earned but had somehow been chosen to carry.
They thought this was a worthless trinket, she thought, remembering the guard's lazy sneer as he dismissed the only thing she owned. They searched me, took everything, and left me the one thing that could save my life.
They hadn't just underestimated her.
They'd handed her a weapon and called it trash.
Slowly, carefully, Aria closed her eyes and reached for the space inside the pendant. She felt her consciousness stretch—like leaning through a doorway—and when she opened her eyes she was somewhere else. The vast glowing garden. The ancient shelves. The quiet cottage.
This is mine, she thought.
Hers. Not her father's. Not her company's. Not any kingdom's or emperor's or fiancé's.
Mine.
She spotted a plant near the garden entrance—the Moon Lotus, glowing pale silver, label pulsing gently. All wounds. All poisons. Accelerates mana development. She reached out and pulled it, and when she snapped back to the physical cave, the flower was solid in her hand. Real. Cool and slightly damp.
She crushed it between her palms and pressed it against her wounded arm.
The remaining cuts sealed completely in under ten seconds.
Aria sat in the dark, healed, alive, glowing faintly, next to a monster she had just killed with a rock.
Then the voice in the pendant spoke again.
Not the warm welcoming voice from before.
Something older. Something that had been quiet while she celebrated, waiting patiently for her excitement to settle.
New Master, it said. The blood identification is complete. But you should know—
It paused.
Aria's chest tightened. "Know what?"
The pendant's awakening released a pulse of mana. Old magic. Strong magic.
"So?"
So everything in the Borderlands within five miles felt it.
A sound drifted into the cave from outside. Not one wolf this time.
Many.
And something else—something deeper, heavier than wolves. Footsteps that shook loose pebbles from the cave entrance. Moving closer. Moving with purpose. Moving like something that had hunted for years and had never once lost its prey.
Every predator in this region now knows exactly where you are, the voice said, something almost like apology woven through the ancient words.
And something else felt it too. Something that has not moved in three years. Something that even the monsters fear.
The footsteps stopped.
Right outside the cave entrance.
Silence.
Then a shadow fell across the opening—too large, too dark, too wrong to be any wolf—and a voice came through the dark. Low. Rough. The voice of something that had long ago forgotten how to be gentle.
"Who's in there?"
Aria's blood went cold.
Because whatever was outside that cave wasn't a monster.
It was so much worse.
It was a man.