The first cry of a newborn echoed through the quiet vilge, pierg the cool autumn air. The child trembled in the unfamiliar cold, his tiny limbs twitg as his fragile sciousness struggled against the rush of new sensations. Gone was the warmth that had embraced him for months, repced by something vast and uhe world around him was bright—tht—and the voices that had once been distant murmurs now pressed in from all sides, clear and overwhelming.

  He was lifted gently, cradled in soft arms. The warmth returned, different from before, yet f. A delicate hand ran over his tiny head, soothing him as he instinctively reached toward the presehat held him. His mother, Mei Liao, looked down at him with tired but joyful eyes, her dark shes trembling with emotion. He was so small, so delicate, yet he felt… plete. Almost too plete. Her firaced his cheek, feeling the warmth of life beh his skin, as a soft, satisfied smile tugged at her lips.

  “He’s beautiful,” she whispered, the exhaustion in her voice doing nothing to mask the overwhelming affe within it.

  Beside her, a ma, his sharp grey eyes fixed on the small figure in her arms. A deep exhale left him as he reached out, calloused fingers brushing against the newborn’s skin with the hesitance of a man unaced to gentleness. The baby stirred at his touch but did not cry. Instead, his tiny eyes fluttered open, revealing a striking mix of grey and amethyst.

  The man’s breath hitched. He had expected many things, but not that. His own grey eyes, the cold steel of a merary’s gaze, were now reflected in his son’s—but iwined with Mei Liao’s amethyst irises, a union of storm aohey were mesmerizing, holding somethih their depths that he could not pce.

  “He’s strong,” he murmured at st, his voice low, ptive. “A fighter.”

  The baby gave a weak shudder, and his eyes slowly closed again, his fragile mind uo hold on for long. The exhaustion of birth, bined with the lingering echoes of something far greater, pulled him bato slumber. Mei Liao sighed, resting her head back against the pillow as she held him close.

  “Well,” she said, her lips curving into a victorious smile. “It looks like I win.”

  Her husband blihe out a breathless chuckle, shaking his head in mock defeat. “I suppose you do.”

  Mei Liao looked back at her son, cradling him gently as if itting every detail of his tiny faory. The soft curve of his cheeks, the delicate flutter of his breath, the straillness in his expressioe his young age. She had already decided.

  “Cai Feiyin,” she murmured, tasting the name as she said it aloud. “A name for one who will rise beyond sight.”

  Her husband hummed, nodding in quiet approval. “Cai Feiyin it is.”

  In the dimly lit room, in the warmth of his mother’s arms, the child who had once drifted in the void was given his first tie to this world.

  Days passed, and the household adapted to the rhythm of life with a newborn. The quiet nights were now filled with soft cries and whispered lulbies, the st of burning wood mixing with the gentle hum of Mei Liao’s voice as she soothed her child to sleep. Life in the vilge tinued as it always had, unaware of the significe of this small existence. Yet within the home by the river, there were moments—small, fleeting moments—where time seemed to slow, where his parents would watch him, sensing something they could not quite put into words.

  His father noticed first.

  One evening, as the fire crackled low, he sat beside the crib, watg as Feiyin’s chest rose and fell in steady rhythm. There was something odd about the way he slept—too still, too posed. Even newborns, as fragile as they were, would fidget, stir, make small noises in their sleep. But Feiyin barely moved, as if untouched by the restless whims of infancy.

  “He’s too quiet,” his father murmured.

  Mei Liao gnced up from where she sat nearby, raising a delicate brow. “He’s sleeping,” she said, amused.

  “That’s the thing,” he muttered. “Newborns don’t sleep like this. They shift, they startle, they whimper. He’s too still.”

  Mei Liao frowned slightly, her gaze drifting back to her child. He was calm, impossibly so. It wasn’t just how he slept—it was the way his tiny hands sometimes ched at nothing, the way his amethyst-grey eyes would stare at the ceiling as if seeing something beyond the walls of this world.

  “You worry too much,” she finally said, brushing her fingers over Feiyin’s small forehead. “Maybe he’s just different.”

  Her husband exhaled, rubbing his temple. He didn’t argue. But the unease remained.

  Feiyin, oblivious to their whispered versation, drifted between wakefulness and slumber, his small body growing aced to the new world he had entered. Yet every time he closed his eyes, he was back there.

  The void.

  The Eight.

  At first, the memories were fragmented—a blur of colors, a whisper of something imme they always returned, each time clearer than before. He saw the orbs of light, floating like shattered remnants of reality. He saw the figures beyond shape and form, Truths that could not be tained by mortal perception. And he remembered the voice.

  "Grow well, little seed."

  His small body would tremble, his breath hitg as something deep within him stirred. The visions did not fade. They were woven into his soul, a quiet whisper in the fabric of his existence.

  Time passed, and winter gave way t. Feiyin grew quickly, his small body filling out with steady strength. He ughed, he cried, he reached for his parents with tiny fingers, just like any other child. But deep within him, something else had ged.

  One evening, as Mei Liao held him he window, humming softly, he suddenly tensed, his small hand g in the fabric of her robe. For the first time, he felt it. A vibration. A pulse. A rhythm beh reality itself. It was faint, subtle, but undeniable.

  The world was moving, not just in the way leaves rustled or rivers flowed, but in a way deeper than the physical, as if existeself had a current. And he could se. His body trembled slightly, his breath hitg, amethyst-grey eyes widening as the sensation overwhelmed him.

  Mei Liao startled, pulling him closer. “Shh, little one,” she soothed. “It’s alright.”

  She thought he was afraid. She didn’t know that for the first time since his rebirth, he was truly awake.

  In that moment, Feiyin realized something. He was no longer merely watg. He was feeling. Listening. The osciltion of all things. A quiet uandiled within his young mind. He did not know what it mea, nor what he could do with it, but ohing was certain.

  He was not the same as before.

  And in the depths of the vilge, far from the gaze of the powerful sects and noble s of the world, the first stirrings of something far greater began to take root.

  For the little seed had begun to grow.