The Empire of Nytherion stood under a heaven chiseled out of starlight, its spires thrusting up towards eternity as spears defying the gods. But on this day, the sky wept.
Rain sliced across obsidian towers. Thunder boomed across the jade-jeweled domes of the capital, and lightning striped the clouds with divine rage. Within the center of the Imperial Citadel, the cries arose not of war, but of birth.
Within the Moonstone Chamber, the Empress screamed.
Incense and blood scented the air. Priestesses ringed the birthing bed, chanting imprecations to the law of the gods, while midwives danced with hectic speed. The empress clamped her teeth together, dark hair dripping with sweat as her hand clamped on the arm of the gold-covered bed.
Then there was the wail.
A cry of a baby, clear and clean as a knife.
But something was not right.
The air wrenched itself.
The candles of the ceremonial braziers leaped towards the newborn as though compelled by a hidden will. The marble walls creaked beneath unseen pressure. Then the laws shifted.
Not figurative. Actual reality flexed.
Essentia broke in roiling waves all around the chamber. The embroidered sigils within the high priestess's garment flashed to awareness, burning with an ancient script. The free-floating text read by the initiate alone now glowed like insects, circling the newborn with wonder.
"Los leyes," a shaking midwife whispered. "They're reacting to him."
The thunderclap tore the heavens in two.
The priestesses fell to their knees. The High Seer, having run from the Temple of Truth, was left speechless in awed reverence. It was without precedent. Unwritten. A mortal child born with heaven and earth's laws already conforming to his will.
"The Second Prince… is divinely marked," someone whispered.
And then, in the awed silence, the eyes of the infant opened.
A couple of hard, storm-gray irises settled on the spinning spell building in mid-air, a basic water conjuring spell the midwife was using to purify his body. The water hovered, sustained by a cord of blue-white Essentia, spinning with elegance.
The baby's pupils constricted.
Something deep in his soul let out a cry from ages past.
"NO—NO, NO, NO—THAT'S MY TECHNIQUE!"
The room vibrated once more, though this time not with divine energy but with a soul's righteous rage awakening after decades of silence.
Kael Thorne had died a heretic.
Nameless, forgotten, unloved his sole offense had been ambition. Born without the Celestial Brand, he had been refused the right to cultivate. Refused the scrolls, the energy, the teachings. In a world where worth was measured by strength, he had been garbage.
But Kael had had a mind that would not be bound.
He'd survived in sewers, gleaned information from abandoned ruins, and cobbled together forbidden facts. And then, he'd learned about Essentia not as a godsend, but as a scientific phenomenon. A code. A system. Something to be deciphered, not simply revered.
He had solved the theory. He could manipulate Essentia without the heavens' leave. All it required was assimilation. He conditioned his body for years. Evolved meditative practices. Strengthened his soul. He had designed the spell to imbibe Essentia directly.
And he'd succeeded for one glorious, blinding instant.
Then he died.
Alone. In pain. No gravestone. No glory.
So when Kael opened his eyes once more, now in the form of a royal heir with the laws churning around him like servants, his first clear thought was
"You thieving bastards stole my legacy."
The days after his birth swirled in shreds. The palace was a maze of black floors, floating platforms, and white-robed courtiers bowing and speaking of the "Blessed Prince." But Kael was no normal child.
His soul was old, and it awakened like a constricted beast.
Nightly, as the nursemaids put him to bed, Kael slipped inward into his own soulscape, now astoundingly expansive. A maelstrom realm of recollection and rule, forged by two lives. His earlier self had perished unfinished. But now?
Now, there were different rules.
"Blessed by the heavens," people said.
No.
He took that blessing back.
By the time Kael was three, he was walking ahead of his big brother. At five, he was reading forbidden glyphs in the royal library under the scholars' noses, who complimented his "divine intuition." He committed cultivation techniques to memory in hours and never applied them.
He didn't have to.
They were reproductions.
He was the original.
He was standing one night on the balcony of the royal garden, looking up at the stars. Footsteps sounded behind him on the stone. The unmistakable voice of his older brother, Orin Valeblade, Crown Prince of Nytherion.
"Flying off to the heavens so soon, little brother?" Orin teased with a grin. He was fifteen, powerful and lithe, already honing at a level most nobles jealously admired.
Kael turned, smiling pleasantly. "Only if they're still stealing my ideas."
Orin laughed, pushing a silver-blue strand of hair behind his ear. "You say odd things sometimes, Kael."
You have no idea, Kael thought.
He did like Orin. But he didn't trust him.
No one with a crown ever missed an opportunity.
Two nights later, Kael discovered the journal.
Not his. The journal.
Entombed deep in the Royal Archive under blankets of dust and arcane seals. His own signature glared up at him. The yellowed, blood-red pages outlined all of his theorems that he had developed in his former existence. And underneath the last page, penned in alternate ink:
"This madman may be right."
Signed… by High Seer Eldros.
Same priest who accused him of heresy in his previous existence.
The truth struck Kael like a divine hammer: they knew. The Seer, the court, maybe even his father the Emperor himself they hadn't devised their system. They had plagiarized it.
His hypothesis had paid off. His death was not a failure.
It was erasure.
They entombed his name, pilfered his discovery, and marketed it as divine providence.
Kael slowly closed the book, fingers shaking not out of fear, but out of waking fury.
That evening, he sat cross-legged, eyes shut, drawing in the threads of Essentia that danced like motes around him.
He did not employ a cultivation technique.
He did not chant a mantra.
He simply recalled.
His soul ignited like wildfire. The Essentia reacted not with opposition, but with recognition.
For the first time in two lives, Kael Thorne smiled.
They might have stolen his concept.
But this time, they would never know he was coming.