They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die.
But for me? There was only weight. Pressure. And then a strange breath—wet and too small—rattling through lungs that weren't mine.
I thought maybe someone had found me. Maybe they'd taken me to a hospital. Maybe this was the moment before waking up.
Then came the voice. Shaking. Terrified.
"Wake up, little darling! We have to leave now!
I opened my eyes to firelight and panic, and a woman's tear-streaked face looking down at me. Her arms wrapped around my tiny body, and I felt it immediately—too light, too soft.
Not a soldier's body.
A child's.
I gasped.
Pain shot through my skull. Not from injury—but from memory. Not mine.
Her name had been Fan Yumei. Seven years old. Soon to be eight.
And she was… gone.
Dead from a fever, caught during a desperate attempt to awaken her core by wandering too close to Dew Springs Mountain. She had no talent, no class, no star ranking. Her peers at the academy mocked her as mortal trash—the only one in her grade who hadn't awakened.
The final blow came the week before she died.
A boy in her class, born into wealth, bragged that his older brother had returned from the Frosted Ridge with two rare 2-star core plants. He boasted that his awakening ceremony would be private—personal healers, family rituals, even a destined profession guide. He promised to return a ranked star-bearer, ready to join the inner disciples before they turned ten.
And he did.
He came back radiant, proud, already forming beginner sigils in the air before their first lesson.
And that left her.
The last one.
The only child in her class still unawakened.
Even though awakening ages ranged from seven to eleven, and she wasn't the oldest—nor the youngest—in their group, the pressure had become unbearable. The glances. The whispers. The pity.
She broke.
She stopped waiting.
That night, she slipped out of her family's house and hiked to the edge of the Dew Springs safe zone, alone, boots on, and shaking. She'd heard rumors about the wild core energy that leaked from the base of the mountain, and believed—hoped—that proximity alone might trigger something, anything. She stayed there for hours, straining to feel the pulse of awakening through meditation she'd practiced in secret for months.
But the mountain gave her nothing.
No stars. No spark. Just bitter wind and damp stone.
Eventually, heartbroken, she turned back through the winding path.
And that's when she found it.
Nestled in a shallow ravine next to a white river, surrounded by whispering moss, was a trembling white plant shaped like a lotus flame. Six soft petals shimmered faintly with inner light, pulsing with deep elemental resonance.
A six-star core plant.
Rare enough to alter a child's entire fate. Enough to elevate an orphan into the inner court. Enough to rebuild a bloodline.
She trembled when she picked it up. She wept. Her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped it.
And then the fever struck.
Hard.
The joy, the disbelief, the promise—it all blurred under the burning heat that flooded her bones. Her limbs went weak. Her vision swam. She stuffed the plant against her chest and staggered the rest of the way home, clutching her discovery like it could anchor her to life itself.
She collapsed before she could show it to anyone.
Two days later, her body failed.
And somehow… now I was here. In her place. Inside her body. A soul transplanted into a world I didn't understand, in a life that wasn't mine.
Even as I reeled from the memories, I understood her desperation. Maybe she'd been too rash. But in a world like this—where power was everything—lacking almost completely didn't mean being left behind.
It meant being left to die.
I didn't have time to unravel it.
Because the ground shook.
A beast raid. Real and close.
The woman—her mother—Ka Sanni, clutched me tighter and ran barefoot across the dirt path, dodging the burning wreckage of a neighbor's home as it collapsed under something massive. The air was thick with smoke and magic.
People screamed. A child cried out from somewhere behind us.
"Yangwei!" Ka Sanni screamed into the chaos. "Yangwei!"
A voice answered—a man's. Sharp, strained, desperate.
"Sanni! Yumei!"
We turned the corner—
And saw him.
Fan Yangwei. Her father. His clothes were torn, a broken rune board still glowing faintly in his hand, blood smeared down his arm. He was running toward us through the smoke, stumbling through firelit debris.
Sanni gripped me tighter, feet moving faster as she sprinted toward him.
We hadn't reached him yet.
But he was there.
Alive. Fighting to get to us.
And we were running to meet him.
My chest ached.
They thought I was her.
Maybe, somehow, I was
But I knew only one thing for sure in that moment:
I wasn't going to let them lose their daughter again.