Chapter 1: The Breath Between Worlds
Year 10002 | Xintian Station, Lower Sector Gamma
People say the stars sing to those chosen to change the universe.
Li Junhao knew that was just a story the rich told themselves, a comforting lie whispered in their gleaming Sky Tier towers. Down here in Lower Sector Gamma, the stars didn't sing. They just watched, cold pinpricks of light barely visible through the perpetual haze.
The mining tunnels were always damp and reeked of iron and stale smoke, a smell that clung to everything. The girders overhead groaned under the unseen weight of the station, a constant, unsettling symphony that scraped against Junhao's nerves. He worked a heavy plasma drill, its throbbing hum vibrating up his arms to his teeth, battling the stubborn rock to hit his daily quota. Fail, and the meager food rations wouldn't be enough to silence the gnawing hunger.
"You're overdoing it again," his friend Taro El-Kai grumbled, his voice a low rumble against the tunnel's cacophony. Taro was short, stout, and his gleaming mechanical arms—a stark contrast to his worn, patched uniform—were a legacy of the Martian war orphan program.
Junhao wiped gritty sweat from his brow, the metallic tang of it strong on his tongue. "I need three more ore cores."
Taro sighed, a heavy sound swallowed by the dust-laden air. "You need sleep, not more work."
Junhao ignored him, the drill a familiar extension of his aching limbs, driving it deeper into the vein.
Then something strange happened.
His drill bit into something yielding, impossibly soft, unlike any rock he'd ever encountered. A soft, golden light bloomed from the newly exposed wall, painting the dark tunnel with an otherworldly glow. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the very rock, and Junhao felt it thrumming in his chest, echoing in his bones. It wasn't a sound his ears registered so much as a deep, internal vibration.
"Did you hear that?" he rasped, his voice rough.
Taro looked around, his brow furrowed in confusion. "Hear what? Just the usual creaks."
Junhao stepped closer, the golden light radiating a strange warmth that settled on his skin. The glowing stone looked alive, pulsing with an inner rhythm.
"Don't touch it!" Taro warned, a sharp edge of fear in his voice.
Junhao touched it anyway. The surface was smooth, almost like skin, yet vibrant with contained energy.
---
Suddenly, the world shattered.
Junhao wasn't in the tunnel anymore. He was suspended in an impossibly vast void, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of swirling stars and vibrant, glowing energy threads that pulsed with a life of their own. Images flashed through his mind like lightning—shimmering planets, brutal, silent battles fought across nebulae, and colossal, slumbering gods, their forms sketched in starlight. He glimpsed temples orbiting shattered stars, monks of light weaving energy like silk, and a name echoed faintly: "Yuxuan"—the Flamekeepers.
The sheer scale of it was overwhelming, breathtaking, and terrifying.
A voice, ancient and resonant as the universe itself, echoed not in his ears, but deep within his very being:
"You are the flame. Awaken."
For a brief moment, as the light consumed him, Junhao thought: Is this destiny? Am I dying? Or being born?
Then he plummeted, a searing fall through the void.
Back into his body.
---
Junhao woke up sprawled on the gritty tunnel floor, gasping for breath. The glowing object was gone, fused into the skin over his chest, leaving behind an intricate, shimmering pattern of strange symbols that pulsed faintly before fading entirely. His body felt different—lighter, coiled with an unfamiliar strength, his senses sharper than a laser blade.
The tunnel was eerily empty. Only the whisper of settling dust and the cold, unyielding silence remained.
Then, the piercing shriek of alarms tore through the quiet, followed by the clatter of heavy footsteps and the whirring hum of approaching security robots.
Junhao didn't think. He simply ran.
His feet found impossible grip along curved walls. His body twisted between piping as if his bones remembered paths he'd never walked. It was instinct—or something older than instinct.
---
Sky Tier | Command Center
Chen Yelin, a top officer from the elite Sky Tier, stared at a holographic screen. It showed Junhao, not as a miner, but as a blazing beacon of light, radiating power like a miniature sun.
"He found a Celestial Core," Yelin stated, his voice flat with a mix of awe and grim resolve.
"Impossible!" a scientist, his face pale and sweaty under the harsh lights, shouted, slamming a fist on a console. "Those haven't been used in thousands of years! They're myths!"
"Well, he just bonded with one," Yelin replied, his gaze unwavering on the glowing image of Junhao. "Now, everyone in the galaxy will be looking for him. The old prophecies... they were real."
He snapped a command into his comm unit: "Send the soldiers. Find him. Bring him back—alive."
Then added, quieter: "If the Flame has chosen again... the Oraphim will come. We don't have long. Activate Protocol Heliarch. Silence the entire sector if you must."
---
Far away, in deep space
A strange being, a swirling nebula of pure light and consciousness, opened its myriad eyes.
"The Flame has returned."
And across the vast, silent expanse of the galaxy, something ancient, something truly cosmic in scale, began to stir from its eons-long slumber.
Something smiled with too many mouths, as if waiting for Junhao to take his next breath.
---
End of Chapter 1