Chapter 2: Sparks in the Dark
Year 10002 | Xintian Station, Maintenance Shaft Delta-9
Li Junhao ran like the void had teeth.
Alarms howled overhead, shrill and merciless, bouncing off steel walls and tangle-pipes like an angry machine choir. Red strobes pulsed with every heartbeat, and the glyphs flickering on the walls? He couldn't read half of them. But the AI's warning was crystal clear:
> Level 6 anomaly. Unknown power detected. Dangerous. Must contain.
Contain. That word stuck like ice in his chest.
"I don't even know what I am," Junhao muttered, ducking under a half-torn vent as sparks spat at his back.
Behind him, security droids skittered closer. Sleek, bone-black machines—too many joints, glowing optics like dead stars. He'd seen what they did to anomalies. They didn't arrest. They erased. Fast. Quiet. Final.
But his legs didn't ache. Not anymore.
His feet barely touched the floor. Every turn, every leap, felt too easy—like gravity had forgotten him.
There was a warmth now, low in his chest. Not feverish. Not pain. Just... there. A quiet humming, steady and alive, like a sleeping star in his bones.
He dove into an old hatchway and slammed it shut behind him. Hiss. Darkness.
Junhao slid down the wall, lungs heaving. His pulse pounded in his ears.
Those symbols... they were still burned into his thoughts.
Celestial Core. Yuxuan. Flamekeeper.
Alien and yet familiar. Like forgotten dreams clawing their way back.
> "What have I become?"
---
Sky Tier | Council Chamber Sigma
Commander Chen Yelin stood, hands clasped behind his back, before a curved table of sector governors and brass-shouldered admirals. The room reeked of formality and tension.
"We've confirmed it," he said. "The Celestial Core has bonded to the boy."
A murmur. Disbelief. Then Governor Vosk, voice like a grinder:
"Impossible. The Flame Protocols were mothballed before the Exodus Wars. No one's activated a Core in six thousand years."
Yelin didn't flinch. "And yet here we are."
High Admiral Xu adjusted her gloves. Her uniform bore the gold-flame crest of the Terran Flame Treaty.
"Is he stable?"
"Unclear," Yelin said. "But if the old prophecies are even half-right…"
Silence. Thick. No one said what they were all thinking.
Yelin continued. "We can't afford another Stellar Collapse. If the Oraphim detect this—"
"They already have," Xu cut in, tossing a holomap into the air. A crimson pulse glowed at the edge of the Daolun Star River.
"A Rift signature. Active. We believe it's them."
No one spoke. Just a single voice, barely above a whisper:
> "So it begins."
---
Lower Sector Gamma | Abandoned Sublevel
Taro El-Kai cursed as he kicked a rusted vent panel.
"Junhao, you crazy bastard, where the hell are you?" he hissed.
Five years of hauling scrap together. Now the guy's apparently bonded to a myth and is being hunted by sky-tier death machines?
Taro had seen it—just a flash, but it was enough. That light. That feeling. Something ancient had stirred. And the Sky Tier? They'd never care why. They'd stomp him out and scrub the footage.
So yeah. Taro had stolen a shock gun. And food. And map chips. He was breaking every rule he'd spent his whole damn life trying not to break.
"I'm gonna die in a tunnel because you got glowy," he muttered, gripping the gun tighter. "Stupid flame-boy."
But he kept walking.
Family was family.
---
Deep Orbit | Edge of Human Space
Something moved in the dark.
It wasn't a ship—not really. It looked like one, if you squinted through enough radiation fog. But it pulsed with thought, with memory. Its hull shimmered like fossilized lightning. Alive. Terrible.
Inside, Nyxai stirred.
Her body shifted in lightless ripples, crystalline threads wrapping around her many, many eyes. She did not see—she tasted starlight, felt gravitational moods. She knew.
A scent. Subtle. Ancient.
> "The Flamekind stirs," she whispered.
A long-nailed finger traced a glowing spiral in the air. Star systems bloomed in its wake.
> "Find the boy. Burn the false light."
---
Xintian Station | Hidden Tunnel
Junhao sat still.
The corridor around him was silent, forgotten by the rest of the station. Pipes wept condensation. Somewhere, distant machinery throbbed like a sleeping beast.
He didn't know how he knew what to do. But something inside told him:
> Breathe.
So he did.
Inhale. Exhale. Again.
The warmth in his chest grew clearer. Like a rhythm he'd always known but never danced to. Threads of invisible power coiled around him. No guidebook. No voice. But he knew—intuitively—how to gather it, how to shape it.
A sphere of flame shimmered into his palm.
It didn't burn. It just was. Contained. Pure. Alive.
This wasn't academy-grade cultivation. This wasn't rich-kid chi flow training.
This was old. Real.
A door cracked open inside him, and he was standing on the threshold of something enormous.
His eyes opened. Briefly glowing.
> "I think... I know what I am now."
Above him, alarms wailed again. The station shook.
They were still hunting him.
He had no mentor. No faction.
Just this spark—and the universe closing in.
But he wasn't done running.
> He was just getting started.
---
End of Chapter 2