The tear in the sky did not explode open—it peeled, like old ice surrendering to spring.
From its edges dripped light the color of burning snow, pale and violent at the same time.
Lauri felt it before he saw it: a pressure, a resonance, a trembling recognition in the marrow of his being.
Something had crossed the threshold.
Something not meant for this world.
And yet… it had come for him.
The Rift Sovereign—titanic, shadowed, half‑formed—knelt in front of Lauri and raised an arm of fractured star‑bone. The gesture was not one of attack. It was shielding.
"Stay behind me," the sovereign rumbled.
Its voice rippled through the valley like a glacier cracking open.
"You must not look directly at it."
But Lauri did.
And the world changed color.
The entity forcing its way through the tear did not have a shape so much as an intention.
Black threads pulsed beneath translucent veils of distorted space, shifting between humanoid silhouette and something ancient enough to predate fear. Its presence devoured depth. The mountains seemed flatter, the air thinner.
Yanmei, half‑collapsed against a frost‑scarred boulder, forced herself upright.
"This qi… it's wrong. I've fought beasts, rifts, shadow‑kin—this is none of those."
Her voice cracked with something Lauri had never heard from her before.
Not discipline.
Not authority.
Something softer.
Almost frightened.
Mei stepped in front of Lauri without hesitation, one hand rising, weaving a sigil of shimmering jade that resonated with her Realm‑Walker nature. Her eyes glowed—not with anger, but with a fierce protectiveness that made Lauri's breath hitch.
"You won't touch him," she said.
The entity's attention slid toward her.
A world‑cold whisper followed.
"…You again."
Lauri felt a sting behind his ribs—as if the words themselves scraped against his soul-thread. Mei's back straightened; the jade light around her flickered, then steadied with a stubborn brilliance.
Yanmei stared.
"You know this thing?"
"No," Mei answered tightly.
"But it knows me."
The Rift Sovereign's arm trembled as it held back the intruder's advance. "Lauri," it thundered, "listen well. What killed your mother hunts by thread—it consumes fate-lines, devours inheritance, corrupts lineage. And now it seeks you."
The entity pushed harder.
The tear widened.
The sky screamed.
Lauri felt an instinct then—something old stirring in his bones. A quiet force. A northern force. Not loud. Not explosive. Not spectacular.
Sisu.
Finnish perseverance—not the blazing fire of ambition, but the slow, patient refusal to fall.
His qi pulsed in response, white and cold, like frost spreading across glass.
The Rift Sovereign turned its massive head toward him.
"Yes," it whispered with something disturbingly close to pride.
"Your first meridian is ready."
Lauri didn't understand cultivation theory; he barely understood the world he stood on. But he understood this:
If he did nothing, Mei would die.
Yanmei would die.
The sovereign would die.
This realm would break.
And Lauri—ordinary sauna‑loving Lauri—was done watching others suffer for him.
He stepped forward.
Mei's eyes widened. "Lauri—!"
Yanmei reached out weakly. "Idiot, stay back—!"
The sovereign's warning shook the mountains: "You are not ready!"
Perhaps not.
But readiness was a luxury.
He placed his palm on his chest.
"Northern Tempering… begin."
A surge tore through him—white, ancient, cold as the birth of winter. His meridians ignited like constellations awakening after centuries of slumber. His breath turned to frost. His heartbeat echoed like a smith striking iron in the deep.
The entity froze.
For the first time, it reacted with something akin to alarm.
Mei gasped, jade light pulsing violently as it tried to harmonize with his new resonance.
Yanmei whispered, "By the Pavilion's ancestors… he's tempering himself with no guidance…"
Lauri felt nothing but clarity.
Silence.
A silence so complete it felt like returning home.
He raised his hand toward the tear.
White light burst from his fingertips—not as a weapon, but as a boundary.
A northern horizon drawn across the sky.
The entity recoiled.
The Rift Sovereign shouted, "Hold it, Lauri! Just a moment more—!"
A heartbeat.
Another.
Another.
The tear flickered, destabilized, shrieking as its edges folded inward—pulled not by the sovereign, not by Mei, but by the quiet determination of a man who refused to yield.
Then—
A spear of black qi shot from the entity's core and pierced the sovereign's chest.
The sky went silent.
The sovereign staggered. Star‑bone cracked.
Lauri's boundary shattered.
Mei screamed his name.
Yanmei dragged herself toward him, sword flashing in desperate arcs.
The entity straightened… and spoke with a voice that tunneled through the marrow of existence.
"You temper well, child. But your lineage is mine."
The tear widened again, devouring light.
The Rift Sovereign fell to one knee, ichor like molten constellations dripping from its wound. It grabbed Lauri's shoulder with a trembling claw.
"Run… to the Jade Frost Pavilion… they must protect you… before it—"
Its voice broke.
Before it what?
A shadowed hand reached out from the tear.
Toward Lauri.
Toward his soul-thread.
Toward the truth his mother died to keep hidden.