Morning in that forest did not arrive like it did in Smoke City.
There was no bell.
No shouting.
No carts scraping stone.
There was only light—soft and constant, as if the sun had grown tired of rising and setting and decided to simply remain.
That alone made it suspicious.
In Smoke City, anything that stayed warm for too long was either owned by someone powerful… or protected by someone more powerful.
Kael woke with his heart already tight, as if he'd been running in his sleep.
He lay still for a while, staring at the wooden ceiling above him.
It did not leak.
It did not groan.
It did not threaten to collapse if he breathed too hard.
The bed did not smell like mold, sweat, or old rainwater. It smelled faintly of dry herbs and clean wood—like someone had lived carefully here, and the world had not punished them for it.
Kael did not understand that.
He understood hunger.
He understood being kicked awake.
He understood learning which alley had fewer rats.
He understood the way guards looked through you the same way they looked through smoke—because smoke was not worth noticing unless it choked them.
But this place…
This place was quiet.
Quiet was not something he trusted.
Slowly, he sat up, careful with the way he shifted his weight.
His missing hand changed everything.
Small motions. Small balances. Small habits.
He had learned to move without thinking about it—because thinking about it made it hurt in a different way.
He dragged the blanket aside, climbed off the bed, and stood.
For a moment, he simply stood there, breathing.
In through his nose.
Hold.
Out through his mouth.
His father's breathing method still existed in his body even when his memories didn't cooperate.
That was the strange thing about memory.
Sometimes the mind forgot, but the flesh remembered.
He stepped outside.
The forest greeted him without judgment.
Cool air washed over his face. It carried pine and damp earth. Somewhere in the distance, birds called to each other as if nothing in the world had ever been cruel.
Kael stood there longer than he meant to, just breathing.
In Smoke City, staring into nothing was how you got robbed.
Here, nothing stared back.
He should have felt relief.
Instead, his chest felt full—like the air was too clean, and his lungs didn't know what to do with it.
He looked toward the massive tree.
Old Master Ren was already there.
He stood beneath the canopy like he'd been there all night, and perhaps he had.
His robe was simple. His sleeves were loose. His posture was relaxed.
Yet the air around him felt… steady.
Not heavy like the Inner District.
Not sharp like a blade.
Steady.
As if the forest itself had decided to behave while he was present.
Kael walked toward him.
Each step felt lighter than it should have.
That, too, was unfamiliar.
Old Master Ren looked down and smiled.
Not loudly.
Not sharply.
Just… kindly.
"You slept," Ren said.
Kael nodded.
His throat tightened before he spoke.
"Yes, Master."
The word came out naturally.
And that frightened him.
Because it meant part of him had already decided to stay.
Ren did not react like a man who had won something.
He reacted like a man who had been worried.
"That is good," he said softly. "You were exhausted."
Kael lowered his gaze.
He did not know how to respond to kindness.
Not clean kindness.
Not kindness without a price attached.
In Smoke City, kindness was a transaction with a smile.
Old Master Ren's kindness felt… inconvenient.
Like it did not care whether Kael deserved it.
Ren watched him for a moment.
Then his eyes drifted—briefly—to Kael's arm.
To the stump where a hand should have been.
Kael's shoulders stiffened.
He waited for pity.
He waited for the slow, disgusting softness people used when they wanted to feel merciful.
Ren did not sigh.
Did not pity.
Did not turn away.
He simply looked back at Kael's face.
"Do you remember what I said last night?" Ren asked.
Kael nodded.
"About… being blurred," Kael said carefully. "About… being hard to find."
Ren nodded.
"And about the other soul," Ren added.
Kael's fingers curled unconsciously.
He could still feel it.
Not as a voice.
Not as a presence.
As pressure.
As a shelf inside his head that held things he could not reach without cutting himself open.
He swallowed.
"Yes."
Ren was silent for a while.
Then he said, "I told you it would hurt."
Kael's eyes flicked up.
Ren's expression did not change.
"It will not hurt like a knife," Ren said gently. "It will hurt like growth."
Kael did not understand the difference.
But he nodded anyway.
Ren lifted a hand and motioned.
"Come," he said. "Sit here."
There was a flat stone beneath the tree, smooth as if it had been placed there on purpose.
Kael sat.
Ren sat across from him, the way he had at the table last night—patient, calm, as if time was something he had too much of.
In that moment, Kael understood something that would matter later:
Old Master Ren did not rush because he could not be rushed.
People who were weak hurried.
People who were afraid hurried.
People who had deadlines hurried.
Old Master Ren looked like a man who had outlived deadlines.
Ren's voice was soft.
"Kael," he said, "the fragments you've been receiving… those are dangerous."
Kael's lips parted.
"Because they confuse me?" he asked.
Ren nodded.
"And because they change you without your permission," Ren added.
Kael lowered his gaze.
That was true.
He had been hearing words in his head he did not understand.
Seeing shapes.
Seeing lights.
Seeing strange streets made of glass and metal.
Feeling emotions that did not belong to an eight-year-old boy starving in Smoke City.
He whispered, "They make me… feel wrong."
Ren's eyes softened.
"They make you feel divided," Ren corrected gently. "Not wrong."
He paused.
Then he said, "I will open them."
Kael's breath caught.
"All of them?" he asked.
Ren nodded.
"Freely," Ren said. "So you can see. So you can understand."
Kael hesitated.
His voice came out very small.
"What if I don't like what I see?"
Ren smiled faintly.
"Then you will learn something important," he said.
Kael frowned.
"What?"
Ren's tone stayed mild.
"That you are still alive," he said. "And the dead life cannot bite you unless you let it."
Kael did not fully understand.
But he felt the weight of those words settle into him anyway.
Ren lifted two fingers.
He placed them lightly against Kael's forehead.
The touch was gentle.
The effect was not.
Kael's vision blurred.
The forest tilted.
The light cracked.
For a heartbeat, he felt like he was falling again—into cold water, into helplessness, into the River of Time that had swallowed him and spat him into Smoke City like waste.
Then—
It changed.
The world snapped.
Noise.
Harsh, endless noise.
Not birds.
Not wind.
Metal.
Voices.
Machines.
A different kind of city.
Buildings rose like cliffs, straight and sharp, made of glass that reflected sunlight instead of swallowing it. Lines ran everywhere—clean lines, hard corners—like the world had decided curves were inefficient.
People moved fast.
They wore strange cloth—tight fabric, stiff seams, shoes that clicked on flat ground.
Kael's eyes widened.
He tried to breathe.
His lungs filled with air that smelled of exhaust and heat and crowded bodies.
He looked down.
Two hands.
He had two hands.
He stared at them like they were foreign objects.
Then the hands moved without waiting for his permission.
Writing.
Holding tools.
Turning pages.
Touching keys that made a box glow.
Symbols appeared.
Numbers.
Diagrams.
Lines.
A building drawn in a thousand careful strokes.
Kael's heart hammered.
He was seeing through another life.
Not like a dream.
Like someone had poured a person into his head.
A child sitting in a classroom, eyes sharp, never satisfied with simple answers.
A boy whose stomach growled at night but who still forced himself to finish his work, because failing meant becoming invisible.
A teenager who learned quickly because he had learned early that the world did not forgive weakness.
A young man walking across a wide campus, books pressed to his chest, clothes clean, face tired, mind hungry.
A voice snapped at him—an instructor, impatient and fast.
A test paper returned with a mark that made his chest lift.
Praise.
The strange warmth of being seen.
Then more.
Long nights.
Projects.
Calculations that grew teeth.
Pages of symbols that looked like spells but were only numbers arguing with reality.
The memory did not linger on happiness.
Because that life had not been happy.
It had been driven.
It had been hungry.
It had been stubborn in the way only orphans could be stubborn.
He saw a certificate.
A degree.
Then another.
A Master's Degree—Structural Engineering.
The words burned themselves into his mind like a seal.
Kael's breath shook.
He felt pride.
Then immediately, he felt fear.
Because pride was always followed by the world correcting you.
And the world did correct him.
The memories pushed forward.
Work.
A hard hat.
A clipboard.
Steel beams and concrete.
A high-rise building reaching into the sky, unfinished and full of temporary supports that held the upper floors like fragile promises.
He heard radios crackling.
He heard a supervisor calling out instructions.
He saw a crane moving above—slow and heavy—swinging steel like a god that did not understand consequences.
Then—
A moment of wrongness.
Not dramatic.
Not fate shouting.
Not a villain laughing.
Just… wrong.
A jerk too sharp.
A movement too fast.
A sound that did not match what it should have been.
A radio dropped.
A scream.
The crane arm swerved like something had kicked it from the sky.
Kael felt the confusion first.
Then the terror.
He saw the impact.
He heard the sound of steel meeting concrete.
He heard a structure losing its agreement with gravity.
The memory did not linger on bodies.
It did not need to.
The horror was in the helplessness.
The sound of things failing.
The sensation of falling.
The sudden understanding that intelligence did not matter when the world decided to collapse.
And then—
Silence.
Cold.
A hospital smell.
A blank ceiling.
A heartbeat that stopped not with pain, but with exhaustion.
A life ending without family at the bedside.
An orphan in a world of steel and light.
The memories did not pause.
Because that life had not paused.
It ran forward like a river.
It carried loneliness that tasted like metal.
It carried bitterness that had no target.
It carried an obsession that kept the mind from breaking.
Stories.
Endless stories.
Novels about cultivation—mortals climbing by pain and persistence until they could split mountains, overturn seas, shatter skies, and make the heavens look away.
Heroes who grew stronger by bathing in sunlight until their bodies became impossible.
Warriors who screamed and changed, hair blazing like gold, strength multiplying because rage refused to accept limits.
People born different—mutations, gifts, curses—who learned to survive because the world punished the ordinary first.
Kael felt the nerd-like joy of it.
The shameless daydreaming.
The late-night arguments about realms, techniques, physiques, bloodlines.
He felt the small, humiliating hope: If I could be reborn… I would do it right. I would grind. I would suffer. I would win.
And beneath all of it, he felt the truth that life had hammered into that man:
Sometimes effort is not rewarded.
Sometimes the world simply collapses.
Sometimes you die without an audience.
That was what made those stories so addictive.
They promised a world where suffering meant something.
They promised a world where pain could be converted into strength.
They promised fairness.
Kael's mind screamed.
Because he had been given those promises… after he had already lived in a world that proved promises were lies.
The memories surged.
Ten years.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
All at once.
Like a dam breaking inside his skull.
Kael's body seized.
His breathing broke.
His stomach turned.
His vision flashed—too bright, too loud, too much.
And then he heard Master Ren's voice—soft and steady—cutting through the storm like a rope thrown into a flood.
"Breathe," Ren said. "Slowly."
Kael tried.
In through his nose.
Hold.
Out through his mouth.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The memories did not stop.
But.....