Chapter 1: Whispers of the South
They say the sky cracked once.
Not with thunder.
Not with fire.
But with memory.
Long ago, under the fading rule of the Yuan Dynasty, the empire stood tall on the outside but crumbled from within. Its palaces gleamed with gold, soldiers marched in perfect lines, and dragon banners danced in the wind. But behind those curtains of silk and ceremony, whispers moved like smoke—slow, choking, and impossible to grasp.
Among those whispers was an old prophecy, barely remembered and rarely spoken aloud:
"When the Sky of the North fades, a child of the South will rise.
Born from forgotten stars,
Raised between rivers,
He shall walk between heavens and shake the roots of kings."
Most called it a fairytale. Some said it was a warning. But deep in the southern province of Jiangnan, near a river that flowed lazily into the Southern Sea, a boy was born on a quiet morning that seemed to pause time itself.
The wind stopped.
Birds held their songs.
The blue of the sky turned soft, like ink left too long in water.
That child's name was Li Tianhe.
He didn't come from noble blood. His home was a modest wooden house built near the river, surrounded by bamboo and sleepy willows. People in the village said strange things about the boy. That he didn't cry when he was born, only blinked and stared straight at the midwife like he knew her soul. That the water around his house always stayed calm, even during storm season. That animals—cats, dogs, even chickens—followed him like he was a little emperor.
His mother, Nyi Raraswati, was a quiet woman with a gaze both kind and distant. She spoke little, mostly in a foreign tongue, though her Mandarin was fluent enough to silence gossip. She came from across the ocean, a place she called Parahyang. Nobody had ever heard of it, but her stories sounded like dreams: forests that sang at night, mountains that breathed fog, temples older than dynasties.
She wore robes with patterns the villagers couldn't name—woven with golden thread and marked with strange symbols: ᮕᮛᮠᮡᮀ. And always, always, she wore a wooden pendant over her heart, carved with swirling lines that pulsed faintly when Tianhe touched them.
His father, Li Cheng, was simpler. A middle-ranking general posted to the southern border, quiet but firm, with a sharp gaze and a kind hand. He never boasted, never drank too much, and often brought Tianhe small gifts: a feather from a hawk, a tiny jade carving of a fish, a scrap of poetry from some northern poet.
Li Cheng died when Tianhe was five.
The story was short and cruel. Bandits attacked a farming village. When Li Cheng arrived, he saw not bandits but tax collectors, armed and drunk, taking rice and dignity from people who had nothing left. He raised his voice. He drew his sword. And for that, the nobles called him a traitor.
There was no trial. No funeral.
Only a sealed letter and a cold box of ashes.
Tianhe didn't cry.
His mother did not scream.
But that night, the sky wept like it had lungs.
From that day forward, Tianhe changed.
He began to read everything—books on history, war, philosophy, even cookbooks. He listened more than he spoke, watched more than he moved. By the age of ten, he could recite the Art of War, quote Laozi, and correct old Master Shen at the temple about stars and spirits.
And then came the dreams.
They began as whispers—voices calling his name in a language he didn't know. Then images: two moons hanging above mountains of silver, a sea that burned like fire, a throne made of roots and gold.
His mother said nothing, only placing the pendant in his palm and closing his fingers around it.
"Never forget who you are," she said in her soft accent. "Not even when they tell you who you're not."
At twelve, Tianhe caught the attention of a retired strategist named Jun Ma, who now served as a gardener for the Wuyingdian Academy—the empire's most elite military school.
Jun Ma was quiet and funny, with a limp in one leg and a strange habit of talking to trees. But he saw something in Tianhe. A sharpness. A silence filled with questions.
"You read like you're chasing ghosts," Jun Ma once said. "That's a soldier's heart right there."
With Jun Ma's help, Tianhe sat for the entrance exams. Everyone laughed. A poor boy from nowhere? With no clan, no backers, no name?
But he passed.
Not just passed. He shattered records.
Three years later, he was the youngest graduate in Academy history.
He didn't smile. He didn't cry.
He only looked at the sky, and for the first time in years, whispered:
"Do you remember me?"
To be continued in Chapter 2