He had planned to buy clothes, but his bloodlust and the day's ordeal weighed on him. Rest, long overdue, called louder. Calen turned homeward, the pearl and pendant secure, ready to sleep.
Calen trudged toward his house, hands buried in his pant pockets, his mind churning over the day's events and the arc of his life. Today had been the most significant in two years—a stark contrast to the monotonous grief that had consumed him since his father's disappearance. Those two years were a blur of mourning, hunger, and poverty, each day bleeding into the next. Now, reflecting on it, his memories felt fragmented, as if shrouded in fog.
He tried to recall his life before his father vanished. Strangely, only a handful of moments surfaced: vivid conversations with his father, etched in his mind with crystalline clarity, as if they'd happened yesterday. Yet, those fragments were too sparse to account for the twelve years he'd lived before the loss. The more he probed, the more a nagging unease grew within him—something was wrong, deeply wrong.
Focusing harder, Calen strained to unearth more from his childhood. A sharp throb pulsed in his temples, escalating into a piercing headache. The pain felt familiar, like the prelude to awakening from earlier. He reached his house, the ache now a relentless drumbeat in his skull. Fumbling under a nearby stone, he retrieved the hidden key and unlocked the front door.
As he crossed the threshold, the pain surged, amplifying tenfold, as if the house itself rejected him. Staggering toward his bed, desperate to collapse and find relief, his vision blurred. Darkness closed in, and before he could reach the bed, his legs buckled. Calen crumpled to the floor in the hall, consciousness slipping away.
Sunset Village - Northwestern Residential Area
In the northwestern part of Sunset Village stood a grand two-story house. Its front yard bloomed with vibrant flowering plants, open for all passersby to admire. In the backyard, a towering oak tree swayed gently in the sea breeze. Beyond, the vast ocean stretched to the horizon, the night sky above littered with stars, cloudless and strikingly clear.
Beneath the oak, a small tea table held a teapot, a chessboard, and two steaming teacups flanking the board. Two men in their seventies sat opposite each other, engrossed in a chess game. One, with a short white beard and long white hair tied in a ponytail, exuded elegance and refinement. He was the village chief.
Across from him sat a man with a clean-shaven face, his shoulder-length, white hair loose and swaying in the breeze. His dark red pupils glowed faintly in the dim light, lending him a wild, unrestrained air.
"How's the new boy?" the second man asked.
The village chief sipped his tea and let out a long sigh. "It's complicated. The boy is only fourteen, an orphan for the past two years, surviving on scraps and enduring constant hunger. He had lost touch with the village since his father vanished, unaware of even basic knowledge that every villager should know. His awakening story is… extraordinary. He ate a deep-sea demon fish's flesh raw out of hunger, forcing his body into an Aether overdrive. He must have uncanny luck, because some great figure at sea took pity and guided him through the overdrive to awaken."
The other man listened calmly but raised an eyebrow at the mention of help. "How do you know someone aided him?" he asked.
"The boy said a voice told him to eat more of the fish," the chief replied. "I assume it was a senior passing through, pitying him."
The man scoffed. "Old Yang, are you going senile? Do you think awakening someone is that simple? Even masters from cultivation families can't casually awaken others. It demands immense strength and focus, enough to aid only one or two promising juniors a year, giving them an edge by awakening early. They must make contact and spend days in seclusion. This boy didn't even see his benefactor; he only heard a voice and awoke on a day. Do you grasp how powerful this person must be?"
The chief's eyes widened as the man's words unraveled his hasty deduction. "Do you think the boy's hiding something? Or perhaps a special treasure helped him awaken?" he asked, puzzled.
"No, it can't be a treasure," the man said. "We'd sense a lingering scent of the treasure around him if it's a special treasure, but I detected nothing unusual. It's likely true—a very, very powerful figure helped him. Likely someone in the Intent Realm. But why? Why aid a random boy? Many die at sea daily, so why pay attention to this boy specifically?. If we chalk it up to pity, what's such a powerful figure doing in this backwater?"
Both men fell silent, grappling with the mystery. They felt entangled in something complex, unaware of its scope. After a few minutes, the chief broke the quiet. "I've asked Martin to investigate the boy. We'll see if his report offers clues."
They resumed their chess game, the board a silent witness to their unease.
…
Martin trudged along the paved road toward the village chief's house, the flickering light of flaming torches casting long shadows on either side. The acrid scent of burning oil hung faintly in the air, mingling with the cool night breeze. At the road's end loomed a grand, two-story manor, its windows aglow with an ethereal white light—an anomaly in a village illuminated by the warm, yellow flicker of torches and oil lanterns. The glow emanated from rare Aether lamps, powered by ambient Aether, a subtle reminder of the chief's status and resources. Martin's steps were automatic, his mind tangled in a web of troubling thoughts.
The chief had tasked him with investigating a boy and his parents, but what Martin uncovered left him unsettled, as his initial assumptions began to unravel. Earlier, when the boy, Calen, claimed a voice urged him to consume more of the demon fish, Martin dismissed it as a hallucination born of pain and hunger. Now, doubts gnawed at him. The boy's origins seemed far more complex than those of a mere orphan.