Kai woke up screaming.His hand struck the wall beside his bed hard enough to crack the plaster, and for several seconds he couldn't breathe. His chest rose and fell in ragged bursts. Cold sweat soaked through his shirt. The room was dark, and for one disorienting heartbeat he didn't know where he was.Then the details settled back into place. His bed was still beneath him. The curtains were still closed. His phone was still charging beside the lamp, its little light blinking green in the dark like nothing in the world was wrong.But the smell of smoke remained, thick in the back of his throat, and Kai knew nothing was fine at all.He lowered his trembling hand and stared at the fresh crack running through the plaster. Thousands of people had been screaming in his head only seconds ago. Ancient cultivators running through a burning city. Machines descending from a sky that didn't belong to this century. And that voice, low and patient, repeating the same four words.Bring them togethe

THUMP.The ground shook beneath Kai's feet.Sophia remained unconscious in his arms, her weight suddenly precious in a way that startled him. He tightened his hold without meaning to.Around him, the café had gone unnaturally quiet. The two workers stood frozen near the counter, eyes glassy. The unconscious man on the floor had stopped trembling. Outside, the entire street had gone still. Too still.Kai looked through the glass. A woman stood frozen beside a taxi. A delivery driver, halfway across the road, hadn't taken another step. A student clutched her backpack like she meant to walk and simply forgot how. A man stood mid-stride in the crosswalk.All of them had their eyes closed. All of them wore the same symbol on their foreheads, gold, then dark blue, pulsing like a slow heartbeat.Kai's jaw tightened. He pulled out his phone and called Aria.She picked up on the first ring. "Kai?""She's unconscious.""I know.""You know?" His voice sharpened. "How do you know?""I can see her

Kai did not sleep. He sat on the roof until sunrise, arms wrapped around his knees, watching the horizon bleed from black to gray to a reluctant gold. The image of Elias opening the black door kept replaying in his mind. Not once. Not twice. Over and over, like a wound that refused to scab.His master had stood before that ancient door willingly. And Shen Tian had been there, watching, saying nothing.Kai closed his eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?"The wind moved through his hair, indifferent to the question. Below him, the city was slowly waking. Cars returned to the roads. Shop grates rattled open. People walked toward work with the particular blindness of people who believed yesterday had been ordinary.The government had already released an official statement. A temporary neurological phenomenon has caused several citizens to lose consciousness. Authorities have contained the situation. There is no cause for public concern.Kai almost laughed. No cause for concern. He had felt thou

"The Last Cultivator has returned home."The words echoed through the hospital, and dozens of patients sat upright at once, eyes glowing with the same golden light. For one terrifying second nobody moved. Then they collapsed together, thud, thud, thud, and the ward erupted into screaming and beeping monitors.Kai grabbed Sophia's hand. "Come with me.""What is happening?""I don't know." For once, that was the truth, he didn't even have a theory. He only knew one thing: something knew where he lived, and it wanted him there.His phone buzzed. ‘PHASE TWO: FIND THE FIRST HOUSE.’ He deleted it. It came back. He deleted it again. It came back, then dissolved into a map, a red point blinking over his own neighborhood.Sophia looked over his shoulder. "Is that your house?""We're going alone," Kai said, pocketing the phone."We're going. You just said we.""I misspoke.""You don't misspeak, Kai. You calculate." She crossed her arms. "So calculate this — you're not leaving me in a hospital f

STATUS: ALIVE.The words burned into the wall in cold blue light, and Kai's mind simply refused to load them, like a door jammed shut against a storm. Elias. Alive.After the machines. After the blood. After Kai had watched his master throw himself into the killing blow meant for him — after eleven years of carrying that single frozen image behind his eyes like a scar that never closed.His hands curled into fists so slowly it looked deliberate, though it wasn't."No." The word came out cracked, barely a whisper.The strange man beside him didn't flinch. "Kai—""Don't." Kai rounded on him, Qi flaring hot enough that the air around his shoulders shimmered. "You knew.""I knew there was a possibility.""A possibility?" Kai jabbed a finger at the glowing wall like it had personally insulted him. "It says he's alive!""It says E-01 is alive." The man's voice stayed maddeningly level, which only made Kai angrier."That's Elias!"Silence.Kai closed the distance until he could see the tired