The ridge took an hour and cost him two blisters.

  He knew they were forming around the thirty-minute mark and kept walking anyway. Stopping on a slope with unknown terrain and something large somewhere to the north wasn't a decision he wanted to make. By the time he pulled himself up onto the bare rock at the top his right heel was demanding a conversation he wasn't prepared to have.

  He stood on the rock and looked out.

  The forest had no edge.

  In every direction, past every horizon, unbroken canopy. No buildings. No roads. No cleared land. Just trees going on until they became haze and then, far to the east, mountains. Dark and enormous, the kind that still held snow at the peaks regardless of season.

  To the west a river. Wide enough to catch the afternoon light in long silver strips.

  South, three smoke columns. Two thin. One thick, black, growing.

  A forest this size didn't exist back home. Not on a continent that still had cities.

  "This is going to be a problem," he thought.

  The sky above it all held that wrong blue, and looking at the full horizon made the wrongness worse somehow, like the color had more room to be itself out here.

  He sat down and took his shoes off. Looked at the blisters. Accepted them. Put the shoes back on because there was no alternative.

  He opened Earth Chat.

  [EARTH CHAT — WORLD] 9,782,441,203 users active

  It wasn't a conversation. It was a flood.

  Thousands of messages per second in every language. Lines visible for less than a breath before the next wave buried them.

  where am i someone please

  DO NOT GO NORTH OF THE EASTERN RIVER — there are things in the water

  my daughter was right next to me she's twelve her name is—

  ruins near a clearing with stone formations, something is inside them and it is NOT

  anyone near the mountains STAY AWAY from the—

  He watched it run for a full minute.

  "I can't read this," he thought.

  He closed it.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  The Summon Interface was still open from the Codex. He pulled it up again properly.

  SUMMON INTERFACE: Active

  Available Arrival Stage: Mortal Awakening — Early

  Available Potential: ★☆☆☆☆ or ★★☆☆☆

  Fragment Cost: ★☆☆☆☆ = 50 Fragments · ★★☆☆☆ = 150 Fragments

  Note: Summoned beings are fully realized individuals. They arrive with full knowledge of their skills and capabilities. They have no memory of a past because none exists. They are not tools. Treat them accordingly.

  He read the note at the bottom twice.

  Fully realized individuals.

  Not constructs. Not assets. Someone had written that word deliberately and put it somewhere he couldn't skip.

  He had zero fragments. 150 was a long way away.

  He went to close it.

  A notification appeared.

  QUEST COMPLETE

  Objective: Open the Summon Interface for the first time

  Reward: 1 Selective Summoning Scroll

  Note: Fragment cost waived when this scroll is used. One use only.

  The scroll dropped into his inventory before he finished reading.

  He opened the interface again. The cost line had changed.

  Summoning Scroll: 1 available. Fragment cost waived on next summon.

  Two stars. That was the answer. The cost was already covered, there was no reason to take the worse option.

  But not yet. He hadn't even been here a full day. He didn't know the terrain, what threats were close, what was worth knowing before he made that call. Whoever came through the scroll would wake up here with no past and no idea what they'd landed in. The least he could do was understand the ground first.

  Cael decided he'd use it tomorrow, once he had something more useful than a ridge and a headache to offer.

  He closed the interface.

  The quest log updated.

  QUEST: Easy

  Objective: Use Lightning Sense for 1 cumulative hour

  Reward: 2 Codex Fragments

  Two quests running. The survival one still counting. This new one measuring his practice time.

  The sun had dropped while he sat on the ridge rock. The thick smoke column south had grown heavier. The screaming from earlier had stopped. He couldn't decide if that was better or worse and settled on not knowing yet.

  He pulled the manual from the Codex.

  Thunder Void Foundation Sutra — ★☆☆☆☆

  He opened to the first page.

  It was a technique guide. Completely. No preamble, no explanation of why cultivation worked or what the world was. Just the method, written in exact technical language for a practitioner who already understood the framework.

  The first section was the breathing pattern. Not general breathing. This breathing. Specific counts, specific pauses, specific internal focus points aligned to where his three affinities ran. The text described sensation targets he had no reference for yet. "When the void channel acknowledges the draw, hold the out-breath until the stillness completes itself." He read that sentence four times.

  He read that sentence four more times and set it aside.

  The second section described the first meridian pathway. The route it took through the body was mapped precisely. Up the left side, crossing a specific point at the chest, down through the right arm to the fingers. The technique required him to trace that route mentally while holding the breathing pattern. Both at once, from the first session.

  "This wasn't written for someone starting from zero," he thought.

  He was not that person. He was going to have to learn the framework from the technique itself, the hard way, by doing it wrong enough times to understand what right felt like.

  Night came in from the east while he read. The forest below the ridge changed sound as darkness arrived. Birds going quiet, other things starting up. He tracked the northern thing with his ears when he could. At some point he couldn't find it.

  He kept reading until his eyes stopped moving reliably.

  Then he closed the Sutra, lay back on the cold rock, and looked up at the wrong blue sky going black.

  "Day one," he thought. "Still breathing."

  He was asleep in under four minutes.

  End of Chapter 2