He awakened to pain and power.
There was no warmth, no blinding light, no divine welcome. Only pressure intense and unrelenting as if the very fabric of the universe resisted his existence. For a brief, soul-wrenching moment, Kael felt himself split in two: the memories of another life clashing violently against the embryonic rhythm of this one.
Then… silence.
And then a heartbeat.
Ba-dump.
He existed.
Not as a concept, not as a drifting soul, but as flesh, Small, Fragile and yet impossibly dense with power.
It should have been impossible to think because he was just a newborn, freshly baked from the womb but Kael was awake. His mind was alert, his soul luminous and pulsing with sentience far beyond his form. His name Kael echoed in his being like a memory he hadn't yet earned.
Around him, voices blurred. Foreign, musical, their tones seemingly urgent.
"He's not crying…"
"The starlight! Look, his body's absorbing it!"
"Ancestor save us, what is this child?"
The scent of incense and crushed starlotus filled the air. Kael blinked against the gleam of glowing runes etched into the birthing chamber's crystal dome. Floating orbs of spatial essence hovered above, trembling. A ripple of aether not the normal star energy, but its purer, ancient counterpart coiled around his small form.
He looked up… and knew.
He was on Astralis.
He had never seen it before and never heard the name in this life but the truth was etched into his marrow, as if he had always been meant for this place.
A hand reached toward him delicate, and trembling. A woman, her face drawn from exhaustion yet aglow with wonder, cradled him close to her breasts. Her voice was music touched by awe.
"You're so beautiful, my child" she whispered.
Kael recognized her or rather, felt her: Syra Vorian, of the space-wielding Vorian clan that bent portals and timelines like thread. Her soul resonated with his own. He was her son, though neither of them could have anticipated what had truly arrived in her womb.
Above them, cracks split across the chamber ceiling not from damage, but from space warping under his presence. A vortex opened to the stars beyond the dome, and for a heartbeat, the skies looked down and blinked.
And then the visions began.
Across Astralis, cultivators fell to their knees. Constellations shifted. Astrological temples collapsed under the pressure of celestial messages. Each continent each kingdom, sect, and race witnessed a different sign.
In Solaris Dominion, pillars of golden fire danced around the thrones of the Sunborn Kings.
In Umbra Vale, shadows screamed and merged into an eclipse that lingered for hours.
In Elarion Peaks, bolts of blue lightning carved a name into the clouds: Kael.
In Nether Deep, the tides reversed. A sleeping sea god opened its eyes.
At the summit of Aether Reach, monks in starlight meditation wept, whispering of a child born before destiny.
Back in the Vorian Sanctum, the ancestors arrived.
Ten of them, ancient beings whose cultivation transcended time materialized through rifts of space, their forms half-ethereal. They did not speak immediately. They looked at the child, at Kael then at the vortex around him and then at the spiral hourglass marking glowing faintly on his chest and they saw the truth.
One spoke, his voice a thunderous echo of collapsed stars.
"His soul is not of this plane."
Another narrowed her eyes.
"He is born with a miniature world… Already active. Already… vast."
Kael floated just above his mother's arms, wrapped in threads of silver space-light. Inside his inner world, time surged. Mountains grew. Starlight trees sprouted. It was an impossible feat, a feat reserved for those at the fourth stage of cultivation.
Yet here it was formed at birth.
More astounding still: his star bond began.
In the skies above the Vorian estate, thousands of stars flickered. Then, one by one, they dimmed, not because they lost power, but because they were being drawn upon.
Normally, a child bonded with one or two minor stars. Geniuses sometimes awakened three.
Kael bonded with eight.
And not just any eight, but high-grade stars from the Seventh and Eighth Astral Layers. Each one a beacon of overwhelming might.
The elders fell silent.
This wasn't a prodigy.
This was… a cosmic anomaly.
Suddenly, Kael felt it, a jolt in his lower abdomen. Foreign, intimate, terrifying. It took him a moment to process it: a reproductive core. The ability to bear life. He was born intersex in this world, an impossibility in his previous life, now a possibility in this world, Astralis.
He didn't know whether to feel grief, wonder, or fear. But one thing was certain.
His life would never be simple.
Meanwhile, outside a chamber, far beyond the Vorian clan walls, a girl watched from a floating lotus mirror. Her eyes slitted and dark, glittered with curiosity.
"So… this is the Starborn Rift," she murmured. "Fascinating."
And the mirror flickered into smoke.