Suddenly, he sprang up to his feet as he remembered something important she had said earlier.
"You said out of a hundred cultivators, only one may awaken it, right?"
She looked up at him lazily and replied, "Yeah. What about it?"
What about it? Did she really just ask him that? She was literally asking him to beat a one-percent chance. And if he failed, he knew damn well she was going to kill him.
She chuckled, her tone carrying that cold playfulness again. "Why do you think I chose you out of the billions of people that died on Earth, huh? There's something special about your soul. I haven't seen anything like it before."
Kaiden froze for a second. His soul? She wasn't talking about Kaiden's original soul, she was talking about him—Drex's soul. That made more sense. Kaiden's soul was gone. He was what remained.
"Now sit your ass down and let's get this over with," she said in an annoyed tone this time.
He nodded nervously and lowered himself back down, crossing his legs again. His palms were sweaty as he rubbed them on his robe.
He stared at her shadowy figure for what felt like forever, five minutes of nothing but silence. He waited for the next instruction, but it never came.
"Tch." His jaw tightened. "What am I even doing here?" Sitting silently was torture.
Finally, her voice came, calm and sharp. "Close your eyes and focus on your soul as much as possible."
"My soul? How the hell am I supposed to do that? I didn't even know I had a soul until yesterday. How am I supposed to concentrate on something I can't even see?"
"Shut your mouth. I'll help you out."
Her words cut off any argument he was about to make. He let out a shaky breath and obeyed. His eyelids fell shut, darkness swallowing his vision.
At first, there was nothing. Just the muffled sound of his own heartbeat and the faint rustle of the wind outside. Then it shifted.
It started as a tingling in his chest, faint but persistent, like a string being plucked somewhere deep inside him. The feeling spread, crawling into his arms, his legs, even his fingertips. His breathing grew shallow, his body heavier.
"Don't resist," her voice echoed, though it wasn't coming from beside him anymore. It was in his head, surrounding him from every direction. "Let it take you in. Don't fight it."
Kaiden gritted his teeth, but he listened.
The tingling turned into warmth, then heat, then something far stranger—he began to feel everything. The weight of his bones, the pulse of blood rushing through his veins, the tiny sparks that flickered with every nerve. For a split second, it was overwhelming. He felt like his body was going to burst apart from too much awareness.
And then—
Nothing.
It all disappeared. The heat, the pulse, the noise of his own body. Everything was gone, like he had been yanked out of himself and tossed into a void.
Kaiden's mind spun. This wasn't silence—it was absence. A hollow nothingness that stretched infinitely in every direction. He tried to feel his hands, his legs, his breath, but there was nothing. No weight. No body.
Panic clawed up his throat. Did I die?
Just when he thought he would lose it completely, something pulled at him. A thread, faint but unyielding, tugging him back toward… himself. His awareness flickered, and with a gasp, his eyes snapped open.
He jolted upright, chest heaving.
Right in front of him, leaning close, was her shadowy face. Or rather, the formless mass where a face should've been. Even though he couldn't see features, he swore her empty gaze was piercing straight into his soul.
His blood ran cold.
"Did… did it fail?" Kaiden asked, his voice breaking slightly.