The world had ended once.
The sky still remembered. Its fractured dome stretched overhead, marred with endless gray clouds and streaks of crimson light that never faded. Ash drifted with every breath of wind, falling like snow upon mountains, rivers, and ruined sect halls.
In the collapsed library of the Azure Horizon Sect, a child wailed.
A woman's body—already brittle, skin turned to cinder and bone—curled protectively around him. Her arms had shielded him from falling stone and firestorm alike, but her final act left her body hollow, a sculpture of ash that crumbled as the infant squirmed free.
Elder disciples arrived too late. They found the boy crying amidst ruins and burned scrolls, tiny fists blackened with soot.
"His meridians are… destroyed," one elder whispered after probing with qi. "Charred. No flow remains. He is crippled. Better to let him return to the dust."
But the maid who had followed them into the ruins knelt and scooped the boy into her arms. Her hands trembled, but her eyes were steady.
"If Heaven wished him gone, he would have perished with the rest. I'll raise him. Even if the world calls him broken."
The boy did not stop crying until she wrapped him with a tattered black scarf torn from her own robe.
Seventeen years passed.
The boy had grown into Aeris Yun, tall and lean, yet still branded by the skyfire's curse. He swept the sect courtyard at dawn, while other disciples meditated. Each exhale left a faint puff of ash drifting from his lips. Each motion reminded him that his body was not whole.
"Aeris, why do you bother?" a passing disciple sneered. "No qi flows through your meridians. You're nothing but the sect's sweeper. Forever crippled."
He ignored them. He always ignored them. The broom scratched against stone, steady, like a heartbeat.
But today the wind shifted.
He froze. Something foul clung to the morning air. The usual drifting cinders carried not only the weight of ash—but the writhing, oily texture of plague-spores.
A child's scream cut through the courtyard. A young outer disciple collapsed, clutching his throat. Gray veins crawled across his skin as ash-spores burrowed into his flesh.
The crowd panicked.
"Plague!"
"Stay back!"
"Don't touch him—he's already dead!"
Aeris's hands trembled. His broom clattered to the ground. His body moved before thought could catch it.
He knelt beside the boy, ignoring the cries to flee. The spores pulsed like worms beneath skin, trying to crawl into him as well. His instincts screamed death—but something deeper stirred in his blood.
Take it, a voice whispered. Burn it. You were born from the cinders of heaven itself.
Without training, without technique, Aeris pressed his palm against the boy's chest. He inhaled—deep, desperate.
The plague-spores surged into him like molten needles. Agony seared through his blackened veins. His vision turned white with fire.
But he did not die.
The veins across his arms lit like threads of ember, glowing beneath his skin. His body burned, but instead of consuming him, the ash within fused, shifting, forging. The spores dissolved into raw energy that hissed through his ruined meridians—leaving behind something new.
When the light faded, the boy gasped, free of corruption.
Aeris staggered, smoke curling from his mouth, his eyes flashing ember-red before dimming again.
Silence gripped the courtyard.
One disciple whispered, "That's… impossible."
Another muttered, "His meridians… they're glowing…"
The elders who had once named him crippled stared as if seeing him for the first time.
And above, the ever-broken sky pulsed faintly, as if recognizing a spark it had lost.
Thus began the path of Aeris Yun, the child of ashes—whose crippled body hid a Dao capable of burning the heavens themselves.