The night sky split open, on the other side of the sky was a another world filled with a sea of clouds rolled in over the Azure Peaks, Where a silver haired cultivator stood beneath the light of a thousand stars.
"How beautiful" The Cultivator said.
Lin Yue's robe fluttered in the storm of spiritual energy as thunder surrounded her like dust.
"Heaven Tribulation... Seventh Bolt" she said, her voice calm but her body trembled. She had Cultivated her soul to its final last threshold the boundary between the mortals and Immortals. If she failed this her spirit would scatter like dust blown into the wind but if she succeeded, she would ascend.
But lightning didn't fall as it should have.
It twisted, shrieking with a resonance not born of this world at that moment Lin Yue saw not clouds not even the sky but steel towers with bright neon lights and a mirror like a storm that reflected another woman's face.
On the other side of that reality in a city bathed in endless electric glow was a girl Hana Kimura moved aside another can of coffee and groaned while looking at the Terminal.
"Another error? Are you serious right now..." she sighed.
She was exhausted at this point, she could almost feel a headache was coming and her fingers sore from coding deep into the night the AI synchronization project that she has been building was supposed to to to connect with human consciousness through a electromagnetic resonance that is a "Soul Network" her boss called it that.
Outside her window lightning cracked across the skyline then her monitor flashed white the system glitched.
"What the-" before she can finished the pulse scanner on her wrist sparked and in that split second she saw it, a woman in a flowing blue robe, eyes bright as the sea standing in the storm.
That's when everything collapsed.
When Hana opened her eyes again, her body did not feel right. The air smelled like pine and mist not smog and plastic. She sat up and looked around there was mountains piercing through clouds, sunlight shimmering on waterfalls and distant places floating above the earth it took her a few seconds until realization hit her.
"Wh-What the hell! Where am I!?" She screamed.
She then quickly put her hand on her neck. Her voice sounded strange softer, colder looking down she froze the hands she saw wasn't hers, the clothes weren't hers either.
The reflection in the stream beside her, was the girl she saw before blacking out.
White hair and Ocean blue eyes.
"No way, how am her." She touched her face.
At the same time, Lin Yue gasped awake surrounded by sterile walls, wires and humming sounds of machines. Lights blinked and screens moving around.
Her heart started pounding as she looked into a mirrored surface revealing dark brown hair, short and uneven, framing a stranger's face.
She whispered in disbelief.
"This is a mortal girl"
She turned around and saw openings on the walls which she made her way and what she saw was something she never would have ever thought there was buildings she never seen before and so many lights.
"This is..." she muttered.
Then somewhere across both realms, the mirror between them pulsed glowing like a heartbeat shared by two souls that are torn apart yet bound as one.
• Should I continue directly from Hana's POV (her first chaotic moments in the cultivation world) or Lin Yue's POV (her awakening in the modern city)