"Hmm?… Where am I?"
It was pitch black, thick as a black night. Nothing could be seen. Nothing could be heard.
Then came the light.
No impact. No pain. Just sudden stillness so sudden it made his heart clench in confusion.
He opened his eyes to a sky that shimmered like cracked glass, a thousand reflections of worlds he didn't know suspended in its dome.
The ground was soft, white leaves rustling like wind chimes beneath him. Trees rose around him, tall and spiraled, glowing faintly with inscriptions that shifted when unobserved. The air smelled of dream floral, unplaceable, and fleeting.
"You're late," said a voice.
The ex sprinting ace turned his head sharply.
A mid age lady sat cross-legged on a branch above him, sipping teas from a gourd shaped like an owl's skull.
Her clothes were layered with a faded symbol that looked like they had once been stars.
A Goddess?
"Most arrive before they fall," the lady continued. "You jumped. How dramatic."
"Am I… Am I dead?"
"Only your past life," she responded, not unkindly.
"Now you may choose, return to the cycle, or walk the Path of Echoed Transcendence.
The name stirred something in him.
"Echoed…" he repeated. "What does that mean?"
The mid age lady set down her gourd.
"Tell me boy, do you remember the moment you leapt?"
"I…I heard something."
"What?"
"A voice. Not mine. It… asked me if I could hear it."
The lady nodded. "The First Echo. Rare. Fewer than one in a hundred million hear it naturally. Fewer still survive this fall."
The lady spoke as though the fall he just had was something of an iconic action. A deed that needed to be done for a certain reason.
"What is it?" he asked curiously.
"A resonance, older than time. A scar on the soul of the world." The lady leaned down, eyes gleaming. "When mortals suffer great loss or enlightenment, they become momentarily aligned with their true self, not the one bound by this life, but all selves across all lifelines. Those who hear the Echo can trace that resonance… and, perhaps rewrite their fate."
Hearing all these words, that didn't make any sense to him, he had to ask.
"Who are you? And why me?"
A silence settled between them, heavy and humming.
The mid age lady titled her head. "That is the correct question. And one I dare not answer, for the Echo is not mine to command."
The former sprinting ace bewildered, as he didn't know which of his questions she was referring to.
The lady reached into her sleeve and pulled out a narrow piece of paper.
"But I can offer you an entry…. into our sect."
He took the paper. It felt warm. Alive. Like a heartbeat.
Dream Echo Pavilion was written at the top in silver ink, shifting as he blinked.
"Cultivation?" he whispered. "I thought that I couldn't…"
"Because you were born with a silent soul?"
The mid age lady chuckled, as she cut him short. "Child, your soul doesn't lack sound. It simply sings at a frequency no one in your dust choked village could hear. I mean think about it. Why did you think you were able to accomplish such a fit that no one else could?"
The paper burned away in his hand, dissolving into motes of light that spiraled into his chest.
He gasped, as warmth spread through him, followed by the sudden sensation of being watched.
Not by the lady. Not by a beast.
But by something within himself.
The Echo That Should Not Be…
Words appeared in the air before him carved into a translucent window of light.
[ERROR—Echo Classification: Forbidden (Othir-13)]
[Recalibrating Resonance Framework…]
[Initializing: Sin Point Counter—0 ]
[Dream Fragments: Locked]
[Name: Xue Lian]
[Title: Wielder of the Forbidden Echo]
[Welcome, Wielder.]
The window vanished.
"W…What was that?" he asked, voice shaking.
The lady's expression darkened. "I was afraid of this."
"You know what it means?"
"No one should carry an Echo of Othir," the mid age lady said softly. "Thirteen exit. Yours is the last. The Echo That Should Not Be. It does not echo your past self. but echoes something else. Something not from this world."
His throat dried.
"So what happens now?" he asked
"You still have a choice," The lady spoke. "Stay. Walk the path. Cultivate your strength… and perhaps shape your own ending. Or leave, and return to a world that cannot hear you."
He looked down at his hands.
They shimmered faintly, faint afterimages layered over them, like other hands superimposed, older, younger, bloodied, glowing, skeletal.
So many versions of him.
"I'll stay," he said.
The mid age lady smiled, though her eyes held the weight of knowing.
"Then rise, Disciple…" She said. "Welcome to the path."
As the sky shimmered and began to fracture above them, as if opening a dream-gate, he heard the voice again.
Only now it didn't ask.
"We remember you."
And for the first time, he believed it.
===========
[A/N: Just to make things more clear. I'd start calling him by his name from the next chapter.]