Chapter 5 – The Fall Into Silence
Ashen's breathing was ragged as he crouched behind a cracked stone wall, the ruined landscape of the ancient site spreading out before him like a graveyard of forgotten power. Dust clouded the air, stirred by collapsed floors and broken carvings. The group's expedition, meant to be a routine monster field study, had turned into something else entirely.
He hadn't expected the betrayal.
His classmates had moved on after the minor skirmish with a Crawler Beast, but someone — no, someones — had deliberately left him behind. When he tried to call out, they didn't answer. When he tried to follow, the ground beneath his feet had crumbled. He remembered slipping, the cold rushing wind in the darkness, and the painful crash that came after.
Now, his leg throbbed. Maybe fractured.
Ashen clenched his jaw, pulling himself upright using a nearby column. This was deeper than the rest of the ruin. The air had weight. The strange carvings on the walls no longer resembled the crude symbols above. They pulsed faintly — as if they were waiting.
And then there was the sound — or rather, the absence of it.
No echoes. No scurrying beasts. No wind.
Only a humming silence that tugged at something deep within his chest.
Ashen limped forward, guided by instinct rather than light. His hand brushed against something smooth and cold. A door. No, not a door — a gate, woven together with ancient arrays glowing in faded starlight. In its center was a seal of chaos, almost indistinguishable now, flickering like a dying memory.
His heart skipped. He could feel… something alive behind it.
The gate didn't resist his touch. It fell apart — not shattered, but disintegrated, as if recognizing him.
Inside was a chamber unlike anything he'd seen — a vast dome, filled with silence and forgotten purpose. And in the center, suspended within a web of arrays and runes, was an egg.
It wasn't glowing. It wasn't pulsing. In fact, it looked like it should be dead.
Yet…
Ashen stepped closer, trembling. The egg was massive — twice his size, black as the void between stars, veined with silver lines that curved in patterns impossible to track with the eye. It felt ancient. Cold. Lonely.
And barely alive.
He collapsed to his knees. His body couldn't go on, not with his leg and his qi reserves drained. "Am I really going to die here?" he whispered, voice breaking.
He thought of his family. His younger sister, waiting for him back home. His father, silent but proud. The little desk in his room with cultivation manuals neatly stacked. The mornings he spent training alone while others mocked him.
No. He refused to die here.
But he had nothing left — no scroll, no elixirs, no techniques that could help. Only… that strange power he had awakened the day he arrived in this world. The soul merge.
He had never used it. Not once. The very nature of it revolted him. To merge souls with another lifeform — even beasts — was taboo in all schools of cultivation. It risked losing one's identity, or worse, fusing with something that could overwhelm or corrupt.
But now, it was all he had.
Ashen reached out, hand trembling as he placed his palm on the egg's cold surface. "This probably won't even work," he muttered, bitter. "But if there's even a flicker of life in you…"
He closed his eyes, forcing his soul out.
The technique activated, not through chanting or symbols — but through instinct. A ripple of pain tore through his chest, and in the same moment, he felt something reach back.
A presence. Vast. Sleeping. And wounded.
The soul within the egg stirred. It wasn't aggressive. It wasn't dominant. It was… waiting.
And then came the merge.
Ashen screamed as his body shook, overwhelmed by the sheer density of the soul he was merging with. It wasn't just powerful — it was beyond anything he had felt before. Time seemed to stretch and twist. His memories flickered — replaced, not erased, by glimpses of other skies, galaxies swirling, cosmic storms, planets bowing to the will of something ancient.
The merge didn't consume him. It reshaped him. Their souls didn't fight — they wove together, piece by piece, until what emerged was still Ashen… but more.
When his eyes snapped open again, the egg had cracked, its energy completely faded.
It was empty.
Because it now lived within him.
He looked down at his hands. They looked the same. Human.
But he could feel it — power, cold and distant for now, but waiting. Coiled like a serpent at the core of his being. A dragon, ancient and royal, now part of him.
Ashen staggered upright. His pain was gone. His leg no longer throbbed — healed. His mind felt clearer, his senses more alert. But the greatest change was internal. He could sense comprehension speeding up. Concepts in the cultivation path that once felt foggy now made intuitive sense.
And deep within, DNA — not his — rested silently, waiting to be studied, copied, cloned. But that part was sealed.
For now.
He couldn't absorb or use the dragon's powers yet. The soul merge had granted him access, but it hadn't unlocked everything. He needed to grow — to cultivate. And maybe then… piece by piece, those abilities would awaken.
Ashen turned to the collapsed gate. No one had followed. No one had seen.
And that was for the best.
He would keep this hidden. From his classmates. From his teachers. From even his family.
Because the world wasn't ready for what now lived inside him.
And truthfully, neither was he.
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Preview (for Chapter 6):
Back at the surface, someone lies about what happened to Ashen. But when he returns, stronger and calmer than before, questions begin to rise. And Ashen starts his first quiet tests of his comprehension boost… on a forbidden technique.
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