The night after the ritual, Rin could not sleep.
Even after returning to the academy, his thoughts would not still. The memory of the Dantina Method pulsed quietly in his mind a rhythm of breath and stillness, of light threading through emptiness. Every inhale carried faint warmth. Every exhale, a tremor of silence that hummed against his bones.
He had been placed back among the Outer Disciples, the lowest tier of initiates those who were either too weak or too strange to fit among the ranked cultivators. It didn't bother him much. Few spoke to him anyway. Most still whispered about the boy without a Root Seal, the one who drew Flux yet held none.
But Karo had watched him differently. The old scholar's eyes had lingered thoughtful, uncertain before quietly slipping him a thin, dust-covered book that same morning.
"No one practices this anymore," Karo had said. "The Dantina Method was banned centuries ago. But if the normal paths reject you… perhaps the forgotten ones will not."
So now Rin sat alone in Meditation Chamber Nine, a small stone room deep beneath the academy's east wing. The walls were inscribed with faint glyphs to muffle sound and guide spiritual flow, though few ever came here. It was a place for those who had failed too many times to bear the stares of others.
Moonlight streamed through the skylight above, cutting across the room in pale ribbons. Dust floated in slow spirals, glimmering faintly as the Flux gathered drawn by something unseen.
The Flux Crystal rested before him on a low pedestal, glowing softly. Its light felt patient, expectant.
Rin exhaled, steadying his pulse.Then, he began.
The air stirred. The crystal vibrated.Threads of light rose from the floor and walls, converging on him like rivers finding their source.
But this time, they did not flow into his navel or chest as the instructors taught.They circled him instead slow, deliberate forming a ring of faint symbols that shimmered like constellations. The very air seemed to hold its breath.
Then, the energy slipped through him not filling him, but searching him. It drifted behind his heart, touching that familiar emptiness that had always refused to awaken.
The void opened.
For an instant, he saw it an infinite dark within himself, silent and vast. Then light poured in.
A sphere began to spin in that darkness, delicate yet powerful, drawing the Flux inward like a vortex. Rings of silver and blue coiled around it one, then another, until they formed a rhythm, pulsing in time with his breath.
Warmth deepened into fire.Pain sharpened into clarity.And then, beneath his heartbeat… came another.
A second rhythm.Fainter, deeper.Perfectly in sync.
The Dantina had awakened.
Energy burst outward but instead of chaos, it followed order. Every thread of light that had once fled from him now flowed through hidden channels beneath his skin. It circulated through his limbs, spine, and breath, returning again and again to the heart behind his heart.
Each cycle refined it further:The first, like molten metal.The second, smooth as water.The third, silent as thought.
The Flux no longer resisted him. It obeyed.
Then, something within his consciousness shifted.
The world fell away, and he stood within an endless inner void a space born from his Dantina itself. Above and below stretched an ocean of starlight, slow-moving and eternal. In its center floated a platform of dark glass, etched with silver runes that pulsed in rhythm with his two hearts.
Around the platform shimmered nine faint rings waiting.
Rin stepped forward, though his body never moved. His awareness settled onto the platform, where the reflection of the Flux Crystal hung suspended above the center. It glowed once then split into streams of light that wove through the air like circuits coming alive.
A voice echoed through the void cold, ancient, mechanical, yet almost human.
[Flux Resonance Detected][Secondary Core: DANTINA — Established][Initializing Cognitive Interface…][Welcome, Traveler Rin.]
Light spiraled around him, forming glyphs and circles that filled like glowing seals loading one by one.
[System Synchronization: 9%… 24%… 51%…]Each percentage ignited another ring around the platform, and with every surge, the stars above burned brighter.
[73%… 91%… 100%][Initialization Complete.]
A column of silver fire erupted upward, piercing the void.
[Core Path: Undefined. Awaiting designation.]
Pain flickered across his arms lines of light etching themselves into his skin before fading into faint, ghostly runes.
Rin gasped, clutching his chest. Two heartbeats thundered within him one flesh, one energy harmonizing until the boundary between them blurred.
"Wh… what is this?" he whispered.
The voice replied, calm as still water.
[Traveler Codename: Rin. Origin: Unknown.][Root Seal: Absent.][Dantina Core: Adaptive Vessel Detected.]
The words felt final, carved into the truth of him.This voice wasn't foreign it was familiar. It had always been there, buried within the silence that had haunted his cultivation.
The Flux Crystal in the real world cracked softly, its light spilling away like smoke.
Rin's breath trembled. "What do you want from me?"
[Not from you.][With you.][System Link — Online.]
The platform dimmed, and the stars folded inward.
When Rin opened his eyes, he was back in the meditation chamber. The air was still, the moonlight unchanged yet everything inside him was different.
The Dantina pulsed behind his heart alive, aware. The Flux no longer fled him. It gathered, gentle but eager, answering to his breath.
And within that second heartbeat, he heard a faint hum nine circles waiting to be filled.
[Cycle 1: Initialization Complete.][Cycle 2: Awaiting Activation.]
The voice whispered one last time, fading like dawn mist.
[Begin the First Cycle, Rin.][Let the world remember you.]
Outside, morning light crept across the academy towers, golden and quiet. But within the meditation chamber, another kind of light had been born silent, ancient, and impossible.
The light of the Second Heart.