The first indication that something about Yue Tian was going to be different came when he was two years old and had still not uttered a single word.

  “Maybe he is thoughtful,” Wu Yunmei said, one autumn morning as she watched their son quietly building with wooden blocks in the corner of their sitting room.

  The blocks had simple dream-script characters carved into them to help teach children the fundamentals of dream cultivation theory. Most toddlers his age would be babbling nonsensical sounds while attempting to make the blocks glow with their developing dream qi. Yue Tian merely stacked them in precise configurations, his sapphire-colored eyes fixed intently as if the task demanded an adult’s level of concentration.

  Yue Tianming stopped reading the scroll he’d been perusing and wore the lines of concern that had become increasingly prevalent throughout the past twelve months. His cultivation had been gradually declining since the Genesis Dream technique, and although he tried to hide the effects, the decline had become difficult to conceal as the days passed.

  “The healer said that some children are late to develop speech, especially…”, Yue Tianming gestured vaguely toward their son, “especially those with unique circumstances.”

  Yue Tianming and Yunmei avoided discussing the specifics of Yue Tian’s birth.

  The Genesis Dream technique was their most closely guarded secret. To the rest of the cultivation world, their son was a miracle child, born after many years of unsuccessful attempts, blessed by heaven itself. Only they knew the truth regarding the devastating cost of creating life from pure dream essence.

  Tian looked up from his blocks, those extraordinary blue eyes locking onto his father’s gaze briefly before returning to his construction. In that fleeting moment, Yue Tianming perceived something in his son’s eyes, an ancient sense of sorrow that caused his chest to constrict with worry.

  “He hears everything we say,” Yunmei noted, sitting next to their son. “Watch this. Tian, can you show mama the red block?”

  Instantly, Yue Tian selected the crimson block and placed it in Yunmei’s extended hand.

  “See?” she said, smiling. “He’s listening. He’s learning. He simply chooses not to talk yet.”

  Yue Tianming nodded; however, privately he questioned whether their method of creating a child had impacted little Tian’s developmental process. The Genesis Dream technique necessitated pooling their combined will and dream essence together to manifest life itself. Possibly, something was omitted from the creation process, some essential component of typical human development that they hadn’t thought to include.

  Fortunately for them, that was not the case.

  Three months later, the first words emerged from Tian when he was nearly three years old.

  “Pretty,” Yue Tian said softly, pointing at a butterfly that had settled upon the windowsill.

  Yunmei almost dropped the cup of tea that she held. “Tianming! Did you hear that?”

  When they turned to observe him, Yue Tian was examining the butterfly with curiosity, his sapphire-colored eyes tracking its delicate movements.

  “Yes, little one,” Yue Tianming replied calmly. “It is very pretty.”

  Yue Tian nodded and then continued his quiet activities as if the act of speaking was of no significant consequence.

  Over the next few months, his vocabulary developed at a rapid pace.

  But they noticed that Yue Tian was selective about when and how to use it.

  The little boy preferred to listen rather than talk, observe rather than participate.

  Whenever his grandparents or clan members visited to see Yue Tian, he would vanish into his room or discover a secluded area where he could silently observe the adults without being seen.

  “He is shy,” Yunmei would explain to visitors when they asked about Yue Tian’s exceptional silence.

  However, Yue Tianming recognized something more subtle in his son’s behavior.

  The phenomenon was not simply shyness, but rather an instinctual tendency to withdraw from social interactions. Yue Tian appeared to be most at ease when left alone with literature, or when seated in the garden, passively watching clouds drift across the sky. Occasionally, Yue Tianming would notice little Tian staring off into space with an expression of deep longing, as if he was trying to recall something important that was just beyond his grasp.

  It was when Tian turned four years old that the nightmares began.

  The first time it happened, Tianming and Yunmei were startled awake by their son’s cries. Rushing to his bedside, they found him sitting upright, tears streaming down his face, and his small frame shaking with fear.

  “Tian! What is wrong?” Yunmei wrapped her arms around the boy, feeling the rapid pounding of his heart against her chest.

  “There was a big mountain with lots of people wearing blue robes,” Yue Tian whispered through his sobs. “And they were fighting! Fighting with lights everywhere!”

  Yue Tianming and Yunmei exchanged a concerned look.

  “It was just a dream,” Yue Tianming reassured Yue Tian. “You are safe here with us.”

  But Tian vigorously shook his head. “No! Not a dream! I was there! There was a boy with dark hair, and another boy with…” Yue Tian concentrated intensely, attempting to recall the details. “Different hair. And they were fighting each other, but they were also friends. It made me sad.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “What type of fighting?” Yunmei asked.

  “Magical fighting,” Yue Tian replied. “Fighting with plants, and swords, and frightening things. And there were lots of people watching and yelling loudly.”

  After that first incident, the nightmares came sporadically every few months.

  Sometimes Tian would wake up and tell them about the mountain place again.

  It was the startling detail that concerned them.

  “The people in blue robes live in a really big place with lots of houses,” Yue Tian told them one morning, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “And they have special rocks that make pretty lights. The dark-haired boy is nice to everybody, and the sad boy was sad about a pretty girl.”

  “Which pretty girl?” Yue Tianming asked, exchanging a concerned look with his wife.

  “A very pretty girl who made the sad boy cry,” Tian replied. “She was mean to the sad boy but was kind to the dark-haired boy. It made my belly ache.” His lower lip quivered. “Why was she mean, Papa? The sad boy didn’t do anything wrong.”

  That wasn’t the only nightmare he saw.

  Other times, he would wake up, panicked, describing someone pursuing him through seemingly endless corridors.

  “He wanted to hurt me!” Yue Tian cried after one particularly vivid nightmare. “But I don't know who he was! His face kept changing. Sometimes he looked like the dark hair boy, sometimes like the sad boy, sometimes like someone else. And he was running after me through the mountain place, and I couldn't get away!”

  “What did he want from you?” Yunmei asked, stroking her son’s hair.

  “I don't know! He kept saying I took something from him, but I don't know what I took! I was just trying to hide!” Tian buried his face in his mother's shoulder. “And people were watching again, lots and lots of people, and they were all shouting, but I couldn't understand what they were shouting about.”

  The most unsettling dreams involved what Tian called "the big fight."

  “Everyone was watching,” he told them one morning after having woken up screaming. “All the blue robe people and other people too. And the two boys had to fight each other, but they didn't want to. The dark hair boy looked a little scared, and the sad boy looked angry, but not at the dark hair boy. At something else.”

  “Why did they have to fight?” Yue Tianming asked, wondering if this was related to the prophecy.

  Tian shrugged, the gesture heartbreakingly innocent. “I don’t know. The elders said they had to. And there was this feeling like… like something really important was going to happen. But I can’t remember what.”

  Yue Tianming and Yunmei had exchanged glances but hadn’t known what to say.

  When Tian turned five years old, his unusual talents began to manifest in ways they didn’t expect.

  “Listen,” Yunmei called to her husband one afternoon, waving a piece of paper in his face. “Tian has written another poem.”

  Tianming picked up the paper and studied the handwriting.

  The strokes were precise, each letter drawn with care.

  What struck him however was the poetry itself:

  Autumn leaves remember summer's heat,

  But cannot hold what Time has stolen.

  The Tree stands bare against the cold,

  Dreaming of Springs that may never come.

  Tianming blinked, wondering if he was seeing things.

  What kind of five-year-old wrote like this?

  “This is very sophisticated,” Tianming said slowly.

  “Read the poem from last week,” Yunmei urged, pulling out another sheet of paper.

  In quiet places, shadows gather,

  Whispering of names lost to memory.

  I am reaching for the echo of a song

  that once caused all the world to sing.

  Tianming shivered.

  The poems were beautiful, but there was a sorrow that lingered beneath every word, a sense of loss that seemed too heavy for a boy of Tian’s age to bear.

  “Have you asked him what inspires these?” Tianming asked.

  “He said he doesn’t really know. He said the words come to him when he tries to go to sleep, and he writes them down, so he won’t lose them.”

  A few days later Tianming was in Tian’s room watching him stare up at the stars with his usual deep longing.

  “What do you see up there, son?”

  There was a pause before Tian spoke. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I feel like they’re trying to tell me something important. Something I used to know but can’t remember anymore.”

  “Something you ‘used’ to know? What do you mean by that?”

  “My name,” Tian said simply. “Not Tian. My real name. The one I had before.”

  Tianming’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean ‘before’? Before what?”

  “Before I forgot,” Tian said, still looking into the stars. “Before I came here and everything got mixed up.”

  That conversation haunted Yue Tianming for months.

  So much so that he had secretly consulted several dream cultivation experts.

  They all gave the same response.

  That it was expected that the prophesised child would have a strong connection to the dream realm and that this was merely a sign of that. How it was something to be celebrated and not something to be worried about.

  But their reassurances didn’t calm Tianming down.

  They didn’t know about the Genesis Dream technique.

  What if Tianming and Yunmei had somehow given their son memories that weren’t his own?

  What if their son wasn’t just a child born from dream essence.

  What if their son was a vessel containing fragments of something older?

  Something that existed in the dream realm long before they’d given it physical form.

  Yue Tianming didn’t know.

  All he could do was pray that the dream experts were right, that this was simply because Tian was the prophecy child.

  When Yue Tian turned seven, the formal negotiations regarding Yue Tian’s betrothals commenced.

  “The Liu Clan is interested,” Yunmei announced during breakfast, trying to maintain a nonchalant tone. “Their daughter, Liu Meiya, is quite skilled for her age.”

  Yue Tian looked up from the book he had been reading, a book that would pose a challenge for most adults, a treatise on Advanced Dream Cultivation Theory.

  “Betrothal?” Yue Tian asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Marriage arrangements among cultivating families are common,” Yue Tianming explained. “They strengthen familial bonds and build alliances between clans. The Liu Clan has produced multiple Lucid Lawbearers over the past few centuries.”

  “But I don’t know her,” Yue Tian stated matter-of-factly.

  “You’ll get the chance to meet and grow closer to each other over time,” Yunmei reassured him. “And you’ll get married when you’re both grown and have established your cultivation foundations.”

  Tian nodded thoughtfully and returned to his book. “Do you think she’ll like poems?”

  The question was so naive, so typical of Tian, that both parents couldn’t help but smile.

  “I’m sure she will,” Yunmei said.

  The betrothal ceremony occurred during the Autumn Festival, with representatives of both families attending in the Yue family courtyard. Liu Meiya was a dainty girl with dark hair and bright intelligent eyes. She was probably a year or two younger than Tian. She performed the ritual greeting perfectly, as would be expected of a well-educated daughter of a large clan.

  During the ceremony, Tian stood beside his parents, calmly tolerating the speeches and congratulations from the adults present. During the final segment, when the betrothed couples were supposed to exchange gifts, Tian handed Liu Meiya a collection of his poems bound in silk, beautifully hand-written and illustrated with drawings of flowers and birds.

  She thanked him graciously and offered him an ornate jade necklace with protective symbols etched onto it. “Thank you for the poems,” she said softly. “I look forward to reading them.”

  “I hope you understand them,” Tian said with unusual intensity. “Sometimes I write things I don’t even understand myself.”

  Liu Meiya blinked in surprise at his admission, but before she could reply, the adults moved on to the next part of the ceremony.

  After the guests left, Tian sat in the garden, staring up at the starry sky.

  “How are you feeling about the betrothal?” Tianming asked, sitting down beside his son on a stone bench.

  “Like it was always going to happen,” Tian said, without turning his gaze from the stars above. “Not because of us, but because of something greater. Something that saw this happening before I was born.”

  "You don't sound excited or upset about it."

  “I don’t think that would change anything,” Tian shrugged. “Some things are just written in the pattern of how the world works.”

  Yue Tianming didn’t know what to say to that.

  The casual way his seven-year-old son accepted fate unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

  Another timeskip coming up next chapter!

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