The first sensation was a terrible pain. His soul was on fire, his body burning from the inside out. He thrashed and kicked but something was wrong. There was a weight, a restraint pressing him down. It was physical but that shouldn’t have been an issue. His body felt like lead, hard to move and unresponsive.

A deep fear gripped him as he tried to summon up his formidable powers only to grasp at nothing. Decades of carefully cultivated ability gone, stripped from him in a way that left him feeling shockingly exposed.

That was not, however, as big a problem as the wrenching sensation inside his chest. Trying to push his senses through his body felt like trying to swim through cold molasses, the pain only exacerbating his inability to concentrate.

Old training kicked in. His mind shunted off the pain, compartmentalized it. His body was out of his control to the extent needed to shut off the pain but he could ignore it, for all of the problems that would cause down the line. Pain existed for a reason after all.

His soul. It was too big for the mortal body he was in. When did he move to a mortal body? His thoughts were muddied, confused. Body transference was the sort of thing you did only with no other option. If he didn’t get the rampaging soul energy under control he’d be ripped apart from the inside.

His focus turned inwards. Energy was focused, condensed. Empty pathways, never used in this mortal’s lifespan, had soul power channeled through them. Luckily this body was young and the meridians hadn’t begun to harden. Even with his training the pain was incredible enough to make him choke and gag.

A large portion of his soul’s weight would have to be locked away. This would weaken him dangerously if enemies of the caliber he was used to caught him in a mortal’s body. He’d have to cultivate all over again to regain his true ability.

The situation could be seen as a blessing in a bad day, though. The body he was in was cleanly accepting his soul without any rejection. Except for the truly vile who stole the bodies of their descendants that was unheard of. The constant cycling of soul energy internally was acting as a makeshift physical refinement, the impurities of a lifetime of mortality were being forced out by the density of his soul. The channels in the body were also widened. Whatever body this was would be well-suited for cultivation once he began again.

The pain began to subside, the burning soul energy reducing to a slight buzzing in his fingertips and behind his eyes. Annoying, but manageable. The acrid stink burned his nostrils. He’d have to burn whatever he was laying on. The smell of impurities couldn’t be accurately described. The closest thing he could compare it to was blood, fecal matter, and rotting garbage. There were actual garbage heaps he’d been to which smelled nicer. He shifted on the ruined sheets and slowly opened his new eyes.

He saw white drywall. The kind that made up the walls and ceiling of every semi-modern residential home he’d ever been inside of, been blasted through, or blown up. That meant Earth. The ceiling was sloped in that way which indicated a converted attic. Bookshelves were built into the wall directly across from the bed. The shelves had neatly folded clothes on them. Past the makeshift dresser was an alcove. Sunlight poured through a window which was faced by a small writing desk. The desktop was half-buried in a sea of paper and notebooks. An area had been cleared for a laptop, the only sign of life on it a slowly blinking green light.

The back of his mind tickled as he looked around. There was a sense that he knew this room. One that was getting stronger as his mind cleared out the last cobwebs.

Once upon a time he’d lived here.

Flashes came back to him.

Fighting.

Death.

The cave.

The gem.

The mission.

He choked back a sob as the still-raw emotions swirled in his chest. He tried pushing himself up but his hand slid on the black impurity gunk staining his sheets. His skin felt like every nerve was exposed. The bile rose in his throat. Moaning, he rolled off the bed and onto a rough rug. It was a cheap and loose weave, just something to keep him from stepping on the cold wooden floor with bare feet in the middle of the night. The trashcan by his bedside table was grabbed as he vomited loudly into it. A few panted breaths was followed by another heaving session. Some of the impurities wouldn’t go through the skin and had to be more directly handled.

Unsteadily he climbed to his feet. If his memory was solid there would be a landing outside of the door. To the right were stairs down, across was another bedroom. To the left was a bathroom. He scraped his feet across the rug a couple times to clean the refining gunk from the bottom of his feet and walked across the wooden floor. He reached down and grasped the doorknob.

His entire body was tense. His pupils dilated and he started breathing faster. This was his bedroom from when he was a kid. His house. His family would be here. Almost a century had passed since all of the chaos had started. He didn’t know what he’d say to them. Would he even be recognizable to them as he was now? Did he even deserve the chance to be here?

He reached for his cultivation to stabilize his mental state and felt only an aching void where it should have been. This only heightened his unease. He started breathing through his mouth which caused him to gag from the aftertaste of vomit and impurity. His cheek stung after he slapped himself.

“Getch’er shit together,” he growled. His voice was higher than he was used to.

The door opened easily. The scenery beyond it mirrored the faded memories. Slouching, he stepped into the bathroom and flicked the switch on without thinking about it. The bulb flickered on with a soft buzzing. He stopped and looked up at it, squinting against the uncovered light.

“The grid’s still up,” he noted, then shook his head. “I gotta figure out a lotta shit soon.” With a grunt he pulled open the shower curtain and climbed in. The hot and cold knobs he twisted experimentally until the water sat comfortably between scalding and frigid. Among the various lady’s accessories presumably put there by his sister were a bar of soap and a washrag. The washrag would be ruined by the end of the shower, but he’d be clean.

After about twenty minutes the water started to get noticeably colder. He shut the shower off and climbed out, grabbing one of the towels already hanging to dry off with. There was a mirror over the sink. It was fogged up, so after he was dried off an acceptable amount he wiped it off with the towel.

The first thought he had was that he was young. Younger than he expected. Maybe fifteen. His face was untouched by a razor’s edge with only a few wispy hairs to show for it. Soft brown eyes looked back at him. This was what he’d looked like before the pain and the power and the suffering. Well, it was almost what he’d looked like.

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What should have been straight black hair reaching down to just above his shoulders was now white. Not gray, not silver, completely bright white. He ran a hand through it experimentally. Yes, that was his hair. Must be a consequence of the soul transfer, he thought.

His body was already showing the effect of the forced physical refinement. He’d never been fit as a youth. Not fat, just that sort of pseudo-skinny of someone who didn’t gorge himself but also didn’t exercise. That was no longer the case. His body looked lean, showing the first steps of the picture-perfect musculature common to cultivators who have grown past the lowest levels. He even had a barely visible six pack.

This sort of improvement would be impossible to hide from anyone who’d seen him shirtless. He snorted derisively. This wasn’t a problem compared to how blatant the change to his hair was. At this point in his history the list of people that had seen him shirtless outside of his family was effectively zero.

His family. That hurt more to think about than he was entirely comfortable with. Something would have to be done. The thought of pretending to be the same was immediately dismissed. The boy from this time period had died decades ago, broken down under torture and death. He barely remembered that boy and certainly couldn’t pretend to be him for an extended period of time.

They needed to be told. He came back to tell people. To get some ready. To keep them and others alive. There were more than a few who probably also needed killed. He hadn’t kept great track after getting back to Earth. So he’d have to tell them the truth, or at least a version of it that was palatable.

A loud gurgling interrupted his train of thought. He needed food. There’d be some in the kitchen downstairs. He moved back to his bedroom, nose wrinkling at the impurity stench. The first thing he did was open a window. The smell wouldn’t dissipate while the gunk was in the room, but at least he got a gulp of fresh air.

The shelves of clothes were disappointing. Mundane fabrics and too many black graphic t-shirts. Over half of his shirts were black with some forgotten logo or pithy quip on them. They were dismissively tossed aside. He ended up settling on a pair of black basketball shorts with white stripes down the sides and a baggy red and white jersey.

Feeling farther away from suitably dressed than he’d prefer, he proceeded to the stairs. They were covered in a luxurious pink carpet which his feet sank into as he descended them. Murky memories climbed to the surface and overlaid themselves onto his vision.

As a teen he’d slipped on these stairs many times running up or down them in socks. His mother would put the laundry on the fourth step from the bottom to take up when he passed by. There was a closet at the base of the stairs which everyone hung their coats in next to the front door.

There were times when, alone with his thoughts, he’d rebuilt this place in his memories. Each potted plant, each chair. The books on the shelves. The food in the kitchen. The locations of the trees in the yard. For years this was his mental sanctuary, the one place that he could come close to anything approaching peace.

Returned.

The feelings that threatened to overwhelm him were ruthlessly clamped down on. There would be time for that later. In the dark, alone, miserable, when his lowest and most self-hating desires would be indulged. Right now the mission came first.

No one was home, but that wasn’t surprising. The rest of the household were early-birds. They were up at the crack of dawn, usually to go do something together like hit garage sales or go to the early service on Sunday. He’d kept up with them for years but getting up that early just didn’t come naturally to him like it did them. They’d still go but unless it was something they’d told him about beforehand and he’d agreed to do they let him sleep.

I was a demanding little shit, he thought as he poured milk into a bowl of raisin bran. The motions came to him easily. It was strange, the things that stuck in the memory. Soul transfer left you without the memories of the original body. He didn’t know the year. He couldn’t tell you how old he was. He only vaguely remembered the faces of his family. There was no way he could find this house on a map. Pouring a bowl of cereal? Burned into some part of his soul that came with him through the veil of time.

After eating he dropped the bowl in the sink and went back upstairs. He carefully carried the sheets and rug outside, dropping them next to the fire pit his father had built to have barbecues and entertain guests. A brief fishing around in his pockets reminded him that he didn’t have his lighter. One short search inside revealed a box of matches for emergencies.

Walking back out the door made him pause. All he could think about carrying the sheets and rug was the stink and to be extra careful to not get dirty again. Now, without that, he could truly look around.

The sky was blue, dotted with white fluffy clouds. The early morning sun poked through both clouds and trees, layering streaming beams on light from the heavens. There was a warm breeze that played along his skin. The only thing to be heard was the rustling of the leaves as the trees swayed gently with each small gust.

It was everything he’d imagined for almost a hundred years. There had been beauty to see in that time, incredible vistas which had shaken his will just to gaze out at, but this was different. This was a home which he thought he’d never see again. Just standing in it was threatening to break past the barriers that had stood the majority of his life.

Fire rose quickly from the soiled sheets once placed into the pit and ignited. Impurities didn’t burn well. There was even a chance that nothing would grow on that spot for years to come. Acrid black smoke rose in thick coils from the fire pit. The rug caught quickly when placed on top, causing the heat to leap out towards him. He could feel it on his face and took a moment to marvel in the feeling. Before coming back a simple mortal fire like this would have been unable to affect him in even the smallest way.

With a sigh, he shook his head and stepped back. He needed to get out of his own head. The fire burned itself out quickly, which he followed up by pouring a bucket of water on it.

Back inside, his eyes flicked over to the digital clock on the stove. The time was creeping closer to noon. His family would be back soon. He seated himself at the kitchen table, facing the door to the garage in the kitchen. That was the door they’d come through. As the time ticked by he entered a meditative state. Keeping enough of his awareness open to watch the door was difficult, but possible.

There were too many unknowns to sit down and do nothing. Depending on how old he was there could be only a few months before everything fell apart. He reached out to feel the qi in the air.

The amount and purity was surprising. The qi in the air twirled and played like smoke that could only be felt. While it was nothing compared to some of the higher realms that he’d visited, it would be far easier to restart his cultivation than he thought. This was untapped power just sitting here for anyone with the knowledge to take advantage of.

It had been known, before he came back, that there was magic on Earth before the fall, but that it and those who practiced it stayed hidden in the background of society. There had been talks about secret organizations lurking in the shadows of the skyscrapers and even when he’d returned decades later there were still elements of the old world who had sold themselves to the invaders to hold onto a scrap of the authority they’d once wielded as a the power behind the system.

They would be dealt with in due time. Now, though, he needed to begin establishing the foundations of the power that he’d be relying on in the future. He began to draw the energy into himself. The qi came willingly, more sign that it had never been used for cultivation before. His freshly-expanded pathways greedily sucked up the energy. He clamped his will down and pushed the power properly along.

The first thing he had to do was use this power to unblock his acupoints. Once that was done, then he’d start cultivating in earnest. He could start now and forcibly unblock the points later, but there were long-term benefits to getting it done as early as possible.

He smiled ruefully. Going back in time gave him the opportunity to become a better cultivator than ever before. If he managed to survive what was coming then his knowledge of the path to walk would be a massive boon, equivalent to multiple fortuitous encounters. The previous heights he’d reached would be scaled in a fraction of the time, leaving him to aim for the highest peak. True immortality.

Time slipped away as he channeled the power through him. With each acupoint unblocked the qi flowed easier, experienced less disruption. Each slow breath released the turgid qi back into the air, to mingle with the pure and become refreshed.

One thirty was the time on the stove when he was roused to wakefulness. There was a droning, grumbling noise coming from beyond the door he was facing. It was the garage door. He would no longer be alone soon.

He stood from his seat and came around the table. His arms crossed, but then he lowered them. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. The first impression was the most important. His thoughts raced. His pulse pounded in his ears.

The muffled sounds of car doors opening and closing came from beyond the kitchen door. He hadn’t expected the anxiety. Could this be done? He’d have to tell them. They needed to know. He couldn’t hide it. His hands trembled.

With the experience of decades he stilled his hands and smoothed his expression. If there was any time not to let the apprehension show this was it. Among cultivators even the merest twitch could spell the difference between a polite conversation and an ambush from those who sensed weakness. That couldn’t happen. He needed to be strong. He wiped his hands on he sides of his shirt and took a deep breath. They needed him to be strong.

This was it.

The door opened.