Chapter 1. WEG! ALLEIN!

She woke up with a start, cold, weak and strangely alone. Her small head turned to the side and next to her was no one, it made her hurt more than usual.

They had often done a reborn like this. A wuxia-like world, where you cultivate your body, soul and pathways. This time they should have been 5 years old. On the eighth birthday, people in this world will undergo a Chakra Core awakening.

They should have been twins, the skill certainly sounded like it could have been twins. [Zwei Körper, einer Seele einer Fleisch, zusammen zur Perfektion], it meant two bodies, one soul one flesh, together towards perfection. It's been listed as the best body for cultivation and we thought we'd like a cheat start this time around.

And yet she woke up alone. It has become the norm for them to wait for the other to wake up once one of them regains self-awareness. The days that passed when she did not see that bright light of pure love were the cruellest.

Maybe this time she was the first one and they happen to sleep in the same bed as many young twins do?

Slightly happier, yet still somehow uncomfortable, she put on some of her clothes and left her lavishly decorated room. It was kept in a strange mix of Roman and modern culture. The floor was stone and heated while the walls were made wood. A table with a side chair was also wooden and richly decorated.

She could look at it later, first, she had to find her twin. Her room led into a hallway, filled with decorations and paintings.

A quick look around showed that her house wasn't very large, maybe one floor with four rooms. The first was obviously her room, another led into a large stone-tiled bath, including a lion head fountain. The third room was filled with foodstuff and a small cot, alongside a few personal items she didn't care enough about to look over. The final room was also the room where she met the first person in this life, sadly it wasn't the one she wanted to see.

It was a woman in her early twenties, preparing foodstuff while humming some tune. Maybe she would know where she can find my better half?

“Excuse me?” I asked slightly out of breath, feeling strangely exhausted by the small tour I had made.

The woman whirled around and dropped the knife she was holding. “Young Miss! You shouldn't be out of bed and how did you cloth yourself?” She rushed over to me and began to make sure I was right.

Did my body get some harm before I woke up? It is rare but does happen from time to time. Just that we have taken measurements against a weak body. We took the Godly Body, Godly Soul and Godly Pathways Perks.

As I've said, we wanted a cheat start.

“No I'm fine, just slightly out of breath,” I answered her while waiting to get a second word in.

“I'm glad, but why have you not waited for me to clothe you? And you've done it so well as well.” She praised, while still being worried. Was she our mother? I don't look anything like her.

She has mousy brown hair, a slim build with a small waist and almost no chest. A timid girl by her downward shoulders, or more a loyal servant who is constantly in a lowered position to the master. She was also making extra care to not touch any intimate places, so more likely a maid?

“Where is my sibling?” I asked, knowing that it was not the ideal way to ask, but I don't know yet if my twin will be a boy or a girl like me. We didn't specify this time.

“Your brother?” She asked, slightly perplexed but still seemingly having heard the concept of the question often enough.

“Yes, I'd like to see him,” My clothes look all prim and proper, it looks like I am somewhat wealth, if a maid hasn't been obvious enough, so speaking in a somewhat higher class should be okay, right?

“Of course, he will be delighted to hear that you've asked of him. Please wait in your room, I'll ask for him.” She escorted me into my room and left with a quick bow.

I found a book about breathing techniques on a table and began to read the lore of this world on Chakra cultivation. That's where we didn't cheat, neither took a Godly Cultivation technique. We wanted to test stuff out or invent another one again.

If the author of this book is to be believed, then there are 10 stages of cultivation. Yet the book did not list the names of these stages beyond the first three. The Lung Stage, The Heart Stage and The Blood Stage. There was no information on The Blood Stage, beyond its name. And the Heart Stage only listed that the foundation in The Lung Stage would pay off enormously for every further Stage.

A beginner's book, after all. It showed a person sitting in a lotus position with airway arrows and text explaining how one should breathe. There were five Parts to this Stage.

The first part seems to involve the strengthening, regulation and intake of Chakra towards your lungs. First, you have to control the amount, then you'll have to slowly infuse the Chakra into your left lung, followed by the right.

At the beginning, a trainee should hold her breath for...

BAMM!

I had sat down as instructed and wanted to begin the first breathing exercise when suddenly someone my door crash-opened.

It's a sliding door, but with a stone instead of wood. Was hell to open, a good way to keep children out of danger. It was now also not any longer part of the wall, as the one who opened it seemed to have forgotten that it has been, originally, a sliding door.

He tried to pull. Usually that would be the end with a stone door, he just didn't get the memo. So he pulled with way too much strength, and the sliding door became a one time outwards opened one.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I first looked at the destroyed door, then at the intruder, by his out of breath look he must have been running. It's a boy in his middle teens, red hair, same as me. His body was still that of a boy that didn't know where to grow.

“Rasa!” he almost teleported to me, yet stopped moments before engulfing me in a massive hug. With tender care he gave me a slow soft hug, as if he was suddenly way too much aware that he has ripped a sliding door out of the wall.

I looked at him, not feeling anything. I had hoped that it would be him, it would have been the quickest. “Do the other come as well?” I asked from within his hug,

“You mean Grandpa Haron and Father?” he asked, a bright smile on his face that dimmed the moment he must have seen my expression.

There was no other brother or sister mentioned. NO OTHER BROTHER OR SISTER!

WAiT maybe, others were not close by. We were ALWAYS siblings in such situations.

“Are the others to far away?” I asked again. Hating that every normal person would notice that my behaviour was not normal.

He seems to think nothing about it. “Well, your aunts, uncles and the rest life around.” He forced a smile, “is there a reason to invite them and throw a party?”

Still nO oThEr SibLing!

Fuck it! “Don't we have other siblings?” His face grew even more worrisome. As if some extreme fear came to life.

“N..no, only you, Father, Grandpa Haron and.. me”.

I think I blacked out.

The next thing I opened my eyes I was lying in my a different room. My body was sore, my throat soar. A man was sleeping next to my bed on a chair, another chair was filled with my oNLy Brother.

It wasn't HIM, maybe there was, but my twin died? It happens in the absolutely rarest of times, but there was that one time where I got run over by a truck and then summoned into another world. I quickly offed myself and reunited once both of us were dead.

I felt alone. I knew that I would stay alone until I die, with my sibling possibly dead before we could both awaken.

I sighed deeply and tried to feel for our Soullink, the connection we noticed we had both during our lives and the in between where we choose skills. It was the one thing I could always rely on. Our souls were bonded, between worlds and deaths.

There was no Link, I couldn't send any Chakra, this worlds main Energy, towards the usual dot in my mind. Only a metaphorical hole was in front of my mind eye.

WhERe iS tHE boNd!?

I could feel almost no Chakra in my body, but almost nothing should still be more than nothing. And only the connection from my soul to my body via Chakra should be needed, no Chakra itself.

The corner of my eyes seem to blacken and something blurry was moving in my view. My throat began to really hurt. Am I screaming?

I'm alone! The Soullink is gone! “I'M Here!” I can't feel it, the ever present love IS GONE!

I'm ALONE! ThE waRmtH iS GoNE! “I'M Here!” I'M ALONE!

My mind was blindly starring at the hole where the presence of our Soullink should have been.

“I'm Alone!” I mumbled, feeling deader than ever. “I'm … here, not... alone!” A tremor shook through my mind. It ripped, it teared, it splashed, it felt numb.

My mind calmed down again, like the waves in a disrupted pond. “I AM HERE!” Another wave of pain rampaged trough my mind. But I heard it.

I FELT IT!

The louder it got the more pain I felt, but I didn't care. The pain felt like our Soullink. It felt like the shine of the perfect sun in comparison to the freezing cold of loneliness.

My mind pond shuddered with each sentence, I endured if it meant hearing more of them. “I hrt yu, cn't spek... I LOVE ad WIL FIND YOU!” My mind pond began to crack from a pressure I could now identify as extremely dense Chakra. It was as if my pond was not a pond, but an Island inside an ocean of golden green Chakra. It was all encompassing for me and all of it felt like our Soullink. Like waves of emotions, trying to to completely submerge the tiny island in its middle. Each greater than the other, endlessly repeating in a loop of growing intensity.

Each beyond words, each more encouraging, warming, comforting, supporting, helping, loving, lusting, playful, than the other. Some crashed down on others, smothering them and preventing them from overflowing her little island. They were colder, not radiating anything uncontrolled.

The raging sea got slowly calmer, it's waves calming. “I heard you, I understand!” I shouted out, trying to infuse some Chakra from my island into the ocean to give meaning to my inner shout!

The sea got slightly more turmultulus, but it was less than before, especially when I heart it again. “Cn't ear yu, try instl Sulink, love yu WILL FIND YOU!” The last three words made the sea throw huge waves up, but cold ice like glaciers rose around my island, somehow standing in the way of the wave and shielding my island. It felt cold, uncaring, unmovable and must be logic or indifference. Maybe the permanent skill of [Ruhiger Geist]?

It still felt like our Soullink, just not filled with love. It was more the cold indifference to everything NOT ME. Everything that would harm me would be blocked, analysed and destroyed.

Once the sea was calm the wall lowered itself, yet did not vanish. Other flavours of emotion began to come in, yet kept at bay by the cold wall of ice.

I stayed silent, already I could see that the wall wasn't as thick as it first has been. Both of our emotions are overflowing, mine weren't just as Chakra lazed.

Slowly a tendril formed itself from within the wave that represented love. It flowed in a greenish colour, the same as the Soulball in between lives, mine is orange. And indeed, my island began to glow orange. The tendril slowly inched over the wall of logic, moving perfectly straight. It reached towards the hole where our link has been and began to pour in a golden green liquid, interlaced with brownish-red.

It radiated the feeling of love, but not in the way of our Soullink. This were the emotions of something different. I almost lashed out at it when it touched the hole, it was not feeling right. As if a leech was in between the tendril of our love and THIS.

Yet I held back, knowing that there was a cold reason for these other emotions.

The liquid began to form itself into a twisted macabre version of a tree. One tree splitting into two before intervening itself again into ever smaller loops. Branches sprouted and flowers bloomed on their endings. Yet it still radiated this feeling of otherness, however the tendril of love wasn't finished. It connected with the tree and its glow began to climb down one of the entwined halves. It began to glow in a green colour. Radiating chakra filled with the love I knew.

I knew what I had to do, but try as I might I couldn't infuse my Chakra into the other side of the tree. My island was an unmoveable block. All the Chakra I was having was used up, reserved for my body. If I took something I would risk death, with how cracked my island already was.

Still, I did not want this perverse feeling occupy my side. Even if I die, at least some of it must feel like me!

I feel as if we will be able to feel each other through this tree. I can't let my side not feel like myself. Already I feel how the other side was becoming slower. It seems as if this tree wouldn't let itself be completely overridden.

I found a low hanging branch, one with a flower at its tip. This would be where I will infuse my Chakra. It hangs low enough to the ground to lie under yet maybe still smell the flower. I concentrated with all my mind and moments before the light of the tendril dimmed I ripped and pumped part of my island, into the flower.

The sea of emotions began to run wild the moment my Chakra started to move, they crashed into the wall of logic with unrelenting force and broke large pieces off within moments. Then it was gone, as if completely vanishing.

Her mind place was empty again. The sea of other emotions gone. The endless feeling of their Soullink dimmed down to the strange tree. One side glowing green, almost all the way down. Radiating a warmth of pure love. When she moved closer its leaves turned to her and the golden green flowers began to bloom, radiating a smell that awoke many memories.

The other side, her side, felt like love, but not hers. Like a parasite leaching onto her rightful love.

Yet she smiled. It was done, the flower she has put her Chakra into glowed in an orange light and radiated HER love. She smiled in between a wince. Her mind was hurting, the piece of her island she has ripped out was leaking particles.

Maybe her new family has good medicine? Otherwise her mate will have to hurry up.