The pregnant woman drank her tea, unaware of the piece of divinity dissolved within. To her taste buds, the bitter leaves were the most prevalent flavour. She took no specific notice of the liquid, no more than she had the colour of the leaves on the ground or the shade of the sunset. She finished her tea, but it was an instinctual thing, her mind was entirely occupied elsewhere.

Indeed, she was focused on more localised things. Such as the ball of molten magma which had suddenly erupted in her pelvis. This was her first child and she rather thought that this part had been ignored when her mother had explained begetting children to her so long ago. She held back no curses against her buried parent for the lie of omission, doubling over.

Within moments, it dissipated and the pregnant woman almost wondered if she had ever felt any pain at all. That night she had the most peculiar dream. She was looking through many choices, and designing her baby. She took all the liberties that an expectant mother would for her child. Strong, handsome, important. As she awoke, she forgot the dream just as she had forgotten the phantom pain of the afternoon.

A month later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She held her precious jewel close to her, already in his hair and his eyes she saw his father’s features. She was joyous and she was anguished. She wept tears regardless, unsure whether they were hopeful or desperate.

As the child grew, his mother waned. The pregnancy had taken a heavy toll, and despite the local healers doing their work, she passed before the child had any memory of his mother. It had happened quickly, the child hadn’t even been named yet. He was taken to the orphanage of the Guan family due to his father’s place as a retainer of the household.

He was a quiet baby, then a quiet toddler and eventually a quiet child. More time spent watching and listening than making a fuss himself, which the caretakers were thankful for. He was well-liked by the adults around him as he grew to be a perceptive and well behaved member of the family. As he had no parents to give him a name, he was named Guan Ah in his youngest years. Later, when he could speak and understand names he called himself Dan, and Guan Ah Dan was inducted into the Guan family proper.

He cannot say why he knows his name is Dan, but he does. Just as he cannot, and does not, tell anyone about his dream. It is his earliest memory and it scares him. He is chastised often for not sleeping, but on nights when the rain is at its hardest, he avoids his bedroll as though it is hell itself.

The dream - the nightmare - itself would sound quite normal. If Dan could speak about it, he would say that he starts his dream looking down at a quiet planet. The beauty is as indescribable as the dread that he feels when he realises that he is once again trapped. Forced to feel every moment of his being falling apart. He tumbles through the sky in dozens of pieces. He feels himself impact into the hard ground like meteors, when he wakes his jaw will be sore from the crashing of his teeth. As he feels himself seep into the ground like rainwater, the dream is nearly finished. A final, tiny, impossibly small piece of himself falls into a cup of tea and he awakes.

Dan does not know enough of dreams to think this is strange. He just knows that he hates the nausea and dread that he wakes with afterwards. So, he stays awake. He meditates and channels, as all children are taught to do. Dan finds that the matrons do not reprimand him for being awake if he is training, so he trains until he collapses from exhaustion.

However quiet Dan may have been, he was not invisible. The dark shadows under his eyes were the subject of a few jokes and more than a few looks of pity. Due to his own stubbornness, Dan refused to give a reason for his insomnia. It was this way, with his sleeplessness reduced to sad glances and sadistic giggles, until Dan turned six. Until the day Dan awoke from one of his enervated sleeps in a strange room. Sunlight breached the room only through windows high in the walls. The centre of the room, and the sides, were dark. An absolutely ancient pair of elders, a man and woman, were watching Dan as he sat up. He was sleep-addled but stood quickly and bowed in respect.

“Oooh,” the old woman cooed, “well you can’t say that he’s not a well trained little pup.” In a move that made Dan’s head spin, the woman returned his bow. The adults that Dan was used to would only correct your posture with a firm hand and move on, if anything. The old woman’s voice was creaky, like a slowly cracking tree branch. It tickled Dan’s ears. She walked between the lit and unlit parts of the room, making clattering noises in the dark.

“Cycle your mana”.

The old man grumbled, his own voice like the low rumbling after a thunderclap. Dan nearly looked him in the eye, but chose not to. He was not supposed to ask questions when given an order by an elder, so he complied. Dan had understood instantly what the old man had meant when he spoke. He may as well have been told to clench his fist, or grow his hair, or move his eyes.

Dan took a deep breath, and felt his energy, or “mana” as it was named. Just like Dan didn’t know if the dreams of the other children felt like his, he had no clue how unique his own mana felt. He described the control he had of it as a ball of solid water. Some of it got stuck to the sides but Dan could collect them as he ran his mana around his core.

Apparently this was quite special, because the two elders began smiling at Dan a lot more when he described it and asked “what do I do next?”

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“Next?” The old woman had asked.

“What do I do when I’m… full?” He hadn’t known how else to explain it. Dan knew that he hadn’t been actually eating but the bowl that sat in his core felt like it was going to overflow. When he first moved his mana it had felt like rolling a ball around in a large bowl. Now it was as though the ball had become a river that he was struggling to keep contained. It had happened so quickly, Dan was glad that he hadn’t done this before.

“Now you have to make it go the other way.”

This time, Dan blinked hard at the old man’s words and did look at him, questioningly. He couldn’t even slow the whirlpool inside of himself, how was he meant to change the river’s direction now? Nausea was growing in Dan’s throat as his mana continued to pick up speed. He tried to create a reversal to the flow but it was like placing his hand into roaring water. Something inside Dan stung and brought tears to his eyes as pain always did, and his control nearly slipped.

As bad as it was that the river of mana was still getting faster, it would be worse if it exploded out of his bowl.

Dan knew this instinctively. He had no time to be angry at the elders for doing this to him, instead letting his eyes beseech them. He needed more guidance. The old woman looked between Dan and the old man. The nausea rose again, this time causing Dan to swallow back acidic bile. The old woman gave the man a slap on his arm, and he seemed to jolt a little.

Had he been sleeping? Dan wondered, incredulous. The sound of his mana roaring within was nearly deafening and it surprised him that the old man could sleep through it.

“What are you doing, boy? The other way. Another way. Above. However it feels. Don’t fight it, control it.”

Dan focused on the feeling as he said it. If he were able to talk, and then asked to describe the current sensation, he would have said his mana was going from front to back. The old man had said “other” and meant “different”. That still felt nearly impossible, all his control on keeping the rush contained, but not definitely impossible.

He poured all of his concentration into the effort. His body slouched from proper form and his jaw fell slack, eyes unblinking. Any words the elders may have said were lost to the white noise of his mana. Front to back, front to back, front to back, Dan focused on the rolling energy. Front to back, take a little and throw it upwards. Front to back, take a little more and throw it downwards. Front to back and keep drawing from it.

The process took minutes, Dan’s breathing stopped and his energy began to calm. He had viewed his mana as though it were in a bowl, but now he saw that it was more like a flat surface. There was so much more room, a circle to a sphere, formed within. By comparison, the raging rapids were a trickle once more. That same power was still there but it was as though it had squeezed from a straw, moving from a pond to a lake. It snaked through Dan and slowly began to seek out the boundaries it was now contained within.

Dan gasped as his lungs finally remembered to inhale. He spluttered and heaved, unable to move. His arms and legs had been lost to pins and needles, slowly regaining their strength as blood flowed back to his extremities. The elders watched quietly, giving him the time he needed to compose himself. Though, even for a very well behaved child, Dan was six years old and the experience had been frightening. He wept, and the old woman joined him on the cot, sitting next to him.

When he finally pulled himself free from crying into the old woman’s skirt, the fabric of her clothes stuck to Dan’s face. She did not get angry with him for his snotty nose, as one of the matrons once had, instead grabbing her sleeve and wiping Dan’s face.

“Now, now,” she shushed, “that was a lot wasn’t it? You just cuddle Baba for now. Yaya is sorry he didn’t warn you, aren’t you Yaya?” The old woman, Baba, pulled Dan in and glared at Yaya, the old man. Dan’s hair stood on end, and he didn’t know why. The old man winced in his armchair.

“Enough of that,” his voice raised in volume, but still sounded like boots in snow. “I… apologise.” The man, Yaya, seemed to be very unfamiliar with the word. “You are young. I forget these things.”

“No, Elder Yaya…” Dan had regained some equilibrium, and with it, his voice. He was currently struggling between not wanting to correct his elder and not wanting Yaya to say sorry. However horrible it had felt, however stressful, Dan’s insides were now fluttering like moths had been released within. It tickled and it was pleasant. Dan stood from Elder Baba and bowed deeply to both of them.

“Thank you, respected elders.”

“Ha!” Burst Elder Baba. “Not sure about respected. It was for me, child. I did not want to see you walk around so lost.” Dan didn’t know what she meant. He had never left the Guan family grounds and, while they were very large, he knew them very well even at his young age. Regardless, he seemed to have pleased the elders and he was happy for that, at least. “He’ll have to go back, Yaya. Can’t keep him here.”

The old man grumbled something that sounded like he was annoyed, but Dan barely had a moment to register that. Elder Yaya, who had yet to move by this point, flickered. Dan’s eyes only managed to see his shadow dive forward as though it were a separate individual. Shaped like an ancient warrior, Elder Baba’s shadow moved like lightning and when it touched Dan’s own, everything went dark.

Fortunately, as the shadow placed him to sleep, it was dreamless and calm. The boy slept a peaceful rest of eighteen hours before he awoke, disorientated and different. If not for the obvious growth inside himself, he might have thought the whole experience a dream. That the strange room with it’s hidden areas and the positively primordial seniors, who spoke in strange ways and directed him with expertise, was all a figment of his imagination could have easily been believed.

Except he was different now. The small ball within, rolling on the surface of a plate, had become a small storming sphere. Something about the growing power within felt like a secret, so Dan kept his newfound tempest of mana to himself. He continued meditating and avoiding sleep, but it also seemed less harsh on his body. Over the coming days and weeks, he found that he was much more aware than usual.

He drank it in. Without the fugue of sleep covering his senses, everything seemed sharper. Dan felt his ability to react skyrocket, no longer caught unawares by the outstretched feet of other children. Eventually, the teasing and worried glances faded to memory.

If anyone had known to look at the young man’s core, they would have called him a genius. He was the youngest member of the Guan family to ascend to the cross stage in generations. Most did not reach cross stage until they were ten or eleven.

Guan Ah Dan reached the next barrier in his core at age eight.