Felix Mavis sat cross-legged in the center of his talisman workshop, the scent of burnt parchment and bitter incense clinging to the stale summer air. Sweat clung to his brows, his skin pale beneath the flickering candlelight. Dozens of talismans—mostly defensive types and a few half-finished offensive seals—lay scattered around him. They were beautiful in their precision, crafted with care, marked with years of repetition.
Yet none of them could help him now.
His body trembled, veins pulsing erratically. A faint crimson glow spread from his dantian, struggling to stabilize the swirling energy that threatened to rip him apart.
He was trying to break through. Again.
And again, it was killing him.
Felix had never been a prodigy.
He was nineteen when he first touched the Awakening Realm—low stage—through sheer will and the use of expensive spiritual pills. No one praised him for it. Most cultivators in the capital reached that level by sixteen, some by thirteen. By twenty-five, many of them would have already reached the peak of the Awakening Realm, standing among the elites and preparing for legendary steps few dared dream of.
But Felix? He scraped by. Slowly. Painfully.
His talent was average, and so were his options.
The cultivation method he purchased—a cheap, unranked technique called "Breath of the Hollow Vessel"—was riddled with inconsistencies and flaws. It circulated energy poorly, and the longer he used it, the more he felt something wrong building inside him. But he had no choice. Higher-tier methods were sold at hundreds of gold, if not thousands.
And gold was something he didn't have. Not in abundance.
The money he earned from talisman sales—thanks to the strength of his Ghost Ink fireball designs—barely covered the cost of pills, materials, and the occasional medicinal balm. The rest went into ink, parchment, and crystal dust for his work.
He spent his days drawing. His nights cultivating. His life was a slow bleed.
But Felix refused to stop.
Tonight, he believed, would be the breakthrough.
He had prepared the room meticulously. Eight Lesser Spirit-Condensing Pills sat in a bowl beside him, their fragrance pungent. He had acquired them through bartering and near-begging—some from traveling alchemists, others from damaged stock that no one else dared use.
He had swallowed six already.
His veins were on fire.
The flow of spiritual energy within him was erratic, hitting blockages formed from years of flawed circulation. His bones creaked with the strain. His breath came in short, dry gasps.
Then—he felt the wall.
The bottleneck.
The passage between Awakening Realm low stage and mid stage was narrow, and his path twisted. His meridians were unstable, like cracked pipes about to burst. The energy pressed against the barrier, surging with force from the pills.
One more push.
Felix bit his lip and released the energy.
Pain erupted through his chest. His heart skipped a beat.
The energy inside him raged like a flood, spiraling out of control.
He screamed.
Blood poured from his mouth, his ears, his nose. His skin erupted in welts. The fragile network of spiritual veins in his chest shattered like glass, and he felt something rupture inside him.
He collapsed onto the floor, coughing blood.
His vision blurred. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.
"Damn it..."
He reached for the last pill with a trembling hand, but his fingers were numb.
Was this how he would die?
Struggling for years, only to fall short at the threshold?
His eyes closed. The world dulled.
And then—
A whisper.
Not a voice. Not sound. But a sensation.
Something flickered in the back of his mind. A line of light. A curve. A symbol.
Then another.
And another.
He saw them—not with his eyes, but with his consciousness.
The structure of a talisman.
Intricate. Precise.
Lines. Ink. Flow. Energy.
Each mark had meaning. Each stroke mattered. Not just because it created power—but because it mirrored life.
Felix's eyes snapped open.
"Life... is like a talisman."
The thought was simple.
But behind it, something vast stirred.
Epiphany.
A rare, mystical phenomenon where a cultivator's mind transcends ordinary comprehension. A moment where the world unfolds. Where truth, often hidden, becomes clear.
Felix floated in his awareness.
He saw the broken lines of his meridians. He saw how the flawed method forced energy along jagged paths.
But more importantly—he saw how to fix it.
Not through pills. Not through borrowed techniques.
But through understanding.
Through creation.
Through drawing.
Just as a talisman must guide power with balance and purpose—so too must the body.
He reached inward.
Guided by instinct and revelation, he wove spiritual energy into new lines—gentler ones, flowing like brushstrokes rather than chisels.
He restructured the channels. Rerouted the flows.
It was agony. His body protested. The damage was deep.
But his mind remained calm.
He was drawing again—this time upon himself.
The pressure returned.
This time, he welcomed it.
He gathered the remaining energy—pure, fierce, and condensed from the pills—and directed it through the new pathways.
It surged.
It filled him.
The barrier broke.
A thunderclap echoed in his spirit.
He had done it.
Awakening Realm. Mid Stage.
His entire body pulsed with energy, even as blood pooled around him.
But it wasn't clean. He was still broken in places. The new pathways were crude. Fragile.
And his body—the physical vessel—was battered nearly beyond repair.
Bones fractured.
Lungs torn.
Vision dimming.
He had succeeded.
But at a cost.
He felt his limbs go numb. His breath slowed.
The last thing he saw were the faint glowing lines on the wall beside him—one of his old talismans.
And in his mind, the words repeated.
"Life is like a talisman. Draw it with care."
Then—darkness.
Felix collapsed beside the ink-stained floor, his pulse shallow.
A single breath escaped his lips.
But the glow in his core remained.
Alive.
Flickering.
And growing.