The stars screamed the moment he was born.
Above the Vorian Clan's sacred lands, the heavens fractured with clouds spiraling into vortices, constellations wrenching out of alignment, the sky itself splitting open in a cascade of silver light. The birthing chamber, perched atop the Astral Spire, convulsed with uncontrolled resonance. Ancient formations flared and collapsed in on themselves, unable to contain what had never before walked this world.
And then silence.
And in that silence… a cry.
The moment the sound left his lips, reality itself shifted.
Visions tore across the skies of Astralis. The planet trembled. The figures of ten thousand astral origin cultivators bowed toward Vorian lands. Prophecies ran wild, the veil between realms split, time itself went still and the Heavenly Dao spoke three words that shook existence:
"The Blessed One."
Flowers bloomed all over the world. Birds took flight in synchronized reverence. Billions of races, from the lowest beasts to the highest immortals, dropped to their knees in instinctive worship. Star essence flooded the world, accelerating cultivation speeds tenfold and in the Vorian lands, there was an overflow of aether so thick people spontaneously broke through. Across Astralis, terror and awe warred in the hearts of all who witnessed the birth of something impossible.
Meanwhile, deep beneath the Vorian mountains, where the clan's oldest and most terrible slumbered, ten pairs of eyes opened at once.
These were not mere elders. They were paragons, beings who had slept for eons, only to rise when the clan faced annihilation. And now, without a word, they moved.
Space folded and the ancestors materialized inside the birthing chamber like specters of starlight, their gazes locking onto the infant in his mother's arms.
The child glowed with aether so rich, it liquified.
Resonance pulsed from him in waves, warping the air. His tiny body thrummed with power no newborn should possess:
A Tier 9 star, already bound to his soul. Two Tier 8 stars, orbiting in perfect, instinctive harmony. A Constellation Lord's foundation, fully formed, an impossibility that defied the heavens.
His soul was too vast. It pressed against the fabric of the realm, leaking flickers of Eldar sigils and celestial runes, knowledge no mortal should hold. His very breath distorted time within the chamber.
Then the Patriarch, Kael's father, a cultivator at the Stellar Rebirth realm stepped forward, and then froze. His cultivation, mighty as it was, could not touch his own son.
It was the ancestors who acted.
Together, they wove an ancient formation, one not used in millennia. Sweat beaded on their spectral forms as they forced the seal onto the child, not just to protect him, but to also protect the world from him.
The ritual lasted hours and when it was done, the child lay quiet, his aura diminished but not extinguished. His inner world had already formed, a swirling cosmos of stars and accelerated time.
However, it wasn't enough.
"His soul must also be sealed," one ancestor rasped.
Soul-sealing a newborn had never been done. There would be repercussions but they had no choice. They were in a race against time.
When the final seal settled, the ancestors stood in grim silence, gasping for breath, weakened spiritually but relieved that they could prevent the baby's body from exploding due to the enormous power contained and happy that they were able to reduce the size of Kael's birth phenomena.
And then the healer spoke the words that would shape Kael's fate forever.
"He is intersex." And the chamber went still.
The ancestors turned, their eyes narrowing, not in disgust, but calculation.
"His body is strong, but his nature…"
"There will be complications if he bears a child."
"He must be protected, guarded and brought up to serve the clan first."
Yet none dared suggest disqualifying him due to his gender. How could they?
"There is no other heir with his talent," one ancestor murmured.
"No one else has been able to command the stars like this, at least not in millions of years."
The verdict was swift.
"He can't be allowed to seek a partnership outside of the clan. His bloodline is the purest with the best space/time manipulation that has not been seen in millions of years."
"He must marry within the bloodline. No outsider can lay claim to him."
One of the ancestors spoke to Lysandros, Kael's father: "He would be engaged to the strongest member of the clan once he turns ten. We cannot allow another clan to gain access to him. This child would bring us to the peak and ensure thousands of years of prosperity for our clan."
"No one outside this room can know the truth."
His mother, once the Holy Saintess, now the Matriarch, sat frozen, her Cosmic Domain cultivation doing nothing to steady her trembling arms as she cradled him.
His father, the Patriarch, stood behind her, jaw locked, eyes burning with a fear he could not voice. He spoke with a trembling voice:
"No one outside this room can ever know what he is, for his safety and our clan's prosperity."
The baby was named Kael Alric Vorian.
As an infant, he was too beautiful, a kind of beauty that made people want to own him.
His skin was like pale moonlight, phoenix-shaped eyes that were deep and unblinking, a heart-shaped mouth, long lashes, sharp brows that made his face both androgynous and devastatingly feminine.
The air itself clung to him. Adults averted their eyes. Servants hesitated before speaking. His beauty was not just striking, it was dangerous. The kind that bred obsession, envy, and ruin.
And so, from the moment he could walk, no one touched him unless they absolutely had to, for it was forbidden.
When Kael became two years old, a forbidden text slipped past the wards of his chamber.
Kael stared at the diagrams, the passages, the book laid bare before him. It was about intersex people and their abilities. He realized that he could give birth even though he looked like a man outwardly.
The book slid from his hands down to the floor. His breath came too fast. A silent scream built in his chest, collapsing inward like a dying star.
But I'm a man? How could it be? He felt like the earth was giving way under his feet. He immediately stripped naked and examined his whole body. Is this the price of being too beautiful? He looked downwards and didn't notice anything different. Poor Kael did not know that his body would start changing at ten. He looked inwards and looked at his organs. His inner sight went to his pubic region and scanned through. He finally noticed something extra.
Fuck me. I have a womb.
He fell backwards, his mind a mess, wondering, what now?
By three, he noticed the whispers.
The servant girls looking at him from the corner whispered "fox demon" underneath their breaths. Clan mates would whisper underneath their breaths after a sound thrashing from Kael, "unstable vessel that is only meant to be pushed down and used, how dare you humiliate me." Older boys would whisper, "seductive freak," after trying to talk to him and receiving a cold stare in response.
He felt it in their stares, desire, fear, envy all twisting into a noose around his neck.
If he weren't the heir, he knew his fate would be to be sold, packaged, given away like a prize.
His power was his only shield.
And so he endured.
He trained and pushed himself harder so that he could be strong enough to control his destiny.
After a gruelling training session, he sat beneath the mirrored ceiling of his chamber, staring at his reflection, and looking through his fragmented memories, begging the question:
"What was I before I became this?"
Outside, the stars pulsed like a heartbeat.
And far above, in the forgotten depths of the cosmos, the Eldar Realm shivered,
As if it had just remembered a name it tried to erase.