It flowed up Lin Tian's arm like warm honey, heavy and sweet, sinking straight into his marrow. For a heartbeat, there was only that sensation, a profound comfort that made him want to close his eyes and sleep for a century.
Then the memories hit.
Not his own. These were old, so old the edges had worn smooth with time. They unfolded behind his eyes, not as pictures, but as lived experience.
He stood on a peak that scraped the void between stars. Below him, not a world, but a tapestry of countless realities, threads of light woven into a shimmering, breathing whole. He was not alone.
Figures stood beside him, their forms blurred by power and time, but their presence was unmistakable. A woman whose laughter was the sound of a forge fire. Another whose calm was the deep, cold silence between galaxies. A third whose eyes held the shifting colors of a primal forest.
This was not a harem. This was a covenant.
