Lotus could hear the river beside her, cheerfully babbling along, pretending that it didn’t just drown her. At some point the churning white torrent had tapered off into a mellow brook. She rolled over from her face down position on the sandy bank, staring at the open sky above the treeline.

She sat up slowly, half-expecting her body to protest, to punish her for leaping in the river and everything that came after. It didn't. No water sloshing in her lungs, no leaden exhaustion in her limbs. Instead, energy thrummed within her like an arrow begging to be released.

Lotus patted herself down. Her clothes must have dried while she was unconscious, the rest of her equipment lost to the river. Something felt off, like the rest of the world had tilted five degrees and she was the only one upright. She didn’t recognize the scenery, but it was familiar, as was much of the forest: a sandy riverbank next to a seemingly endless forest. 

The ground around her showed no activity, no traces of rescue. How was she still alive?

She tried to remember. The girl with the auburn hair. The ledge. The prayer she offered to the Immortals. The coldness of the river. And then—what?

She wasn’t sure, but it felt like she had forgotten something important.

As she got to her feet, she finally discovered the source of the weird feeling. Her body was far too light, as if it could float away if she jumped too high. She moved her left arm. She saw it move normally, but her arm felt hollow, none of its usual weight accompanying the movement. She held the arm with her other hand and confirmed that the firmness of her arm was still intact. She let her left arm go limp, but her hand didn’t register any weight. 

Curious. 

She decided to test how fast she could run with her light body, selecting a sturdy oak tree as the destination, approximately ten meters away. 

Lotus pushed off with her toes and—launched herself into the tree head first. She wildly misjudged the strength of her muscles, bridging the gap in a second, but she didn’t feel any of the expected pain of hitting her head. She removed her face from the trunk, spitting out a piece of bark, and stepped back to observe the tree. It had a dent in it, vaguely sharing Lotus’ nose, cheekbones, and jawline.

“I look pretty good.” She laughed for the first time in what felt like years.

Excited to test out her newfound strength, she picked up a loose stone on the ground and hurled it at another tree. The stone buried itself into the trunk like a seed into soft soil, which only made her more thrilled. 

She wasn’t weightless and fragile, she was strong.

Crouching, Lotus channeled all her energy into her legs, then launched herself upward as high as she could, grabbing onto a pine branch ten meters above her. She placed her feet on the branch and steadied herself against the rough bark before looking around. 

A sea of green and brown stretched out in every direction. This was the realm of the branches, a mystical world where one misstep could mean a quick and brutal exit. A land where the ground itself was alive, constantly charting new roads that only residents of this world knew about. She watched as a pair of squirrels jumped from branch to branch, oblivious to the hidden wonders of their world.

Mesmerized, she prepared to follow them, but she pushed off with too much force, and the branch snapped beneath her. Lotus screamed as she plunged from her perch, high above the forest floor. She fell back to the earth with a loud thud, her body leaving a deep impression in the soil. 

Once the shock left her system, Lotus pushed herself up slowly. The impact hadn’t harmed her at all. She looked back up at the place she had fallen from. If she wanted to revisit the realm of the branches, she would have to learn to properly utilize her strength.

A smile formed on her face, which broke out into a reckless laugh of delight. She ran through the forest, not minding that she found her face embedded in a tree every other second. She couldn’t get enough of the present moment, the wind through her hair, the world as her playground.

“I need to stop eating bark.” Lotus muttered to herself.

Although she didn’t have her hunting gear with her, she still had to aim, only now she was the projectile. She aimed at a smaller pine further away, partially covered by the foliage between them. Lotus braced for impact, arm defending her face as she released the projectile. 

Her arm hit the tree with a loud thunk, creating yet another dent. She glanced back at the path that she cleared, a bloodless victory against branches and leaves, which lay massacred all over the forest floor.

Lotus heard a creaking noise from in front of her body, and she turned back to see the rest of the tree falling towards her.

BOOM.

A tree fell in the forest, but the sound was not as loud as Lotus expected. Her face bore the brunt of the attack, the base of the fallen tree hitting her head before rolling off to the side.

“Okay, that one hurt a little.” She winced, guessing it might leave a bruise.

By the afternoon, she had gotten more used to her new capabilities, her movements regaining their usual precision when she used a quarter of her full speed and strength. It wasn’t just her physical prowess that had increased, her mind and reflexes seemed sharper too.

As she made her way back to the river, a thought occurred to her. 

Is this a reincarnated body? She wasn’t certain how reincarnation worked, but if the Immortals finally returned and brought her back to life, then surely her family was alive too. Her heart raced at the thought.

Lotus carefully walked to the edge of the river to examine her reflection. Her hopes faltered as Lotus’ face stared back; still the same face, but not without some differences. 

Her eyes were golden.

She leaned closer, thinking maybe the light hit the water at the wrong angle, but no matter how she turned her head, their color remained the same. The hazel she'd always known was gone, replaced by a bright gold that held unknown depth. It was, she admitted, a pretty color.

A new golden mole glowed faintly beneath her left eye, resting peacefully against her cheekbone. For some reason, its presence made her unusually irritated.

The details of her dream slowly came back to her. The golden speck, the six sided white room, the disappearing golden stairs. Right before she lost consciousness, a strange fork melted into her palm and spread throughout her body. Was it really a dream?

She had no explanation as to how she could have gone from the river, into the room, into the river again. She didn’t even know where it even was. She was sure that the stairs reached far higher than any mountain she climbed before, but there were no mysterious white towers along the river as far as she could tell. Maybe the room was created by the Immortals, surely they worked in mysterious ways. But why would all powerful Immortals go through all of that trouble to hide a fork?

Fork?

Was it really a fork? 

The Spirits stole the Mad Celestial’s golden trident, hiding it so he could never use it again.

Lotus blinked. Could the fork really be the Mad Celestial’s Trident? As strong as she was, she didn’t have the ability to split the sky like her father described in his stories. And how would the Mad Celestial, an existence larger than planets, wield something that could fit in the palm of her hand? And if it were true, what did that make her, now that the fork merged with her body?

Lotus’ reflection stared back at her from the water’s surface. She now knew why the mole made her so irritated.

"...You came out with me, didn't you?" Having broken through the white room with her own strength, she was no longer afraid of the voices.

Birds chirped in the distance.

"I know you're there. You had plenty to say in the white room." Lotus put her hands on her hips, staring at her own reflection. “Are you a Spirit? What was that fork? Was it really the Mad Celestial’s Trident?”

Refusing to take silence as an answer, she reached up and dragged her nails against the mole, trying to scratch it off, to no avail. It was beneath her skin, which had been given almost as much toughness as she was given strength. 

She dropped her hand with a long sigh and looked across the river in contemplation, realizing her questions wouldn’t be answered today.

She thought about maintaining the Heavenly Dao. Was she still able to do that, now that she might be a Celestial? But did she still have to, since Celestials are also immortal?

She sat down on a flat stone by the water's edge, suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with her body, her mind spiraling. Maybe she would live all the way until the Immortals returned, but the other Immortals might treat all Celestials as enemies and strike her down.

I just need to show them that I’m a good Celestial, and ask them to bring my family back!

Her father had knowingly walked towards death to try and save her sister. If she wanted to be like her father, she had to be ready to do the same.

She gazed at Heaven and the six constellations, slowly ascending to their usual seats as the sun died down.

"I don't care if I’m cursed, or a Celestial, or even a trident," she whispered, "but I’m going to find the Immortals and make them bring back my family." 

A breeze moved through the tree line, as if the forest itself acknowledged her resolve.

As the breeze settled, the air shifted, almost imperceptibly. The birds chirping earlier had flown away.

The hair on the back of her neck rose.

She surveyed the trees across the river. Nothing stood out, but she could feel hungry eyes on her skin. 

They were watching her.