Pale morning light filtered through the thin curtains of a small bedroom, painting the cluttered shelves and stacked notebooks in soft gold. The apartment was quiet at this hour. And in the very center of a narrow bed, sitting cross-legged with his back straight and his eyes closed, was a young man doing the same thing he did every single morning.
Elias Arkwright breathed in and breathed out with practiced ease.
Meditation.
In this world, it was the first thing anyone learned and the last thing anyone outgrew. Children were taught the breathing forms almost as soon as they could sit still, drilled in them year after year until the motions became second nature—a compulsory lesson every school hammered into its students, all in the hope of turning it into a lifelong habit. Because meditation was not merely an exercise. It was the path itself.
Everywhere—in the air, in the floor, in the light, in the very walls of the apartment—there existed an invisible ocean.
Spiritual Energy.
It saturated the world so completely that most people forgot it was there at all, the way a fish rarely thinks about water. Through meditation, a person learned to draw that energy in, to gather and refine it within themselves. Do it long enough, with enough patience and discipline, and one day the accumulated energy would take shape—and a Beast Taming Space would be born within the soul, marking the moment an ordinary person became a true beast tamer.
And even after that, the work never stopped. Meditation remained the means by which every beast tamer advanced in rank, consolidated their growth, and pushed their Beast Taming Space toward greater heights. From the youngest student to the oldest living legend, everyone meditated.
Elias had been through this same routine for years now, patient and unhurried, waiting for the day his own efforts would finally bear fruit.
He drew the energy inward, the way he always did.
It answered, gathering somewhere deep beneath his ribs in a place that wasn’t quite physical, pooling and condensing the way it had on a thousand mornings before. He guided it without thinking, the motions worn smooth by repetition, expecting nothing more than another quiet, ordinary session.
And then—something stirred.
The amassed energy, so still a heartbeat ago, suddenly revolved.
It spun inward, faster and faster, drawing in everything he had so carefully gathered—and then it expanded, blossoming outward all at once into something vast and new.
A space unfurled within his soul.
One moment, there was nothing, and the next, there was a world—a small, cubic space of white void, silent and pristine and waiting. It was empty. Featureless. Absolutely perfect in its blankness, like a fresh page before the first word.
A Beast Taming Space. His Beast Taming Space. After all these years, it had finally formed.
Elias’s serene expression cracked into a gleeful smile.
It was a strange thing to be born twice.
In another life, on another world, there had been a boy in a hospital bed. No parents to grieve his situation. No visitors. Just white sheets, the steady beep of machines, and a body that had decided, far too early, to stop cooperating. He had been small, and quiet, and very alone, and he had died of cancer before he ever got the chance to grow up.
That world had been called Earth, and it had not known about Spiritual Energy.
This one did.
Blue Star had been ordinary once, too, centuries ago—a place much like Earth, full of cities and farms and people going about unremarkable lives.
Then, Spiritual Energy emerged. It seeped into everything: the rivers, the mountains, the trees, the flora and fauna, even the stones, the storms, and the old, forgotten things.
The world swelled with new power and expanded under its influence.
Life forms and others twisted and birthed into Demonic Beasts, ferocious creatures wielding fire and frost and worse, and for a long, terrible while it seemed humanity might simply vanish from the world it had built.
But humans were stubborn. In their darkest hour, when extinction pressed close, they did not merely survive—they thrived. They learned to drink in that same energy, to forge a space within their own souls, and through it to bind beasts to their side, to contract them and fight alongside them.
Now, hundreds of years later, the apocalypse had become routine, with humanity's advancement and increased understanding of Spiritual Energy. Every person could awaken their Beast Taming Space as young adults, and become a beast tamer. It was as natural as growing up.
For Elias—who remembered dying alone, who had been reborn into a family that was warm and loud and loved him dearly—even the ordinary parts of this world felt like a miracle every single day.
And his Beast Taming Space had come with something extraordinary.
As the thrill of it all was still settling into his chest, the second wave arrived—knowledge, pure and instinctive, the way one simply knows their own name. The shape and nature of his Talent, the unique gift every newly awakened soul received in the very moment their Space was born, exactly once in a lifetime.
Words assembled themselves behind his eyes:
[Omniscient Questions]
Effects:
A Talent that could obtain truth. Absolute, guaranteed, unquestionable truth about spirit or demonic beasts. About any spirit or demonic beast. About the things he had spent his entire second life obsessing over—evolution pathways, bloodlines, the secret architecture of how creatures grew and changed and evolved.
He, Elias Arkwright, who had filled entire shelves with notebooks full of theories and guesses and maybes—he could just ask. And the answer would always be true.
Elias stopped breathing for an entirely different reason. He read the words again, then a third time, slower, the way a man double-checks the math on something far too good to be true. Then he pinched his own arm—hard—just to be certain he wasn’t still half-asleep and dreaming.
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It hurt. Quite a lot, actually. He winced, rubbing the spot, and pinched it again just to be thorough, because a researcher does not accept a single data point. Awake. Definitely awake. It was real, it was perfect, and it was his.
A laugh bubbled up out of him, helpless and bright—the kind that almost never escaped in front of other people.
“This is cheating,” he informed the ceiling. The ceiling, wisely, declined to argue.
There was only one catch, and even calling it a catch felt ungrateful: one question a day. Only one. He had no idea—none whatsoever—what his first should be. There was simply too much. Every notebook on every shelf seemed to lift its head at once and clamor for attention. It was, without question, the best problem he had ever had.
And on this morning, after his eighteenth birthday, the very first thing he wanted to do was tell his family the good news.
“Elias! Lunch is ready!”
“Coming!”
As usual, Elias looked at the empty dinner table and set out the silverware and dishes.
In the kitchen, his dad Damien was cooking. He didn’t look like someone with two grown kids; at most, he looked like someone in his late twenties.
But that was natural in this world. With the contract of a spirit beast, both the contractor and the contractee benefited. The contracted spirit beast grows faster and stronger, while the contractor gains feedback from the beast’s growth—benefits that depend on the beast’s attributes and strength.
As a result, most people’s lifespans extend to around 200 years. There are even rumors of living legends, a thousand years old and still around, protecting humanity.
His dad had awakened the Enhanced Healing talent, which strengthened the healing abilities of his contracted beasts. It allowed him to contract a rare life-and-water-attribute Sparkling Jade Guppy, which he named Amia.
Elias watched as the fist-sized, pure white guppy—as if carved out of jade—swam in the massive tank in the living room. Noticing his gaze, Amia drifted toward him, blowing a small bubble. He greeted her with a smile and a wave.
As for the feedback, the water attribute granted enhanced water affinity and detoxification, while the life attribute granted slower aging and an extended lifespan.
Hence, his youthful appearance, even though he was in his eighties.
His dad finished up and took off his apron, signaling to him.
“Go wake your mother and brother up. They must be starving.”
“Got it.”
As he opened the master bedroom door, Elias saw a silver-haired, fierce-faced woman who looked to be in her thirties, even though his parents were only 4 years apart—his mom Selena—sleeping like a log, as usual.
He shouted loudly into her ear because nobody could wake her up, not even if an earthquake were going on.
“MOM! DAD CALLED! Lunch’s waiting!”
She grumbled and slowly surfaced from her slumber.
“Coming, coming… just a few more minutes.”
“Sigh—no, Mom, you have to get up now, or Dad will be angry!”
His mom was a professional combat beastmaster who had awakened the Ice Body talent, which enhanced her contracted beasts’ ice skills, boosted her own resistance to ice attacks, and increased the growth speed of her ice-attribute beasts.
She was usually away for days at a time, out in the outskirts where wild Demonic Beasts roam, capturing and hunting them, and foraging for rare materials to make a living. Basically, the adventures of this world.
She could never rest properly outdoors, so home was the one place she let all her tension go—a familiar scene that had played out countless times.
Knowing she’d wake up and come as usual, he left and arrived at his older brother’s room.
They were ten years apart, which might seem like a lot, but in this world, it was pretty common for siblings—what with the expanded lifespan and whatnot.
He graduated from a formal combat beastmaster college three years ago, then followed and trained under Mom ever since—picking up her bad habits along the way.
His brother had awakened a rather unusual combat talent called Bond Relativity Combat Enhancement, more widely known as Friendship Power. The closer you were to your contracted beasts, the higher their overall stats—quite a powerful talent.
“Kyle! Wake UP! Lunch’s ready!”
He shouted as he rudely shook the bed, then quickly dodged the hands that shot out to grab him.
Having done all that, he went and sat down at the dining table.
Soon, the two of them shuffled out, exhausted, and dropped into their seats as Dad went to the living room tank to feed his contracted beast.
With the bowls out, Mom and Kyle summoned their own beasts. Mom called out her ice-attribute Snowfall Owl named Eiren and another ice-attribute elemental-type spirit beast, named Rime, an Ice Sprite. Kyle summoned his fighting-type Boxing Monkey, named Koda.
Soon the summoned beasts and the rest of them were eating, and in the middle of their everyday conversation—Elias announced his awakening.
“Oh,” he said, as casually as he could manage, fiddling with his chopsticks. “My Beast Taming Space formed this morning, by the way. During meditation.”
The table went still for half a heartbeat.
Then it erupted.
“WHAT?” Kyle nearly knocked his bowl over as he shot upright, a grain of rice still stuck to his cheek. “My little brother’s officially a beast tamer now?! Why didn’t you lead with that?!”
“Elias!” Mom’s grogginess vanished instantly. She reached across the table and ruffled his hair hard enough to shake his body, grinning like she’d just won a fight. “That’s my boy. Eighteen and awakened, right on time.”
Dad turned from the tank, and the proud, warm look on his young face was the kind that made Elias’s chest feel tight in a way he still wasn’t entirely used to, even after all these years. “Congratulations, Elias,” he said softly. “We’re happy for you. Truly.”
Even the beasts reacted. Eiren gave a low, dignified hoot of approval. Koda thumped a heavy fist against his own chest in what was clearly meant to be a salute. Rime spun a delighted little loop in the air, scattering harmless snowflakes across the table, and from her tank, Amia released a cheerful stream of bubbles.
“Okay, okay—” Kyle leaned forward, eyes shining with the particular intensity he reserved for combat and gossip. “The important part. Your talent. What’d you get?”
Pairs of eyes locked onto him.
He set down his chopsticks. And for once, he didn’t hesitate or hedge or stare at the table. He just smiled.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “Perfect for what I want to be.”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then the tension he hadn’t even noticed in their shoulders quietly drained away.
Because they knew. Of course, they knew. They’d known for years exactly what he wanted to become—not a combat beastmaster like Mom and Kyle, charging into the outskirts to hunt Demonic Beasts, or a healer like his dad, but a breeder. A researcher. Someone who discovered evolution paths and helped spirit beasts become more than anyone thought possible.
A talent unsuited to that dream wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Plenty of great breeders worked with talents that had nothing to do with research, leaning instead on patience, study, and stubborn years of effort. It wouldn’t have stopped him.
But this? A talent that handed him truth itself?
It would help. Enormously.
“Of course it’s perfect,” Mom declared, stabbing the air with her chopsticks. “Would’ve fought the heavens myself if they gave my son a junk talent.”
“Please don’t fight the heavens at the dinner table,” Dad said mildly, sitting down at last.
“No promises.”
Kyle threw an arm around his shoulders and hauled him half out of his chair. “A genius breeder in the family! You hear that, Koda? We’re gonna be famous by association.” Koda nodded sagely, as though fame by association were a long-held personal goal.
“Get off,” Elias laughed, shoving at his arm. “You’re going to make me drop my food.”
“Can’t hear you. Too proud.”
Rime, deciding this was a wonderful game, latched onto his other side and tried to help Kyle by tugging at his sleeve, which accomplished nothing except making everyone laugh harder. Amia blew a single, judgmental bubble at the chaos from her tank. Eiren let out a long-suffering sigh that somehow conveyed more dignity than the entire rest of the table combined.
And in the middle of it all—the warmth, the noise, the family that had no idea what they had given to a boy who once had nothing—Elias laughed until his cheeks ached, and thought, not for the first time, that being born twice was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.
Lunch carried on, loud and bright and unhurried.
Somewhere in his soul, an empty white Space waited patiently for its first spirit beast.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, a single question was still waiting to be asked.
Elias Arkwright
Damien Arkwright and Amia
Kyle Arkwright and Koda
Selena Arkwright, Eiren and Rime
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