*Three hundred years ago*

*[The Cryo Chamber]*

Three oval pods, attached to a vine, float, suspended mid-air in the middle of the large, dimly lit room. Two guards dressed in pale yellow traditional Yuanjian attire stand guard at the large metal doors.

A cry from within the room alerts them, and despite being told not to enter, they rush inside.

Little did they know that it was a mistake, a mistake, that would cost hundreds of their brethren their lives.
The metal doors that were partially opened seconds ago are thrown wide open, and gray robes kiss the marble floor as a tall, slender-figured lady enters the room with her palms stretched out to her sides.

"Your highness, you shouldn't be here!" The taller of the two warns, bowing his head.

The girl scans the room, "Thank you for letting me in." She waves her hand, and the men fly halfway across the room and hit the floor. They try to stand, pointing their weapons: three feet long, pointed, golden shafts but instead double over with pain as if punched in the gut.

The younger man, in an unexpected move, flings his shaft at her. "My apologies, your highness." The man yells as the weapon hits the girl square in her chest, dragging a gut-wrenching scream from her. A beam of light: shoots from her fingertips, its target: the guard who had dared to hurt her. The first guard mimics his partner's move. The second blow to her abdomen makes her stagger, yet the beam finds its target, killing the guard on the spot.

As the girl scrambles to her feet, the one still alive rushes towards the exit, closing the door behind him. Upon exiting, he jams the alarm button, filling the entire establishment with siren sounds, alerting everyone in the place.

As hundreds of men, women, and security personnel leave their posts and rush to the Cryo Chamber, the metal doors burst open. The guard watches, bewildered as an abyss-like formation opens inches away from the oval floating pods.

"Stop, Ah-Yu." A voice booms in the chamber, making the woman glance over her shoulder. Her eyes soften for a moment before they are back to steel. She turns; in her arms, she holds one of the three pods. A man dressed in red enters the chamber. ""Lower your weapons. She is your princess." He commands, before looking at the girl's blood-soaked robes; he exclaims, "Sister, what have you done!?"

The girl laughs. She seems to have aged decades in a matter of seconds; with blood turning her purple robes darker and her face paler, she cradles the pod closer to her bleeding chest, "Even now, you are more concerned about what I have done? The blood that I spill now runs in your veins as well, brother, but you don't care, do you?"

The man raises his arms to show that he is unarmed and starts closing the gap between the two, "Daiyu, Ah-Yu, you know that's not true. We are connected, you and I. Come back to us...come back to me. You are hurt. Your gifts have turned against you,  sister. Return the pod to its rightful place. You have no clue what you are doing."

The girl's laugh turns manic, "I know, exactly, what I am doing, brother. I am leaving."

"You can't leave. The facility is surrounded. The royal guards will be here soon. I won't be able to protect you."

Princess Daiyu's laugh dies on her lips, and a tear rolls down her cheek, "Where I am going... I can't get to it through doors."

A look of terror flutters across the young man's face, "Dimensional rift..." he muttered under his breath; shaking his head, he pleads, "Don't do that, please. Hundreds will die. Your name will be sullied forever. Nothing has happened that can't be fixed yet. Come back."

"You think I am heartless, don't you? You don't believe me. I have left something for you in your study; if you have ever trusted in our bond, look at it." She takes a deep breath. "I know if I do this today, hundreds will die, but if I don't, the whole race will be wiped out. I am choosing the lesser of two evils, brother."

"You can't separate them, Daiyu. They are connected. The First can never be reborn unless all three are present." He pleads. "I promise that I will listen to you. I will talk to father on your behalf."

While the man speaks, a blue glow from the woman's limbs starts flooding the room with light before pulling back and concentrating around her, forming a bubble. The woman looks at her brother fondly, "I know you mean them, but it's too late. Don't mention what I told you today to anyone. Tell your descends what I told you." She side-eyes the two pods to her left, "Please hide them. Elders have interpreted the words wrong. The first shall not be reborn to save us from XudianJi. If the XudianJis find a way into TengFei, no one, not even The First, shall be able to save us. Only the seeds can help us start afresh."

She closes her eyes. A thread of blue exits the translucent bubble. Invisible to all, except the royal siblings, it drifts over to the young prince and wraps itself around him.

Realizing what his sister had done, he tries to stop her yet again, "Ah-Yu, what good is it if they die and I survive."

The woman's eyes dip to look at the pod in her arms, "When the planets align, the beacon will glow. Through the dimensional rift, The Key shall return home. The first shall respond to the seeds' call. The two races will become one; a new beginning we shall find." The princess glances at the remaining pods on the vine and presses on, "Those are my words. Remember them. Don't make the mistake I made. You need to survive. Tell father that you had no hand in it. I am sorry that my actions will cause you to lose your birthright, brother. But at least you shall live. When the time comes, he will return. He will find his destiny, and together, they will show us the way." No sooner do the last words leave her lips, the woman flings herself into the abyss-like hole. The rift closes behind her, killing everything living around the establishment with an ultrasonic wave that had emanated at the point where lady Daiyu had disappeared moments ago.

The only survivor, the prince, walks out of the now dust-filled paths carrying the two remaining pods, the seeds, out of the establishment.

*****

*Earth 2.03; Year: 2090: North-East Asia*

A rumble of thunder rocks the windowpane almost off its hinges. As the skies turn dark, a woman waits for her husband to return. A loud knock on her door makes the heavily pregnant woman step outside her home despite her reluctance to do so. Her pupils dilate, radiating fear as they land on an injured young girl of probably sixteen cradling something in her arms. The woman, fearing that the girl might die, for she was bleeding through her chest, escorts her in. She offers to call the doctor, but the girl refuses; Instead, she takes out a disk-shaped object from the front of her robes and hands it to the woman who had taken her in.

The girl takes the woman's hand in hers, "This body is about to perish." She speaks in a low voice as if trying to conserve energy. "Can you please hide something for me?" She requests. It sounds so pitiful that the woman accepts; nodding her head, she asks, "What do you want me to hide?"

The girl, whose long flowing purple robes had turned an ugly shade of magenta, unwraps the object she had been cradling in her arms. She reaches for the woman's hand and places the oval pod on it.

"Human," The girl speaks; there is a raw power behind her words. It reminds the woman of a candle glowing bright before it meets its end. "This is the future of my race. From this day forward, treat it as you would yours. Please take care of it."

"How?" The woman asks on the edge of panic. However, that very moment, a dazzling blue light seeps into her hand at the place they were resting on the pod, and an instant later, the woman falls unconscious.

Daiyu waits till the glow has entered into the woman's abdomen, and the pod has turned to dust before pushing herself to stand. She places a finger on the woman's temple and smiles. "Zhang, from the family of Xian, my people will wait for your return. TengFei will wait for you to return."
Her eyes lower to the woman's belly where the DNA of The First seed integrates itself with its counterpart seamlessly and hides, becoming part of the whole.

Daiyu waves her hand just like she had done before, and all traces of her ever being there get erased. With a fond look at the sleeping woman, Daiyu closes her eyes, satisfied. "When the time is right, you will find your way home, Zhang. And when you do, you will remember." The Yuanjian princesses' words die on her lips as she breathes her last, and her body turns to dust just as the pod had done and vanishes into thin air.

{Author's Note :- Word count 1592

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