My Glimpse was cut a few moments later, the sheer amount of Essence in the room overwhelming my ability, but I sensed no hostility with my Gaze. The invitation hung in the air, resonating like a held note that refused to fade. It wasn’t just a sound; it was a hook in my curiosity, tugging with gentle insistence. I opened my eyes in the shadowed inn room, blinking away the lingering afterimage of the diamond mandala. My Echo sat on the bed, staring at me with my own expectant expression.

  “Well,” I murmured to the Echo, rolling my shoulders to work out the stiffness of the prolonged Glimpse. “She cleared the stage. It would be rude to miss the encore.”

  The Echo nodded once, a silent agreement to hold down the fort. I slipped out the window, taking the same path as the vision. I didn’t skulk through the shadows; I flowed, moving through the crystal canyons of the city with the confidence of someone holding a backstage pass.

  The Diamond Spire didn’t have guards in the traditional sense. It had acoustic wards — walls of pressurized silence that would liquefy the organs of anyone who disrupted the local harmony. But as I approached the pinnacle, the silent wards parted for me like a heavy velvet curtain being drawn back by an invisible hand. It was an eerie sensation, walking through a space designed to kill, only to find it bowing in welcome.

  I phased through the diamond wall of the Sanctum, emerging into the room of light I had seen in my vision.

  Lady Crysanthe was waiting.

  Up close, she was even more striking than the Glimpse could convey. She didn’t hover; she occupied the center of the room like a localized sun, her gravity stronger than the planet’s pull. Her body was a masterpiece of refraction — her sapphire hair cascading over shoulders made of flawless, transparent diamond. Internal rainbows shifted deep within her form with her every breath, painting the walls with moving color. She looked regal, terrifyingly powerful, and... curiously young.

  “Welcome, stranger!” she chirped. The melodic, bell-like quality of her telepathy didn’t sound like the grave voice of a Tier 7 Authority. It sounded like someone ringing a dinner triangle on a porch. She floated down, the massive mandala of crystals swirling excitedly around her like a cloud of eager, geometric puppies. “Most people hesitate when they approach me. They assume I’m going to turn them into a lawn ornament. Which, fair point, I have done, but only to very rude people who deserved it.”

  I let my Veil show just enough for her to perceive my presence, though I kept my conceptual weight carefully masked.

  “Thank you for the welcome, Lady Crysanthe. My intrusion was... forward. I apologize if I disrupted you.”

  “Oh, pish,” she dismissed, waving a crystalline hand that sparkled with captured starlight. “Intrusions are just exciting interruptions. Now, who are you? And why does your soul hum with the frequency of a collapsing star?”

  I straightened, surprised by her perceptiveness. “I am a traveler. I have been sent by someone. You may know him as Thoth?”

  Crysanthe froze. The orbiting crystals stopped spinning mid-air. The air in the room went perfectly still.

  For a moment, I braced myself for an attack, my hand drifting towards my Armory space.

  Then, a radiant, prismatic smile shattered her composed expression.

  “Thoth?!” she squealed, clapping her hands together. The sound was like two glaciers high-fiving. “The God of Knowledge sent you? Oh, that changes everything! He was my Mother’s tutor, you know! She talks about him all the time. ‘Greatest collection in all of the sectors,’ she says. ‘Teaches you to fold Mana like a napkin.’ And here I thought he was just a myth she told me to make me study harder!”

  I blinked, my guard lowering slightly against the sheer force of her enthusiasm. “Your... mother?”

  “Yes! The Matriarch of the Singing Void. She’s... indisposed right now.” Crysanthe’s expression dimmed slightly, a pout forming on her diamond lips. “She finally started her Third Stage Evolution a few years ago. Locked herself in the Abyssal Core. She said, ‘Crysanthe, darling, keep the city from falling into the sky for a decade, mommy needs to Ascend.’ So now I’m stuck conducting the symphony. It’s so boring.”

  My mind reeled as I processed the casual information drop. Third Evolution. That meant Tier 9. This giddy, cheerful being floating in front of me was the daughter of a near-Deity. A potential Tier 9 Entity who had been tutored by the same Scribe who made me move bubbles with my mind — and apparently was a god.

  “Wait,” I said, trying to follow the logic chain. “You think Thoth sent me to meet... her? The Matriarch?”

  “Probably,” Crysanthe shrugged, resuming her floating spin. “Mom’s the genius, her Void affinity is renowned across galaxies. He likely assumed she was still minding the store. He probably didn’t know she was gone? Or maybe he just wanted to mess with her. But you got me instead!”

  “Void Affinity,” I latched onto the term, nodding slowly. “That makes sense. Thoth told me I needed to build upon what I lacked. I assumed he meant my Spatial authority. My movement skill is... well, effective, but blunt.”

  “Blunt is better than non-existent,” Crysanthe giggled, drifting closer. “Let me tell you, my understanding of a Space Concept took a long time to manifest. I always treated distance like something you have to jump over. But mom always says distance is just an opinion. If you treat it like a wall, you’ll always be climbing.”

  She peered at me with mirror-eyes that reflected my own confusion.

  “So, he’s teaching you? Directly? Intervening in the narrative?”

  “He is,” I admitted. “He’s… helped me out.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “That is wild,” she breathed. “Mom said he usually just sits in the margins and grumbles about others interfering. For him to actually pick a student... you must be special. Or a colossal mess he felt compelled to fix.”

  “Uh… maybe,” I said dryly.

  Crysanthe burst into a peal of chiming laughter. “That sounds right! A colossal mess! Oh, I like you, Messy. You’re fun.”

  She circled me, the mirrors of her eyes reflecting angles of myself I didn’t know existed. “And honest. Disgustingly honest. You haven’t lied once.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My skill,” she tapped her forehead with a translucent finger. “[Soul-Resonance of the Empty Truth]. It’s Mythic. Conceptual Space affinity mixed with Resonance. I can hear the hollow space in a lie. Your soul rings clear as a bell. It’s refreshing. Most people who have the courage to come here usually want to steal my core or seduce me for my mana. Or both. Usually both.”

  “I’m just here for the lessons,” I promised. “And maybe a souvenir.”

  “I believe you!” she beamed. “Plus, whatever you used to hide your presence... that’s Mythic too, isn’t it? I didn’t even see you until you popped your head into my Sanctum. Very impressive for a... wait, what are you, really? Tier 6?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed.

  Her jaw literally unhinged and dropped, dangling by a few threads of crystal before she snapped it back into place.

  “Tier 6?” she whispered, voice hushed with awe. “You already have a Mythic skill at Tier 6? Are you trying for the Five? You are, aren’t you? Just like me!”

  She bounced in the air, practically vibrating with glee.

  “I knew it! A kindred spirit! I’ve been stalling my evolution to Tier 7 for three hundred years just to get my last two! It’s maddening! I have ones based on Space, Light, and Resonance... but the last two are so slippery. Mom keeps sending me expensive elixirs from the Deep Void, but you can’t drink Understanding! It’s the worst!”

  I stared at her. A three-century stall? The sheer accumulation of power she must have stored up in that time was terrifying. And here she was, gossiping about it like it was a difficult math problem.

  “You... you’re trying for the Convocation?” I asked. “At the cusp of Tier 7?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, tilting her head. “Most people try to get it done early. Before Tier 5 is the sweet spot because the soul is stretchy. But if you miss that window... like, oops, grew too fast because you were fighting for your life... then you have to really grind. It’s way harder at the higher Tiers. Your soul hardens, you see. It doesn’t want new tricks; it wants to perfect the old ones. People usually try to get it early since it is impossible to Ascend without five.”

  “Thoth warned me about that,” I mused, the puzzle pieces clicking together. Thoth had said ‘don’t wait until Stage 3’. That meant Tier 9. He hadn’t specified when exactly between Tier 5 and 9 I should aim for. I had assumed sooner was better. But Crysanthe was doing it now, at the absolute apex of the Middle Tiers.

  “So it is still possible?” I asked. “To gather them now, at the higher Tiers?”

  “Possible, just excruciatingly expensive and takes forever,” she groaned dramatically, draping herself over an invisible fainting couch. “I’ve memorized every crack in the city pavement waiting for an epiphany. I’ve named the cracks. That one is ‘Serilla’. But you! You’re fresh! I can tell you aren’t a High Born. Or maybe you’re just from a newer Civilization? A naturally occurring mess with a recommendation letter from The Scribe. You must be really special.”

  “Something like that,” I muttered, trying not to think about the ‘Forbidden Hybrid’ revelation. “So... Space. Since your mother is... Ascending... Do you think you can teach me?”

  Crysanthe stopped bouncing. She floated back to the center of her mandala, adopting a pose of thoughtful regality that lasted all of three seconds before she giggled.

  “I suppose I have to! If I turn away Thoth’s friend, he might come edit my Sanctum’s Curtains or something. Plus, I’m bored out of my mind. Conducting the city is important, sure, but it’s repetitive. Same song, different day.”

  She gestured, and the floor of the room — which I now realized was just a sheet of solid light over a drop that went all the way to the planetary core — became transparent.

  “Space isn’t about location,” she lectured, imitating a scholarly tone but failing to suppress her grin. “Location is for shelter sellers. Space is about Containment. You think a room is defined by walls. I think a room is defined by how much I can fit inside it without it exploding or turning into a rift. Dimensional compression! Expansion! Inversion!”

  She clapped her hands, and the room turned inside out. Suddenly I was standing on the ceiling, looking down at the sky.

  “Thoth sent you here to learn to Build, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said, fighting the vertigo but unable to hide my fascination. “He called it a Drafting Room.”

  “Drafting requires a surface,” she noted. “Your Sanctum back home... it’s anchored, right? A fixed point?”

  “Yes.”

  “Boring,” she declared, flipping gravity back to normal. “A true Master of Space carries their home in their pocket. Literally.”

  She reached into the air and pulled out... a bubble. Inside the bubble was a miniature, perfect replica of the room we were standing in, complete with a tiny Crysanthe statue waving at us.

  “Lesson One!” she cheered, tossing the pocket dimension at me. “Don’t catch it with your hands. Catch it with your Authority. Expand your internal space to accept an external volume.”

  I stared at the flying bubble of compressed reality. Catch the room with my soul?

  “If you drop it, it explodes and wipes out three city blocks!” she added helpfully.

  “I’m really beginning to hate bubbles,” I groaned, even as I instinctively reached out with my mana, engaging [Apex Mana Authority] to cradle the unstable dimension. I caught it, sweat beading on my brow. It felt like holding a grenade made of angry math.

  “Nice catch!” Crysanthe applauded. “See? You’re a natural!”

  She floated closer, looking at the bubble in my hands. “This is fun. We should do this more. Actually...”

  A mischievous glint appeared in her mirror eyes.

  “How about a trade?” she offered. “I try to teach you how to fold space until you can fit a palace in a pinky. And in return... you show me what you can do.”

  She drifted back, creating distance, her mandala of crystals sharpening into jagged, defensive points.

  “I’ve been stuck in this place for centuries, Messy. I haven’t had a proper sparring partner since... well, since forever. The guards break too easily. But you? You feel durable.”

  “You want to spar?” I asked.

  “I want to see your Spirit,” she corrected, her voice dropping into a combat cadence. “Thoth sent you. And I want to see what kind of being attracts the curiosity of The Keeper of Records.”

  I grinned, the challenge igniting the thrill of battle in my chest. This wasn’t a teacher; this was a bored godling looking for a playmate. And I could definitely use a glimpse of a Mythic Five trainee’s power.

  “Alright,” I said, drawing a sword from my Armory. “But if I win, you teach me how to make that Spatial rift I sensed surrounding your inner Sanctum.”

  “Oh, you could tell? Deal!” Crysanthe shouted. “But you won’t win!”