“Ready?” Crysanthe asked, her mirror-eyes shimmering with a chaotic, playful gleam. She floated three feet off the ground, standing comfortably on a layer of air that had solidified under her Will. The crystals orbiting her mandala sharpened, their edges gleaming with lethal potential.

  “Always,” I replied, sinking into a grounded stance.

  I didn’t wait. I engaged [Domain of the Ashen Phoenix] instantly. The Mythic heat erupted from my core, but I kept it tight, wrapped around my skin like a suit of blazing white armor.

  She moved.

  There was no wind-up. No telegraph. She simply existed in front of me.

  A fist made of diamond impacted my guard. The force was staggering, a kinetic sledgehammer that felt less like a punch and more like a mountain falling sideways. I skidded back twenty feet, my boots carving deep, molten grooves into the light-construct floor. My arm vibrated with the impact, bone threatening to fracture, but my regeneration flared hot. [Phoenix Rebirth] flooded the limb, knitting micro-fractures in my radius faster than they could propagate.

  I laughed. A sharp, exhilarated sound. I knew I needed a better perception skill. I couldn’t see the hit coming and it was strong enough to challenge my durability to its very limit.

  “Fast,” I noted, shaking out the arm which was already shedding flakes of dead skin as new, tougher epidermis grew underneath.

  “Slow,” she countered, drifting back to her starting position with lazy grace. “You are trying to react to motion. Stop looking at my hands. Look at the space I occupy.”

  We clashed again. This time I engaged [Apex Mana Authority], actively sensing the shifts in the room’s mana.

  I sensed the air harden to my left. It wasn’t visible, but the mana density spiked. I ducked just as a translucent blade of solidified light scythed through the space where my neck had been. The air crackled with ozone as the construct passed.

  I retaliated with a sweep of my Ashen Sword, aiming low, intent on catching her in the gravity field.

  She didn’t dodge. She simply flicked her wrist.

  Gravity inverted locally.

  I fell up. My stomach lurched as my slash went wide, plummeting toward the ceiling which was suddenly ‘down’.

  I used [Ember’s Leap]. I teleported not to safety, but back to the ‘true’ ground, turning my momentum into a downward strike as I reoriented.

  Her hand caught my blade. Not with a glove, but with bare diamond skin. Sparks of white-gold and rainbow light flew as my fire chewed against her crystallized exterior. The heat should have vaporized steel; on her, it just made her glow brighter.

  “Hot,” she grinned, her face inches from my burning blade. “But that heat still needs time to melt. And you won’t have much time.”

  She pushed.

  A shockwave of repulsive force blasted me backward. I slammed into a pillar, the stone cracking under the impact. Pain flared in my spine, bright and sharp.

  I pushed off instantly, wreathed in white fire, the flames consuming the bruises before they could fully form.

  “Come on!” she cheered, raising both hands as the crystals around her began to hum. “Show me your teeth!”

  The next twenty minutes were a blur of violence and geometry. She fought like a prism — redirecting my force, refracting my attacks, turning my own momentum into traps. I fought like a storm — relentless, chaotic, healing instantly from every blow, burning through every barrier she erected.

  I summoned a solar eruption from my palm. A beam of star-fire lanced across the room. She caught it in a mirrored shield, splitting the beam into six smaller lasers that ricocheted around the room, forcing me to dance through a grid of my own mana.

  I lunged, my fist coated in localized Soulfire. She stepped sideways, but instead of moving, she folded space so that I ended up punching the air ten feet behind her.

  It was frustrating. It was maddening. And it was the most fun I had had in months.

  I decided to escalate.

  I tried to extend my Domain, to enforce my Truth of ‘Entropy’ onto the entire room. To deny her control of the environment.

  The sphere of Ashen authority expanded from my body. The air shimmered, heat rising, the light constructs beginning to warp.

  But it hit a wall.

  Her Domain.

  It was an invisible, immovable barrier of pure Emptiness. My entropy crashed against her stillness and shattered like a wave hitting a cliff. I pushed, straining my will, sweat vaporizing off my skin instantly. I poured more mana into the contest, trying to burn a hole in her reality.

  She simply smiled, floating in the center of her perfect world. Her will was older, more refined. She wasn’t fighting my domain; she was bypassing it. She asserted her reality with a calmness that made my fiery rage feel childish.

  I realized then the gap in experience. Her centuries of perfecting Tier 6 showed me a hint of the challenges that will face me after the Summoning. I needed more training.

  I pulled back the domain, centering it on myself again. Brute force wouldn’t work. I needed complexity.

  Grinning through bloodied teeth, I triggered [Echo of the Ashen Sovereign].

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  My clone materialized to her right flank. It wasn’t a struggle; it was an instinct. I shared a fragment of my will, a simple command: Harass.

  The clone lunged, its spectral sword glowing with the same intensity as mine.

  Crysanthe barely looked at it. She flicked a finger.

  A beam of concentrated sunlight lanced at my clone. But my clone mimicked my [Ember’s Leap], teleporting mid-swing to bypass the beam and strike her shield.

  It pinged off her barrier, but it drew her eye. A flicker of surprise.

  “Two of you with skills?” Crysanthe asked, genuinely delighted. “Absolute Cloning? Interesting! Let’s see if you can multitask while juggling!”

  She snapped her fingers.

  Gravity inverted again. But this time, it pulsed.

  The room became a blender.

  I was a ragdoll in a tumble dryer. My clone dissolved under the strain, the construct tearing apart. I anchored myself with [Apex Mana Authority], creating boots of pure weight, slamming them into the wall to find purchase. My core strained, groaning under the effort of fighting a fundamental force.

  “Adaptable!” Crysanthe called out, floating serenely in the chaos. She summoned shards of solid light. “Rain.”

  Thousands of needle-sharp shards fell from the ceiling, walls, and floor simultaneously. An omnidirectional kill-box.

  I didn’t shield. I projected.

  A sphere of plasma erupted from my body. [Phoenix Rebirth] supercharged with mana, rapidly healing my channels. The shards vaporized on contact, turning into harmless steam.

  She opened her palm. A small, black sphere appeared.

  She tossed it above me.

  I felt the tug immediately. My armor groaned. It felt like being spaghettified by a black hole. The nausea returned, stronger this time.

  I dropped my weight, becoming almost massless within my Domain and erupted into flames.

  I turned into plasma, riding the gravity well, orbiting the black hole, slingshotting toward her using her own weapon for momentum.

  I thrust my blade. Using Flicker Strike to change its trajectory.

  The tip appeared three inches from her throat.

  The blade stopped on Space itself. The closer I got, the further away she seemed. An infinite distance.

  She flicked the blade. Resonance shattered it.

  “End,” she commanded.

  A kinetic blast threw me into the wall. I bounced, tumbling, my vision swimming.

  I didn’t stop. I roared, pushing off the wall mid-tumble. I grabbed a chunk of falling masonry and hurled it, imbruing it with heavy mana. She shattered it with a look.

  I closed the distance again. We traded blows — fists, knees, swords, spells. I was burning mana at a rate that would empty a city’s grid, but my blood sang. The fire kept me moving, kept me healing. I was a perpetually exploding sun in human shape.

  Finally, she caught my fist. Not with strength, but with stillness. She clamped my hand in a stasis field.

  Then she caught my other hand. Then my legs.

  I hung suspended in the air, spread-eagled by localized gravity.

  I thrashed, my flames roaring, but I was pinned. The Flame of Ending started to stir within my Soul, demanding to be freed, to ravage and consume her Domain, but I was able to hold it back — not the time nor place.

  She floated in front of me, barely winded. A single hair out of place. She brushed it back, her mirror eyes shining with approval.

  “You... are durable,” she admitted. “And fast. Most Tier 6s shatter under the Resonance. Your spirit is dense.”

  “Stubbornness,” I wheezed, my regeneration working overtime on my crushed ribs.

  She released the hold.

  I dropped to the floor, landing in a crouch. I stood up, shaking off the dust and extinguishing the flames. My clothes were tattered, reformed only by the armor’s self-repair enchantments. The ache in my body was profound, deep in the marrow. It was a good kind of pain. The growing pain.

  “I lost,” I said, sheathing the remnants of my spectral blade.

  “Of course you lost! I’ve been practicing gravity-weaving for over three centuries!” She landed, grinning. “But you made me sweat. Figuratively. Diamonds don’t sweat. But you pushed me too hard. My last dancing partner was a Peak Tier 6 Dragon. I ended up turning him into a brooch.”

  “Note to self: say no to dancing,” I quipped, rubbing my sore shoulder.

  I looked around the room. It was cracked, scorched, and chaotic.

  “We should do this again,” I said, meaning it. “I learned more in twenty minutes of getting tossed around like a salad than in weeks of theory.”

  Her face lit up. “Yes! Please! It’s so lonely here. The crystals are terrible conversation partners, they just agree with everything. You push back! It’s refreshing!”

  I grinned, wiping blood from my lip. The idea of daily sparring with a centuries old Tier 6 Gravity Mage was a nightmare and a dream wrapped in one.

  But then, the thought of home intruded. S-14. Vayne. My people.

  I checked my internal clock. I had spent over 5 days in this world already. I needed to find out more about what Thoth sent me here to do.

  “I want to,” I sighed, the exhilaration dampening slightly. “Really. But I don’t have time, Crysanthe. There’s a threat back home. Maybe I can come back when your mother returns?”

  Crysanthe tilted her head, confused. “Time? You’re worried about Time?”

  “I have enemies,” I explained. “An Empire building a weapon. I need to get stronger, yes, but every hour I spend here is an hour they spend arming that thing. I can’t afford to play games, even fun ones.”

  She stared at me. Then, a slow, delighted realization spread across her face. It was the look of someone holding a royal flush when their opponent just went all in.

  “Oh, silly Messy,” she giggled. “Do you know why my Mother locks herself in the Void of this room? Why the Sanctum is built like this?”

  She gestured to the transparent walls.

  “The Rift surrounding this room. It’s not just acoustic damping to keep out the noise. It’s Temporal Dilation.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “Dilation?”

  “It’s a Time-Sink!” she cheered, spinning in the air. “This entire Spire is anchored outside the standard chronological flow of the Faceted Expanse. That’s how Mom practices for millennia without everyone else dying of old age while she meditates on a single speck of dust. Inside this room... time moves differently. Slower.”

  She floated close, putting a diamond finger on my chest.

  “A lot slower. I can also help teach you how to feel the Void!”

  My jaw dropped. The Drafting Room. Thoth knew. He sent me here so that I could cheat the clock.

  “How much slower? And thank you, I would appreciate that.” I whispered, daring to hope.

  “Hmm, based on the System? One day in here is roughly… oh, a little over nine minutes in your world.”

  One day is nine minutes.

  The math staggered me. A week of real time was… three years.

  “I have time,” I whispered, the realization washing over me like cool water. The crushing weight of the ticking clock evaporated. “I can train. I can master my skills. I can truly evolve.”

  I looked at Crysanthe, whose eyes were sparkling with delight at my reaction. She knew exactly what gift she had just handed me. This wasn’t something Vayne would ever expect.

  “Lady Crysanthe,” I said, activating my [Echo]. The clone appeared beside me.

  We settled into matching combat stances.

  “Would you be interested in another spar?” we asked in unison, grins spreading across both faces.