The first month inside the Time dilation chambers was a sensory hallucination. Outside, less than five hours ticked by on Earth’s clocks. Here, the fractal suns of the Faceted Expanse wheeled overhead in dizzying cycles, creating an eternal, kaleidoscopic twilight through the diamond transparency of the Sanctum’s walls. The light didn’t just illuminate; it built the day, creating zones of hard shadows and blinding refraction.

  We fell into a rhythm that was as brutal as it was beautiful. Crysanthe was a relentless instructor who didn’t teach by lecture; she taught by hazard.

  Mornings began in the “Press,” a gravity chamber she reconfigured daily. Some days force pulled sideways at the equivalent of thirty times Old Earth’s gravity, forcing me to learn to walk on walls as if they were floors. Other days, the floor became a frictionless plane of solidified helium. I had to maintain a perfect meditation lotus while breakfast — spheres of nutrient-dense mana that tasted like blueberries and ionizing radiation — whizzed around the room at Mach speeds. If I broke focus to grab one physically, Crys increased the difficulty. I learned to eat with precise Domain control while my spine groaned under crushing weight.

  Midday was for the Crucible.

  Sparring wasn’t just fighting; it was high-stakes puzzle-solving. Crys would fold space so my left hook landed on my own back. She refracted my vision so she appeared in twenty places at once, laughing from every angle.

  “Don’t trust your eyes, Messy!” she’d chirp, shattering my Mana Shield with a lazy flick of a diamond finger that sent a sonic boom through my chest. “Eyes lie! Light bends! Trust the resonance! Feel the room breathing!”

  I learned to fight with [Apex Mana Authority] extended around me like a sonar web. I felt the mana displacement of her attacks before they manifested. I learned to use my [Echo] not just as a decoy, but as a triangulation point, swapping positions mid-swing to bypass her directional shields.

  My swordplay evolved. It was no longer about cuts and thrusts; it was about defining space. With every strike of my Mana blades, I wasn’t just trying to cut Crys; I was trying to sever the reality she occupied. I chipped her diamond skin more often now. I made her sweat — metaphorically, since she kept insisting Crystals don’t perspire — I made her actually try.

  Afternoons were for the Prismatic Gardens.

  These were specialized meditation rooms made by Crys’ mother that she unlocked for me, carved deep into the Spire’s foundation.

  The “Heart of the Red Dwarf” was kept at a scorching four thousand degrees Celsius. Here, Fire wasn’t energy; it was a viscous, heavy liquid I had to swim through. I molded it like clay, refining my Domain until my flames weren’t just hot; they were dense, capable of exerting physical pressure.

  The “Chamber of Echoes” was absolute silence, where my own will echoed back at me a thousand fold. I had to issue commands to my mana that were so precise, so unambiguous, that the echoes aligned perfectly. One moment of doubt created a deafening screech of psychic feedback that left my ears ringing for hours. It honed my Will into a needle point.

  And then there was the evening. The most difficult, rewarding torture of all.

  The Void Meditation.

  Six hours a day, every day, I sat in the “Oubliette.”

  It was a room cut off from everything. No light. No sound. No gravity. No ambient mana. A sensory deprivation tank for the soul.

  My goal was singular: Find the “Strings” of The Void.

  “The universe is noise,” Crys had explained, hanging upside down from the ceiling like a glittering bat on the first evening. “Mana, matter, light… it’s all just frequency. It’s loud. But underneath the noise… there is the Lattice. The Void-Web. You said your science theories might have called them Strings; we call them Anchors. They hold the fabric tight. If you can see the strings, you can see the puppet show from backstage.”

  For two weeks, I saw nothing but the maddening dark of my own mind.

  I pushed my Spirit to its limit, trying to force perception. Trying to stare into the abyss until it blinked. But I found nothing.

  “Stop looking,” Thoth’s voice echoed in my memory from months ago. “Resonate.”

  I stopped trying to see. I started trying to feel tension.

  Slowly, agonizingly, the dark shifted.

  It wasn’t vision. It was a tactile map manifesting in my visual cortex.

  Faint, silvery lines running through the nothingness. Infinite, intersecting, vibrating lines. They connected everything. They tethered the concept of “up” to the concept of “ceiling.” They tied Crys’ intention to her hand before she even moved it. They were the wires upon which reality ran.

  When she walked past the Oubliette, I didn’t hear footsteps. I felt the lattice shudder. I saw the vibration propagate through the Void like a pluck on a guitar string. I knew where she was, how fast she was moving, and that she was carrying a tray of fruit, just by the specific tension her existence put on the universe.

  I meditated on this. I learned to touch the strings with my will.

  It wasn’t telekinesis. I was not able to push any objects. I would just pluck the string attached to its location, suggesting it vibrate differently.

  Then came the breakthrough.

  It was the thirtieth day. During our daily spar, Crys did something new. She activated a Void-tier stealth artifact she’d been saving. She vanished. Not just optically, but manically. Her signature was wiped from existence.

  I stood in the center of the room, my sword lowered.

  My eyes were closed.

  I ignored the light. I ignored the sounds. I ignored the mana.

  I looked at the Lattice.

  The room was a web of tension lines. To my left, a single, microscopic string vibrated. A disturbance in the quantum foam.

  She stepped. The vibration traveled instantly along the web. Another string hummed to my right — a feint.

  Then, a cluster of causal lines directly behind my neck didn’t vibrate. They tightened.

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  Tension. A strike loading up.

  I didn’t turn. I didn’t cast a spell.

  I simply stepped sideways.

  But I didn’t step through the air. I stepped into the plane of the strings.

  The world turned grey and silent. Colors inverted. Time slowed to an infinitesimal crawl. I was inside the Plane that was wiring the universe.

  It was breathtaking. Like reality was just a dream and this was the true state of being awake.

  It wasn’t just a different place; it was a different state of being. I felt untethered. Gravity didn’t apply here because gravity was just a suggestion made by the strings, and I wasn’t bound by them.

  I saw Crys. She was frozen in mid-lunge, a dagger of hard light inches from where my carotid artery had been a nanosecond ago. Her face was a mask of concentrated glee, frozen in a tableau of violence.

  I walked — leisurely — around her frozen form. I felt the “frictionless” nature of this state. I was moving as a pure concept, my physical mass irrelevant. I studied the weave of her spell, the tension in her muscles, the mana gathered at her fingertips.

  I positioned myself directly behind her. I placed the flat of my blade gently against her back.

  Then I stepped back into reality.

  The sound was like a vacuum seal breaking. Time snapped back to full speed.

  Crys slashed empty air, her momentum carrying her forward.

  I tapped her on the shoulder with my sword.

  She shrieked — a high, crystalline sound — and spun around, eyes wide with genuine shock.

  “You… you just entered the Void!” she accused, pointing a trembling finger. “But that’s impossible. How? I could not feel anything, Mana, Essence, Divine energy, nothing. This was not stealth! You’re a Void Walker? Thoth… Well that at least explains his interest!”

  “Maybe? I saw the strings,” I grinned, feeling the new neural pathways in my consciousness sizzle with the achievement. “And I stepped between them.”

  The technique was… staggering. It felt infinitely cleaner than [Ember’s Leap]. That had been a violent tear, ripping through coordinates through forced conceptual Will. This was different. A phase-shift to a different plane.

  I experimented with it. I tried ‘skipping’ across the room.

  I stepped in. One, two steps in the Void. Step out.

  I appeared forty feet away. There were no signs of any magical or essence based effects or even air displacement. Just existence in a new location.

  I tried doing it vertically. Stepping into the Void, walking ‘up’ the strings of light that poured from the ceiling, and stepping out in mid-air.

  It worked.

  I realized I could chain it. Step in, move, step out, strike, step in again, attacking from multiple vectors within the same nanosecond. I also found that I could stay in the “Void state” for prolonged time without any backlash, which made me realize I potentially developed a very overpowered reconnaissance tool.

  [Skill Evolution Triggered]

  [Skill: Ember’s Leap (Epic) -> Evolution Criteria Met: Spatial Sovereignty + Void Perception]

  [New Skill Acquired: [Void Walk] (Legendary)]

  Description: The user can step into the Void, the quantum space between realities. Time in the Void flows infinitely slower relative to Real-Space. While Void Walking, the user is intangible, undetectable, and untethered from other Planes of existence. Re-entry into Origin-Plane can optionally generate a [Solaris Nova] — a gravitational-thermal burst of displacement energy. Conceptual Teleportation (Ember’s Leap) remains available as a combat-subroutine or for rapid-fire displacement within the lattice.

  “Void Walk,” I whispered, testing the word. It felt right.

  “That’s scary,” Crys breathed, floating closer to inspect me. “That’s logic-defying stuff. Primordial business. You stepped out of the equation. My mom took an entire century to learn how to do that, something is very wrong with you Messy. That’s how she travels between stars without a ship. She just walks until she’s there. First you gain perception of the Void after two weeks now this...”

  Months flew by following the same routine, and my skills advanced at a pace that caused Crys to constantly raise her crystalline “eyebrows”.

  After 6 months, I checked my status. A constant routine to confirm my felt growth.

  NAME: Eren Kai

  STAGE: 2

  CORE ATTRIBUTES:

  SOUL STRENGTH: S+

  SOUL GATE INTEGRITY: Grade S

  ESSENCE MANIFESTATION: Peak Tier 6

  BODY: 699

  MANA: 699

  SPIRIT: 699

  SYSTEM SKILLS (8/10 Slots Available):

  [Domain of the Ashen Phoenix] (Mythic)

  [Prime Axiom’s Nullifying Veil] (Mythic)

  [Void Walk] (Legendary)

  [Void Perception] (Legendary)

  [Phoenix Rebirth] (Legendary)

  [Echo of the Ashen Soul] (Legendary)

  [Apex Mana Authority] (Legendary)

  [Armory of the Ashen Soul] (Epic)

  SOUL ABILITY:

  [Glimpse of a Path]

  I was at the absolute limit. I was pressed against the glass ceiling of Tier 6, vibrating with potential energy. I couldn’t get more raw input without evolving into Tier 7, a step I wasn’t ready to take before learning more about the Mythic Five and how each Tier’s challengers would look like.

  “You’re full, like me,” Crys observed, poking my chest. It felt like poking a steel wall. “Like a cup about to spill. Are you also holding back your evolution?”

  “I have to,” I said, flexing my hand, feeling the Void strings dance around my fingers like spiderwebs. “I need more finesse. More experience with my abilities. I am sure the higher the Tier I am when I get Summoned the more brutal the competition would be.”

  “Messy, but smart,” she teased, but her eyes held respect. “But, most Tier 8s would kill for your skills. Don’t forget that not all Mythic skills are equal, and the way you’re advancing in your will and control over them, it’s honestly terrifying. Most are lucky to have a few standout stickers, but you, you have a very shiny sticker collection. It’s honestly a little infuriating.”

  “It’s a very important sticker collection.”

  Although my progress seemed to have slowed down, I didn’t leave. I didn’t rush home. I needed to take as much advantage as possible of this opportunity. I had unlocked the tools; now I needed to master them.

  I spent days just Void Walking. Learning how long I could stay in the Void before reality started to fray at the edges of my sanity. Learning to fight from the Void, striking Crys’ shield and vanishing before the reverb hit me.

  We sparred differently now. She folded space; I stepped outside it. She crushed gravity; I untethered my mass strings.

  When we first sparred, my chance of winning an all out fight was nonexistent. Now, more often than not, I would win. Then proceed to listen to Crys constantly murmur about how impossible it is and how shocked her mom’s reaction would be.

  I meditated on the nature of Fire, thinking to push [Phoenix Rebirth] toward its next evolution. I sat with my Echo for hours, refining the sense transfer ability until we were one mind in two bodies, perfect synchronization. I practiced going into the Void while simultaneously activating my clone to take my place, a strategy I felt would come in handy.

  I wasn’t just leveling up. I was growing wide. Deep. Building a foundation.

  But I knew it still wasn’t nearly enough. Crys mentioned that, while her mom is extremely talented and powerful, she was not as gifted as her. She also wasn’t born with as many advantages as a real Primordial Scion would have.

  “Another round?” Crys asked one evening, summoning a lance of hard light.

  I grinned, splitting into an Echo, activating my Domain, and sliding into the Void.

  “Another round.”