the strategic analysis complete. He had a battlefield, defined enemies, and a mission. The adrenaline from the information absorption, however, had burned out, leaving him with profound, physical weariness.
He was no longer running on instinct but operating on the borrowed, fragile energy of Wyatt's body.
He glanced toward the high window. The sun was directly overhead, a brilliant noon glare reflecting off the white marble of the academy. It was Sunday. He had a full week to prepare, and wasting the first half-day on sheer exhaustion was counter-productive. The Marine in him demanded peak operational status.
Rest first. Study later.
He crossed the small room and collapsed onto the narrow bed, grabbing whatever stale food was nearby not even bothering to remove his clothes. His mind, still operating in tactical mode, was set: a two-hour power nap to achieve optimal cognitive sharpness.
But the moment he surrendered to the darkness, the darkness betrayed him.
The silence was instantly shattered by the deafening, swirling pressure of the Void. He was falling again, not in spirit, but in a raw, terrifying echo of memory. The air tasted of rusty iron and old, unspeakable thoughts.
The screaming geometries returned, louder than before, rotating around him like a kaleidoscope of knives. He heard the chorus of contradiction: The cube is round. Duty is debt. But this time, the words felt personal, tearing at the edges of his regained identity.
"No," he mumbled, his body thrashing weakly on the academy bed, though he was unaware of it. "My corner. My corner."
The whispers intensified, flooding him with a wave of exhilarating, horrific truth. The knowledge that everything was fake, and nothing mattered was back, demanding surrender.
He saw the creature. The ultimate anchor of the void—the colossal, silent mass of wet, staring eyes—spun into existence before him, a multi-dimensional nightmare that existed outside the laws of three-dimensional space. A tendril of eyes reached out and caressed his collar bone and moved toward his heart.
(Join us. Surrender. The logic is so simple.)
The voice wasn't sound; it was a crushing weight of pure, maddening cognitive data, focused entirely on his last remaining anchor: the survival of the mutt. The vision of his dog, Bear, began to unravel into simple, irrelevant lines of code.
Gio screamed, a sharp, choked sound that was half-Wyatt's terror and half-his own primal resistance.
"NO!" he roared, forcing his mind back to the tangible, the real, the life he had just fought to seize.
He shot upright in the bed, drenched in sweat. The small room was silent, bathed in the gentle afternoon light. The ritual chamber wasnt here; the screams were gone. He was Gio, in room 412, a student with a debt.
But he was not untouched.
His hand went immediately to his chest. Directly over his sternum, a pattern had appeared: a single, thin, black line of scar tissue, perfectly straight and unnervingly cold to the touch, running from his collarbone down toward his heart. It was not a fresh wound, but a healed, brand.
It was the final, indelible remnant of the void—a mark of the un-logic he had so violently rejected, a warning that the chaos was still tethered to his soul. It was proof that his dream hadn't just been a dream.
The phantom scream dying in his throat. The cold, perfectly straight line of the new scar burned against his sternum. He was shaking violently, his heart a frantic drumbeat against his ribs.
The being. The eyes. The un-logic.
He fought a desperate, internal battle, clawing his way back to reality. The memory of the colossal, silent creature—the one that knew the answer to every question and the answer was madness—threatened to overwhelm him.
He needed to focus on the tangible, the mission, the cold granite of the academy. He forced his mind to reject the vision, shoving the entire experience of the Void deep into the darkest, most locked-down chamber of his consciousness.
The Void itself, the long, sickening fall, was already beginning to slip away, too vast and contradictory for his mind to hold. All that remained was the terrifying, immediate image of the final entity.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. A wave of profound nausea hit him, his stomach heaving in visceral revolt against the non-physical contaminant. He sprinted the two steps to the washroom, barely making it to the sink before he retched.
He braced himself on the basin, coughing and gasping, his throat raw.
When he finally looked up, his eyes met his own reflection in the worn mirror.
He froze.
It wasn't Wyatt's face he noticed, or the sweat dripping from his hair, or the purple bruise on his neck. It was his eyes.
His irises were stained with colors that should not exist—the impossible, acidic green and loud, philosophical colors of the void he'd fallen through. He was captivated and horrified. Within the familiar brown of Wyatt's eyes, the foreign hues swirled, a tiny, swirling reflection of the geometric nightmare he had just escaped.
He stared, the madness threatening to draw him in again. The colors pulsed with a silent, hypnotic promise of understanding.
It wasn't just a dream.
He slammed his eyes shut and vomited again, dry-heaving bile into the sink until his muscles spasmed and the world went blessedly dark behind his eyelids. He stayed there, head bowed over the porcelain, waiting for the physiological storm to pass.
When the nausea finally subsided, he forced his eyes open again. He looked into the mirror, breathing shallowly.
The staining was almost gone. Wyatt's blue eyes were back, but the crystalline, terrifying quality Sarya had briefly noted was now punctuated by tiny, almost imperceptible flecks of the void's color.
They were barely visible, but mesmerizing. He watched as they seemed to subtly intensify, gaining luminosity the longer he held his gaze.
He broke away instantly, stepping back from the mirror as if burned. That was his new security risk—a physical, visual tell linked directly to the taint he now carried.
Gio stumbled back to the bed and lay down, forcing his breathing into the deep, measured rhythm he'd mastered years ago. He remained there, wide awake and rigid, allowing the cold, hard logic of the present to push out the chaotic remnants of the past.
After a long stretch of silence, he felt steady enough to move.
His gaze landed on the simple, magical time-keeping clock mounted near the door. The simple, floating numbers confirmed that his "two-hour nap" had lasted a brutal three hours and twenty minutes.
Gio pushed himself to his feet. Three hours and twenty minutes. Time he couldn't afford to lose. The physical frailty of Wyatt's body had made him vulnerable.
He touched the cold scar on his chest, a fresh, cold vow forming in his mind. No more. He would never again surrender to sleep for that long.
Two hours try to keep it at two I'll need to see how long the fall lasts before I find that, thing.
Just the thought of it made him retch. The Void has a hold on him.
Gio pushed away from the bed, the phantom pain in his chest a constant reminder of the time he couldn't afford to waste. "Two hours," he muttered, committing the new sleep discipline to memory.
He turned to the desk. The chaotic pile of scrolls and books still represented a catastrophic information gap, but his anxiety was tempered by a raw, almost child-like excitement he hadn't felt since his first deployment. Magic was real. He could touch it, study it, and use it.
He sat down amidst the mess, a sudden eagerness overcoming his reluctance. First things first: fundamentals.
He browsed the collection, ignoring the complex, high-level texts Wyatt had been obsessed with. His fingers quickly located a worn, thin, coil-bound volume tucked beneath a stack of notes: "Magical Origins and Original Magics." Simple title, likely basic material. Perfect.
Gio opened the book, his eyes instantly absorbing the dense, technical prose.
The Labyrinths and the Flow
The book didn't detail complex spell formulas, but the nature of the energy itself. It explained that the magical resource of the world—Mana—was not native to the surface. It was introduced via deep, subterranean structures known as Mana Vents or Labyrinths.
The text was clear: No human has been able to explore the Labyrinths to the bottom. They were geologically and magically unstable, changing constantly and therefore impossible to map.
The book presented two main theories on the Labyrinths' origins:
The Ancient Legend: Legends suggested the Labyrinths were the veins of a powerful, primordial being locked away by the gods, meant to be released when the final cataclysm arrived, "and all that's made is to be unmade.".
The Modern Theory: Modern researchers believed that some primordial essence from the creation of the universe still existed in its raw state deep underground, and the natural radiation of that essence was what caused Mana to flow up through the vents to the surface.
This constant upflow of raw energy was the lifeblood of the empires. The Labyrinths constantly produced high-grade magical herbs, rare minerals, and, critically, made beasts stronger and more numerous near their exit points. This explained why all the fractured empires were in perpetual conflict, constantly trying to control and build over more Mana Vents.
Gio's mind immediately connected the dots. The Veiled Territories were simply areas where the vents were most volatile and exposed. The empires were fighting over the faucets of magic.
The text delivered a chilling piece of context for Wyatt's history:
The tragedy that took Wyatt's parents happened because the vent's flow intensified unexpectedly. The concentrated build-up couldn't be safely handled by people without enough Mana accumulation or specialized shielding.
It wasn't a slow disaster; it was an aetheric catastrophe caused by a sudden, natural surge. Wyatt's parents were just victims of this world's unpredictable, violent nature.