The western hall had become his sanctuary.
Morning light seeped through cracked stone, painting long bars of gold across the dust-choked floorboards. No servants came here. No guards patrolled. Even the rats seemed to avoid these walls.
James stood alone, barefoot, eyes half-lidded.
He no longer relied on instinct alone—but he didn't ask the AI for guidance either. He relied on repetition, observation, and the pressure in his skull that told him when he was close to something real.
He exhaled slowly.
Then acted.
He focused on a point ahead of him—an empty pocket of air where nothing moved, nothing breathed.
There was no chant. No motion of the hand. Only will.
Compress. Turn. Anchor.
The air resisted. His vision flickered. A pulse of vertigo crawled up his spine.
And then—
The world bent.
A subtle indentation rippled outward, as if space itself had been thumbed like wet clay. The distortion held for only a heartbeat before snapping back, leaving the air trembling in silence.
James staggered once, breathing hard.
Blood trickled faintly from his left nostril.
He wiped it away without surprise.
Unstable fold generated. Structural logic required for permanence.
The AI's presence flickered briefly through his mind, but James didn't respond. He hadn't requested assistance yet.
He needed to know he could reach the threshold on his own.
The headache swelling behind his temples forced him to sit. He leaned back against the cold wall and closed his eyes—not in rest, but in recollection.
That pulse—that bending sensation—it hadn't been shapeless.
There had been layers.
Like something stacked beneath reality.
He searched his memory of the moment, reconstructing its shape. Not words. Not formulas.
Form. Mind. Breath.
Three pressures pressing against his will.
He didn't know why those concepts came to him, only that they felt true.
He felt, rather than heard, the studio door shift slightly at the far end of the corridor. Reflexively, he stilled his presence—breath, posture, thought.
Someone passed by the archway without stepping in. James listened.
Two voices murmured:
"…my grandfather said these halls were sealed in his time. Called them 'Breached' wings."
"Old superstition. Only three chambers were ever locked by decree."
"Aye, but you know the saying: where space buckles, minds break."
The voices trailed off into silence.
James opened his eyes slowly.
He didn't fully understand the words, but he recognized something in them—an echo of the ripple he had made… and the stories no one told directly.
Not yet.
His pulse slowed.
He looked at the section of air he had disturbed.
It was still trembling—only faintly, but not by accident.
This time, he reached for the AI with clear intent.
Assist. Structure only. No instruction.
The AI responded without comment, weaving a framework from the impression he'd already made.
Not shaping the idea.
Just translating it.
In his mind, one structure surfaced—silent, efficient, and barely stable:
Foldpoint: localized compression of a spatial plane using cognitive anchoring.
James absorbed the logic, then discarded the rest of the framework before it could form more.
He pressed his palm to the floor and stood.
The blood had dried at his nose.
His vision steadied.
He tried again.
This time, the air did not ripple.
It bent.
Only slightly.
Only for a breath.
But it held.
And somewhere beneath the stone and silence of the Reed estate, an old tension stirred—unseen, but not unconnected.