[TWO WEEKS LATER — DAWN]
The training ground was empty at this hour.
Just how I liked it.
I stood in the center of the field, barefoot on dew-soaked grass, eyes closed, breathing slowly. The morning air was cold enough to bite—sharp, clean, carrying the metallic scent of dew and distant woodsmoke from the academy's furnaces.
Perception Limit: Full activation.
The world behind my eyelids exploded into awareness.
I could feel everything within a hundred-meter radius. The individual blades of grass bending under my weight. The moisture condensing on the training dummies. The subtle vibrations of students sleeping in distant dormitories—heartbeats, breath, the minute shifts of bodies against mattresses.
I could sense the mana flowing through the academy's wards—forty-seven distinct layers, each one humming at a different frequency, creating a symphony of protective magic that most people would never perceive.
And beneath it all, I felt the space itself—the fundamental structure of reality, the invisible framework that held everything together.
Distance. Position. Relationship.
Everything exists because of the space between things.
So what happens when you change that space?
I opened my eyes.
In front of me, suspended in the air, were three steel spheres—each one the size of my fist, hovering motionless at different heights.
I'd been practicing this for two weeks.
Spatial Limit let me manipulate distance—expand it, compress it, freeze it.
But the spheres always felt... static. Like I was just holding them in place rather than truly controlling them.
There was something missing.
Something I could feel lurking at the edge of my understanding—a deeper layer waiting to be unlocked.
I raised my right hand slowly, focusing on the nearest sphere.
What is distance, really?
It's the space between two points.
But what defines that space?
Force.
Attraction. Repulsion.
Push and pull.
The fundamental relationship between all things.
My fingers tingled.
The air around my hand began to shimmer—not with heat, but with something else. A distortion. A pressure.
The sphere trembled.
"Come on," I muttered. "Show me..."
CRACK.
Something inside me shifted.
Not physically. Deeper than that.
Like a door in my soul had been kicked open.
Power flooded through me—raw, overwhelming, infinite.
[LIMIT SYSTEM: LAYER 3 UNLOCKED]
[ENERGY LIMIT — ACTIVE]
[BLUE FORCE: ATTRACTION]
[RED FORCE: REPULSION]
The sphere shot toward my hand.
Not pulled by magnetism or telekinesis.
Attracted at a fundamental level—the space between us collapsing so violently that the sphere had no choice but to move.
I caught it reflexively.
The metal was ice-cold against my palm, vibrating with residual energy.
My hand was glowing.
Blue light—soft, ethereal, beautiful—wrapped around my fingers like living water, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.
I stared at it, mesmerized.
What is this?
I could feel it now. Not just see it. Feel the way the blue light was pulling at everything around it—the air, the grass, the moisture, even the light itself seemed to bend slightly toward my hand.
It wasn't just moving objects.
It was rewriting the relationship between them.
Making distance meaningless.
I clenched my fist, and the blue light intensified.
The second sphere ripped free from its position and slammed into my hand with enough force to shatter bone—but Spatial Limit activated instinctively, creating an infinite buffer between the sphere and my skin.
It stopped millimeters away, trembling in mid-air.
Too much, I realized. I need to control the intensity—
I relaxed my grip slightly, and the sphere settled gently into my palm.
Better.
Now for the opposite.
I switched to my left hand and focused on the third sphere.
Not attraction. Repulsion.
Not pulling space together. Pushing it apart.
My left hand began to glow.
Red light—sharp, violent, burning—erupted around my fingers like flame made of pure force.
The grass beneath my feet flattened as if crushed by an invisible weight.
The air shimmered with heat haze that wasn't actually heat—it was space itself being compressed and then violently expanded.
I pushed my palm forward.
BOOM.
The sphere exploded backward.
Not thrown. Not launched.
Repelled—with such force that it crossed fifty meters in less than a second and embedded itself three inches deep into the stone wall at the edge of the training ground.
The impact echoed across the empty field like a thunderclap.
I stared at my hands.
Blue light dancing around the right.
Red light burning around the left.
This is...
I felt it then—the sheer weight of the power I'd just unlocked.
Not physical weight. Conceptual weight.
The weight of holding forces that could unmake reality if I lost control.
"Impressive."
I spun around.
Instructor Kaelen stood at the edge of the training ground, arms crossed, his scarred face unreadable.
How long has he been watching?
"How did you get past my perception?" I asked, genuinely curious.
"I didn't." He walked closer, boots crunching on gravel. "You were so focused on your training that you stopped paying attention to your surroundings. Rookie mistake."
"Fair."
He stopped a few meters away, studying me with those sharp, calculating eyes.
"What was that?" he asked quietly.
"New technique."
"That wasn't magic."
"Never said it was."
His jaw tightened slightly. "Valdris, I've been teaching combat magic for twenty years. I've seen Fifth Circle Archmages who couldn't generate that much raw force. And you're six years old with no Mana Core."
I shrugged, letting the blue and red light fade from my hands.
"Guess I'm just built different."
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then he drew his sword.
"Show me," he said flatly. "Full power. Don't hold back."
I blinked. "You sure about that?"
"I'm Fourth Circle, kid. I can handle whatever you throw at me."
I grinned.
"Your funeral."
[THE SPAR]
We stood thirty meters apart.
The morning sun was rising now, painting the sky in shades of gold and crimson. Mist still clung to the ground, swirling around our ankles like living smoke.
Kaelen settled into a combat stance—sword held at a diagonal, weight balanced, mana already flowing through his body in visible circuits of golden light.
Fourth Circle Enhancement: Full Body Reinforcement.
His muscles, bones, reflexes—all amplified to superhuman levels. He could move at speeds approaching forty meters per second, hit with enough force to shatter stone, and his skin was as tough as steel plate.
A normal six-year-old wouldn't last three seconds.
I just stood there, hands in my pockets, grinning.
"Ready when you are, old man."
His eye twitched.
Then he moved.
Perception Limit flared to life.
Time didn't slow—my mind just accelerated, processing information faster than reality could unfold.
I saw Kaelen cross fifteen meters in 0.4 seconds—his mana-enhanced legs cratering the ground with each step, displaced air creating a visible shockwave behind him.
Speed: 37.5 meters per second. Sword trajectory: horizontal slash aimed at center mass. Mana density in blade: Fourth Circle standard. Cutting power: sufficient to bisect a stone pillar.
The sword came at me like a beam of golden light.
I didn't dodge.
I raised my right hand.
Blue Force: Minimum output.
The blade stopped.
Not blocked. Not deflected.
Stopped.
Frozen in mid-air, one meter from my body, as if it had hit an invisible wall.
Kaelen's eyes widened slightly.
He pushed harder, channeling more mana into the blade—golden light flaring brighter—but the sword wouldn't move forward even a millimeter.
Because the space between us was infinite.
No matter how much force he applied, the distance would never close.
"Interesting," I said casually. "Fourth Circle enhancement gives you about 340 newtons of striking force. That's pretty good."
I clenched my fist.
Blue Force: Increased output.
The sword was ripped from Kaelen's hands.
Not pulled gently—ripped.
The force of attraction was so violent that the weapon tore through the air, spinning end-over-end, and slammed hilt-first into my waiting palm.
I caught it effortlessly, reversed my grip, and examined the blade.
"Nice balance," I commented. "Little heavy for my taste, but—"
Kaelen blurred.
Blink Step.
He compressed space with pure mana manipulation, appearing directly behind me, palm glowing with condensed fire.
"Inferno Palm!"
The temperature spiked instantly—2,000 degrees Celsius concentrated into a point the size of a coin, enough to vaporize flesh and bone on contact.
The heat washed over me like standing too close to a furnace. I could smell my hair beginning to singe—
My left hand snapped up.
Red Force: Full output.
BOOM.
The space between us exploded.
Not literally—no fire, no debris.
Just pure expansion of distance, manifesting as a shockwave of repulsive force.
Kaelen was thrown backward like a ragdoll, his Inferno Palm dissipating harmlessly, body tumbling through the air for twenty meters before he managed to twist mid-flight and land in a crouch.
His boots left twin furrows in the dirt.
He looked up at me, breathing hard, genuine surprise flickering across his face.
I twirled his sword casually and tossed it back to him.
"You were saying something about handling whatever I throw at you?"
He caught the sword, and for a moment, I thought he might actually be angry.
Then he grinned.
"Again."
[THE REAL FIGHT]
This time, Kaelen didn't hold back.
He moved like a storm incarnate—flickering between positions with Blink Step, each strike coming from a different angle, his blade wreathed in flames that left scorched afterimages in the air.
Slash from above—
Red Force: Repulsion.
The blade bounced off the invisible barrier, and I sidestepped smoothly.
Thrust from the left—
Blue Force: Attraction.
I pulled his sword off-course, the tip passing harmlessly past my shoulder by millimeters.
Three-strike combination: diagonal, horizontal, vertical—
I weaved through them like dancing through rain, Perception Limit feeding me perfect information about every movement before it happened.
Strike one: 0.3 seconds. Trajectory: 47 degrees. Miss by 8 centimeters.
Strike two: 0.6 seconds. Trajectory: horizontal. Block with Red Force.
Strike three: 0.9 seconds. Trajectory: overhead. Counter with—
I raised both hands.
Blue in the right. Red in the left.
And for the first time, I tried to use them simultaneously.
The world screamed.
Not audibly—but I felt it. Felt the fundamental forces of reality being twisted in opposite directions, attraction and repulsion fighting against each other in the space between my palms.
The air distorted violently, creating a visible ripple—like looking at a mirage on hot pavement—
And something new formed.
A sphere.
Perfectly black.
The size of a marble, hovering between my hands, pulling in light and pushing it away at the same time.
Hollow Point.
The prototype of what would eventually become Hollow Collapse.
Kaelen froze mid-swing.
His eyes locked onto the sphere.
"What... is that?"
I could barely hear him.
All my focus was on maintaining the balance—keeping Blue and Red from tearing each other apart, holding the contradiction stable.
It felt like holding two magnets with opposite poles pressed together, but the magnets were concepts and my hands were the only thing keeping them from destroying everything around us.
Sweat dripped down my temple.
My vision blurred slightly at the edges.
Too much. Too unstable. I need to—
I threw it.
HOLLOW POINT: RELEASE.
The black sphere shot forward—not fast, but with terrifying inevitability—and hit a training dummy twenty meters away.
There was no explosion.
No fire.
No sound.
The dummy just... ceased to exist.
A perfect sphere of nothingness appeared where the dummy had been—three meters in diameter, perfectly smooth, like someone had scooped out a piece of reality with an invisible spoon.
The edges of the void shimmered faintly, then collapsed inward with a soft whump, and reality rushed back in to fill the gap.
When it settled, there was nothing left.
No debris. No dust. No ash.
Just... nothing.
Silence.
Complete, absolute silence.
Kaelen stood frozen, staring at the empty space where the training dummy had been.
His sword hung limply at his side.
"That's..." His voice was barely a whisper. "That's not magic."
"I know."
"That's not possible."
"And yet."
He looked at me—really looked at me—and I saw something I'd seen before.
Fear.
Not of me, exactly.
Fear of what I represented.
"How did you do that?" he asked quietly.
I lowered my hands, the blue and red light fading. My fingers were trembling slightly from the strain.
"Blue Force attracts. Red Force repels. When you combine them in exactly the right balance, they create a point where both forces exist simultaneously. Infinite attraction and infinite repulsion in the same space."
"And that creates...?"
"A void. A place where matter can't exist because it's being pulled and pushed at the same time. So it just..." I snapped my fingers. "Stops existing."
Kaelen was silent for a long moment.
Then he sheathed his sword.
"You're dangerous, kid."
"I know."
"No." He stepped closer, his expression serious. "I mean you're dangerous. Not just to enemies. To everyone around you. To yourself."
I frowned. "I can control it—"
"Can you?" He gestured at the empty space. "What happens if you lose focus while forming that sphere? What happens if the balance tips even slightly?"
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know.
"Power without control is just destruction," Kaelen said quietly. "And from what I just saw, you've got more power than anyone your age has any right to have. But control?" He shook his head. "That's going to take time. Discipline. Failure."
"I don't fail."
"Everyone fails, Valdris. The question is whether you learn from it before it kills you."
[LATER — THE INFINITE MIRROR]
That night, lying in bed, the mirror appeared again.
This time, dozens of reflections stepped forward—each one a version of me from a different timeline, a different possibility.
One spoke, his voice echoing from all of them at once:
"Layer Three unlocked. Blue and Red."
"You're getting closer to what we became."
And what's that?
"Untouchable. Unstoppable."
"Alone."
Another reflection stepped forward—this one missing an arm, scarred across half his face.
"I lost control during a fight. Combined Blue and Red without proper balance."
What happened?
He smiled bitterly.
"I erased half a city. Everyone I cared about was standing in it."
The mirror trembled.
More reflections appeared, each one showing a different consequence.
One was blind—eyes burned out from sensory overload.
One was insane—mind fractured from perceiving too much.
One was dead—or hollow, anyway. Still breathing, but nothing behind the eyes.
"Every layer you unlock makes you stronger."
"But it also makes you less... human."
"The question is: how far are you willing to go?"
I woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat.
My hands were glowing faintly—blue light around the right, red around the left—even though I wasn't actively channeling.
It's bleeding through, I realized with cold clarity. The power's becoming part of me. Not something I use—something I am.
I clenched my fists, forcing the light to fade.
Outside my window, the first rays of dawn were breaking.
And somewhere in the distance, I felt it.
A presence.
Vast. Cold. Watching.
The Church had stopped observing.
They were moving.
[THREE DAYS LATER — THE ANNOUNCEMENT]
Professor Aldric stood at the front of the lecture hall, his expression grave.
"In one week," he announced, "the academy will host the Trials of Ascension—a tournament where students may challenge those in higher Circles to prove their worth."
Excited murmurs rippled through the class.
"The winner of each bracket will receive rare resources, advanced training, and—for those exceptional few—direct mentorship from Sixth Circle masters."
My ears perked up.
Sixth Circle. Saints.
That's... interesting.
"However," Aldric continued, his voice hardening, "this year's trials will have a special clause. Any student, regardless of Circle or age, may issue a challenge. And the challenged party cannot refuse."
The murmurs turned into shocked whispers.
Across the room, I felt someone's gaze burning into me.
I turned.
Cael Ashford was staring at me, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
Oh.
He's going to challenge me.
Perfect.