The plateau above the ruins was bare stone and open sky, chosen deliberately.
No key convergence.
No relic interference.
No ambient amplification.
Aethric stood at the center of the natural circle, staff resting against his shoulder, expression unreadable. Nyra faced him from several paces away, nerves taut beneath her calm.
"Magic," Aethric said, "is not power."
Nyra frowned slightly. "Then what is it?"
"Permission," he replied. "Granted by layers most mages never realize exist."
He raised one finger.
The air responded not with light or force, but alignment. Mana that had been drifting aimlessly snapped into coherence, flowing around his hand like a river recognizing its bed.
Nyra felt it instantly.
Not pressure.
Not heat.
Obedience.
"This is First Layer manipulation," Aethric continued. "What academies teach. Shape, release, sustain."
He closed his hand.
The mana dispersed, harmless.
"Second Layer," he said, "is permission. Convincing magic that it should obey."
He tapped the ground with his staff.
The stone remembered heat and cracked as if fire had once touched it, though no flame appeared.
Nyra's breath caught. "You didn't cast anything."
"No," Aethric said. "I reminded the world of an older truth."
He looked at her sharply. "Now you."
Nyra swallowed and focused, reaching inward, not grasping, as she had been taught, but listening. Mana stirred hesitantly.
It resisted.
Her brow furrowed.
Aethric did not intervene.
Minutes passed.
Then...
The air around Nyra softened.
Mana curved toward her, uncertain but curious.
Aethric's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Good," he said. "You are not commanding it. You are offering context."
Nyra opened her eyes, startled. "It feels like… negotiation."
"Exactly," Aethric replied. "The Third Layer."
He gestured skyward.
High above, clouds shifted not dramatically, but with intent, aligning into a spiral that mirrored an ancient sigil Nyra had never learned, yet somehow recognized.
"Hierarchy," Aethric said. "Every spell answers something. Most mages scream at the bottom and wonder why nothing listens."
He lowered his hand. The clouds dispersed instantly.
Nyra stared. "And you?"
"I speak where the hierarchy begins," he said simply.
She hesitated. "Is that why the Hollow Sovereign?"
"Is it dangerous?" Aethric finished. "Yes. It does not break the hierarchy. It replaces itself within it."
Nyra shivered.
Aethric stepped closer. "Now, we proceed carefully. You will attempt a Fourth Layer touch."
Her eyes widened. "Isn't that"
"Forbidden," he agreed. "For good reason. You will not cross it. You will only feel it."
He placed two fingers lightly against her sternum.
"Do not reach outward," he instructed. "Let it notice you."
Nyra obeyed.
The hum inside her chest intensified, resonating deep, deepening, widening, unfolding like a door opening into a room that had been waiting.
The world sharpened.
She felt depth beneath reality, interlocking systems, ancient permissions, sealed pathways humming with dormant authority.
Aethric felt it too.
His expression changed not from fear, but recognition.
"Stop," he said sharply.
Nyra tried.
The hum surged.
The ground beneath her feet darkened as sigils etched themselves into the stone, not spells, but structural marks older than casting.
Aethric moved instantly.
He layered suppression fields with surgical precision, isolating the surge without collapsing it. The air thickened, resisting Nyra's pull.
"Nyra," he said, voice controlled but urgent. "Release it."
"I don't know how!" she gasped.
The mana twisted.
For a heartbeat, something else answered.
Not mana.
Absence.
A sliver of Nullcraft bled into existence, thin, unstable, and utterly wrong. The sigils flared violently, edges unraveling reality instead of shaping it.
Aethric's eyes went cold.
"That is enough."
He placed his staff between them and spoke a single word not aloud, but into the hierarchy itself.
The Nullcraft collapsed, devoured by containment layers that rewrote local permissions.
Silence slammed down.
Nyra fell to her knees, gasping.
The sigils faded, but not completely.
One remained.
Aethric stared at it.
It was not a Hollow Sovereign design.
It was older.
"Nyra," he said slowly, "you did not access forbidden magic."
She looked up, shaken. "Then what did I touch?"
Aethric tightened his grip on the staff.
"You were recognized by it."
Far beneath the plateau, something long sealed shifted.
And for the first time since the First Era
A higher layer noticed humanity again.
Nyra accidentally triggers a form of magic beyond standard mana, neither taught nor fully forbidden, forcing Aethric to intervene. The sigil left behind is not Hollow Sovereign in origin, implying an even deeper First Era authority has acknowledged her presence.