Chương 417: Fracture

I sat cross-legged on the dark basalt platform of the real world, my star-cores spinning in a slow, perfectly stable stasis. The silver channels in the stone pulsed in a comfortable rhythm beneath my boots, but the serenity of the volcanic basin did not soothe my mind. A standard week had passed. During those seven days of agonizing waiting, I did not let my mind remain idle. I spent the cycles in a deep, hyper-focused state of sensory training.

With my physical body wreathed in the absolute stasis of my Tier 9 foundation, I let my consciousness drift outward, scanning the sub-layers of space with a precision I hadn't possessed as a Sovereign. My perception was no longer bound by the standard coordinate lines of the Lattice. Instead, I began to detect incredibly faint, hair-thin lines of reality that existed deep beneath the Void — lines in a color I had never seen before, my only sense of comparison was that it resembled a red undertoned silver.

These 'silver' cobwebs were drifting everywhere throughout the third Layer. As I observed these lines, I began to understand that these were probably the un-systemic tethers of destiny. The spiritual cords seemed to also bind my newly Ascended soul-gate directly back to Ferra. Through these microscopic, 'silver' threads, I could feel my people across the stars.

I could hear the slow, deep heartbeat of Bastion's planetary core, the quiet humming of Leoric's newly installed shield-relays in our atmosphere, and the distant, warm laughter of my students practicing their gravity-slopes in the Academy courtyard. It was an extremely daunting task, a practice in the education of superhuman processing. A terrifying yet exciting endeavor that proves that I have become truly a different being.

At the Ninth Tier, my mind was no longer bound by the linear, three-dimensional neural pathways of my old human body. I processed data in a non-linear, multi-layered stasis. To a Ferran, imagining a completely new color — a hue outside the visible electromagnetic spectrum — is a physiological impossibility. The average brain or whatever 'processing unit' the average species has simply lacks the hardware before Ascension.

But as my star-cores cycled, my optical and cognitive lattice expanded beyond those mortal limits. I could physically 'see' and conceptualize entirely new 'colors' of the Deep — wavelengths of spatial energy that represented gravity-vectors, the pale-violet decay of uncompiled entropy, and the cold, starless hue of the absolute void. Although my brain didn't translate them into human terms; it understood them as raw, three-dimensional geometric values. I was observing reality in its original, un-edited format.

But the starlight-lily crystal on the stone altar remained quiet, and the silver-blue portal of Crys' trial did not open. Anxiety began to fester behind my ribs, a cold, sharp friction that made my [Crown of Pride] sit heavy on my brow.

"If this trial exists outside of standard system-time," I said aloud, my voice echoing in the silent, empty basin.

"If our return coordinates were supposed to be measured to the exact same microsecond regardless of the subjective eons we spent inside... then why isn't she here? We should have returned together." The Void System remained silent. Unlike the Prime, its interface didn't project status sheets or direct data.

Instead, it manifested as floating, jagged shards of purple crystal that hovered in my peripheral vision, bleeding un-aligned starlight and shifting runes directly onto my optical nerves with a low-frequency hum.

"Answer me," I demanded, my tone dropping into a low-frequency rumble that made the obsidian pillars of the basin vibrate.

"I know you are not a primitive machine. You've been watching me since the Plunge. What is happening inside her Challenge?" The silence of the basin held for a long, agonizing minute before a sudden, cold dampness crept into my mind. The purple crystal shards in my vision wreathed themselves in a shaky, erratic light, the runes bleeding directly into my thoughts. [She has failed, Eren Kai,] the unaligned presence whispered in my thoughts, her telepathic tone carrying a slow, solemn weight.

[Her starlight-conduits have collapsed under the weight of the dilation. Her coordinates are no longer registered. Her essence will be returned to the Wheel.]"No," I gritted my teeth, standing straight, my physical density cracking the dark sand beneath my boots.

"I watched her. Her crystalline body-vibration was stable. There is no way she failed unless... Tell me. What really happened?" The purple shards began to flicker violently, the silver coordinate-lines in my vision refracting into a chaotic, distorted jangle of uncompiled metadata. [The... the compilation has been corrupted,] a presence spoke, her voice breaking with a telepathic static that sounded like grinding glass. [The... the Court of Primes... they wove a Runic Parasite into her Gate... an external backdoor... they have altered her starlight-dilation... trapping her coordinates in an absolute, infinite loop where her density cannot compile... she... we cannot... help...] The message cut off abruptly, the purple interface snapping back to its normal, clinical stasis. I stood in the volcanic basin, my jaw tightening as the analytical realization hit me. I knew that the Systems weren't omnipotent gods, but I didn't expect the Courts to still somehow reach us here.

It really showed that they were just massive, clunky Machines riddled with backdoors and vulnerabilities. The Court's coercive Architects had lived long enough to have entire blueprints of them, and they opened those backdoors like secret corridors in a castle. They couldn't touch me because of the nature of my Challenge, so they had targeted Crys, altering her time-dilation to trap her in an infinite loop. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"They really are persistent," I muttered, my eyes churning with an absolute, starless black and arterial crimson fire.

"But if they can do that, there must be something I can do myself…" I reached out with my zeroth-tier [Symphony of the Animus Arch], my fingers physically grasping the fading purple thread of the system's communication in the air. I wreathed it in [Apex Mana Authority], refusing to let the connection de-cohere.

"Tell me how to save her," I commanded, my voice shaking the volcanic mountain range. The unaligned presence in my mind flickered back to life, her voice carrying a frantic, hushed urgency. [You must open a Lattice Portal within the Deep,] she whispered, her words projecting a series of complex, non-Euclidean mana-blueprints directly into my brain-cores. [You must weave your gravity-conduits into the fourth Void Layer... creating a physical coordinate-bridge to enter her trial-chamber. You must shatter the Runic Parasite at her center before the dilation eats her soul. But... I must go. They are tracing my thread... do not let them see your light...] The connection snapped, the purple shards in my vision returning to their quiet, unbothered stasis, leaving me alone on the basalt platform.

"I really must get Kasian more resources to look into those System prompts… It's like a direct message from someone," I muttered. I sat down, my mind racing as I analyzed the projected blueprints. It was an incredibly complex, pre-System void technique — a method of weaving gravity-strings and uncompiled void-essence to create a physical bridge between two separate challenge-chambers.

It was like trying to weave a single thread of raw gravity through a loom of rapidly spinning time-strings, requiring a level of uncompiled spatial-weaving that would take years to master. I spent several hours practicing the method, my star-cores spinning in a maximum, screaming rotation as I tried to compile the spatial runes. But I failed.

Every time I tried to weave the delicate silver-lines, the uncompiled void-mana of G-42-Epsilon would resist the geometry, the gravity-anchors collapsing before the bridge could stabilize. And Crys was dying in that infinite, temporal loop now. I didn't have years. I had minutes.

"If I cannot pick the lock," I said, standing up and pulling the [Crown of Pride] into reality, "then I will simply have to burn down the door." I wove my [Voidflame] to its absolute maximum, safe threshold. I didn't wreathe it in my Domain this time; I willed the black-red liquid fire to expand, wrapping my hands in a violent, entropic corona of deletion. As I prepared to strike, I entered a deep, intense state of focus, meditating on the un-aligned mechanics of my Voidflame.

The uncompiled mana in my channels felt like a viscous, black-red oil that hummed with the high-pitched, glass-shattering frequency of absolute zero. I wasn't just trying to travel through space. I was using my Voidflame to delete the concept of separation between my trial-chamber and hers. If the distance between our two coordinates ceased to exist, we would already be standing in the same room.

I willed my Voidflame to enter the fourth Void Layer, and with a single, violent gesture, I drove my hands directly into the fabric of space where Crys' silver-blue portal had closed. I didn't try to just open a gate. I physically shredded and burned a hole into her challenge chamber. The sound of the space tearing was a physical, planetary-scale shriek that sounded like heavy canvas being ripped apart under a colossal, unaligned knife.

The moment my Voidflame tore through the uncompiled space, three things happened simultaneously. First, a bright, clinical flash of purple starlight wreathed my vision, the jagged crystal shards in my eyes shifting as the Void System reacted to the unprecedented, conceptual violence of my strike. [(Origin-Tier) Skill unlocked.] [Concept: The absolute deletion of deep Void boundaries through Projected Hybrid Soulflame Conceptual Entropic Friction.] Second, an extremely powerful, furiously hostile presence erupted on the outer edge of Sector Z-99. It was a presence so gargantuan, so absolute in its authority, that it felt as though an infinite, burning eye of starlight had opened in the deep void, scanning our coordinates. This was a cosmic presence that dwarfed the star-fields, its gaze carrying the absolute, unyielding law of the Court of Primes.

The sheer, psychological weight of its gaze hit my soul gate like a physical hammer, threatening to crush my mind and dissolve my Soul. I felt a hopeless, primal wave of absolute fear — a terror that made my knees buckle, my star-cores screaming as they struggled to maintain their rotation. I had to flare my [Voidflame] to its absolute limit, engulfing my Domain and wrapping my mind in a burning, uncooled wrath just to resist the crushing, divine pressure of its gaze.

But third, before the hostile eye could locate my position, another extremely powerful presence appeared. It was a warm, silent shadow of starless black — a presence that carried a similar geometry to the First Progenitor's soul-scars. It felt like the primordial shadow was wrapping around me, weaving a colossal shroud of un-systemic stasis that completely blocked the hostile eye's scanning sweeps, hiding our world from the cosmos like a mother shielding a newborn spark of light from the sun.

The giant, burning eye of starlight blinked, unable to find my light, and slowly dissolved back into the deep void layers. I stood on the basalt platform, my chest heaving as my star-cores slowly slowed from their high-speed rotation, my hands wreathed in the black-red liquid fire that had just burned a hole through the fabric of the universe. The chaotic rifts in front of the gate were open. The scorched hole in the space was whispering with her silver-blue starlight.

I adjusted my armor, my eyes churning with a starless black and arterial crimson fire.

"Hold on, Crys," I whispered. I stepped into the scorched, bleeding rift, ready to drag her back from the dark.