[Central Academy – Tournament Sublevel, Day Four]
Above the arena, the world seemed to return to normal. Applause, lights, magic shaking the walls. But deep beneath the surface, under all layers of appearance, another story was quietly being written.
In a round chamber marked with anti-surveillance symbols, six students sat in a semicircle. All of them were tournament finalists. All of them had witnessed a fracture.
Kaelya was the last to enter.
Her gaze was clear, but behind her silence was a decision.
— "We're not here to discuss victory," she said. "We're here because we witnessed an absence."
Ytheris, silent and solemn, nodded slightly.
— "Albert."
— "Albert," the others echoed almost in unison.
—
[At the Same Time – The Academy's Sealed Observatory]
Zhelenya stepped onto a platform of living light, surrounded by empty mirrors. None of them could reflect the Spiral anymore. None showed what was happening to Albert.
Next to her, an old mage with bandaged eyes asked:
— "Are we still watching him?"
— "No. Now we're waiting for him."
— "Do you think he'll return?"
— "I think we'll be forced to accept that the world will never be the same."
—
[Earth – Unknown Location]
The blue-eyed girl opened her father's journal for the first time. She had kept it hidden for years, but now—its pages were no longer blank.
Letters appeared on their own, written by a hand that no longer lived.
> "If you're reading this, it means he has stepped forward.
And if he has stepped, then you must choose: to run...
or to accept that your dream is more real than the world."
She sighed and closed the book.
— "I won't run anymore."
—
[Eternal Council – Internal Plane of Accords]
One of the Council members uttered a rare name:
— "Ithrial…"
All others fell silent.
— "It hasn't been spoken in ten thousand years."
— "And yet, he has been found."
— "By whom?"
— "By the one who must not be named. The one even we can no longer control."
Sypherion was not present, yet his echo could be felt across the entire chamber.
In a far corner, a black sphere quietly unraveled.
— "He's almost here."
—
[Within the Spiral – Beneath the Threshold of Reality]
Albert walked through a layer where logical laws had no voice. Around him, existence became malleable, and past and future melted into an eternal now.
On a floating rock, a figure awaited him. Not human. Not alive. But not dead either.
Albert recognized it. It was the Unspeaking Guardian – one who only appeared when a new path formed between worlds.
— "I don't have to tell you anything," the entity said.
— "I know."
— "Then step forward."
Albert raised his hand, and the shadow-bridge ignited into spherical light.
A new path. A new verdict.
[Tournament – Day Four, Afternoon]
The arena trembled again. In Albert's absence, the crowd's interest had shifted, but the competition had not stopped.
The secondary final was underway.
Ytheris and Eiren stood on the battlefield, surrounded by stabilized runic circles. Both silent. Both aware that, although the fight seemed important, in truth it was not.
— "Will we continue this theater?" Eiren asked, his voice calm, but cold.
Ytheris didn't respond immediately. Then he raised his dark blade and said:
— "Not for us. For the eyes that still don't understand."
And it began.
Black lightning, ice shields, temporal slow fields, arcane projectiles — all part of a violent dance.
But behind every strike was restraint. An absence.
As if both were trying not to draw attention to what could no longer be ignored: Albert's absence.
—
[Central Library – The Spherical Archive of Mementours]
Zhelenya entered a chamber no one could access without a living key.
She touched a suspended memory sphere and whispered:
— "Show me the echo of the missing steps."
The sphere trembled. A single name appeared, formed of fractured light:
Albert.
But below it, another sequence formed — unreadable. A foreign symbol.
Zhelenya flinched.
— "It's not just him. Someone... is following him."
—
[Earth – The Basement of Frozen Clocks]
The blue-eyed girl sat within the rune circle.
For the first time, she recited a fragment of a spell she had never learned:
— "Where shadows walk, and light stays silent,
Where I never dreamed you but still know you—answer me, being of the impossible."
Time around her stopped. The air thickened.
In the cracked mirror in the corner, a figure appeared for a split second.
Her eyes widened.
— "It can't be…"
Her brother rushed in.
— "What did you do?!"
— "I found the shadow of the one who no longer has a name."
—
[Within the Spiral – The Newly Formed Path]
Albert walked without haste. No entity blocked him. No illusion tested him.
The path wrote itself by his will.
Then, a quiet vibration.
A sound that did not exist.
An eye, drawn into the air, began to cry with inverted light.
Albert stopped. He knew what was coming.
— "Beings from the unthinkable layers…" he murmured. "Are coming."
[Tournament – Arena, Secondary Final]
Ytheris and Eiren no longer spoke. The duel had become a symphony of mastered power. The audience was captivated, but behind each move lay a deeper truth:
Albert's absence had created a void in the very structure of the competition.
Eiren launched a vortex of blue-hued lightning. Ytheris raised a veil of shaped shadows. The impact should have shattered everything — yet the magical barriers trembled, not from the clash… but from the echo of something deeper.
— "You feel it too?" Eiren asked silently.
— "Yes. We're not fighting for a title. We're fighting to stay visible in a world that begins to forget all that isn't him."
—
[Professors' Chamber – Parallel Review]
A group of master magicians debated in silence.
— "Albert broke the standard structure of the examination."
— "He broke more than that. He redefined the upper limit of potential."
— "Can we continue the tournament without him?"
— "Only if we accept that we're no longer measuring strength… but survival against the unknown."
—
[The Spiral – The Zone of Unbegun Thought]
Albert moved forward into a region that had never been defined by anyone. The space had no boundaries, yet each of his steps created them.
Ahead, a vast wall formed from unfinished thoughts. Living paintings. Suspended ideas.
Here dwelled the Beings from the Unthinkable Layers — entities made from fragments of abandoned reality.
One of them now took shape.
It was tall, but without a clear form. It spoke with four overlapping voices.
— "You have come where no one was ever invited."
Albert didn't respond immediately.
— "I don't enter. I remake."
The entity shuddered. From its body, shards of reality fell away.
— "Your name is in no registry. And yet all things know you."
Albert raised his hand. The sky around him melted into symbols.
— "Because I am what comes after questions."
The entity stepped back. For the first time, even the Unbegun Layer hesitated.
—
[The Blue-Eyed Girl – The Vision]
In a suspended moment, the girl collapsed into the magic circle. Her eyes saw through the fractured crystal mirror:
Albert walking into a place where every question had died before it was ever spoken.
She whispered:
— "He no longer seeks. He imposes."
[The Nameless Realm – Between the Unbegun Layers]
Albert moved effortlessly, and the path continued to write itself around him—obedient and alive.
The undefined entities of this place—once abandoned dreams, unfinished laws, and unrecorded whispers—began to merge into a common shape.
Not to confront him.
But to ask permission to exist in his presence.
A chorus of light-voices spoke in a single wave:
— "You who walk without beginning or end... You have the right to reconfigure us."
Albert looked upward, where there was no sky, only raw consciousness.
— "There's no need to redefine you. Only to let you choose your shape."
And with those words, all that had been uncertain in this place... took form.
Time in that layer triggered for the first time in its existence.
—
[Tournament – Sealed Arena, Final Round]
Ytheris knelt in the dust, his sword shattered in three places.
Eiren stood, breathing heavily, blood running from a cut on his cheek.
The crowd was on its feet. Not in triumph—but in respect.
— "Final decision?" the referee whispered.
Kaelya stepped onto the platform and looked at them both.
— "We have no winner."
All eyes turned to her.
— "Because the victory has already been claimed… by an absence that changed everything."
—
[Forbidden Chamber of the Observers]
Zhelenya watched the symbol still pulsing in the core of the memory sphere.
— "A path was permitted… but never asked for."
The old mage with his eyes bound replied:
— "That makes it the most dangerous path. Because it has no purpose. Only presence."
—
[Earth – In the Dream of the Frozen Block]
The blue-eyed girl walked through a dream where everything was still.
Next to her, a clock ticked backward.
A faceless child looked at her and said:
— "He no longer searches. What do you do?"
She answered without hesitation:
— "I wake up."
And her eyes opened in the real world.
Somewhere in the Spiral, Albert felt that moment.
[The Spiral – The Intersection of Silence and Gaze]
Albert arrived in a space where neither light nor darkness felt at ease.
A place of transition, where every step was both a choice and a declaration.
Before him, a circle formed — not magical, not symbolic, but purely existential.
From it rose a familiar silhouette. Not Ithrial. Not a god.
It was… the echo of his own choice. A version of himself that had never stepped forward. That had never said "yes."
— "Do you recognize me?" the version asked.
— "You're what I would've been if I had refused."
— "And why didn't you refuse?"
Albert stepped toward him without hesitation.
— "Because I don't walk the path. I am the path."
The version dissolved. Not into dust. But into pure potential.
—
[The Tournament – The Ending]
The audience no longer applauded. Those in the stands felt the event had ended in a way that couldn't be described.
Kaelya withdrew without explanation. In her hands: a crystal that hadn't existed before.
— "He left something behind."
—
[Eternal Council – The Room Without Voice]
Sypherion was now fully present. His silence filled the space.
The eight waited. They did not speak. Did not breathe. Did not even think.
Until Sypherion said:
— "He stepped into his own shadow."
A single question formed:
— "And what did he find?"
The answer fell across the world:
— "The silence that knows everything."
—
[Earth – The Frozen Laboratory]
The blue-eyed girl held a fragment of light in her palm. She couldn't explain it. It wasn't warm. It wasn't cold.
It was simply… the echo of a step taken by someone else, but felt by all beings connected to truth.
— "It has begun."
—
[Albert – In the Passage Toward What Comes Next]
The bridge vanished. The ground beneath his steps was no longer ground.
He no longer walked. No longer stepped. No longer searched.
He was simply present.
And in that presence, all things that had once avoided him…
began to draw near.