The deeper layers of the ruin felt quieter.
Not because there was no noise, but because the ruin had stopped testing him.
It was watching.
Marth stood at the edge of a rusted gateway. Its surface shimmered faintly, laced with spatial scars. Not fresh. Old. Maybe centuries.
He pressed a palm to the side wall and muttered:
"Dimensional Trace."
The spell revealed faint echoes of movement. Not human. Not even biological. Spatial imprints, overlapping paths. Remnants of something large that had moved through here over decades.
Then suddenly stopped.
He let the spell fade.
"It's empty now."
He passed through the gate and into a hollowed-out chamber. The walls were lined with slits and sigils—possibly vents, possibly weapon ports. Whatever system ran the ruin, this room had once been defensive.
Now it was a husk.
In the center stood a stone monolith, unmarked and humming with latent mana. Its base pulsed slowly, matching the rhythm of something deep within Marth.
He narrowed his eyes.
Why hadn't he lost everything?
Every other mage would've been reset by death.
But not him.
Because the source of all magic wasn't physical.
Not the brain. Not the body. Not even the mana circuits most mages relied on.
It was the soul.
And Marth's soul… had carried over, fully intact.
That included his Esper trait. His spell foundations. And above all else—the two spells carved into the most dangerous part of his existence:
The Arkanum slots
Origin Magic
A tier of spellcraft beyond twelfth-grade.
It didn't simply manipulate the world—it redefined it. Conceptual-level magic that bent the rules, rather than followed them.
Teleportation, summoning, flight—those were child's tricks.
Origin spells ignored the system entirely.
But power like that came at a price.
To cast an Origin spell, a mage needed two things:
The spell formula, often ancient, encrypted, or unfinished.
A permanent Arkanum Slot carved into the soul.
These slots couldn't be forced open. The soul resisted. And to carve even one, a mage needed a Soulbrand Ember—a rare crystallization of death, will, and mana.
Most died trying.
Marth had succeeded. Twice.
Each Arkanum Slot came with something else:
A finite well of Origin Energy—a fuel source tied to the soul's depth.
That energy regenerated over time, but slowly. Until it recovered, the slot was dry, and the spell it carried was dormant.
This meant Origin Magic couldn't be spammed.
It demanded patience. Precision.
And when used… it warped reality itself.
He remembered the first time he carved a slot.
The pain had nearly broken him.
It wasn't like memorizing a spell or inscribing a scroll. This was surgery on the soul. If he failed, his essence would've collapsed.
But he didn't fail.
He carved two.
The first slot bore a spell of his own design:
Event Horizon.
A singularity—born of force, gravity, and inevitability.
A conceptual core that pulled all matter, thought, and mana into collapse. Once activated, there was no escape.
Only silence.
To support it, Marth had built dozens of twelfth-rank spells designed to interact with it—bend time near it, channel its force, or harness the debris it left behind.
That was why, in his past life, they called him:
The Black Hole Demilich.
The second Origin spell?
He hadn't created it.
He found it—buried in a ruin older than written history. Its name was lost. Its power wasn't.
He moved closer to the monolith in the chamber's center. Its pulse echoed the rhythm of his own Arkanum Slots.
That couldn't be coincidence.
He placed his hand against it. Mana surged.
For a moment, the space around him… changed.
Not literally. Not physically.
The monolith released a faint click. A compartment opened in its side, revealing a small box of bone and blackened glass.
Inside, resting atop velvet, was a single ember.
A Soulbrand Ember.
Fresh.
Untouched.
Even one could drive nations into war.
And here it was—waiting. As if it knew.
Marth stared at it for a moment… then pocketed it.
No questions. No ceremony.
Generosity from the dead didn't need explanations.
He turned, but didn't leave.
Something else lingered.
Not a trap. Not a ward.
A presence.
The ruin had memory.
And it was still watching.
Still judging.
He spoke aloud, voice calm and flat.
"Your projections were primitive. The mirror trick? Sentimental nonsense."
No answer.
Just the low hum of the walls.
"But I understand the logic," he continued. "You test through illusion, manipulation, feedback. You want to know what's human. What isn't."
He stepped toward the next door.
"I'm not human. Not in the way you expect."
Still no reply.
But the door opened.
The corridor beyond had no light.
No runes.
No threats.
And yet—for the first time since entering the ruin, Marth hesitated.
Not out of fear.
But analysis.
The ruin had shifted again.
No more illusions. No more projections.
Now it was waiting.
In the silence, his mind returned to an old question:
Why didn't the ruin appear in his past life?
It had.
He was simply too late.
It phased out of alignment—dimensionally unstable, bound to something that moved between layers of reality.
He blamed timing.
He was wrong.
He reached the corridor's end and found a sealed door.
Unlike the others, this one was featureless—no locks, no hinges. Just a single glowing glyph etched in concept, not ink:
The formula for "entry denied."
Marth smiled. A real smile.
Cold. Calculated.
"Finally."
He raised his hand. A sliver of Origin Energy bled from his soul.
The ruin flinched.
He traced the air. The formula unraveled.
And behind the door, something stirred.