The silence of the cabin cracked as the door slid open. Liora entered, a tray of tea balanced carefully in her hands. She froze when she saw her master staring at a scroll with uncharacteristic intensity, and then her gaze shifted to Adrian.
She faltered. She had joined the mission to protect him, yet the boy had become something she could not even comprehend. How could she guard someone who now seemed untouchable?
Better to stand aside and serve quietly. She set the tray down and took her place near Selena without a word.
Adrian asked. "How do I etch this rune into my body?"
Selena looked up. "You want to etch it? Dangerous. Space concepts aren't toys, they can tear you apart."
"I'll handle it," Adrian said simply.
Selena studied him, then exhaled. "There is a way. I found it decades ago. A symbol, not in any Volume, lets a scroll's rune burn into flesh as a tattoo."
"I discovered it by accident."
Adrian's eyes sharpened. He thought he knew everything that humanity had after reading the three volumes, but it seems he really underestimated people like Selena. Experiences really let them discover things, and it could never be underestimated.
He had learned his lesson.
Selena showed the symbol. He absorbed the new symbol in an instant, Source translating its meaning as if it had always been his.
He dipped quill to ink and re-inscribed the strengthening rune, this time weaving the new mark into it. The parchment glowed faintly, symbols rising from the page like drifting stars.
Selena blinked. He had glanced once at her symbol, then inscribed it flawlessly. Even she had struggled for months when first uncovering it.
Adrian raised his hand. The floating construct drifted onto the back of his palm, searing into his skin with a hiss.
Runes flared, then settled into golden lines that pulsed faintly, alive. He even felt he could remove this later, so this was flexible.
The cabin shuddered with the shift. Mana poured into Adrian from every direction, flooding into his body. He staggered.
Breath caught in his throat. Pain tore through him.
Adrian thought he was ready. But he wasn't.
The moment the runes started to work, he was gasping for breath, except breath meant nothing anymore. The rune was already cutting off his body's reliance on oxygen, simulating a void he had never experienced.
It felt like drowning and freezing at once.
His blood turned to ice in his veins. Muscles locked, brittle as glass. Even his cells seemed ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
His body swelled, shrank, twisted with the stress of existing in nothingness.
"Adrian!" Liora's cry cracked across the cabin, but she couldn't reach him.
A barrier of writhing space surrounded him, the void simulation creating its own protective field. Selena's golden tattoos pulsed faintly as she leaned forward, fascinated despite herself.
Dorian's expression was grimmer, he had seen prodigies burn themselves out chasing impossible theories. But even he couldn't look away.
Adrian's manifestation flared instinctively, white-grey mist spilling across his form, but the rune was relentless. The void simulation gnawed at him, tore him apart, and rebuilt him.
Freeze. Adapt. Freeze. Adapt.
The cycle repeated endlessly. minutes of agony stretched into eternity. His vision blurred, his body splitting between fire and ice.
But through it all, he felt his cells learning, bending, changing.
Mira pressed herself against her father's side, watching in horror as Adrian convulsed. "Is he dying?"
"No," Selena whispered, her voice filled with something between awe and terror. "He's evolving."
Minutes crawled. Then half an hour.
Gradually, his body adapted. The cold still pressed against him, but no longer shattered him. His blood no longer froze, his body had learned to circulate mana itself as fuel for his organs, adjusting to operate without air.
When he opened his eyes, they gleamed with calm fire. His body felt alien, reborn. No longer dependent on breath, no longer bound to human limits.
He felt nothing. A simulation of the void.
Slowly, painfully, he rose to his feet. His steps were unsteady at first, then firm. His chest didn't rise or fall, he no longer breathed, yet his body thrummed with vitality.
It was weird but also terrifying.
"Adrian?" Mira's voice cracked, barely a whisper.
He turned toward her, movements precise but strange. Like he was learning to inhabit his own flesh again.
Then, as if testing him, the rune deepened its simulation. He felt it, the void. A deeper yawning emptiness pressed against him, the chill of space itself.
His body should have collapsed. It did not.
"What's happening to you?" Liora stepped forward.
Adrian's gaze fell to his palm, watching the golden lines pulse. The rune was still working, still pushing him deeper into adaptation.
He realized the void he initially sensed was not this terrifying. The rune seemed to slowly increase the strength of the void as the body adapted to it.
Selena's eyes gleamed with disbelief. "You… adapted?"
"This rune…" His voice was steady, though his hands trembled faintly. "It simulates the void, stage by stage."
"At first, only enough to freeze me, to force my body to adapt. Then deeper, until mana itself replaces air."
"It rewrites the body's foundation until survival without oxygen… is natural. I feel it even now, my body is constantly getting adapted to a stronger void."
Dorian leaned forward, "How much stronger can it get?"
Adrian met his gaze. "If this continued, one day, it will let me stand in true emptiness. Even space will feel like home."
Even saying it aloud, he felt the strangeness of it. Like he had cut himself free of a chain that had bound humanity since birth.
Liora's lips parted, but no words came. To her, it wasn't just strength, it was unnatural. Something beyond human.
Mira stared at him as though she were watching the birth of a myth. Her father's arm tightened protectively around her shoulders.
Selena leaned back, exhaling sharply. For once, she wasn't mocking. She looked shaken.
"Do you realize what this means? You've just taken the first step to making humans viable beyond Earth. Beyond planets. Into the void itself."
Her golden tattoos seemed dim compared to the brilliance emanating from Adrian's hand. With her methods, reaching the stage Adrian achieved in thirty minutes would have taken hundreds of years.
Adrian's gaze lowered to his hand. The faint glow of the rune pulsed like a heartbeat.
"Yes, our first step for survival"