The private study was a cathedral of floating geometry. Equations in Avulum's glowing script drifted through the air like schools of neon fish, shifting their variables whenever Akhtar gestured toward a shimmering prism. This was a place of quiet focus, far from the judging eyes of the High Council and the sprawling, vibrant noise of Orizon below. Here, the air was cool and still, filtered through ancient stone that hummed with a low-frequency magic I was finally beginning to perceive as more than just a headache.
"In the Tower, they treat magic as a gift from the stars, an intuitive art to be felt and channeled," Akhtar said, pacing between two hovering crystals that projected a three-dimensional map of the mana-flow. "But for you, magic must be a calculation. Your world won't give you the luxury of feeling the flow because there is no flow. You have to build the pipes before you turn on the water."
Akhtar tapped a central crystal, and a holographic model of a human silhouette appeared in the center of the room. A soft, translucent blue mist surrounded it—the representation of Avulum's ambient mana.
"Here, casting is like breathing. You pull from the world, and the world pushes back, keeping the energy stable," he explained. With a swift swipe of his hand, the blue mist vanished. The silhouette turned a stark, hollow grey, standing in a total void. "This is your world. A vacuum. If you release even a spark of mana on Earth, there is no external pressure to hold it in place. It will want to expand—violently—until it reaches equilibrium with the nothingness around it."
The implications hit me with the weight of a textbook. In physics, when a gas is released into a vacuum, it expands instantly to fill the space. If my internal mana was the gas and Earth was the vacuum, a simple light spell wouldn't just glow; it would try to occupy the entire street in a fraction of a second. The energy would dissipate before it could ever take shape, likely tearing my arm apart in the process.
"To survive casting there," I mused, looking at the grey silhouette, "I can't just let the energy out. I have to wrap it in something. A containment field that mimics the atmospheric pressure of this world. I have to create a micro-environment for every spell."
"Exactly," Akhtar grunted, his eyes showing a flicker of grim satisfaction. "But even a contained spell is useless if it doesn't interact with the environment. This is where your Snowshoe theory becomes more than just a metaphor."
He brought up a wave-pattern diagram that shimmered in the air between us. "Every world has a pulse. Avulum vibrates at a high, melodic frequency—a constant song of creation. Earth, from what we can tell through the fractured gates, is different."
"It's dense," I said, thinking of the hum of power lines and the thrum of heavy machinery. "It's grounded in physical matter. If Avulum is a violin string, Earth is a lead pipe."
"Correct," Akhtar said. "If you try to use Avulum's frequency on Earth, the magic will simply vibrate itself into heat and smoke. It will be rejected by the physical laws of your world. You have to find the Harmonic Constant—a way to tune your mana so it resonates with the atoms of Earth. You don't want the magic to fight the physics; you want the magic to hitch a ride on them."
We spent the next hour analyzing the feedback logs from the initial breach. I began to see it as a problem of phase-matching. If I could adjust the frequency of my internal mana to a specific wavelength—let's call it the Anchor Frequency—the spells would "grip" the physical world. Instead of sliding off the surface of reality, they would lock into it.
Finally, we turned to the runes. In Avulum, runes were flowing, artistic loops—elegant cursive that looked more like poetry than technical instruction. As I studied them with my new Arcane Vision, the inefficiency was staggering. The curves were beautiful, but they were "leaky." They relied on the high-mana environment of Avulum to stay powered, like a bucket with holes sitting in a pouring rainstorm.
"These are designed for abundance," I said, tracing the glowing path of a standard Fire rune. "On Earth, I'll be working with a limited battery—my own body. I don't need art; I need a circuit."
I began to mentally straighten the lines, turning the flowing script into sharp, geometric angles. I looked for ways to add insulation—sub-runes that would act as resistors, preventing the energy from bleeding out into the vacuum before the spell was complete. I was redesigning the ancient language of magic into a schematic.
"If I shorten the path of the mana and use 90-degree turns for stabilization," I explained to a baffled Akhtar, "the energy doesn't have time to lose its coherence. I can make the spell 40% more efficient. I'm not just casting; I'm engineering."
Akhtar looked at the jagged, modern rune I had sketched in the air. It looked nothing like the traditional symbols of the Tower. It looked like the motherboard of a computer.
"The Council would call this heresy," Akhtar whispered. "But the Council isn't going back to Earth. You are."
He handed me the training staff again. This time, I didn't just grab it. I calculated the grip.
"Now," Akhtar said, "enough with the diagrams. Let's see if your brain can tell your hands how to build a vacuum-sealed circuit."
The theoretical session was over. My head was spinning with constants and variables, but for the first time, the "void" inside me didn't feel like a weakness. It felt like a blueprint.
I stood up, facing the training target. My body was still recovering, and my internal mana reserves were low, but the math was solid. I closed my eyes, visualized the geometric circuit, and prepared to create the first "pressurized" spark in the history of two worlds.