When Kael first entered the Divine Library, he had no idea that his memory was unique, the rarest gift—one whose bearers could be found nowhere else in the world.

  With boundless memory, Kael became the personal vault of knowledge for one of the Gods. Day after day, century after century, he read books, turned scrolls, absorbed every formula, every word, every hint of truth. Everything that had ever interested the God became his task.

  Kael studied the theory of alchemy and medicine, the history of ancient empires and the languages of forgotten races, the magical systems of alien worlds and texts that could drive others insane. And afterward… he simply answered. He stood before the God as before an executioner and spoke all that he knew.

  At times the tasks were meaningless. At times—impossible. With a mocking smile, the God demanded that he study what had not yet been discovered, unravel what did not exist. And when Kael failed, punishment awaited him.

  Flaming chains, bone-crushing vises. Illusions in which he died hundreds of times. Endless puzzles where he burned in despair, knowing there was no way out.

  But the God had no intention of killing him. On the contrary—he preserved him, as a rare toy and a perfect tool.

  The bargain bound Kael to swallow the rainbow-hued pills that prolonged his life. They kept his body strong and his mind clear. He could not refuse. Could not break the oaths. Could not even die by his own will.

  But the cruelest mockery was something else… The God of Knowledge and Madness had never forbidden him from becoming a spirit mage—yet never gave him the chance to do so. On his desk he kept the Canon of Magic suited for Kael, never allowing him to glimpse within.

  Centuries passed. And Kael remained the same ordinary human he had been in Lasthold.

  And every time Kael dared to let his eyes linger on that book, floating above the God’s massive table, the torment would begin anew.

  The God, smiling, would lift the binding, flip the pages so that the sound frayed his nerves, and say:

  “Do you know, Kael, who created this Canon of Magic?” His voice was sweet as poison. “It was created by a master who possessed the very same Form of Soul as you.”

  Kael would freeze, his heart clenched—for that Canon of Magic proved that even with a foundation like his, one could achieve greatness. Yet knowing this, the God laughed and went on:

  “That mage dared to defy us, to defy the Gods. But he was mercilessly destroyed… I keep his Canon as a sweet memory of his death…”

  He would slam the book shut, and its echoing sound reverberated in Kael’s bones.

  “That is why, my dear Kael,” the God continued, leaning so close his breath touched the skin, “you must learn humility from the one who fell. You must understand: this is part of your training. Training in acceptance. Training in submission.”

  Laughing, he would recline on his throne, and his words fell like a sentence:

  “You must abandon all ambition. For you are nothing but my instrument. Forever.”

  And today was the very day Kael intended to rebel against these torments.

  No oath bound him from studying the Canon of Magic. He had read hundreds, thousands—entire schools and paths gathered from every dimension. Yet each turned into dead emptiness in his hands, a meaningless set of symbols. All because his Form of Soul was particularly unfortunate and rare.

  For him, all canons of magic were trash. All, except the one. The one the God kept as refined mockery.

  Kael sneered, staring into the void above, the floors vanishing swiftly below. His amber eyes glinted with hatred and resolve.

  “For the first time in all my service, that bastard has left the Library…” he murmured, still rising toward the Library’s summit. “The next Assembly of Gods won’t be for another thousand years…”

  He clenched his fist, nails digging into his palm, but he no longer felt the pain.

  “I won’t miss the chance to show that bastard I am not broken! I won’t miss the chance to finally feel what it is like—when mana flows through your veins!”

  At that moment the platform began to slow until it stopped completely. Before him stretched a golden bridge leading straight to colossal gates crowned with elaborate patterns and inscriptions that shone with a cold light.

  Kael stepped forward, his cloak stirring behind him. His thoughts cut through the silence like a blade:

  “I know he left the Canon here on purpose, so he could punish me brutally afterward… When he returns, he still won’t allow me to advance, and he’ll torment me even more… Sick bastard…”

  With those words he pushed the doors, and they swung open with a booming echo, revealing a vast and opulent hall.

  Towering columns reached upward, the ceiling lost in golden radiance. The air was steeped in the scent of old paper, metal, and a strange sweet-floral note that made Kael shudder—too many memories of eternal bondage.

  But his gaze fixed instantly on the center. There, above the massive table, hovered a book within a gilded glass cube. Gray, stripped of luster, yet it was precisely this that made it stand out among the hall’s treasures.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Kael strode straight toward it.

  From the side, several golden marionettes lifted their heads and spoke in unison with lifeless voices:

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  “Master Kael, you are not permitted here. Punishment awaits you.”

  But he did not even turn his head. Their words bounced from him like rain off stone.

  “Now I’ll find out what it feels like—to accumulate mana…” the thought pulsed in his mind, hammered in his temples. “I’ll know the feeling even those in Lasthold once had…”

  The marionettes cried after him, their dead voices echoing and distorting through the vast hall:

  “Return! Punishment awaits you! Return!”

  But Kael didn’t listen. His steps grew faster, his breath tore from his chest, and in his eyes burned not fear—but hunger. He walked as if possessed.

  Reaching the table, Kael stretched out his hands and seized the cube. The glass surface chilled his fingers, but without hesitation he wrenched the lid away. The clang of gilt rang through the hall, rebounded from the columns, and sank into silence.

  With trembling hands he drew out the gray book. The leather of its binding was rough and aged, as though steeped in time and blood.

  Drawing a deep breath, Kael opened it.

  At once he began feverishly flipping through the pages. Sheet after sheet, the sound of rustling merged into a continuous flow. His amber eyes darted over the lines with inhuman speed. Every word, every stroke of every symbol imprinted instantly into memory.

  There were descriptions of progression levels—sequential steps along the path, from the simplest breathing to visual images and the flow of mana. But not only that. Hidden between the pages were notes of the technique’s creator: journal entries, fragments of memories, records of the uprising he had led, and battles he had fought against the Gods.

  Kael did not try to grasp the meaning of what he read. He did not allow himself to linger on the words. One thing mattered above all now—to take it all in. To memorize it. Word for word, symbol for symbol, page after page.

  He read, and memory turned every page into his own knowledge.

  When the final page was done, Kael froze. His thoughts swirled back to the beginning—to the lines describing the very first step.

  A faintly mad grin spread across his face. His lips trembled, and he rasped:

  “So… your name is the Canon of Primordial Void…”

  He closed his eyes.

  In that instant, before his inner sight unfolded the vision described by the creator. Darkness. Absolute, bottomless, devoid of even a hint of motion. Kael imagined himself as nothing—a form without boundaries, a void that neither draws nor repels.

  And then it happened—the very thing he had longed for his whole life.

  He felt a strand of mana. For the first time. It was everywhere—flowing in the air, pulsing in the stone walls, ringing in the books and marionettes. And it moved toward him. A current, unseen but tangible, slowly poured into his body.

  Kael burst into mad laughter, his voice echoing against the vaults of the hall:

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha! At last!”

  Memories of the text flared in his mind, and he hurriedly spoke aloud, as if afraid to forget:

  “Now I need to distribute the mana properly through the spiritual channels…”

  But the moment he said it, the gray book in his hands blazed!

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  A brilliant light cut through the hall, and with it fell a terrifying aura. The air hummed, the golden columns shook, books rustled as if thousands of voices began to speak at once.

  The force crushed him to the floor, his knees slamming into the stone tiles on their own, his breath breaking.

  “Damn!” Kael roared inwardly, clutching the scroll to his chest. “Could it be—the God of Knowledge and Madness has returned?!”

  But then…

  A voice resounded. Deep, calm, ancient—as though an echo of creation itself.

  “Khaa… At last, someone has activated the Canon of Primordial Void…”

  Kael’s body trembled. His mind feverishly sifted through every fragment of knowledge that could explain what was happening. Finding nothing better, he forced himself to mutter:

  “Who are you, elder?”

  The reply came without hesitation, steady and majestic:

  “I am the Divine Spirit who made a contract with the former owner of this Canon. I was bound by oath to aid the bearer of the Canon of Primordial Void should he fall—to return time to the point where he could rise once more against the Gods. But alas… we were too late.”

  Kael’s mind quivered. His heart pounded in his throat. With effort he raised his eyes to the gray book still blazing in his hands and whispered:

  “Divine… Spirit?.. That’s…”

  But he didn’t have time to finish.

  The voice thundered again, stronger now, as if filling the entire hall:

  “Now you are the bearer of this Canon. And at last, I may claim my freedom… Besides, I see that you too are oppressed by the Gods.”

  Kael’s thoughts scattered, collided, entwined like torrents of madness. He seized hungrily at every shred of knowledge that might shed light on these words. Hundreds of texts surged up from his boundless memory.

  “Turn back time?!” the thought tore through him. “If he… Could this Spirit be of the legendary temporal type?! And of Divine rank besides?! How can such a thing be possible?!”

  Kael opened his mouth to cry out for the Spirit’s help, but the Spirit spoke first.

  “Hm… Roughly seven hundred years…” the voice drawled, as if in thought. “It will cost me all of my strength. But in return, I shall regain my freedom…”

  The moment those words rang out, the world around Kael trembled. The floor fell away, walls and columns flowed like they were dissolving into boiling light.

  His thoughts tangled, ripped from order and scattered like dust in the wind. His body convulsed, his arms went limp, his breath caught. He felt—as though he were dying.

  And before his consciousness slipped away entirely, the final phrase resounded:

  “If fate wills it—we shall meet again. But alas… neither of us will remember this day. For all, including you and me, these seven hundred years shall be erased. I hope you live your second chance differently…”

  At those words the world before Kael collapsed. Light shattered into fragments, and the monstrous pressure crashing down on him instantly stole his awareness.

  Kael felt his very self dissolve, spread into darkness. He was becoming the void itself, the very nothingness he had just imagined in his first step of progression.

  And then—like waking from a long, deep sleep, he felt a tingling in his body. At first faint, as if a thousand needles brushed his skin. Then stronger. In the muffled darkness, distant sounds arose—voices, rustling, the chop of a knife on wood, birdsong—as though sounds were breaking through from beneath a heavy sea.

  Kael twitched nervously and snapped his eyes open.

  Above him stretched a wooden ceiling. Through the window streamed the bright light of dawn—the sunlight he had not seen in centuries. The air was filled with the scent of freshness. From outside came the chirping of birds, the distant voices of merchants speaking in the tongue of Lasthold, and the first steps of a waking city.

  He slowly sat up from the bed, still half-dreaming. His eyes slid across the walls, over forgotten yet familiar details—an old wardrobe, a stool by the window, a simple wooden door. All of it was too familiar, too impossible.

  In the next instant his sleepy, weary eyes widened in horror. His face blanched, his hands shook.

  And he immediately screamed, breaking into hysteria:

  “WHAT… THIS IS MY CHILDHOOD ROOM?!”