“Baby steps.”

  That’s what I’ve been saying each time I come back.

  Incremental progress on the mental resistance front. Only a matter of eternity before I get where I need to be. Luckily, I have eternity.

  The deception’s nearly perfect now. Most of their foot soldiers die screaming in a flaming jungle.

  Riegt knows it. He isn’t fooled. He just doesn’t care. To him, they’re tools to be spent. Nothing more. With those eyes of his, that makes sense.

  I’m starting to catch them now—Riegt, Riez. Not fully, not yet. Just the outline behind the smoke, like trying to see through glass fogged by breath.

  Each push of what I call ‘Mental Mana’ strengthens my resistance and thins the haze around them. The same pressure that once flattened me now presses like a whetstone. Still heavy, but sharpening instead of breaking. It isn’t clarity, but it’s closer.

  Mana in the brain—shield and scalpel both.

  Not a single book I’ve read mentioned it. And I’ve finished the library. I’m certain it came from the envelope Krieg gave me.

  Back then, the mana flooded my head without direction. No control. No focus. Just raw power crammed where it didn’t belong. Unstable.

  Now, I’m learning control.

  But while the resistance grows, the offense has withered. My body. My blade. My storm. All shoved to the back seat.

  Stagnating.

  This challenge feels like the fight with Voi. A lot of dying. A lot of trying.

  But this time, the wall feels larger. With Voi, progress was slow, but it was there. Each loop carried me forward, inch by inch.

  With Riegt, it’s different. I claw back an ounce of mental strength each time, but with my power lagging behind, it all ends the same. Dying almost instantly.

  And the worst part? It doesn’t even feel like he’s trying. Maybe that’s why I don’t drop the second he looks my way. Mercy through neglect.

  It’s been countless loops. There’ll be countless more before I find the path forward.

  It makes me feel— alone.

  There’s this unnatural isolation in it. Every time I reset, the thought claws at me: what if everything, from the first breath I took in this world, was just the start of a foresight loop? What if nothing I’ve done means anything?

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  Each return makes me feel more cut off. Everyone around me—Koln, Alfrick, the men—they don’t feel human anymore. Just voices repeating the same lines, characters on a script.

  Sometimes I slip. Moments from one loop bleed into another. Conversations that never happened here feel more real than the ones in front of me.

  I think it started with the fight against Voi. That was the seed. And it’s been festering ever since.

  But I can’t stop. Not now. Not—

  ***

  “Ever.”

  I’m standing in front of Riegt. Sky blotted by smoke. Jungle ablaze.

  His palm rises. I’m frozen.

  My mind floods with a thin stream of mana. Just enough to twitch free, to dodge.

  The air collapses.

  He gives me that usual look and steps closer.

  I pounce—lightning flaring.

  I die all the same.

  ***

  I’m standing in front of Riegt. Sky blotted. Jungle burning.

  Palm rising. This time, I’m not frozen.

  My mind’s already flooded with a stream of mana. I move earlier. Not perfect—his grip still there.

  I dance. He kills. I die. He doesn’t.

  ***

  Riegt in front. Smoke and fire.

  Palm rising.

  I’m already moving—zipping behind him. Mind almost filled.

  We clash.

  No—he slaughters.

  I die.

  ***

  I’m in front of him again. Smoke choking the sky. Jungle burning itself to ash.

  His palm rises.

  This time, moving quicker, lightning crackling through my veins.

  I break the grip. For a heartbeat.

  His eyes narrow. He adjusts.

  I die.

  ***

  Again.

  The fire’s the same. The sky’s the same. His palm’s the same.

  But now, my mind is iron. Resistance biting back at his pull.

  For the first time, he falters. Just a flicker. A strain in his stare.

  I almost smile—then he tears me apart anyway.

  I die.

  ***

  “Baby steps.”

  “Baby steps.”

  “Baby steps.”

  I keep repeating it, trying to ground myself.

  Koln gives me that look—confused, like every other time. Never questions it. He already knows why.

  I did it, though. For the first time, I blocked Riegt’s grip. Just for a second, but it held.

  Still not enough. Not yet. I don’t have the power to win in a straight fight. Not even close.

  Time to move forward—Aspiration’s Folly—Sixth Dream: Resonance.

  After mastering Equilibrium inside myself, the next step is syncing with what’s outside—ambient mana, the world’s flow. The air, the ground, the fire—everything humming with it.

  Resonance lets me overlap mana of the same nature. My wind sphere can hold even while I cast wind spells, no collapse, no tearing apart. I can reach into the world’s pool, stretch my own limit outward. Not that I need more mana—I’ve got plenty. What I need is precision. Complex shapes. Finer threads. Ways of twisting magic that only exist when you weave your current with the world’s.

  Riegt already resonates. That’s why he slips away like smoke. Why he pulls the air into itself and makes it starve. His “erasure” isn’t divine—it’s just collapse. Fold the air down into a single, suffocating point. A vacuum sharp enough to unmake whatever it touches.

  So, in reaching the Sixth Dream, I gain overlap—same mana natures flowing together instead of tearing apart. My reach expands. My reserves stretch, tapping the world’s current. Complex shapes, finer work—finally within grasp.

  Hopefully I hit that stage before going insane.

  Either way, I’ll reach it. Insane or not.

  …Maybe I already am.

  ***

  I’m sitting in the middle of my training grounds.

  Meditating.

  When it’s this quiet, noise seeps through. Not from here. From other loops. Voices, footsteps, the clash of steel—all the wrong sounds leaking into this one.

  Sometimes I even expect things, and they show themselves. Koln walking through the gate when he isn’t there. Alfrick’s laugh echoing against empty walls. A phantom image of Riegt just standing in front of me, waiting.

  The confusion gets worse each loop, and with it, my solitude.

  I’ve been hammering away at Resonance.

  The instinct jammed into my skull urges me to pull ambient mana inward, then shove it back out, again and again. Like the orb, except I’m the medium—the bridge between myself and the outside.

  Do it long enough and it should become like breathing—unconscious, automatic. Filling the air with your control the way lungs fill with air.

  And with my sphere, it isn’t as impossible as I thought. The principles hold. Just reversed. Instead of pushing my mana outward to carve space, I drag the world’s current inside. Then twist it. Shape it.

  When it works, the feeling is… different. Denser. The mana doesn’t burn like my own—it hums. Alive. It’s like trying to drink from a river while the current drags at your throat.

  And when it doesn’t work? It buckles. The streams slide out of my hands, scatter, shatter. I lose control. The air cracks, pressure collapses, sometimes the ground splinters beneath me. Sometimes I black out.

  The failures come often. More often than the successes. Especially when my mind slips—when the bleed from other loops worms in.

  But I’ll get there.

  I don’t have a choice.

  Riegt—your days are numbered. Same as my sanity.