For Noah, minutes slowly bled into hours.

His head began to pound with a steady thrum. His eyes watered, and his vision wavered in and out of focus.

But he didn't stop. Or rather, he couldn't stop. Not when he was this close.

Sweat rolled down his temple, dripping onto the sand beneath him. His breathing grew heavy, but his will refused to break.

Layer after layer clicked into his mind, until finally…

Click.

The formation slotted into place, whole and complete, etched into his mind.

Noah slumped backwards onto the sand with a heavy exhale. His chest rose and fell, each breath ragged.

The coarse grains clung to his clothes, sticking to his sweat-soaked skin.

He hadn't realized how drenched he was until now, with his shirt plastered to his body and his hair damp against his forehead.

He stared up at the ceiling, chest still heaving, a small grin on his face.

"Got it."

Noah sat up slowly, still breathing hard.

He ignored the way his shirt clung to his back, shaking his head. He wasn't done, not yet.

His eyes locked onto the phantom lines burned into his memory, which was the intricate lattice of Pocket Cube. He raised his hand and began to form it.

The glyphs flickered, half-built, then sputtered out.

"Again," he muttered.

He tried once more, tracing the impossible spirals, layering glyph after glyph, but the formation slipped apart like sand through his fingers.

His head throbbed with each failure, the pain digging deeper behind his eyes.

Again. And again. And again.

Minutes dragged into hours, his headache a pounding drum that beat in time with his failing attempts.

Finally, he stopped, panting, holding his temples. His vision swam, the edges blurring, but his mind refused to yield.

'Think, Noah! Fucking think!'

He remembered Null Stride. How he had solved it by working from the inside out instead of trying to force the whole at once.

His eyes narrowed. "Would it work here too?"

He delved back into the memory of the formation.

He saw it then. The true center.

It was a tight, compact core layer, like the heart of a labyrinth.

Every other spiral, every symbol, every arc of power was built outward from that point, tiling across reality like geometric tiles.

"Yes…" he whispered. "That's it."

He dove in.

His focus narrowed to a pinpoint, stripping away the outer noise.

He built the central glyph, anchoring it like a nail driven into the world itself.

Then he added the next, and the next, each line spiraling outward, clicking into the intersections like teeth in a great machine.

Time dissolved. Hours slid by unnoticed.

His body began to rebel. His temperature rose, sweat running down his neck, soaking his collar.

His hands trembled, his knuckles pale from how hard he clenched his focus. The pounding in his head grew worse, heat flooding him until he felt feverish and delirious.

Still, he didn't stop. His eyes shone with a wild, almost demented determination.

White spots danced at the edges of his vision, threatening to blot everything out. His body swayed where he sat, but his will stayed locked.

And then… there was an almost audible click.

The impossible puzzle locked into place. A solid black orb hovered above his palm, gleaming with the light of the abyss.

Noah's breath caught. Then his lips split into a grin.

A laugh burst out of him, low and ragged at first, then louder, filling the empty hall until it echoed off the stone walls.

"Heh… hahahaha!" He had done it. He'd fucking done it!

Staggering, his legs shaking like they could barely hold him, Noah climbed to his feet.

The orb pulsed above his hand like a newborn star of darkness, waiting.

"It's time," he whispered.

And he cast the spell.

The orb pulsed once in his palm, then vanished with a soft thrum, sinking into nothingness.

At first, there was silence. Then…

Clack. Clack. Clack.

White panels unfolded out of the air around him, snapping together like the pieces of a great invisible puzzle.

They spread in all directions, one wall locking into another, a ceiling settling neatly overhead, and a floor sealing beneath his boots.

In less than a breath, Noah was no longer standing in the training hall.

He was enclosed.

A perfect thirty-by-thirty-foot cube stretched around him, every surface gleaming smooth and white, as if carved from pure light.

There were no seams and no shadows, nothing but pristine emptiness on all sides.

Noah blinked, spinning slowly in place. His footsteps echoed faintly off the walls, though the sound came back muted, dulled, like the cube had swallowed it.

He placed his hand against the wall. It was cool to the touch, almost glassy, but not quite solid.

As he stared, the surface rippled faintly, then bled into transparency.

His breath hitched.

Through the wall, he could see the training hall, with its floor of sand and stone, the same torches flickering on the walls. But it was faint, as if seen through a veil of mist.

He pulled his hand back, and the wall turned white again.

A slow grin spread across his face. He didn't know how he knew, but he could instinctually tell.

This was another space.

Relative to reality, but separate from it.

He was standing in the exact same spot, but layered out of sync with the real world.

If anyone walked into the training hall right now, they wouldn't see him. They wouldn't see the cube. They wouldn't even know it existed.

Noah let out a low chuckle, pacing along the edges of the cube. The air inside felt weightless, unbound.

Even the smallest movement of his mana reverberated through the space, as if the cube responded directly to him.

"A pocket of reality…" he whispered. "All mine."

The thought was intoxicating.

If he chose, he could vanish from sight in the middle of a battlefield. If he needed, he could trap himself inside and wait out a storm.

And more importantly… he could pull others inside.

Noah tilted his head back, staring at the smooth white ceiling. The cube was silent. Eternal. His own slice of nothingness.

A sanctuary.

A prison.

Or a weapon.

His grin widened.

Noah exhaled slowly, his palm brushing against the white wall.

With a flicker of intent, the cube shivered, then began to collapse inward.

The walls peeled back, folding into themselves like paper that had been set aflame, until nothing remained but the empty training hall.

The spell was gone.

Noah stood there, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his temples.

"That's… enough," he muttered, his lips curling into a tired grin. "My work for today is done."

He shifted his weight and took a step forward…

The world tilted.

A wave of vertigo slammed into him, and the training hall spun wildly.

His knees buckled, his vision swimming as spots of white burst at the edges of his sight.

He tried to brace himself, but his body betrayed him. His arms felt heavy, his legs numb.

"No…"

The word never left his lips.

His body pitched forward, hitting the sand with a dull thud, and Noah knew nothing more.

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