I adjusted my robe and let the tornado of violet Essence hum around my body. The domain waited like a sealed room.
The tablet behind me glowed faintly with the runes I had written into it. The chains were tight, the mirage-volcanoes stood silent, and the dim forms of the Abyss Core and the dead Star watched without sound. It felt like the moment before a verdict.
I had shaped the idea in my mind until it was perfect.
A door that could lock space and time. A ticking face on the door that counted moments down or up. A devour that would not only eat flesh or stone, but laws, motion, memory, Essence, everything that tied a thing to its existence.
And I wanted it to live as a small object in my hand, a cube the size of my palm that I could throw like a seed. When it opened, the field would expand and become a prison anyone could not escape from.
I reached for the laws inside me. Space, time, devour. The three of them were threads I had woven together before, but never like this.
I let my Psynapse draw the pattern. It felt like carving a rune on air. I traced a rectangle in my head and folded its edges. Time was the skin across that rectangle. Space was the frame holding the skin tight. Devour was the hunger hidden inside the skin. I pictured a clock on the face of a shut door. The clock ticked in my mind. I felt the weight of each tick.
Essence answered. Not all at once. The Dawn Core was strong now and fed me steady. The tablet lent its runes as structure.
My Right to Insight told me where weak points would form. The chains hummed like coiled snakes ready to strike.
I reached into the domain’s flow and pulled a thin thread of violet energy into my palm. It slid along my skin cold and hot at the same time. I wrapped it around my fingers and then closed my hand.
A small cube of shadow and light condensed between my palms. It was dense. Its surface looked like polished iron, but there were tiny runes moving under the metal like fish under water.
At the center of one face, a small clock spun and ticked. The ticking was faint, almost swallowed by the wind of the domain, but I heard it as if it were in my own mind.
I opened my eyes and stared at the cube.
I let it sit in my hand and read its structure with Right to Insight.
The information poured into me. Space and time were not raw material. They were rules tied to points of reference.
The cube would not devour everything at once. It would latch onto anchors. A step, a breath, a spell. It would carve a door into those anchors and force the anchors through. If the anchors were cheap, the prize was small. If the anchors were heavy, like the root of a law, the price would be steep.
I felt the cost immediately. The mirror had already taught me that nothing came for free. The Dawn Core would support the construct, but it would still demand something in return. To give the cube the ability to reach into the law field, I needed to offer part of my own strength.
The equivalence rule was clear: I had to give something for the cube to function properly.
The tablet’s runes helped me shape the structure.
I reached toward the mirage-volcanoes and pulled thin strands of fire, frost, and lightning laws from them, only a small amount. Not to power the cube, but to teach it. These threads would help the cube recognize different laws when they came close. Once it identified them, the cube would be able to grab those laws and consume them fully.
It was a simple exchange. A small sacrifice now so the cube could do its job later.
I set the cube on my open palm and told it to sleep. The clock’s ticks slowed until they were almost nothing. The cube’s face cooled. It looked harmless then, a small object that would not trouble a child. I took a breath and let myself think of testing it.
For the first test, I chose something simple, a rock. Nothing alive, nothing tied to any law. Just a solid but a big piece of basalt I pulled from the edge of the domain. It floated in front of me, still warm from the mirage-volcanoes.
I set the rock down in front of the cube.
The clock on its surface ticked once.
I willed the cube to activate, just a small test.
The cube rose from my hand, rotated, and then unfolded itself. The panels shifted apart and formed a narrow door in the air. The moment the door appeared, the space around it tightened, and time rippled like a slow-moving wave.
No sound came from it, but the air felt heavy, like it was being pulled inward.
The door opened slightly and the door’s pull touched the stone.
The rock didn’t explode or crumble. It simply blurred at the edges, lost focus, and then vanished. No fragments. No dust. Not even the faintest trace of Essence. It was as if the stone had never existed.
The door folded back into the cube. The ticking clock steadied again, its hands settling back into place.
The test was a success.
Next, I tested it on movement.
I created a small loop of lightning in front of me, a spark shaped into a ring, held together by a thin layer of Essence. It crackled softly, almost like a tiny bell ringing.
The cube responded at once. The clock on its surface began ticking faster, as if the construct was getting ready.
I willed it to activate again.
The cube floated up and unfolded. This time the door opened wider, and the space around it tightened sharply. The pull spread out and touched the spinning spark.
The effect was instant.
The spark’s motion slowed so much it looked like it was being stretched apart. Time around it thickened, turning the moving ring into a long, drawn-out ribbon of light. Then the ribbon collapsed into a thin black line and disappeared.
The cube absorbed it cleanly.
When the door closed and the panels folded back, the cube glowed a little brighter, almost like it had just finished a small meal.
The test was perfect.
The tests made one thing clear: the cube didn’t only consume matter. It could consume movement, and even the law behind that movement.
It could erase a spell before it fully formed, freeze a step mid-stride, or pull apart a technique before the user even finished shaping it. That alone made it terrifying.
I tried something harder next, a fragment of a minor law I had created earlier.
I released the fragment and brought the cube forward. The door opened, and the pull reached out. The fragment trembled like a candle about to go out, then shrank into nothing. A thin stream of law-energy flowed into the cube, fading into its surface like ink.
I felt the law for a brief moment as it passed through the cube. The sharpness of wind forced into a blade. It wasn’t easy for the cube to swallow; the entire construct shook as if it had been struck from the inside.
But the cube closed again, steady and complete.
I waited a few breaths.