“A success in finality, hidden from eyes, beget an infant of reality, of heavens despise.” - Last words of the First Divine Envoy.

  Solemn and backed into a corner with the world out to get him, Ceif sat cross-legged on the ground.

  A translucent bubble, a little further out than arm’s reach, held his surroundings at bay. The frown that rested on Ceif’s face had finally disappeared.

  There wasn't much he could think of doing anymore in his current situation. He couldn't even see out of the protective bubble. All the destruction raining down around him removed any visibility he once had. The ground surrounding the bubble had long disintegrated into nothingness. It was the only thing keeping the dirt pillar underneath in place.

  Taking a deep breath, Ceif reached into his robe and pulled out the only item he had remaining. His hands couldn’t help but caress the paper-wrapped object. It was the focus of his current situation. A sigh escaped his lips. “A thousand choices and I chose the wrong straw.”

  Ignoring the hint of regret from pushing further into his mind, Ceif began unwrapping the paper. Escaping the confines of the wrappings, a strange energy pulse emitted as the object was revealed.

  He and others in the surroundings felt something. Ceif couldn't help but notice the bubble flicker. He had to admit, even the thought of all his troubles forcing him to perish like this was probably amusing from the outside looking in.

  Ceif had nothing else on him anymore. His weapons were destroyed, and storage trinkets were abandoned earlier. There was no point in regretting those actions as they were in trade for his life to reach this moment.

  His gaze focused on the object as he thought of everything he had given up only to buy himself one brief escape after another. Those chasing only took a few short moments to realize what Ceif was holding.

  Studying it again, Ceif had long familiarized himself with the diagram on one side and the strange text on the other. The only choice he saw was to use the technique scrawled upon it. Whatever force it was constantly expelling called out, compelling him to use it. It was either that or wait until his final shield dissipated and all the different attacks currently bombarding it would fall onto him.

  Ceif let out a self-pitying chuckle at meeting his end in such a way. All the struggle to claw his way up to the Point Formation stage was about to be wasted. He had not even got close to being an all-powerful Verieth. He could see no more hope to survive.

  Cursing those around and bombarding him in his mind, he exhaled. The long breath he had inhaled just a moment ago was released as he concentrated on the tablet.

  Ceif raised the tablet in front of himself with both hands, eyes intent on the starting point of the diagram he had chosen. All surroundings falling from his senses, he focused his mind’s eye inward toward his soul. With care, he’d begun the search, attention precise on the so-called rebirth tether of the soul.

  No matter how much a soul changed, the soul tether always seemed to remain the same. It is only faintly connected with the rest of the current self. It would change color or opacity, but its shape would always remain as you evolved past a mortal being. Even those at the top seemed clueless if it could be improved in any way aside from that.

  There were stories. It was Ceif’s slip-up in revealing that the tablet he found targeted that part of a person. There were a myriad of other techniques that targeted the soul tether, and most would do nothing at all.

  No. Some would damage it. The person who performed the technique would wail from pain before dying an unpleasant death.

  If it weren’t for the rough symbols on the tablet that explained the technique and the unique aura emanating, he wouldn’t even consider trying it out.

  Well, that and his current situation.

  Ceif knew that he could either die now and somebody else would get the tablet, or try to use it and at least have hope for something. Anything. No matter how slim the chances may be.

  Shaking the thoughts away, Ceif knew he couldn't drift off track once he began. The tablet contained the only known technique that seemed to do something to that part of your soul. With no way out and the bubble shield’s strength waning, he matched the diagram to the internal view of his rebirth tether.

  Ceif began as he drew his energies inside, away from that area. Slow and with purpose, he pulled them through the willowy veins toward his eyes. Although this was the first technique he had ever heard of that used internal energy in such a way, he had practiced it before out of sheer curiosity.

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  Just like when he practiced, Ceifs eyes lit up and began to glow a faint blue that seemed to darken as it expanded past his eyes. From the outside, the strange sight would show the dark blue was somehow growing brighter due to the increasing intensity. Soon, the color shifted past the visible and all that was left was a haze of turbulent air leading from his eyes straight to the tablet.

  The thought of times past when he had tried to figure the tablet out on his own flashed in his mind. Though he had memorized it, slow and steady, he began to chant to himself. His energy traced the tablet's diagram with his intonations. The completion of the technique described on the tablet, his only intent. Just as the text described, he mirrored it internally on the rebirth tether of his soul. With absolute focus, he traced, step by step, bit by bit, the entirety of the diagram.

  Ceif soon reached the final line on the tablet. His sight caught the shift of something changing. The lines and points he had previously traced folded in on themselves before blossoming into an even more complex array. In his sight, it somehow extended past the two-dimensional depiction into three.

  Although the change surprised him, Ceif carried on. The more he did, the more he felt the strange fluctuations from the tablet increase. Accompanying it was a pressure like he had never felt before giving him a sense of doom.

  Line by line, curve by curve, Ceif steadily continued with complete disregard for those in his surroundings. As soon as he met that last point, the tablet let out a pulse of energy that washed over him. After it passed, his tired eyes finally looked up and away from the tablet. Ceif was Astounded. No more attacks were being thrown at him.

  Observing the now visible area surroundings, Ceif could see what used to be a few hundred now looked like thousands. They were all at varying distances and heights, but the sheer quantity was something. He wondered if it were over a thousand. Two?

  Beyond the people lay even larger vessels floating in the sky of the tiny planet he had escaped to.

  A wry smile appeared on his lips. Even if these were his last moments, he let his worries go as a sense of peace overcame his mind. A mumbled escaped his lips, consoling himself. “I regret nothing.”

  Ceif wasn't wholly sure why they had stopped. He could barely make out several of them frowning or talking as their lips moved. There were a variety of different actions the others were all taking. It occurred to Ceif that all of that just didn’t matter anymore. He had given it his everything, down to just the clothes on his back and the object he now held.

  A few seconds later, he felt a large tug. Something was ripping the entirety of his energy out from him, stealing his breath along with it. He was sitting down, so while it was painful, he could suffer the extreme discomfort that left him as helpless as he was when he was born.

  At the same moment, all those in the air surrounding him began to plummet toward the ground. The following thirty seconds, the majority exploded from the height of the fall on impact. Ceif was shocked and a little happy at the same time. They had all pushed him into his current situation, tracking him down all the way here on this no-name planetoid.

  Unfortunately, Ceif noticed several that had survived or were already standing once again on the ground. The thought crossed his mind to give up on fleeing after dismissing the bubble shield. Just maybe, he could attempt to run some more. That’s when he realized that there was no longer a bubble shield protecting him. He needed to leave while he still had a chance given the massacre that had just happened!

  Attempting to stand up, Ceif found that he could not move. He could not breathe. He was frozen in place!

  With his eyes darting around in a slight panic, Ceif realized that not a single person was approaching him. That wasn't all he noticed. There was a distinct dark blue haze subtly warping the air and space around him now too.

  Squinting, he could vaguely make out a large web of energy spreading out away from himself. It pulsed to an unknown rhythm like reality was about to shatter. Each pulse of the web glowed, drawing something in as the fluctuating lines of haze grew ever more distinct. The finer branches soon began to make themselves known, becoming visible to all.

  With each pulse, Ceif could hear a deep thrum, a beat, akin to his own heart. That thought struck his mind as the pulses were exact with his own.

  A bit confounded by what it all meant and what was happening, Ceif looked back to the tablet. It had lifted itself from his grasp, now floating in front of his lower chest, unassisted. Its color had shifted, matching closer to the eerie blue as his senses barely noticed it become cloudy.

  Lost in the sight of the shifting color and haze, several heartbeats passed. Ceif was engrossed as the tablet lost its solidity. It now looked closer to a smoky, pearlescent silver, tinged in darker spots shifting into their own little strings. Realization struck when he focused on the strings. They matched the focal points of the intersections from when he was copying the diagram after the three-dimensional version revealed itself to him.

  A low rumble met Ceif’s ears, and he looked away from the spectacle of the tablet. His entire surroundings were now blotted out by a twisting and contorting space. The world around seemed but a canvas to be crumpled up.

  The rumble grew louder and louder. Ceif began to feel like something was wrong with the technique on the tablet. Recalling the excerpt given to him by the seventh researcher he had taken it to. There was no title, only the following words.

  "The cost is not which one, one-hundred, or one-thousand can pay, but those and the void can. Forever remember, everything after."

  Ceif began to ponder over the cost until noticing the tablet was now similar to his surroundings. It had completely integrated with whatever energies that thrummed around him in the booming rumble. It all crawled toward him as he could only watch, frozen in place.

  The backdrop to the entire scene was now a contorted mess. The tablet shot into his lower chest. To those present, their eyes only had enough time to send a millisecond of a visual. Everything around them seemed to phase out to nothingness, accompanied by a sound that could not be described as Ceif and the others followed suit.

  Thus, a void in that universe was born, several thousand light-years across. Later referred to as, the Edge of Space. Anything that passed a certain point in any direction surrounding where Ceif had sat that day was annihilated, and the tablet, lost.