The pocket dimension was still as timeless as when Caelum had fallen asleep. He couldn’t tell if hours had passed or mere minutes since he woke up. The stars above were pinned in the same positions, flickering faintly in the void. It was unsettling, the way this place existed outside normal time, as if reality itself had taken a break.
Seraphine, of course, seemed unbothered. She sat cross-legged near the fire, leafing through her grimoire as if nothing had changed. Her focus was entirely on the pages before her, the light from the fire casting sharp shadows on her face. Her dark braid rested over one shoulder, the small purple jewel at its tip catching the light every so often, glinting like a far-off star.
Caelum, on the other hand, was restless.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Maybe it was the way the air felt thicker, or the growing awareness of the storage ring on his finger, as if it was becoming part of him. Or maybe it was just the weight of everything he’d been told—about mana, about the limitations of magic, and his unexpected place in all of this.
Absently, he began fiddling with the ring again, turning it over in his hands, twisting it on his finger. His mind wandered back to Seraphine’s earlier words about mana crystals. How they could leak into the surroundings when improperly stored. How they were rare and valuable, the lifeblood of the magical plain. And yet here he was, sitting with a low-grade storage ring—practically a beginner’s tool, as she’d put it.
Fifty mana crystals.
It was enough to be useful, she had said. But now, staring into the faint shimmer of the firelight, Caelum found himself wondering just how useful it really was. Could it store anything of value? Could it really hold anything important?
His fingers brushed the edge of the ring, and suddenly, he felt a spark—something small, sharp, like a twinge in the back of his mind. He froze, instinctively pulling the ring closer to his face. There, embedded in the shimmering void inside the ring’s pocket dimension, was something new.
A tiny fragment. No larger than a pebble, but unmistakable—a mana stone fragment.
“What the hell?” Caelum muttered under his breath. He hadn’t put it there—he was sure of that. But there it was, floating inside the ring’s storage space, clear as day.
He turned to Seraphine, who was still focused on her book, seemingly unaware of his discovery. His mind raced, trying to piece together how it could have gotten there. He’d barely been using the ring. He wasn’t even sure how it worked entirely.
“Seraphine?” he said slowly, his voice laced with confusion.
She looked up from her grimoire, one eyebrow raised in mild curiosity. “What?”
Caelum held up the ring, turning it slightly so she could see the faint glimmer of the mana fragment inside. “There’s... there’s a mana fragment in here. I didn’t put it in.”
For a moment, Seraphine didn’t react. She simply blinked, then stood up, crossing the short distance between them in a few quick steps. Her violet eyes narrowed as she examined the ring, her expression shifting from curiosity to something closer to concern.
“That’s impossible,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “I emptied that ring before I gave it to you. It was completely clean.”
Caelum frowned. “So... what’s it doing there?”
Seraphine shook her head, clearly baffled. “I don’t know. Without an array or a proper setup, it should take years for even a splinter to form inside a ring. And this is a low-grade level one. Those practically repel mana stones compared to even a level two.”
She paused, her eyes flicking back and forth as if trying to work through the problem in her mind. “This makes no sense. Not without a massive amount of mana concentrated inside the ring. And even then, it’s rare for a low-grade ring to produce anything like that without outside help.”
Caelum’s pulse quickened. “So... what does that mean? How did it get there?”
Seraphine’s gaze sharpened. “You’ve been focusing your mana on the ring, haven’t you?”
He hesitated. “I... I guess? I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with it, but I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
She exhaled sharply, her eyes widening slightly as she seemed to piece something together. “Caelum, do you have any idea how much mana it would take to create even a fragment like this? You’d have to be pouring days’ worth of mana into the ring. This shouldn’t be possible, not after just leaving the mortal plain.”
The realization hit them both at the same time.
“You’re absorbing mana,” she said quietly, her voice tinged with disbelief. “From this dimension.”
Caelum’s stomach dropped. “What?”
Seraphine crossed her arms, her expression tightening. “You’ve been pulling in ambient mana—probably unconsciously. You were starved of it for so long in the mortal plain, your body’s been overcompensating by drawing in mana at an incredible rate. That’s why this fragment is here. You’ve been dumping mana into the ring without realizing it.”
Caelum stared at her, his mind reeling. “So... I’ve been absorbing mana this whole time?”
“Yes,” she said, her tone serious. “And at a rate I’ve never seen before. It also explains why the artifact has been taking so long to recharge. You’ve been hogging all the ambient mana in this pocket dimension.”
A cold sweat broke out on Caelum’s forehead. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. He had just been trying to get a handle on the ring, on magic in general. And now he was absorbing mana like a sponge, unintentionally.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said quickly, his voice tinged with panic.
Seraphine shook her head, though she didn’t seem angry. “It’s not your fault. You’re adapting to magic—more rapidly than I anticipated. But this changes things. You’re absorbing mana at a rate that’s unnatural, even dangerous.”
Caelum opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Seraphine reached out, handing him a small piece of bread. “Here, eat this,” she said, her voice a little softer now. “It’ll help you ground yourself a bit.”
He took the bread, though his thoughts were still spinning.
Seraphine handed him another piece, brushing her fingers against his hand casually as she did. The moment her fingers grazed his, something happened.
A spark. An electric charge that pulsed through him.
Caelum felt the shifting ring on her finger break beneath his touch. It was a subtle thing, but the impact was immediate. Seraphine’s eyes widened in shock, and she quickly pulled her hand away, staring at her ring in disbelief.
“No... no,” she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. “That was our only way out.”
Caelum’s heart sank. “What? What do you mean?”
Seraphine held up her hand, showing him the ring—the one they had been using to shift between dimensions. It was cracked, the turquoise stone at its center now dark and lifeless.
“We’re stranded,” she said quietly, her voice flat. “Without this ring, we can’t leave. The pocket dimension is closed. There’s no way out.”
Caelum felt the weight of her words crash down on him. He had broken it—somehow, without even meaning to, he had broken the one thing keeping them tethered to the magical plain.
“I didn’t mean to—” he started, but Seraphine shook her head, cutting him off.
“I know,” she said, her voice calmer now, though there was an edge of frustration behind it. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re stuck here.”
The weight of Seraphine’s words settled like a heavy blanket over Caelum’s chest. Stuck. The one thing tethering them to reality, to a way out, was now broken, shattered by his careless touch.
He stared at the lifeless ring in Seraphine’s hand, his thoughts a chaotic whirl. “I—I didn’t mean to do it,” he stammered, his heart pounding in his chest. “I don’t even know what happened.”
Seraphine, still visibly shaken, took a deep breath. She closed her hand around the broken artifact and slowly lowered it to her side. “It’s not your fault,” she said, though her voice was tight with frustration. “But this is... bad. Very bad.”
Caelum swallowed hard, his palms slick with sweat. “Can’t we... fix it? Isn’t there something we can do?”
Seraphine shook her head, her violet eyes darkening. “No. That artifact was ancient magic, crafted long before we truly understood the nature of shifting. Repairing it is impossible—it’s not just about recharging it. The magic within it is... gone. The ring itself is nothing but a shell now.”
Her gaze flicked back toward the fire, and for a moment, Caelum saw something he hadn’t expected—fear. Seraphine, who had been so composed, so in control of everything, now seemed... uncertain.
Caelum took a step forward, his voice wavering. “So... what do we do? You said we’re trapped. But there has to be a way out, right? I mean, we can’t just—”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Walk forever?” Seraphine cut him off, her voice sharper than before. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That’s exactly what will happen if you try. You could walk in any direction in this dimension and never reach an edge. There is no escape—not without a shift.”
Caelum’s stomach clenched, his throat suddenly dry. He glanced around the pocket dimension, the endless expanse stretching out around them. No escape. The very thought made his head spin. “So... we just wait?” he asked, trying to keep the rising panic out of his voice.
Seraphine nodded slowly, though the tension in her body hadn’t eased. “We wait,” she said quietly. “The headmaster who sent me on this mission should notice something is wrong eventually. He’ll come looking for us.”
“How long will that take?” Caelum asked, his voice almost a whisper.
Seraphine hesitated, glancing away. “I don’t know. It could be hours... or it could be days.”
Caelum felt the ground beneath him tilt as a wave of nausea rolled through his gut. Days. They could be stuck here for days, with no way out, no plan, and no idea when—or if—someone would come for them. His breath hitched in his throat, and he fought to keep his composure.
Seraphine, seeing his expression, tried to offer a semblance of comfort. “We’ll be fine, Caelum. This pocket dimension is stable, and we have enough supplies to last us. We’re safe. For now.”
Safe. The word hung in the air like an empty promise. They might be safe from whatever dangers lurked outside the pocket dimension, but they were still trapped—stranded in a place where time didn’t seem to exist, where the stars never moved, and the landscape stretched into an endless void.
Caelum collapsed onto the ground beside the fire, burying his face in his hands. This was too much. First, he was ripped from his old life, then thrust into a world of magic he didn’t understand, and now he had broken the one thing that could get them out of here. It was all spiraling out of control, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Seraphine watched him quietly for a moment before sitting down across from him, her eyes softening. “I know this is a lot to take in,” she said, her voice gentler now. “But you can’t blame yourself. There are things happening here that neither of us fully understand.”
Caelum glanced up at her, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Seraphine hesitated again, her eyes flicking toward the broken ring in her hand. “When you touched the ring... something happened. I’ve seen artifacts break before, but not like this. It wasn’t just a random accident.”
Caelum’s pulse quickened. “What are you saying? That I... did it on purpose?”
“No,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “Not on purpose. But there’s something about you—something I haven’t seen before. When you touched the ring, it reacted to your mana. Like it was... drawn to you. Almost as if it was absorbed by you.”
Caelum blinked, his mind racing. Absorbed? That didn’t make any sense. He didn’t know the first thing about how artifacts worked, let alone how to absorb anything from them. “But that’s impossible,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Seraphine’s eyes narrowed, studying him closely. “Is it?”
Caelum opened his mouth to protest, but the words caught in his throat. He didn’t know. Everything about this world was new to him—magic, artifacts, shifting. He had no idea what was possible or impossible anymore.
Seraphine leaned forward, her voice low and serious. “What were you doing when the ring broke? What were you thinking about?”
Caelum frowned, trying to remember. It had all happened so fast, but there was something... something about the ring. About shifting. He had been thinking about how they had moved through layers of reality, how it had felt like flipping through pages in a book.
“I was thinking about shifting,” he admitted, his voice barely audible. “About how we moved through dimensions.”
Seraphine’s expression shifted, a flicker of realization crossing her face. “Your eye,” she said suddenly, her voice sharper now. “I saw something strange when you touched the ring. Your left eye... it flickered. Just for a second. But I saw it.”
Caelum’s heart skipped a beat. “My eye? What do you mean?”
Seraphine leaned back, her brow furrowed. “It was like... like the ring. Just for a second, your eye glowed with the same energy as the ring. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Caelum’s pulse raced. His eye? Glowing like the ring? That didn’t make any sense. But as he sat there, the broken ring resting between them, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed. There was a heaviness in the air now, a weight pressing down on him that hadn’t been there before.
Seraphine’s voice softened. “What were you doing just now, Caelum? Think carefully.”
He swallowed hard, his thoughts racing. He had been thinking about the ring, about shifting, about how they had moved between worlds. And then... then the ring had broken, and everything had spiraled out of control.
But that wasn’t all. As he sat there, the firelight flickering in his peripheral vision, something else began to surface in his mind. Tiny fragments of information, like drops of knowledge, bubbling up from the depths of his consciousness. Shifting. He could see it, understand it, as if the knowledge had always been there, just waiting to be unlocked.
“I don’t know,” Caelum whispered, his voice trembling. “But I... I think I know how to shift.”
Seraphine’s eyes widened, her gaze locking onto him with an intensity that made his skin prickle. “What are you talking about? You shouldn’t know anything about shifting. It takes years to learn, even with formal training.”
Caelum shook his head, feeling the strange knowledge surge inside him, unbidden. “I don’t know how I know... but I do. It’s like the information is just... there. In my mind.”
Seraphine stared at him, her violet eyes wide with a mixture of shock and something else—something like fear. “That’s not possible,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
But deep down, Caelum knew. Something had changed when he touched that ring. Something had awakened inside him.
The air between them felt charged, heavy with unspoken tension. Caelum could feel his heart hammering in his chest as Seraphine’s intense gaze bore into him. He didn’t know how he knew about shifting—he just knew. The information seemed to have seeped into his mind the moment the ring had broken, like drops of water falling into an already full cup, tipping it over the edge.
Seraphine stood slowly, her eyes still locked on him, as if she were watching something dangerous—something unpredictable. “You shouldn’t be able to know any of this,” she said, her voice tight with disbelief. “No one can just absorb knowledge like that. It takes years of study, practice, guidance from experienced mages. Shifting is one of the most complex magical arts... and yet you’re saying it’s just there?”
Caelum swallowed hard, nodding slowly. “It’s... hard to explain. I didn’t know it was happening. I just... I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like I understand it, but I haven’t learned it.”
Seraphine crossed her arms, her expression tense as she paced near the fire, her robe sweeping over the ground like the night itself. She was silent for a moment, her mind clearly racing, trying to piece together what this meant. “I’ve never heard of anyone absorbing magic or skills without training,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s... unheard of.”
Caelum’s fingers twitched involuntarily, and he rubbed his temples, trying to make sense of the swirling knowledge that felt both foreign and familiar. The idea of shifting felt almost instinctive now, like a muscle memory he hadn’t known he had. “Is it possible... that the ring transferred its knowledge to me when it broke?”
Seraphine’s steps faltered, and she paused mid-step, turning slowly to face him. “Artifacts don’t work like that,” she said, her voice measured. “Even if the ring broke, it wouldn’t have transferred anything to you. Not intentionally, at least.”
Caelum frowned, frustration creeping into his voice. “But something happened. I can’t explain it, but I feel like I know things I shouldn’t. Things about shifting... about magic.”
Seraphine was silent for a long moment, her violet eyes narrowing as she studied him. She seemed to be weighing something in her mind, some decision that hung on the edge of uncertainty. Finally, she spoke, her voice low and laced with suspicion. “You touched the ring. That much is clear. And now... you have knowledge you shouldn’t.”
She stepped closer to him, her presence suddenly imposing, the air around them growing colder. “This isn’t normal, Caelum. Magic doesn’t work like this. The fact that you’re absorbing knowledge so easily is... disturbing. It suggests something deeper.”
Caelum tensed, feeling the pressure of her words. “What do you mean?”
Seraphine’s gaze softened just slightly, but her tone remained serious. “There are stories—old stories—about certain individuals who could tap into deeper sources of magic. People who could absorb knowledge, skills, even power from the world around them. But those people... they didn’t last long.”
A chill ran down Caelum’s spine. “What do you mean, ‘didn’t last long’?”
Seraphine’s expression darkened. “They went mad, Caelum. Their minds couldn’t handle the influx of foreign knowledge. Magic... it’s not something you can just take in all at once. It has to be learned, processed, understood. Those who tried to skip that process—who tried to take shortcuts—lost themselves.”
Caelum’s mouth went dry. “So, you think that’s happening to me?”
“I don’t know,” Seraphine said quietly. “But this... ability you have, whatever it is, isn’t natural. It’s dangerous.”
Caelum felt the weight of her words settle over him like a storm cloud. He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to accept that he might be walking down a path that could lead to madness. But the signs were there—the strange knowledge, the fragments of understanding that didn’t belong to him. And now, Seraphine was telling him that this power could be his undoing.
“But I can control it,” he said, his voice wavering slightly. “I can learn how to use it properly. Right?”
Seraphine sighed, her gaze softening for the first time. “Maybe. But you need to be careful. This kind of power... it’s not something you can just play with. If you’re not careful, it will consume you.”
Caelum’s mind raced as he tried to absorb everything she was saying. The idea that his newfound power—this strange, inexplicable ability to absorb knowledge—could drive him mad filled him with a cold, creeping dread. But at the same time, a flicker of something else stirred within him: curiosity. What if he could control it? What if he could use this power without losing himself?
“Have you ever heard of anyone... controlling it?” he asked, his voice quiet but filled with a cautious hope.
Seraphine hesitated for a long moment, her violet eyes searching his. Finally, she shook her head. “No. But then again, I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Her words hung in the air between them, both a warning and a challenge. Caelum knew the risks now—knew that this strange ability could be as much a curse as it was a gift. But there was no turning back. Whatever this power was, it was now a part of him, and he would have to learn to control it—or be consumed by it.
Seraphine’s posture relaxed slightly, and she sat back down by the fire, her expression thoughtful. “We’ll need to figure out what’s going on before we do anything else,” she said, her voice calmer now. “But for now, I need to know if there’s anything else you’ve... absorbed. Anything you haven’t told me.”
Caelum shook his head quickly. “No, just... just the shifting knowledge. That’s all.”
Seraphine studied him for a long moment before nodding. “Alright. But you need to be honest with me, Caelum. If anything else happens—if you start experiencing other strange... abilities—you need to tell me. We can’t afford to be caught off guard.”
Caelum nodded, though his thoughts were already spinning in a thousand directions. The strange flashes of knowledge, the feeling of understanding something he shouldn’t—it all felt so surreal. But now, the stakes were higher than ever. If he couldn’t control this, if he couldn’t learn to manage this power, it could destroy him.
He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “So... what do we do now?”
Seraphine glanced at the broken ring in her hand, her lips pressing into a thin line. “For now, we wait,” she said. “We’re still stranded here until the headmaster realizes something is wrong and comes looking for us. But while we wait... I want to try something.”
Caelum raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Seraphine held up the broken ring, her eyes glinting in the firelight. “I want to see if you can tap into this artifact again. If your ability really does allow you to absorb magic, maybe there’s something else you can learn from it.”
Caelum’s heart skipped a beat. “You want me to... touch it again?”
Seraphine nodded, her gaze serious. “Yes. But this time, we’ll do it carefully. I’ll guide you through it. We need to understand what’s happening to you, Caelum. And the only way to do that is to push your limits.”
Caelum hesitated, his mind racing. The idea of touching the artifact again—of potentially unlocking more knowledge, more power—was both thrilling and terrifying. But Seraphine was right. They couldn’t afford to be in the dark about this. Not if they wanted to survive.
“Okay,” he said, his voice steady. “Let’s do it.”
Seraphine held the broken ring out to him, her eyes locking onto his. “Just focus,” she said softly. “Don’t force it. Let it come to you.”
Caelum took a deep breath, reaching out slowly to grasp the artifact.