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

A translucent bubble, surrounding a little further out than arm's reach held his surroundings at bay as the frown that rest on his face had finally disappeared.

There wasn't much he could do any more in his current situation. He couldn't even see out of the bubble due to all the destruction raining down around him. Even the ground surrounding the bubble he was inside had long disintegrated into nothingness. The dimensional shield bubble was the only thing keeping him and the dirt underneath in place. Taking a deep breath, he reached into his robe and pulled out the only resort he had remaining.

Caressing the paper wrapped object, he knew was the focus of his current situation, a sigh escaped his lips. He thought, “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 and a strange energy pulse emitted as the object was revealed.

He and all those in the surroundings felt something and 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 abandoned earlier. There was no point in regretting those actions as they were in trade for his life at the time. His gaze focused on the object as he thought of all else he had given up, only to buy him one brief escape after another. Those chasing only taking a few short moments to realize the tablet he now held in his hand was not one of the things he had left behind.

Studying it again, Ceif had long familiarized himself with the diagram on one side and the strange text on the other. The only real choice he had left was to use the technique scrawled upon it in conjunction with whatever force it was constantly expelling. 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 bombarding him in his mind, he exhaled the long breath he had inhaled just a moment ago as he concentrated on the tablet.

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

No matter how much a soul changed, the soul tether always seemed to remain exactly the same. The best way to describe it, was a sphere surrounded by a tube, embedded somewhere inside of you. It only faintly connected with the rest of the current self and would change everything but its shape as you improved and evolved past a mortal being. Even those at the top had no idea if it could be improved in any way aside from that.

There were stories. And it was his slip-up for revealing that the tablet he found targeted that part of a person. While there were a myriad of other techniques that targeted the soul tether, and most would do nothing at all.

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

If it wasn’t for the text on the tablet that explained the technique and the unique aura emanating from the tablet itself, 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 a chance. No matter how slim it may be.

Shaking the thoughts away, he knew he could not drift off track once he began. The tablet contained the only known technique that seemed to do something to that part of your soul. And with no way out, he matched the diagram to the internal view of his own rebirth tether.

He began as he drew his energies inside away from that area. Slow and with purpose, Ceif 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 a little before out of sheer curiosity.

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

Slow and steady, Ceif chanted to himself as his energy traced the tablet's diagram. The completion of technique described on the other side his only intent. Just as described, he mirrored it internally on the rebirth tether of his soul. Focus absolute as he traced step by step, bit by bit the entirety of the diagram.

Just as he reached the final line on the tablet, his peripheries caught the shift. The lines and points he had previously traced folded in on themselves before blossoming into an even more complex series. In his sight they somehow extended past the two-dimensional depiction into three overlaid on a representation of his soul tether.

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

Line by line, curve by curve, he continued until reaching the end of what he could see on the diagram.

As soon as he met that last point, the tablet let out a pulse of energy that washed over him. As it passed, his tired eyes finally looked up and away from the tablet and watched astounded.

There were no more attacks being thrown at his bubble. Observing the now visible area around, Ceif could see what looked like thousands of people in his surroundings at varying distances and heights. Beyond them lay even larger vessels floating in the sky of the tiny planet he had escaped to.

A 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 and mumbled, “I regret nothing.”

Ceif wasn't sure why they had stopped as he saw several of them frown or talking to each other as he could barely make out their lips moving from afar. There were a variety of different actions, all of which just didn’t matter anymore. He had given it his all.

A few seconds later, he felt a large tug, 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.

It was also at that moment that all those surrounding him began to plummet toward the ground. In the next 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.

Unfortunately, Ceif noticed several that had survived, or were already standing on the ground. The thought crossed his mind to give up on fleeing and dismiss the bubble shield 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 with the massacre that just happened!

Attempting to stand up, he couldn't move. He couldn’t breathe. He was frozen in place!

Looking around in a slight panic, he realized that nobody was approaching him either, but that wasn't all he noticed. There was a distinct dark blue haze warping the air and space around him.

Squinting, he could vaguely make out a large web of energy pulsing to an unknown rhythm. Each pulse of the web glowed, drawing something in as the fluctuating lines of haze grew ever more distinct. The finer branches began to make themselves known, becoming visible to all.

With every pulse, Ceif could even 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 form his grasp, now floating in front of his lower chest, unassisted. Its color has shifted, matching closer the eerie blue as his senses barely noticed it become cloudy.

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

A low rumbled met Ceifs ears and he looked away from the spectacle of the tablet. His entire surroundings blotted out by a twisting and contorting space, like the world around was but a canvas to be crumpled up.

The rumble grew, louder and louder as he began to feel like something was definitely wrong with the technique on the tablet. He recalled the excerpt given to him by the seventh researcher he took it to. There was no title, but 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. Completely integrating with whatever energies that thrummed around him in the booming rumble. It all crawled toward him as he could only watch, still frozen in place.

The backdrop to the entire scene now a contorted mess as the tablet sunk into his lower chest. Eyes only having enough time to send a millisecond of a visual. Everything around him seemed to phase out to nothingness, accompanied by a sound which he could not describe and he followed suit.

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