I turned my awareness inward, instinctively searching for the massive pressure that had defined the last two years.

  For a moment… I found nothing.

  The turbulence had vanished.

  In its place was only a point.

  Not large.

  Not radiant.

  Just a presence so dense that perception slid around it like water around stone.

  The singularity did not radiate power.

  It simply was.

  Even I could not truly perceive it.

  I could feel the pull.

  But the core itself lay beyond observation.

  __

  For two years my soul had overflowed with mana.

  Its pressure had been Overwhelming.

  Now…

  The familiar ocean of mana was gone.

  The turbulence had vanished.

  Not weakened.

  Not exhausted.

  Simply unreachable.

  Nothing had disappeared.

  It had only fallen past the event horizon.

  The gravity of the singularity held everything within.

  The endless expansion of mana no longer existed. All of it was drawn inward, held by a single point of gravity deep within my soul.

  My first objective was now complete.

  Transcendence Syndrome was no longer a death sentence.

  It had become the fuel that fed the singularity.

  I allowed my awareness to sink toward the core.

  Instantly, every current of mana folded inward.

  The circulation through my body ceased.

  The presence that mages sensed—the faint pressure of living mana—vanished completely.

  To the outside world, I would appear empty.

  Yet within my soul, the singularity burned with quiet intensity.

  Its gravity pulled everything toward the center.

  But the vessel did not collapse.

  Dark energy answered the pull.

  An opposing pressure spread through the walls of the soul, steady and unyielding, reinforcing the structure against the inward force.

  Balance formed between the two.

  Gravity and expansion.

  Collapse and resistance.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  As long as that balance held, immersion could be maintained.

  I remained in that state for several minutes… then longer.

  There was strain—but far less than before.

  Hours would be possible.

  The singularity held everything within.

  No aura leaked outward.

  No mana pressure touched the world beyond my body.

  I existed in sight.

  But not in presence.

  To perception…

  I did not exist.

  To any mage attempting to sense me, there would be nothing.

  Only a hollow presence where a person stood.

  I withdrew my awareness from the core.

  Instantly, the circulation returned. Mana spread naturally through my body once more, filling the channels it had always followed.

  Gravity required no supervision.

  The singularity sustained itself.

  Now that the singularity no longer demanded my full attention…

  I could finally use the dark attribute freely.

  I only needed to reach out and draw upon it.

  And there were many things I wanted to try.

  The memory of the portal surfaced in my mind.

  The strange resonance I had felt while passing through it.

  Teleportation.

  Spatial folding.

  Even the manipulation of distance itself.

  The possibilities were… numerous.

  My fingers twitched slightly at the thought.

  But now wasn’t the time.

  My body had endured seven days of relentless strain. My mind even more so.

  Experiments could wait.

  Power wasn’t going anywhere.

  Rest, however, was long overdue.

  I walked to the bed and lay down, letting the weight of the past seven days finally leave my body.

  Within moments, sleep claimed me.

  When I woke up, the world felt… normal again.

  Sunlight slipped through the window, casting quiet lines across the floor. For a moment I simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, letting the silence settle around me.

  A week had passed.

  Seven days spent at the edge of destruction.

  Yet the house outside my room sounded exactly the same as it always had—distant footsteps, faint voices, the quiet rhythm of everyday life continuing without interruption.

  Slowly, I sat up.

  My body felt lighter than it had in years.

  I exhaled quietly and stood from the bed.

  Outside this room, nothing had changed.

  The same routines waited. The same training. The same ordinary days.

  And for now… that was exactly what I needed.

  I opened the door and stepped out, returning to the life I had paused for seven days.

  The familiar weight of the sword settled into my hands.

  Steel whispered through the air as I moved through the basic forms of the Hayakiri Style.

  One step.

  One breath.

  One cut.

  The rhythm returned quickly, as though the week of isolation had never happened. My body remembered what my mind had temporarily set aside.

  I finished the final strike and let the blade lower slightly, exhaling.

  That concluded today’s sword training.

  A thin sheen of sweat covered my arms, but my breathing remained steady.

  I placed the practice blade back on the rack and wiped the sweat from my hands.

  The training yard slowly returned to silence as I stepped out of it.

  My body felt pleasantly tired, the kind of fatigue that came from proper training rather than exhaustion.

  It had been a while since I last practiced like this.

  For seven days, I had remained shut inside my room, my entire focus consumed by the collapsing star inside my soul.

  Now… life had quietly resumed its normal rhythm.

  I walked back toward the house.

  The familiar scent of food reached me even before I stepped inside.

  My stomach responded immediately.

  Apparently, forming a singularity inside one's soul did not reduce the need for proper meals.

  When I entered the dining room, my mother was already there.

  She sat at the table calmly, arranging the dishes.

  But the moment she noticed me, her eyes lifted and lingered on me for a second longer than usual.

  I took my seat across from her.

  For a moment neither of us spoke.

  “You finally decided to leave your cave,” she said.

  I gave a small shrug. “Something like that.”

  She watched me for another second before returning her attention to the pan.

  “You stayed in that room for nearly a week,” she said casually.

  Her eyes lingered on my face, studying me with quiet attention.

  Then a faint smile appeared at the corner of her lips.

  “You look… happy.”

  She tilted her head slightly.

  “Did you make some kind of breakthrough in magic?”

  I paused for a moment before answering.

  It wasn’t an unreasonable question.

  Locking oneself inside a room for days rarely meant anything else for a mage.

  And technically… she wasn’t wrong.

  But the truth was far too complicated to explain.

  So I simply nodded.

  “Something like that.”

  Her smile widened slightly, clearly satisfied with the answer.

  “I thought so,” she said.

  “Your face gives it away.”

  “Was I smiling?”

  I hadn’t noticed.

  Maybe I was.

  For months, every day had felt like a step closer to the end. The pressure in my soul had grown without mercy, like a clock ticking toward a moment I could never escape.

  But now that clock was gone.

  The countdown had finally stopped.

  Perhaps that alone was enough reason to smile.

  We continued eating after that.

  The conversation drifted to ordinary things — the household, the city, small events that had happened during the week I had locked myself away.

  It felt strangely peaceful.

  Normal.

  When the meal finally ended, my mother wiped her hands lightly and looked at me again.

  “Ah, right,” she said, as if suddenly remembering something.

  “Your father was looking for you.”

  I glanced up.

  “He was?”

  She nodded.

  A small pause followed before she added with a faint smile,

  “Seems he has something to discuss with you.”