Silence weighed heavy.
The platform stood still within the void — and the void stood still within it.
Noah remained motionless, staring at the horizon.
Now there was something in the absence.
A quiet kind of expectation, as if the place itself was waiting for him to say the right thing.
"What am I missing?" he murmured.
His voice echoed and faded, swallowed by a distance that didn't exist.
He knelt and touched the ground. Smooth. Cold. Lifeless.
No texture. No resistance. No sign of a border.
What was this platform, anyway?
Matter?
Idea?
Memory?
Noah lifted his gaze to the endless white surrounding him and took a slow breath.
Then he walked to the edge — and jumped.
The fall was exactly the same as the first — long, endless.
The difference was that this time, he paid attention.
He watched every detail.
When he returned to the platform, he didn't hesitate before leaping again.
And again.
And again.
Once, twice, ten, a hundred times.
"Why do I always come back to the platform?" he muttered, not sure how many times he'd fallen.
"Is it just a spell pulling me back… or is there truly no ground below?"
Then something clicked inside his mind.
"Below?"
He lifted his head — and saw the same white horizon.
Exactly the same as to the sides… or below.
"If there are no sides…" he whispered, "...then maybe there's no 'up' either."
And if there was no up, then there was no down to fall into.
He tried to convince himself, but his body refused to believe.
Instinct still told him what was "above" and what was "below."
That invisible anchor kept him bound to a direction the place itself didn't seem to recognize.
"If directions don't exist… then why am I still falling?"
Once more, he threw himself off.
This time, he turned midair and looked down.
The fall continued — and, just like before, in an instant, he was back on the platform.
"Am I wrong?"
He jumped again. And again.
Then, exhausted, he sat in front of the monolith.
"What separates two points is not space," he read softly, "but the mind that perceives it."
Noah sighed.
"I still can't reach the second platform."
He lay back, letting his body fall into nothingness. Closed his eyes.
The air — if there was air — flowed through his lungs without weight.
Images drifted through his mind: the black monolith, the engraved phrase, that silent vibration echoing in his chest each time he repeated it.
How many times had he tried to understand what it meant?
But maybe… he'd been thinking with the wrong part of himself.
"If space has no north, and time has no step…" he murmured, "...then movement isn't real either. It's not the place that changes — it's me."
"Direction is a concept of the observer."
He stood up.
Walked to the edge of the platform.
The abyss awaited — stretching in every possible and impossible direction.
He felt a wind that didn't exist brush against his face — and vertigo embraced him.
His heart pounded. The memory of the last fall returned: fear, despair, warped time, helplessness.
But now there was something different.
"Maybe the mistake wasn't falling," he thought. "Maybe the mistake was believing I was falling."
He closed his eyes and opened his arms — as if to welcome the inevitable.
"If there's no up…" he whispered, a tired half-smile on his lips, "...then falling is just another way of rising."
And he jumped.
The windless void roared.
The emptiness opened wide.
His body plunged — and the platform vanished behind… or above… or within. He no longer knew.
The fall was long and endless, as before — but now, something had changed.
Noah focused on the thought: "I'm not falling. I'm changing."
And the space around him answered.
The white began to twist, as if the world itself had decided to follow his logic.
Directions melted — ground became sky, sky became nothing.
Noah's body spun and floated — and for an instant, there was no gravity.
No, there had never been gravity.
He opened his eyes.
There was no more falling.
His body hung suspended, motionless — not at rest, but in balance.
A sharp, blinding clarity pierced through him.
All that existed was him, the void, and the meaning he gave to movement.
"So that's it…" he whispered. "Direction is a choice."
His gaze fixed on the platform floating somewhere in the horizon — whether that was above, below, or anywhere else.
"Then why not go there?"
At that very moment, his body began to fall… upward.
The platform, which once drifted away, now drew closer.
When he was about to reach it, Noah hesitated — and decided to keep falling upward.
He passed it by and continued to rise.
There was no limit to how high he went.
Then he turned, and decided to come back.
He fell toward the platform — and landed softly on his feet.
A deep, resonant sound, like the distant toll of a bell, echoed through the nothingness.
The white horizon folded in on itself — and a thin black line appeared in the air, outlining a rectangle.
The door.
It hadn't appeared; it had revealed itself — as if it had always been there, just waiting for him to look from the right angle.
"I still have a lot to train here…" he murmured.
He wanted to keep going, but decided to stop. He could always return.
The door hovered above the platform — or below.
Noah couldn't reach it by walking.
So he stopped beneath what he decided was "below" it.
And with a small smile, he let himself fall upward.
His body ascended — and passed through the door in one motion.
It felt like crossing a veil.
He kept falling — until something soft cushioned his back.
"Ow…"
"Ow!"
Dazed, he tried to get up, holding onto something small and soft.
"Get off me, you idiot!" a furious voice yelled.
His mind lagged behind.
When he finally stood, he realized he was back in the Heritage Hall.
The Gatekeeper was staring at him with a strange expression — and on the floor in front of him was…
"A child?" he muttered.
It was a little blonde girl, blue-eyed, golden-haired, wearing a loose white dress.
"Who are you calling a child, you idiot?!" she snapped, glaring at him.
Noah smiled and crouched.
"Hey, Gatekeeper, why's there a cute kid here?"
And naturally, he placed a hand on her head.
"Sorry for falling on you. How about I bring you some ice cream next time?"
The little girl froze, stunned.
She opened her mouth a few times, but no sound came out.
Her eyes filled with tears — and then she ran off, vanishing somewhere into the hall.
"What did I do wrong?" he asked, confused.
The Gatekeeper sighed.
"You did well in the challenge."
Noah raised his eyebrows.
"How long did it take me?"
The Gatekeeper chuckled.
"Here, in the real world? Only about an hour since you stepped through the door."
"The real world?" Noah repeated.
The Gatekeeper nodded.
"The first two chambers you faced inside the Heritage exist in the real world, so time flows normally there."
He paused before continuing:
"But here, in the main hall, time aligns with your world. Out there…" — he pointed to the stone door — "…it's different. Learning magic means losing yourself to the abstract. Time doesn't exist… or rather, it exists in its purest form."
Noah frowned.
"To put it simply," said the Gatekeeper, "if you'd spent the same amount of real time as you did inside, when you came back, everyone you know would already be dead."
Noah froze.
"That long...? What kind of place is that?"
But no answer came.
The Gatekeeper only watched him and murmured:
"The purest forms of magic are so abstract and complex that no mortal should be able to comprehend them. Not a human whose life barely lasts a century."
Noah pondered his words. There were truths hidden there — and some of them frightened him.
"Looks like the future won't be easy," he sighed.
Then he glanced at the Gatekeeper and asked something different:
"Those runes on your body… are they made by fusing smaller ones together?"
The man's eyes gleamed with interest.
"Not exactly. Runes are often misunderstood. Each stroke carries an individual purpose, so within a single rune…"
"...several smaller ones exist," Noah finished. "And it goes on until nothing's left — or everything becomes one."
A fire rune, after all, was made of unique lines — each one a rune in itself. Two runes together could, in truth, just be one greater whole.
Noah looked around, but the little girl was gone.
He sighed, turned, and walked toward the portal.
"See you around," he said before jumping through.
The hall fell silent.
The Gatekeeper stared at the stone door of the challenge and whispered:
"How is that even possible…? How could that be his first trial?"
He shook his head, weary.
"Was all this part of your plan, master?"
In a distant room, wrapped in darkness, the little blonde girl sat alone. Her delicate hands touched the top of her own head — and she smiled.
She whispered something, but no one heard.