The problem with a place designed to be paradise is that after a while, you start looking for the ventilation shafts to see where they hide the plumbing. Or in my case, where they pipe the excess, stolen mana.

  It was Day Three in the Zenith of Drifting Tides, and the chronic stress that had knotted my shoulders for the last two years was finally beginning to unspool. If I were a normal person — or just someone who hadn’t spent the last twenty-four months treating reality like a broken coding project — I would have been content to float in the Sanctum of Flow forever.

  I drifted on my back in a suspended lake of what looked like liquid opal. It wasn’t water; it was a high-viscosity suspension of dissolved Spirit-Jade and concentrated wind-mana. It permeated the pores, hunting down microscopic stress fractures in the meridian channels and filling them with soothing, resonant energy.

  “This place is ridiculous,” Anna’s voice drifted over from a nearby lily pad the size of a hover-car. She was sitting in a lotus position, [Final Word] resting across her knees, vibrating softly in tune with the water. “I just spent an hour in the ‘Echoes of the Hunter’ dojo. It simulated atmospheric currents from twelve different gas giants. I feel like I learned a year’s worth of ballistic intuition in a lunch break.”

  “That’s the service,” I sighed happily, letting my hand trail in the glowing water, watching the ripples turn into tiny, harmless nebulas. “Optimized growth. It’s what happens when a civilization spends fifty thousand years perfecting the spa experience instead of building orbital cannons.”

  Using the word “resort” to describe the Zenith felt terribly insufficient. Every inch of the floating archipelago was a masterpiece of metaphysical engineering. We had spent the last forty-eight hours spending a fraction of my recently acquired fortune to sample the wildest facilities the galaxy had to offer.

  We visited the Cloud-Sculpting Pavilion, a massive open-air dojo where high-tier Aeromancers taught guests how to solidify water vapor into temporary, functional structures. I managed to make a very shaky chair without using my [Apex Mana Authority] after a few tries. It collapsed into rain after three minutes, earning a polite nod from the Tier 6 instructor. Anna, showing off her terrifying precision, sculpted a perfect, crystalline bow that fired hail-arrows which shattered targets three miles away.

  Then we went to the Stellar-Forge.

  It was less of a blacksmith shop and more of a star-worshipping temple. The anvils were blocks of neutron-star matter — stabilized by containment fields — and the hammers hummed with gravitational force. I watched a smith fold a bar of sun-steel twelve thousand times in a minute, his arms moving in a blur of motion that distorted the air.

  “Imagine what Leoric could do here,” I mused, maximizing my [Void Perception] to take illicit mental notes on the runic arrays etched into the floor. “The efficiency is terrifying. They don’t even need to convince the metal to change state through harmonic resonance; it’s always eagerly awaiting command. We need to integrate this effect into our foundries.”

  “You’re working again,” Anna chided, flicking a droplet of spirit-water at me.

  “I’m researching,” I defended. “If I can bring even ten percent of this tech back to Earth, we can save years of development.”

  Lunch was served on a floating terrace overlooking the central waterfall — a roaring cascade of diamond-clear water that fell into the cloud layer miles below. The menu was entirely concept-based, translated by the System to match intent.

  I ordered a dish called Resonant Clarity, which turned out to be a soup made from star-dew and leviathan bone broth. It tasted like memories of a perfect winter morning — crisp, sharp, and energizing.

  “If we bring Masha here,” Anna said around a mouthful of glowing noodles that sparked with tiny arcs of flavor-lightning, “she might refuse to leave. She’ll kidnap the chef.”

  “We can afford to hire a few mentors, chefs and others,” I countered. “Our void-craft profits are climbing and the people are still too low level for the upgrades. We can continue selling to the System Shop for at least another year.”

  As I ate, enjoying the buzz of pure, high-grade mana filling my stomach, a commotion at a nearby table drew my attention.

  A young man, draped in robes woven from literal spun gold and draped in more jewelry than a museum exhibit, was loudly berating a server. He was handsome in that sharp, engineered way that suggested genetic tampering before birth, and his aura radiated the chilly arrogance of a high-born Cryomancer. His four bodyguards — stoic Tier 6 mercenaries in matching polished plate armor — looked bored, likely used to this routine.

  “I specifically requested the Solar Terrace!” the young master snapped, slamming a goblet onto the table. The liquid inside didn’t splash; it crystallized instantly from the force of his leaked mana. “Do you know who I am? I specifically did not choose the Anonymous Profile so I would be treated appropriately. I demand a meeting with the Twin Suns!”

  The server, a four-armed entity composed of shifting living-sand, bowed deeply. “Apologies, Honored Guest. The Solar Terrace is booked by a High-Priestess who requires absolute silence for her communion. We cannot disturb her.”

  “A Priestess?” The young master scoffed, waving a fan made of elegant blue feathers. “Probably some hedge-witch from the rim worlds. Move her. I wish to compose a sonnet about my own magnificence, and the lighting here is subpar.”

  I sighed into my soup.

  “Anna,” I projected mentally. “Situation.”

  “I’m busy reaching enlightenment via noodles,” she replied, her mind feeling calm and amused. “Don’t start a war. We’re on vacation. Besides, security is tight. I see three hidden enforcers in the rafters waiting to act.”

  “I know. Just admiring the universal consistency of jerks.”

  The young master’s gaze swept the room, looking for a target for his ire since the server wasn’t bending. It landed on me.

  My Veil was up tight. I looked like a nobody. Just a guy in rental linen robes enjoying expensive soup.

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  “You there!” he barked, pointing a jeweled finger. “Move to the lower deck. I require this space for my entourage to spread out.”

  I paused, spoon halfway to my mouth. I looked around. The terrace was huge. And there was no way this guy was picking a fight with me out of all the other people.

  “There are twelve empty tables,” I said mildly, gesturing with my utensil. “And the view is identical from all of them. The sun is millions of miles away; moving three feet won’t change the angle much.”

  The table went silent. The young master blinked, clearly unused to being spoken back to.

  “Insolence,” he sneered. “A peasant wouldn’t understand the feng shui of light. Guards! Remove the vagrant. His presence disturbs my creative flow.”

  Two of the guards stepped forward, their armor clanking. Their hands rested on maces that hummed with kinetic charges.

  I sighed again.

  I could flatten them. I could create a localized gravity well and stick them to the ceiling. I could [Void Walk] them into the waterfall. I could erase the concept of ‘standing’ from their immediate reality.

  But that would ruin the mood. And trigger the resort’s pacifist wards. And get us kicked out before Anna finished her dessert.

  “I think I’m done with the soup anyway,” I said, standing up. “It was getting cold. Enjoy your poem.”

  I bowed slightly — mocking, precise, and dismissing.

  “That’s right,” the young master preened, turning back to his entourage, satisfied with his ‘victory’. “He must have recognized who I am.”

  I walked away.

  As I passed, I pulsed a tiny, microscopic thread of [Entropy] through the Void into the leg of his chair. It wasn’t an attack; it was just… accelerated aging. It would degrade the molecular structure over the next ten minutes. Right around the time his main course arrived, he was going to find himself sitting on the floor very, very suddenly.

  “Come on,” I signaled Anna. “Let’s hit the Archives.”

  “You really wanted to fight that guy didn’t you?” she teased, joining me.

  “It’s not worth it, we have enough trouble back home.” I replied. “I do want to find out who he is though for acting like that when everyone else here seems to follow the rules. I noticed the Zenith Enforcers’ aura seemed very hesitant, almost afraid.”

  We parted ways at the Library Spire. Anna had decided to splurge.

  “I booked a session in the Chrono-Dilation Chamber,” she announced, showing me the Platinum keycard. “It costs 5,000 QS for a week inside, but only an hour passes out here. I’m on the verge of a breakthrough with [Final Word]. I can feel it getting close to evolve with my higher Tier, I just need to isolate myself to understand the ‘Timeline’ aspect of the shot.”

  “Go for it,” I encouraged. “Just don’t age yourself too much. I prefer my younger sister to stay younger.”

  She stuck her tongue out and vanished into the elevator.

  Left alone, I wandered into the Archives.

  The room was a hollowed-out geode the size of a cathedral, lined with shelves of floating thought-crystals. I grabbed a few on ‘Ancient Planar Theory’, ‘Sustainable Mana-Grid Construction’, and ‘Philosophies of the Star-Core’ and headed to a reading alcove.

  Three hours passed in blissful study. I learned about how the Asura race stabilized their core planets, about the symbiotic relationship between world-trees and star-cores. I was soaking it in, filling memory packets for Kasian and creating mental blueprints for Jeeves.

  And then, as my mind relaxed into the deep rhythmic state of study, the perfection of the resort slipped.

  I felt it.

  It felt like a glitch in the security, but it was something deeper. Underneath the manicured gardens, beneath the floating islands, beneath the complex grid of purification arrays I had admired earlier.

  There was a pull.

  It wasn’t sinister in the way Azrael’s hunger was. It wasn’t Kyorian consumption. It felt… hydraulic. Industrial.

  Every spell cast, every healing spring used, every breath taken by the thousands of high-tier cultivators in the resort generated a tiny amount of excess energy. It flowed down, through the island roots, channeling into the abyss below.

  “They are skimming some mana from everyone. But where does it go?” I whispered, lowering the thought-crystal.

  The curiosity itched. The [Void-Star] in my chest spun, intrigued by the movement of such massive volumes of energy being disguised as background noise.

  It felt vast. Ancient.

  “This place isn’t just a resort,” I realized, a chill running down my spine. “It’s an Essence farm. A polite, expensive farm. They filter the mana for us… so we refine it within ourselves… and then they skim a small portion off the top.”

  Is it really just a small tax? A System cost for maintaining the barrier? Or is it something else?

  The resonance felt… familiar. It had the weight of something I had felt before. Old architecture.

  My curiosity flared. Thoth’s “Editor” lessons in me screamed at the discrepancy. A looped system shouldn’t be able to leak like this, especially with so many powerful cultivators unaware.

  I checked my internal clock. Anna was locked in for another six hours.

  I was bored. And I had a mystery buried under a tropical paradise.

  “Jeeves,” I whispered to him through our Anima Soul-link. “Note to self: The paradise has a basement, and I am checking it out.”

  I walked to the window. The clouds below the floating islands were thick, a churning sea of white obscuring the surface.

  What was down there? A machine? A Titan?

  I couldn’t physically investigate. The security wards on the restricted levels were intense. A physical breach would bring down every Enforcer, cultivator and Monk on the archipelago.

  But the mind is free. And the Void respects no walls.

  “Just a peek,” I decided, the thrill of the unauthorized taking over. “Just a little look behind the curtain.”

  I retreated to my private cultivation pod — a sphere of transparent metal suspended under the main island. I engaged the privacy wards and sat cross-legged.

  “Let’s see what you’re hiding, Zenith.”

  I closed my eyes. I slowed my breathing until it matched the hum of the station.

  I reached past the Star-Cores orbiting my heart.

  I found the thread of probability.

  [Glimpse of a Path.]

  The Archives faded. The scent of ozone and books vanished.

  In the vision, I was weightless, Walking through the Void.

  I stepped through the floor. Ignoring all Runes and Wards, heading towards my target, outside of gravity.

  I fell past the hanging roots of the floating islands, past the waterfalls turning to mist.

  I dove into the white cloud layer.

  The mist was cold and charged with static. As I broke through the bottom of the cloud cover, the darkness opened up.

  And I saw the Engine.

  It was a skeleton. A literal, planetary-scale ribcage made of fossilized starlight, thousands of miles long, resting in the darkness. And pulsating through its ribs was the run-off mana from above, feeding something that slept in the cage.

  “Oh,” I whispered in the simulation, looking towards a sleeping god.

  This was a massive risk for curiosity’s sake, I already knew that my Glimpse could be detected by Ascended beings, and a creature that could contain this much mana had to at least be in the Tenth Tier.

  I readied my Flame to immediately sever the Glimpse through the Void should I need it to — the backlash that would cause would be a lot better than being trapped in a God’s Domain.

  Then, I drifted closer.