beyond the fold

Marth looked at the bubbling potion in his hand and started thinking.

This world is called Velithar. In this world, when you reach the age of six, everyone awakens an Esper ability. Most people awaken low-level ones. Esper abilities are graded from F to SSS, with F being the weakest.

When he was six years old in his past life, he awakened a B-grade rare spatial ability called Minor Space Bending, which let him slightly distort local space. It didn't help much in combat, but it granted enhanced spatial perception—perfect for studying spatial magic.

It was that gift that got him into the Imperial Magic Academy.

Later, with the help of a rare spatial treasure unearthed in the Whispering Sands, he evolved the ability into A-grade, gaining better distortion control and spatial anchoring. It helped, but it wasn't enough—not for his goals.

Decades later, in the buried labs beneath the ruins of Surnak, he found fragmented pages from a forgotten method: the Esper Infusion Technique. Though incomplete, it hinted at a way to forcefully evolve Esper abilities. After twenty years of experimentation—following the completion of the reincarnation ritual—he refined it into something stable.

But the requirements were brutal.

It could only be used by someone under thirteen, and only someone with flawless mana control could survive the process.

In his previous life, he met neither condition.

Now, after reincarnation, both were fulfilled.

He sat cross-legged on his bed. His body was still young, but his soul was ancient. The potion he'd crafted—glowmoss, whiteshade leaf, ashfern, marrowmint essence—glowed faintly with silvery threads. A stabilizer. A bridge between body and soul. It would help prevent collapse during the process.

He began circulating the Esper Infusion Technique.

Mana moved with eerie precision—threading, weaving, spiraling around the glowing core deep within his soul.

The room shifted.

Shadows bent sideways. The edges of the window warped slightly, as if they were being pulled in two directions. Light curled instead of spreading. Time stretched. The flame on the candle burned inward.

He raised the potion and drank.

The moment it touched his tongue, something cracked in his awareness. His mind expanded. The world no longer felt three-dimensional. He felt curves where there should be corners, infinite depth behind thin walls. His breathing stopped for a moment. The mana spiraled into his core.

Then the Esper core fractured.

He didn't resist.

He watched as the fragile lattice of his old ability—Minor Space Bending—shattered into countless geometric shards, each spinning through his soul like stars. Then they converged again, reforging themselves into something entirely different.

A cold shiver passed through him. Not from fear, but recognition. The process didn't just reshape his soul—it rewrote the laws under which it operated. The metaphysical architecture of his essence was being carved anew, etched with lines that did not obey this world's natural geometry.

He gasped.

A hole opened around him—not in space, but through it.

The room didn't just distort—it folded. Inside-out. The bed curved upward in an arc. The floor disappeared into a sphere. For one brief moment, Marth was nowhere, floating in a corridor of spiraling dimensions—each one watching him back.

Then it stopped.

The world snapped back.

And something had changed.

[SSS-Rank Esper Ability Awakened]: Dimensional Aberration

Grants mastery over higher-dimensional geometry. Allows the user to fold, refold, or shear space using non-Euclidean logic. Enables access to impossible angles, recursive matter compression, and entropic distortion. Prolonged use may attract attention from trans-dimensional entities.

Marth opened his hand.

The air peeled back—not with a sound, but with a feeling, like the turning of pages in a book no one had written. He saw beyond the wall. Behind the stone was… not more stone, but a slope of colorless shapes, rotating in patterns that defied logic.

He quickly closed it.

His heart was racing. Not from weakness or danger—but from comprehension. He hadn't just awakened a stronger ability. He had entered a realm of understanding that defied his previous magical logic. This wasn't evolution. This was transcendence.

"This ability…" he thought, "…this isn't just stronger. It's unnatural. It's a lens into what shouldn't be."

He stood, his legs unsteady. The mana in his body still trembled slightly, not from exhaustion, but from being stretched into forms it wasn't used to.

Dimensional Aberration wasn't just an evolution. It was a revelation.

He could already feel the applications.

He could anchor teleportation spells without sigils. He could create folds that warped spell trajectories. He could build sanctums between dimensions—safe zones invisible to any tracking magic. He could compress space to hide entire laboratories in a broom closet.

But more than that—he could feel the universe responding to him differently. The very weave of Velithar had started to recoil from him, as if aware that something foreign had slipped through its fabric.

This wasn't just power.

This was danger.

And it would change his path.

He had spent centuries chasing immortality. He had studied soul binding, spirit encasement, temporal regressions. All had limitations. All were finite.

But this?

This was infinite.

With this, the soul could exist not only across time—but outside it. Detached from entropy. Removed from decay. He had touched something that even liches feared—something that moved between realms like a thought between dreams.

"This changes everything," he whispered.

He sat back down, hands still glowing faintly with residual energy. His thoughts spiraled—not in panic, but in layered calculation. His mind palace shifted, rearranged itself. Paths and branches bloomed within it. Possibilities he never dared to hope for now stood open before him.

He thought of the lich ritual he'd perfected over four centuries. He had planned to use it in his late years—but now, it seemed crude. Inefficient. Obsolete.

"If I could rewrite the ritual… not to bind my soul to this plane, but to something outside it—"

His mind turned toward the mythical stone—the one he discovered late in his past life. It had emitted a unique form of space-time energy. Back then, he could only theorize about its full potential. Now, it felt obvious.

He could build a Dimensional Phylactery.

Not a simple soul anchor in this world. No. He would create an artificial spacetime continuum—a pocket of ordered madness hidden beyond the folds of known reality. His soul would not only be hidden… it would be unreachable, existing where time moved differently, where causality had no grip.

"A realm where I am the only constant," he murmured. "A home outside existence."

He smiled faintly, the first true smile he had shown in this life.

He still had a long path ahead. But for the first time, he felt that immortality was not a dream—it was a blueprint.

And he had all the tools to carve it.