The Norn Stone sat heavy in my palm, its surface a swirling abyss of liquid darkness studded with pinpricks of starlight. Moonlight bled through the sheer curtains of my Zurich apartment, casting fractured silver across the desk where I'd laid out my tools: a notebook filled with arcane equations, a vial of powdered silver, and the remains of three snapped fountain pens.
I exhaled through my nose, flexing my fingers. The stone's presence hummed against my skin - not warmth, not cold, but something deeper. The pressure difference before a storm. The hush of dead air in a cathedral.
Observation Haki: Active.
The world fractured.
Mana unveiled itself as a living, writhing thing - not energy, but a substance. It pooled in the corners of the room like liquid mercury, coiled around the legs of my chair in lazy spirals, dripped from my fingertips in viscous strands. My own Aether glowed gold where it shaped the flow, but now I could see the imperfections - the cracks in the dam, the leaks in the vessel.
Burst Step - First Iteration
I triggered the technique. The world blurred -
and left behind a jagged scar in the mana currents, like a bullet through water. The displaced energy roiled violently before collapsing back into equilibrium.
Wrong.
Second Iteration
I adjusted the Aether flow, letting it guide rather than force. The step came smoother this time, but mana still eddied in my wake like disturbed silt.
Better. Not perfect.
The stone pulsed in my grip, its constellations shifting. I watched, transfixed, as the star-patterns rearranged themselves into something eerily familiar - the exact energy signature of my flawed technique. The vision burned itself into my retinas:
Aether should move with the mana, not through it. Like a hand parting curtains rather than a knife stabbing cloth.
Third Iteration
This time when I moved, there was no disruption. The mana flowed around my Aether like water around a swimmer's limbs, parting and reuniting seamlessly. The step left no more trace than a breath on glass.
I exhaled shakily, running a hand through sweat-damp hair. My reflection in the darkened window showed eyes gleaming with unnatural gold light - the mark of overtaxed Aether channels.
One technique refined. Dozens more to go.
I turned my attention to the Aether Sword flickering in my left hand. Under the stone's gaze, its imperfections stood out like wounds:
The hilt's latticework too rigid, causing stress fractures
The edge's mana alignment off by 3.7 degrees
The core matrix already degrading from unstable harmonic resonance
Hour after hour, I rebuilt it. Each failure brought new understanding. Each success revealed deeper layers of complexity. By the time dawn painted the Zurich skyline in pale watercolors, I could:
Maintain a blade for without energy loss
I could use it to disrupt attacks of magical nature... Or combined with my haki create a shield repelling most attacks.
I could shape it into distinct forms without structural compromise, from a Great Odachi down to a khopesh, It was beyond gratifying being able to switch between forms at a moments notice, it would most definitely catch most off guard and I would most definitally use it to its max potential.
Yet the stone showed me how much further there was to go. God Runes, the thing that allowed Arthur to not only command the world to do his bidding but reshape it too he could manipulate laws like space, destruction, and even fate...
But what the First stone showed me was that each God Rune wouldn't just hold shape - it would breathe, drawing in ambient Aether and release it in a form that could allow for the very baseline of reality to be re-written.
I collapsed into bed as morning birds began their chorus, the stone's constellations still burning behind my eyelids. Its lessons carved themselves into muscle memory, into the very pathways of my Aether.
When I dreamed, it was of golden equations unfolding like wings, and a voice that might have been the stone's whispering:
"You've learned to walk without ripples. Now learn to dance on the fabric of the world."
=Day long timeskip=
I awoke again, it was late into the evening... I was starving, I quietly began moving Aether to my will using it to grab clothes that were more presentable than the all white I wore right now.
Activating my psychological invisibility I used Godstep to teleport outside my apartment in an instant, and I began making my way towards 'Williams ButchersTable' a place with a damn good steak.
Before I stopped on the side walk, I quietly contemplated whether I should try burst stepping across large distances... Welp now's a good time more than ever.
I began enhancing the range of my senses, the Visionary pathway already gave me supreme detail, so I didn't use advanced Observation, Haki to go further.
I concentrated at the location before in an instant space itself moved around me, as if my will shaped the world itself... I had just used space altering abilities to arrive a little faster to a steak house...
Well who can judge a man when he's hungry... I opened the door, the bell ringing I walked into the the establishment the waitress looked at me to greet me before just pausing...
What are you looking at? I'm just a customer?
"Hello maam where may I take a seat at?" I asked her directly.
Her face turning a deep red, "Oh uhm sorry right follow me Herr?" As she lead me directly to a seat
Watching her reaction I realized.... 'Oh shit I don't have psychological invisibility on... Fuck'
"Kaslana, I go by Dr. Kaslana"
I quietly make a prayer 'let's just hope no one stares at me... too much'. Thus began a lunch with a lot of stares from other tables... 'God I'm still so not used to this level of attention.'