Daniel

The table was older than the main house of the Lis—older than most of the estate, even. It stood beneath the observatory dome at the top of the library wing, in a room dusted with spiderweb runes and disused enchantment coils.

“Alright. Time for some old-fashioned learning,” Ethan said. He sounded way too excited.

Daniel rolled his eyes.

He laid his hand across the smooth obsidian surface, watching faint rings of light pulse outward in response.

“Touch-sensitive,” Ethan murmured from the back of his mind. “Runes keyed to ambient mana. Just hold your hand there.”

The center of the table glowed, lines of light branching outward in a blooming, geometric array. Then, with a sound like a whisper cutting silk, a three-dimensional map sprang to life—layered spirit-glass projections floating above the stone.

It began with the core.

A sphere of golden light marked the capital—the seat of the Imperial family—glowing like a miniature sun suspended at the center of the world.

Around it, semi-concentric Rings of translucent territory shimmered outward. Not perfect circles—these were curved zones of influence, shaped by ley lines, mountain ranges, divine ruins, and ancient spellwork. Each Ring pulsed with different resonance patterns, different colors, different intent.

“Welcome,” Ethan said dryly, “to the Aetherian Empire.”

Daniel leaned in, absorbing it piece by piece. Cities shimmered in distant pulses. Mountain ridges rose in etched silhouette. Floating provinces and warded valleys rotated gently in suspended formation.

And then the full scale of the terrain hit him.

Snow-capped ridges bordering subtropical coastlines. Jagged canyonlands and swampy jungles. Highlands scarred by battlefield mana still crackling with residual energy. Entire biomes twisted together in strange, contradictory harmony.

It reminded him of home.

Not this one—the other one.

“It’s like the continental U.S. had a baby with Rivendell,” he murmured. “Stay away from their Yellowstone. It could eat you.”

The range of environments was staggering. Forests gave way to desert plateaus. River deltas bled into mana-pulsing plains. None of it felt governed by logic—only legacy.

“Mana has a strange effect on the world,” Daniel muttered.

“First thing you need to know,” Ethan said, “Rings represent areas of influence, not borders. The closer to the Capital, in theory, the most influence you have. No one draws clean lines through this kind of territory. You hold what you can. You protect what you must.”

“We’re here,” Ethan added, pulsing a marker on the western curve of the Second Ring. “House Li’s dominion. Not part of the First Ring—by choice, mind you.”

A smaller orb shimmered into view, its borders traced with silver glyphs and subtle pulses of mana. Daniel watched the lines form—a clean, deliberate shape locked into the larger spell-grid. The area was marked by a massive range where the color coding distinguished the border between Ring Two and Three on the western border.

“So they control the routes between the capital and the western provinces.”

“Exactly,” Ethan said. “The General is indispensable to the overall power structure of the Empire, but he has little patience for politics and no patience for fools. So they settled out here where the Hi-dong Mountain range meets a great forest on Cheudo. Concerned about mobility for heavy troops, he started building roads. He turned infrastructure into Capital influence. Now half the continent’s trade passes through Li-administered channels.”

Ethan got Daniel to flick his fingers outward. The map expanded.

“There are Five Great Rings. These are basically administrative zones.”

The First Ring lit up.

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A dense golden cluster of energy flared into view—almost too bright to look at directly.

“The Inner Capital,” Ethan said. “Royal districts. Sacred precincts. The Imperial Palace sits here. It sits on top of the Pier of Endor. It’s basically a floating rock in the middle of the Empire, but the First king of the land built the Empire's palace there, and it's kept people at bay for over 1500 years.”

Daniel squinted. A dozen overlapping wards pulsed around a concentrated sphere of power.

“Access is heavily regulated to the Capital. Even more so to the Imperial Plaza. The Empress’s domain. She’s… particular. Some might say paranoid. We don’t enter unless summoned.”

“An Empress. How progressive.”

Ethan snorted. “Only because the Emperor has been in seclusion for about ten years.”

“Ahh... well, damn the patriarchy.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Ethan pulsed another sector.

“The Second Ring: Administrative zones excluding Parliament and main residents of the Tier 1 and 2 Houses that aren’t the Lis. The major Guild halls and two of the three main academies.”

He gestured toward a spiral cluster of towers and rolling hills.

“That’s the Imperial Academy.”

Daniel tilted his head. “And that’s where your old lab is?”

“Indeed. An adjunct wing—sealed. The Academy is a weird place, almost a mini kingdom to itself. The Head Master is another one of the few Peak Human Experts that are alive. The Academy has its own charter. Ancient privileges from the founding war. Not even the Emperor can walk into their archives without cause.”

“So how did you get in?”

“I earned it. And then got sort of banished after receiving my degrees. Long story.”

Daniel’s attention shifted.

The Third and Fourth Rings swept outward. Far larger, more diverse. Their boundaries arced around mountain ridges, vast deserts, highlands, spell-sealed forests, and beaches nestled against oceans and lakes.

Provincial zones stretched like tangled banners across mana-dense landscapes: scorched frontier lands held by House Vang, the highland temples of the Wu Consortium, shifting mist valleys that never settled on maps.

“These are where most advanced cultivators come from,” Ethan said. “Not Tier-1 house scions—people who’ve reached the upper bottlenecks of the Human Realm. Some even flirting with what lies beyond. The deeper you go, the thinner the air, and the more dangerous the mana currents.”

“There are also concentrations of other power—divine, Aether, wild qi. Dangerous. But the returns... are outrageous.”

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “You’re talking about people who went past Level Ten?”

“Yes. The Human Realm’s ceiling is more than just strength—it’s cultural. Structural. Foundational. If humans are smoke... then anything beyond Human is steel.”

“Most of the energy in this world can’t even be used properly. Too few people. Too many locks. And the methods to ascend beyond Human? Fragmented. Buried. Or outright forbidden.”

Daniel let that settle.

“So no ranking system? No S-class cultivators or whatever?”

“That’s for guilds and dramatized propaganda. Real cultivators don’t wear letter grades. You’re either Human... or you’ve transcended.”

The Fifth Ring glimmered.

Or didn’t.

Daniel frowned. The outermost edge of the map looked broken. Disordered. More suggestion than territory.

“The Fifth Ring isn’t mapped,” Ethan said. “Too volatile. Dead empires. Broken space. Storms that don’t follow rules. Demon remnants. No proper governance. And some say... portals to other worlds.”

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “You’re foreshadowing a little heavily there, my friend.”

“Uh?”

“Never mind. So we’re going there, right?”

“Eventually. But not yet.”

Daniel chuckled dryly. “Good. Let me survive college first.”

The map contracted slightly.

Ethan pulsed a node within the Academy’s Second Ring sector—a sub-layer beneath the visible buildings.

“This is where it is. My vault. Prototype lab. Isolated beneath the Spell Engineering Department. Sealed after I left. But not deleted.”

“Why not?”

“They think they neutralized the tech. They didn’t. They felt that was enough.”

Daniel studied the ward cluster—swirling like a suspended hurricane of golden light.

“And you think I can get in?”

“You can. Your body is mine. Same bloodline. Same core signature. I tuned the lock to resonance frequency.”

“Not exactly what I meant. Are they going to let me?”

Daniel felt the mental shrug.

“You’re the son-in-law of House Li. They’ll have a hard time denying you.”

Daniel stepped back from the projection, arms folded.

“This feels big.”

“It is big,” Ethan said. “That lab contains the only working scaffold I ever built for the Framework. Raw materials. Cross-referenced notes. Trace readers. Even a few spirit-forged diagnostic rigs. Bottom line: we need what’s in there.”

Ethan paused.

“If we get that vault open? We go from theory... to architecture.”

Daniel nodded slowly, eyes still on the flickering map.

“How big is all this land, exactly?”

Ethan paused, calculating.

“From the far western sea cliffs to the Eastern Ridge Barrier? About five to six thousand li. A flying relay ship takes three days to cross it—assuming no storm interference.”

Daniel did the math.

Roughly three thousand miles.

So... about the size of the continental U.S.

“And only ten million people,” he muttered. “That doesn’t track.”

“It used to be more,” Ethan said softly.

Daniel looked up.

“Before the last Demon War,” Ethan continued, “this place was alive. Densely packed cities. Endless sect spires. Trade routes that pulsed like veins. The Fifth Ring alone held dynasties.”

“And that was… how long ago?”

“Over a thousand years.”

“That’s long enough for full demographic recovery.”

Ethan’s voice turned quiet.

“Yes. But they came back.”

Daniel blinked. “Who?”

“The demons. Not in force. Not like before. But enough. Quiet. Methodical. Searching. I don’t know what for.”

Daniel stared at the ghost sectors. The unlit border towns. The fractured outlines of cities that hadn’t pulsed a single mana signal in decades.

And suddenly, ten million didn’t feel like a number.

It felt like a countdown.