Wherever a contingent of the Alliance met the Utopian spires on the mainland, the knights charged without hesitation. A great spear of fighting spirit struck the spire's flank; with a thunderous crash, the Utopian spire split and collapsed.

"The last spire has been destroyed. All Utopian spires have now been razed. Thank you for your fighting and your sacrifice."

Skyborne City's communications officer confirmed every spire's fall to the Alliance's forces, yet his voice held no trace of triumph.

"It appears the Utopia has advanced its plan to the next stage. Prepare yourselves for the next engagement. We do not know when it will come, but they will be stronger."

The officer's tone turned grave as he explained the situation: the spires had acted as lures. By striking the theocracy of the Church of Light, the Utopia had managed to forge a second "node."

The Utopia had grown dramatically in strength since the completion of the first node. With the second now in place, no one knew just how much power they would gain and when they would strike again.

"Understood. We'll make preparations and rest up," the legion commander answered, even as medics and herbalists worked on his broken right arm. "Do the scholars of Skyborne City scholars know more about the Utopia's aims or command over the void?"

That would be the deciding factor: without solid knowledge, the Alliance would still be wandering blind, unable to predict the Utopia's targets or how to counter them.

"I'm sorry. Truthfully, we know almost nothing of their purpose. We've made small advances in our research of the void, but they're painfully limited..."

The news was like a hard stone in the commander's gut. An enigmatic teammate was an annoyance; an enigmatic enemy was a true terror to face.

The Utopia was one such enemy. The Alliance had no idea what its endgame looked like. Their strikes felt useless; the Utopia's repeated successes gave them a feeling of stark despair.

"Hopefully there'll be some progress," the commander muttered.

"We will see it through," the Skyborne City officer said with forced confidence, before the line went dead.

The officer sat back and sighed. "How can such a group exist without any trace? Not even Skyborne City holds records of them. We've studied magic and alchemy for ages, but how can they know more about the void than we do? What do we do against an enemy we know nothing about?"

He leaned back, tangling his fingers in his hair. There was significant pressure on him—on all the communications officers present—who were responsible for disseminating the latest information across the battlefield. There simply didn't seem to be any good news.

"Hm?"

He drummed his fingers on the desk out of habit. Something felt off. He couldn't attribute the feeling to anything; it was merely his instincts at work.

But before the officer, who had trained as a wizard, could get up and figure out what was wrong, the instruments before him lit up all at once.

"The concentration of void energy is rising—not just around the Utopian nodes, but across the entire continent."

Both nodes were pulsing, projecting void energy outward and increasing the void density across the entire continent. Strangely enough, unlike in ordinary circumstances, the material realm didn't seem to reject the void energy emanating from the nodes.

"We've detected simultaneous fluctuations in the two special environments created by the Utopia. They appear to be projecting part of their power into the void itself, producing effects we still cannot identify. Our preliminary hypothesis is that these unknown influences are what's driving the rise in void density across the entire continent."

The observers used both instruments and their own senses to monitor the two Utopian nodes. These nodes were exerting pressure on the void and operating on principles entirely beyond their understanding.

At that moment, the void resembled an overfilled reservoir: the water inside was rising at a slow but steady pace, seeping drop by drop into the material world.

Those who sensed the change first, naturally, were wizards: those whose very nature was tied to the void. Next came Skyborne City's instruments, then the magicians most attuned to their souls, the knights, and finally ordinary folk with no special gifts at all. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The rise in void density was slow, almost painfully so. It took careful attention and concentration to notice. At most, it stirred up a faint unease buried in the subconscious, a sense that something was quietly wrong.

But unprecedented things did not go unnoticed. Even during the Abyssal Wars, void density had never increased across the entire continent. The implications were too great to ignore. Whatever the Utopia sought to accomplish might surpass even the Alliance's darkest expectations.

"I don't understand... just where did they get this technology?" cried a scholar deep in void research. He flung his instrument aside and clawed at his hair in a near-hysterical fit. "We've studied for so long. Our magitech, our alchemy... All our knowledge far surpasses that of the past, but we're still lagging hopelessly behind the Utopia in terms of the void. Why? Even with better facilities, we can't replicate the Morningstar, whereas they—"

The shifting void density around him, rising with the rest of the continent, was the final straw breaking his composure.

Years of stagnation, of watching the Utopia overturn their most basic understanding of the void, had left him into a permanent state of stress. Before today, he could still comfort himself with one flimsy belief: we're safe in Skyborne City; here, at least, we can study in peace.

But now, as he sensed the void change right beside him, he could no longer pretend the Utopia's actions would never affect him. As a wizard, he knew exactly what would happen if the material realm's void density continued to increase. The realization hollowed him with wordless dread.

A sharp blow landed between his shoulder blades. Another scholar had slapped him hard.

"Hey. Get a grip," the second scholar snapped. "You're a wizard. If you lose focus now, I'm going to have to deal with your voidspawn transformation. At least spare me that trouble. It's not all hopeless. There's at least some good news."

His irritated voice cut through the panic, helping the frantic scholar claw his way back toward clarity. Clinging to the distraction, the shaken man forced himself to ask about this supposed piece of good news.

"The fluctuations created by those two environments were unusually obvious this time, so obvious that even our instruments, which can barely scan the shallow layers of the void, could pinpoint their exact positions. More importantly, in the middle of all that noise, we found something else. A faint thread... one not originating from either node."

The shaken scholar blinked. "Can we determine where the Utopia will strike next?"

"Exactly. Let me see... yes, we've confirmed the rough location. Hah. Of all places, it's the Ashen Wastes. Might be the upper plains, might be down in the City of Sin... We can't be sure yet. But at least it's something. Even if we still can't decipher the mysteries of the void, as long as we stop the Utopia's next action, we'll be fine."

"...Right. As long as we stop them from creating another one of these nodes, we can still win."

The middle-aged wizard clenched his fists. He forced himself to stop thinking about the darker possibilities. What if they didn't need another node? What if destroying the nodes now didn't make a difference? What if the spires were bait all along...?

"Icarus's attempt did help a little," the other scholar added. "Restarting the research from scratch fixed quite a few theoretical contradictions. Maybe, just maybe, we'll understand the void someday."

"And how is Mr. Icarus's work progressing?"

"Right, there's another piece of good news. He's found something, I think. He's shifted to solo research, and should have a report out within a day or two."

At that very moment, Icarus was seated alone in his residence, staring grimly at the documents spread before him. He was, at his core, not a commander at all. He was merely a scholar whose intellect had deposited him within the Central Assembly, and thus, by a stroke of misfortune, left him in charge.

For now he had entrusted that position to Skyborne City's machine spirit, Astartes, and a handful of trusted researchers. He had thrown himself completely into verifying one hypothesis he could no longer ignore.

Two comparison charts lay before him:measurements taken before and after restarting the research into the void from its very foundations. Before the restructuring, progress had been nonexistent; afterward, the improvement was notable... yet still agonizingly slow.

The more Icarus thought about this, the stranger it seemed.

How could there be this many errors in established theory? In every other field, newer methods surpassed the old. This was true of magitech, alchemy, and even the knights' arts. Technology always led to more progress—unless something had gone horribly wrong.

"...Only one thing could have caused all these issues," he murmured. "Malicious interference. If all subsequent research was built on a flawed foundation, then every advance would be progress toward the wrong destination."

This was his dreaded conclusion.

"In every other discipline, magitech and alchemy, for example, the foundations of the theory are observable and independently verifiable. But the same cannot be said of the void."

He drew a slow breath. "Could all known information on the void—every text on wizardry, every method of cultivation—be wrong from the beginning? Deliberately altered? Deliberately misleading?"

To deceive the world for so long without anyone noticing, these false foundations would have to be perfect. Every step had to appear correct, every method producing a result that seemed right, even as practitioners drifted farther from the truth with each attempt.

That was impossible in any ordinary field. But wizardry and the void were ambiguous, malleable things. They presented truths that shifted when observed, concepts that resisted definition.

And if all their imparted understanding of the void had been rewritten, if the foundations passed on from one generation to the next were riddled with flaws...