The journey begins with a deceptive sense of normalcy as Utsushikome and her pragmatic companion, Ran, traverse the bustling streets of Old Yru to attend a high-profile academic press conference. Beneath her quiet, self-deprecating exterior, Utsushikome is hiding a secret letter from an old family friend, revealing that the legendary Egomancer, Samium of Ur-Ysar, is being kept alive in the secret sanctuary of the Order of the Universal Panacea. This revelation transforms a simple academic excursion into a high-stakes rescue mission, as Samium is the only person who might hold the key to curing Utsushikome's own deeply buried affliction and explaining her grandfather's dark past. At the Academy of Medicine and Healing, the smug Headmaster Ishkibal parades the class of prodigies before a crowd of elite investors, while the ambitious class representative, Kamrusepa, delivers a bold speech about defeating death that makes the traditionalist audience visibly uneasy. The group is soon split by gender under the guise of security protocols, and Utsushikome boards the massive Aetherbridge lift to ascend to the Empyrean Bastion. During the ascent, she tries to distract her anxious classmates with a series of dark, botched jokes, barely concealing her own growing dread as the lift undergoes a reality-bending transposition process. Looking out into the starry void of the Empyrean, she spots a fleeting, impossible anomaly clinging to the underside of the bastion—a dark, spider-like shape that vanishes in a split second, leaving her to wonder if they are being watched by something that defies the very laws of life in a vacuum. Upon arriving at the bastion, the tension increases when they are forced to surrender their scepters to a heavily armed security force, stripping them of their immediate defensive capabilities. As they navigate the labyrinthine, ancient streets of the fortress, Utsushikome realizes that the safe, predictable world of the academy is rapidly fading behind them, replaced by a web of paranoid security measures and hidden agendas that threaten to swallow them whole.

The mystery deepens as the girls are escorted through the abandoned, vandalized lower levels of the Empyrean Bastion by a silent, heavily veiled driver who refuses to reveal his face or identity. He leads them to a primeval, subterranean ruin that predates modern civilization, featuring bizarre fertility idols and a colossal, weathered statue of a nameless man reaching for the heavens. At the end of this ancient hall lies the Nadir Gateway, a room that has no floor, opening directly into the terrifying void of the Empyrean with the planet Mimikos shimmering thousands of miles below. Despite the lack of any physical barrier, the air is held in place by an incredibly complex, energy-intensive enchantment that defies conventional physics, forcing the terrified travelers to step onto a path of hovering black tiles that materialize only when they advance. In the center of this void, they sit on a suspended platform beneath a beautiful, hypnotic mural that depicts a circular, looping version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero is doomed to repeat his quest for immortality in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. The circular nature of the painting triggers a profound sense of unease in Utsushikome, who senses a quiet, mocking contempt woven into the very brushstrokes of the art. Suddenly, the platform undergoes a jarring transplanar teleportation process that leaves their minds temporarily suspended in a dark, silent void where time itself ceases to hold any meaning. When they regain their senses, they find themselves in the Sanctuary of Apsu, a massive, glass-domed greenhouse built at the bottom of a pitch-black, high-pressure ocean on the lower plane of Atelikos. The transition is so violent that the gentle Ophelia immediately collapses and vomits on the floor, while Utsushikome is seized by a terrifying sense of deja vu, realizing that the layout of the sanctuary and the timing of the events are matching a sequence of memories she has no rational way of possessing.

While exploring the sanctuary, Utsushikome wanders into a sealed, water-filled section of the arboretum and discovers the Nittaimalaru, a gargantuan, alien-like biological construct resembling a twisted, oil-slicked tree that is engineered to survive the crushing pressure of the ocean floor. Here, she is ambushed by her brilliant former mentor, Neferuaten, who instigates a rapid-fire magic duel to test her reflexes and improvisation skills. Utsushikome manages to win through a desperate, unorthodox physical tactic, biting her own finger to bridge their bloodlines and bypass Neferuaten's anatomical defenses with a life-slaying incantation. Their reunion is cut short when they return to the main building and find the servant, Yantho, collapsed in the kitchen, while the adjacent pantry has been subjected to a localized time-acceleration anomaly that has rotted all the food and covered the walls in thousands of mysterious tally marks. This unsettling discovery casts a shadow over the evening dinner, where political tensions explode between Bardiya, a cynical veteran of the bloody Ikkaryonic revolution, and Durvasa, a pro-Alliance Biomancer who defends the state's brutal pacification campaigns. As the two clash over the morality of the ruling gerontocrats and the unequal distribution of life-extending therapies, the ambitious Kamrusepa aggressively takes Durvasa's side to protect her own career prospects, sparking a bitter argument that tears the social fabric of the class apart. The atmosphere is shattered when the child prodigy, Lilith, coldly declares that all arcanists are murderers anyway, silencing the room with a chilling reminder of the violent history that built their comfortable society. Retreating to her room in a state of exhaustion, Utsushikome performs her nightly acclimation exercises, recording her thoughts in a secret journal while struggling to maintain her sanity against a growing conviction that she is trapped in a repeating loop of tragedy.