It happened on a Thursday, during an ordinary practice session, with no particular warning.He had been working through the deeper intensity level that Vera had recommended after Foundation Establishment completed — holding the void frequency expanded for longer periods than he had managed in the early weeks, letting the void core engage with the ambient energy of the northern region rather than just maintaining its own stillness. It was not comfortable work. The northern region's disrupted qi pushed back in ways the cleaner southern valley had not, and holding the expansion steady against that took a quality of attention he was still developing. Most sessions ended with him releasing the practice before he had reached the duration he was aiming for, because he had learned in the waste pit that pushing past a genuine limit was less productive than working up to it gradually.On the Thursday session he had been holding the expansion for about twenty minutes, longer than most days, and

The first attempts at holding ambient qi inside the mirror went about as well as the first attempts at the expand-and-return motion had gone back in the waste pit — which was to say, not particularly well, in ways that were instructive rather than discouraging.The mechanics of the hold were straightforward enough in theory. He brought the void frequency into the expanded state, selected a specific ambient frequency from the northern Wastes' constant background noise — he started with the compressed earth energy running through the valley floor because it was the most stable and therefore the easiest to isolate — and then instead of simply reading it off the mirror surface, he tried to draw it inward, into the void space, and hold it there.What actually happened was that the earth frequency touched the mirror surface, he directed his intention toward drawing it in, and it simply did not come. Not with any resistance, not with any particular feedback. It just stayed where it was and h