A few days had passed since his father, his instructors, and the physician had realized the truth of his terminal illness, and the mansion had settled into a heavy and suffocating routine.
Every morning, while the sky was still a deep and dark blue and the rest of the household was sound asleep, Fainyx woke up and immediately reached for his magic.
He did not use a chant and he did not draw a magic circle, he simply pulled the space apart and stepped into the Aetherium. The air inside his private portal was fresh and thick with pure mana, and he immediately started his morning run.
He pushed his fragile body across the vast and green grass, running as hard as he could to build his stamina against the Hollow Constitution Syndrome, and his father and the physician did not know that he did this secret exercise every single morning in the dark because he kept his portal completely hidden from everyone.
When his legs felt heavy and his running was done, he walked over to the patch of rich soil where he had planted the Kalmias. He examined them quietly and they were growing beautifully in the space he had made, their petals luminescent and healthy as they drank in the pure energy of the dimension.
There were more than ten of them last time, but he counted only nine left in the dirt. He remembered how he had carefully taken one out and placed it in a vase in his living room a few weeks ago, specifically so he could give it to his new master Yong before he left.
Yong could not know about the existence of the Aetherium, and Fainyx preferred to keep his lazy life as uncomplicated as possible.
As he stood up from the glowing flowers, Fainyx looked around and he realized with a quiet shock that the space he had made was continuing to grow. When he had first created the portal, it was merely the size of a small garden, and then it had expanded to the size of a normal village, but now it stretched out so far that he could not help but walk for thirty full minutes just to reach the end of the new terrain.
The river had also lengthened, winding through the landscape with a clear and musical sound, and when he crouched by the bank and looked closely, he could see actual fishes living and swimming inside the water.
'Just how much bigger will this portal be?' he thought, his violet eyes following a silver fish as it darted playfully under a rock.
'I created this to be a storage space and now it is turning into an entire world...'
He walked further into the new lands and he saw a massive tree standing tall in a clearing, and there was a big red thing hanging high up in the branches.
"Is... that an apple?"
He realized it was an apple, and he used a delicate thread of his wind magic to pull it down safely into his hands. He smelled it and it smelled incredibly good, carrying the scent of pure and unpolluted nature, and he took a cautious bite.
He was completely shocked. The juice of the apple spread out on his tongue and it was crunchy and sweet and watery all at once, and it was so delicious that his carefully maintained emotionless demeanor completely faded away.
A genuine and bright smile broke across his face, and he thought to himself that it was a very delicious fruit, much more delicious than any normal apple he had ever eaten in his past life on Earth.
He finished the fruit quickly and took out a seed from the inside, noting that it was a bit bigger than what he expected, but he just shoved it into his pocket and left the tree behind.
As he continued to explore the edges of the river, he spotted some strange plants with dark leaves, and it looked exactly like a plant that gives coffee beans.
He took a closer look and realized that it was indeed exactly what he thought it was, and he saw that some of the small berries on the lower branches were already ripe and red. He took one and opened the inside, and even though the bean was all white, he knew for a fact it was a coffee bean.
'Coffee!'
he thought, and his internal voice was doing a quiet victory lap. 'This is truly excellent.'
He spent a few more minutes enjoying the peaceful silence of his world before he opened the portal and stepped back into his bedroom, sealing the Aetherium shut just as the sun began to peek over the horizon.
He changed out of his running clothes and sat on the edge of his bed, and a few moments later, the heavy door to his room opened, and the Duke and physician Michael walked in to begin their daily morning examination.
"How are you feeling this morning, Fainyx?" the Duke asked, and his voice was thick with the same lingering anxiety that he carried every single day since he had cried in the office.
Michael stood beside him, his hands already glowing with a warm and cozy aura. "Please remain still, young master, I must check your mana pathways to see if the illness has worsened over the night."
Fainyx sat on the bed with his perfect, blank mask firmly back in place. He felt the physician's aura move inside his body, and it was warm and comfortable, but he couldn't help but let out a dry sigh in his head.
'I just ran for half an hour and explored a massive magical dimension, and now I have to sit here and pretend I am a fragile piece of glass that cannot move,'
he thought while his violet eyes stared blankly ahead.
He reached for his notebook on the nightstand and wrote slowly and deliberately.
[ I am feeling fine today. There is no pain. ]
The Duke read the words and he let out a long breath, and he gently patted Fainyx's head with a relieved but guilty smile, completely unaware of the vibrant and massive world his son was hiding just behind the fabric of space.