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The alchemical symbols were unmistakably of the same structure as the magical glyphs Ian had brought from the tower earlier. He exhaled heavily.
"Albus must have seen something in you. You're both the same, always unearthing old relics and then dumping the trouble on me."
Shaking his head with a mixture of resignation and amusement, Nicholas turned to a long, narrow cabinet and rummaged through its cluttered depths until he retrieved a strange, arcane-looking device.
"What's that?" Ian asked, curiosity ignited by the peculiar design. The object was about the size of a small magical trunk and crafted from a silvery alloy rarely seen outside of ancient vaults. Its surface shimmered faintly with complex, laced carvings, each glowing softly, as though etched with dormant enchantments.
Every line seemed to pulse with long-lost magical principles. In one corner was set a faceted crystal, clear, gleaming, and glimmering like a star caught in glass. Ian could feel instinctively that the crystal was not only the device's heart but also the key to unlocking its hidden potential.
"I call it the Prism Box of Secrets," Said Flamel, grunting as he lifted the thing. Ian quickly stepped forward to help, but Flamel deftly avoided him, clearly refusing to admit that his age was catching up with him.
"It's for deciphering the nature of obscure magical artifacts?" Ian guessed, a bit uncertain, still focused on the crystal.
"Exactly," Flamel confirmed. "We may not be able to translate each rune or inscription directly, but this helps analyse the inner workings of ancient magical constructs by comparing their structure and resonance to known magical laws."
"After all, most magic shares fundamental patterns. Even the oldest glyphs can be broken down if you understand the logic behind their design. Those ancient enchanters weren't creating magic from nothing, they worked within the same magical reality as we do."
Flamel began pulling out several long, hollow tubes from the Prism Box of Secrets. They looked surprisingly like something a Muggle tinkerer might cobble together, but any seasoned alchemist knew that refusing useful knowledge, even if inspired by the Muggle world, was folly.
With careful, methodical precision, Flamel connected the tubes to various points on the old, broken clock.
"Even broken things like this can be analysed?" Ian asked, surprised. He knew he was still an amateur in the alchemical arts, but he hadn't expected such a complex system to be decipherable in its current state.
"You underestimate me, young man," Flamel replied, a chuckle escaping his lips. It took him over ten minutes to finish attaching the final threads of tubing.
"Step back a bit."
As Flamel bent down to initiate the ritual enchantment, he glanced at Ian, who instinctively tightened his grip on his wand and cast a protective charm around himself.
However,
Flamel's next words left him utterly speechless.
"No, not because it's dangerous, I'm just afraid you'll swipe the core crystal from my device the moment my back's turned. I've half a mind to believe you've practically emptied the tower you stumbled into."
Ian was left without a retort.
"..."
He was about to argue that he wasn't a thief when Flamel twisted the prism into place, and the Prism Box of Secrets suddenly roared to life in a silent, blinding blaze of colour.
Scarlet like dragonfire, sapphire like ocean depths, emerald like ancient forest, golden like mid-morning sun, violet like starless void, silver like moonbeams, and obsidian like shadowed corners of the soul…
The rotating gem locked itself onto an unseen axis and began turning smoothly, casting a kaleidoscope of luminous beams throughout the room. Periodically, it would flare with light, drawing streams of magic inward.
Ian couldn't make sense of the device's precise workings, but he was beginning to understand why Flamel had been so protective. The shifting crystals looked like they could buy a manor in Hogsmeade apiece.
The spectrum of colour soon coalesced into a focused beam that lanced through the old clock, scanning it from within, as if plumbing its secrets.
Time stretched slowly onward.
New symbols began to appear on the surface of the Prism Box of Secrets, not the familiar scripts of Arithmancy or Ancient Runes, but something entirely foreign. Even Ian, a polyglot fluent in over two dozen magical dialects, found himself utterly lost.
"Can't read them, can you?" Flamel grinned. "That's because I made the language myself. No one else can understand it."
He puffed up slightly with pride as he stepped forward, ready to interpret the secrets only he could reveal.
Many times, those like Nicolas Flamel, wizards who had lived long, extraordinary lives, found great amusement in crafting things that defied ordinary understanding. Creating an entirely new language, for instance, was something Ian had only ever seen on that old American Muggle television show, The Big Bang Theory, before he'd crossed into this world. In one of its episodes, the characters and their fans had cobbled together a fictional tongue by patching elements from other languages.
But this was different.
Nicolas Flamel clearly operated on an entirely different level. His self-invented language bore no resemblance to any script Ian had encountered. And Ian, who had mastered more languages than most living linguists, was absolutely certain of that.
[Language Proficiency (Level 7): 534/6400]
One glance at the shimmering system prompt in the Twilight Realm confirmed just how many dialects Ian had committed to memory. He devoted time each day to language study, be it Gobbledegook, Mermish, or even the obscure rune dialects used by ancient druids, so if anyone could speak on the topic with authority, it was him.
"What's your device telling you?" Ian leaned in closer, his brow furrowed as unfamiliar symbols scrolled across the Prism Box of Secrets. He couldn't decipher the script, not even a letter.
"Something... odd," Flamel muttered, no longer shielding his findings from the young wizard.
He read in silence for a moment, the shifting patterns of light dancing across his aged face, his expression slowly transforming from intrigue to puzzlement.
"What's strange about it?" Ian peered more intently at the device's inner workings. Beneath the prism, a marvellously complex mechanical structure was visible, an enchanted contraption built from gears, runes, and alchemical coils. It resembled a living mechanism, like a miniature magical labyrinth, its workings whispering secrets only a master alchemist might understand.
"I initially assumed it was a variant of a time-turner," Flamel began, squinting at the glowing readings, "but... now I'm not so sure." He glanced at the colossal broken clock once more, his usually clear eyes now clouded with disbelief. "If my readings are correct, and my judgement rarely errs, then this isn't a time-turner at all. It's something far more peculiar... a time-capture device."
"A time-capture device?" Ian's heart skipped. He immediately recalled the time loop he'd been trapped in, one wrought by Salazar Slytherin himself. That particular loop had been laced with fate's own threads, a high-level enchantment well beyond the reach of ordinary magic.
"So... you mean it repeats the same period of time? Like reliving the same day?" Ian asked, startled.
"No, no, no, it's not quite that simple," Flamel corrected with a wave of his hand. "This device doesn't reset time. Rather, it seizes a segment, whether a few days or several months, and stitches the beginning and end together seamlessly. There is no reversion, no 'starting over.' Think of a Möbius loop: time flows endlessly within, and those caught inside continue to live, unaware that they've been looped."
"A Möbius loop?" Ian echoed, attempting to visualise it.
"Indeed. And as long as this thing continues to run, time within it flows normally. A year, ten, even a hundred could pass, and no one within the loop would notice the cycle. It's an incredibly intricate form of magical containment. But I cannot imagine why anyone would go to such lengths, it would take a staggering amount of magical energy to maintain such a device."
Ian considered that. "Perhaps... it was meant to avert a catastrophe?"
Nicolas Flamel paused. The theory didn't seem far-fetched.
"To hold back disaster... Yes, that could be it. But it would have to be something immense, something that threatened an entire magical civilization." He rubbed his temples, visibly thinking. "Has there ever been an event like that in our history? A magical calamity on such a scale? Babylon, perhaps? Atlantis? Lemuria? You stayed in Britain during the break, didn't you?"
Ian winced. "Er... not exactly?" How could he explain that the Twilight Realm couldn't be found on any Muggle globe?
"..." Flamel simply stared at him.
Choosing not to press, the old alchemist turned his attention back to the broken device.
(To Be Continued…)