Rain poured down on the wilderness.
Under the flashes of lightning, the muddy ground reflected a pale, ghastly glow. Ian and Cam had just steadied themselves outside the city when a bone-chilling cold crept up from behind them before they could catch their breath.
"Found you!"
Through the curtain of rain, a crimson figure emerged from a crack in space.
The Ghost Bride.
She dragged five pitch-black coffins behind her. With every step she took, frost formed on the ground as though death itself were advancing toward them. Her red veil whipped wildly in the wind. Her gaping, bloody mouth was slightly open, and her crimson eyes were locked onto Ian's like a hunter staring down its fleeing prey.
"She... she followed us?!" Cam's voice trembled as he nearly collapsed to the ground. "We couldn't even shake her with Apparition?!"
Ian's expression turned grave.
He had thought the distance outside the city would be enough to escape her. But it seemed her existence transcended the limits of space; she wasn't chasing them.
She was inevitably arriving.
"She isn't relying on speed, and she isn't tracking us," Ian murmured. "She's been defined as someone who must find me. As long as I remain on this land, she will appear."
The Ghost Bride raised her hand.
Crimson threads lashed out like whips, tearing through the rain as they shot toward Ian's throat.
Yet Ian remained calm.
He was a wizard with trump cards, more than one, in fact.
He knew that, once he played his trump card, he could escape this situation. However, seeing that the Ghost Bride had already caught up, he decided to try studying her creation using conventional means first.
Because of that...
The Ghost Bride's shriek tore through the night sky. Her rotting wedding dress writhed under the moonlight like a living creature.
Ian could feel the structure of spacetime around them begin to twist. The Embryo was using a hidden connection to alter the laws of reality and strengthen its minion.
Clearly, it was also eager to harness the power of a legendary wizard like Ian.
"Mr. Ian!" Cam weakly grabbed his arm. Golden patterns had already spread across the young man's face. "She's going to..."
Before he could finish... the Ghost Bride's figure split into seven blurry phantoms that surrounded them from different directions.
Every movement she made left trails of golden sand in the air.
Those tiny particles floated and assembled into a three-dimensional net that encircled them.
Seeing this, Ian gave a sharp shout.
"Wall of Flames!"
His wand swung fiercely.
The ground exploded with a thunderous roar, and a sea of fire over ten meters high surged upward. Flames rolled, and heat waves raged, instantly splitting the wilderness in two.
Within the inferno were ancient incantations infused by Ian himself—powerful enough to burn a soul. The Ghost Bride stood before the blazing sea. Her red veil snapped in the hot wind.
She did not stop.
She did not hesitate.
She stepped directly into the flames.
The fire devoured her body. Her wedding dress instantly turned black, her skin peeled away, and her crown melted.
Yet she continued walking through the fire.
Black mist poured from her wounds, constantly healing her body. Her crimson eyes flickered within the flames like a lighthouse from hell.
She was not burned to death.
She did not even slow down.
By the time she stepped out of the inferno, her body had corrected itself back to its original form. The anti-magic effects that Ian had woven into the flames had failed to take effect.
"Fiendfyre."
Ian's wand traced a blazing blue ring of fire.
This was not ordinary Fiendfyre; it was an enhanced version mixed with Ian's system magic. The flames shone with an eerie blue glow, melting space itself into glass-like crystals wherever they passed.
The Ghost Bride's phantoms paused briefly before the wall of fire.
Ian seized the opportunity. He grabbed Cam and traced the Apparition pattern in the air with his wand.
At that very instant, space began to twist... seven golden threads shot through the wall of flames like lightning and wrapped tightly around Ian's ankles.
"The groom wishes to see you."
All seven Ghost Brides spoke at once, their voices overlapping into a chilling echo.
Ian felt an icy chill spreading upward from his ankles.
Those golden threads were not merely physical restraints; they were rewriting his body's state, attempting to synchronize him with the Ghost Bride's fundamental substance.
"Not a chance!"
Ian's wand burst with blinding violet light.
"Temporal Severance!"
The instant the violet light collided with the golden threads, strange folds in space and time formed.
Ian saw his left hand suddenly become half-transparent while Cam's hair rapidly turned white and then black again. The Ghost Bride's figures split and recombined within the warped spacetime like reflections inside countless mirrors.
But that brief reprieve vanished in an instant.
The Ghost Bride's core, the crystal embedded in her chest, erupted with a blood-red glow.
All spacetime abnormalities were forcibly "smoothed out."
Ian's wand hummed in dissatisfaction.
"Useless...useless..."
The Ghost Brides chanted in unison.
Golden sand gushed out from their bodies, forming complex, three-dimensional runes in the air. They were the opposite of every spell Ian had used earlier.
Cam suddenly began coughing violently. What he spat out was no longer blood... but a mixture of golden sand and blue crystal fragments.
"W-what's happening to me?"
He was filled with terror.
"It seems the other side doesn't intend to let you go, either."
Ian realized that Cam was also experiencing a kind of "synchronization" influence. The Ghost Brides all raised their arms at the same time, the hems of their wedding dresses fluttering despite the lack of wind.
Ian could feel the structure of reality around him beginning to collapse. Some higher-dimensional force was rewriting the laws of physics in an attempt to imprison them forever in this loop, transforming them into the same kind of existence as the Ghost Brides.
It was time.
Ian took a deep breath and suddenly pressed his wand against his temple.
The action caused the Ghost Brides to freeze for a moment, as if they could not comprehend the prey's apparent act of self-destruction.
They likely thought Ian was trying to end his own life.
However...
Was that really the case?
Of course not.
Ian gritted his teeth; his mind was already made up. He knew conventional magic had no effect on her. Her existence was anchored by a higher-level rule: she had to catch up to him.
That was the "mission" given to her by the Embryo of the evil god, the very definition of her existence.
To change that, one had to change the definition itself.
Ian, of course, possessed a power of the same level.
"Any pursuer shall never touch what is pursued.
Any seeker shall ultimately lose themselves in the act of seeking.
I declare that it is a paradox for her to catch me.
Therefore, this 'catching up' cannot come to pass."
Ian closed his eyes and murmured softly.
He was invoking the Paradox Divine Authority he had obtained from the Dark Wizard, one of his ultimate trump cards.
As his final words fell, a deep blue light suddenly erupted and spread across the entire space like ripples.
In that instant…
The sky and earth seemed to freeze.
The Ghost Bride halted her steps.
She stood in the sea of flames, her crimson eyes still locked on Ian. Her bloody mouth was open as if she were about to scream, yet her body could not move forward even a single step.
Yet her body could not move forward, not even a single step.
She raised her hand and shot out blood threads, but they twisted and shattered in midair as if striking an invisible wall.
She tried to go around.
She tried to teleport.
She tried to tear open space.
No matter what she did, some higher-order force denied her arrival.
Her existence remained intact. Her mission remained. However, the act of "catching Ian" had already been defined as a logical impossibility.
It was like trying to draw a square circle or achieve motionless movement.
Her actions had become a paradox that could never be realized.
"What kind of magic is this?!" Cam stared in shock.
"Divine authority," Ian replied quietly. His pale face clearly showed the immense cost of using such power against an opponent connected to a false Sun God.
Even if he was false, he was still a pseudo-deity, a being whose rank stood above Ian's.
The moment the final syllable fell, spacetime seemed to pause.
The Ghost Brides froze mid-leap.
Their golden sand halted in mid-dispersion.
Even the wind stopped flowing.
"It's not about power, but about definition," Ian explained softly. He showed no sign of collapsing and still had enough strength to explain to Cam. "I redefined the relationship between her and me. She can exist; she can pursue. But catching up has been forbidden by the logic of the universe."
Within the sea of flames, the Ghost Bride struggled in a berserk frenzy.
For the first time, something resembling confusion appeared in her crimson eyes.
She raised her hand and pointed toward Ian. Blood threads shot out again, only to twist into a strange ring in midair before finally dispersing.
She could not understand.
All she knew was that she had to pursue him, yet she could not comprehend why she could not catch him.
In the Paradox Domain, only Ian and Cam could move. The young man stared at everything in stunned silence, his lips trembling but unable to form words.
Ian offered no further explanation. He grabbed Cam by the arm.
"Apparate!"
This spatial jump was smoother than any before. There was no resistance or interference, almost as if the entire universe were making way for their escape.
When their vision cleared, they were standing on a cliff overlooking the western bank of the Nile River. In the distance, Memphis lay beneath the moonlight like a slumbering giant.
"T-they..." Cam collapsed to the ground, pointing toward the opposite shore.
Even from so far away, seven golden lights could be seen flashing wildly above the city. The Ghost Brides were clearly still trying to pursue them, but an invisible force held them in place.
Each time they moved a certain distance beyond the city, they were instantly reset to their starting point.
They were like ants trapped on a Möbius strip.
In fury, the Ghost Brides merged together again into a single body.
Yet, that made no difference either.
No matter what she did, the Ghost Bride could not reach Ian and Cam.
Some power was influencing her, ensuring that she could never meet Ian again.
It was the supreme divine authority that Ian possessed.
"The Paradox has taken effect," Ian said, examining the half-broken wand in his hand. His voice sounded tired, but satisfaction lingered in it. "Until someone breaks the definition I set, she will never truly approach us."
Hearing this, Cam curled up in a crack in the rocks, never taking his gaze off Ian.
That expression... a mixture of awe and fear, Ian had seen it in the eyes of many people before.
Cam had previously believed that, as a Legendary Wizard, Ian was someone worthy of immense respect. But after witnessing what had just happened, he realized that he might have underestimated Ian after all.
"Just which god are you the incarnation of?" Cam finally could not hold back the question. His voice was dry, like the wind blowing across a desert. It was the only explanation he could think of.
Otherwise, how could Ian possess divine authority?
"Hm?"
Ian used his broken wand to sketch the Temple's structural layout on the sand. Hearing the question, his hand paused.
He looked up. Morning light flowed through his gray-green eyes, reflecting a hint of helpless amusement.
"Cam, I'm going to tell you a fact."
With a light snap of his fingers, the drawing in the sand reorganized itself into Hogwarts' crest.
"How could a wizard be something as inconvenient as a god?"
The young man froze, obviously confused. He opened his mouth, his gaze shifting back and forth between the broken wand and the drawing in the sand.
"But you used divine authority to define a paradox. That's something only the Gods can do."
"And that," Ian interrupted, gently tapping Cam's forehead with his wand, "is exactly the problem."
"You've carved the word 'impossible' too deeply into your thinking."
The river wind suddenly shifted, carrying the faint scent of burning from the direction of the Temple in the distance. Ian stood up. The hem of his black robe swept across the sand, erasing all the drawings.
He looked toward the city on the opposite shore, shrouded beneath a pillar of crimson light. His voice was calm, as though he were explaining the most basic principles of transfiguration.
"The power of the gods comes from faith, so they must be perfect. They must meet expectations."
"And that is precisely their greatest shackle."
"Have you ever wondered why gods need believers? Why do they accept sacrifices, prayers, and offerings?"
"Because they are defined by belief. Their power comes from being believed in. Their existence depends on being worshiped."
"Once no one believes in them anymore, they will fade away like ashes in the wind."
"Gods are fixed beings. Once they are given a certain divinity, God of War, God of Wisdom, God of Death, they can only ever be that god."
"They cannot change. They cannot question. They cannot doubt. They are imprisoned by their own divinity, like prisoners locked inside a golden cage. That's the price of what they gain. When gods choose that path, they must also bear the cost of that path, being forever trapped inside their own divinity."
"There are advantages, of course. But there are disadvantages too—and in truth, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages."
Ian turned and looked directly at Cam.
"But wizards are different. We embrace mistakes, explore contradictions, and dance on the edge of paradox."
"It is precisely that uncertainty that allows us to come closer to truth than any god ever could."
"And we possess infinite possibilities. All that's required is belief—belief that we ourselves contain true power."
Ian spoke the philosophy he had summarized throughout his own journey.
"What?! There's… such an idea?"
Cam's eyes slowly widened.
Almost unconsciously, he reached into his robe and touched the Twilight Hermits Society badge on his chest. The sunset emblem on it was faintly warm.
"You mean… magic itself is greater than the gods?"
"I'm saying that gods are simply one form of powerful existence," Ian replied.
His broken wand suddenly emitted a silver glow, sketching a model of a quantum cloud in the air.
"And the most fascinating thing about this universe is…"
The cloud split apart and reassembled, transforming into many different representations of the universe's fundamental nature. Under Ian's influence, they constantly shifted and changed.
"...that wizards, as observers, can change the nature of what they observe."
That was what made wizards different. Every wizard possessed a fragment of the creative power of the Creator, a truth most wizards themselves did not realize.
But Ian had discovered it.
And now…
He was passing that knowledge on without reservation to a wizard not much younger than himself.
"So that's how it is… Our Twilight Hermits Society actually has similar ideas," Cam said weakly, slumping onto the icy ground as he caught his breath, though his eyes never left Ian. "But the way you explain it… it's much clearer."
The way he looked at Ian was no longer mere respect.
It was almost reverence.
A surge of warmth rose in Cam's chest.
He had always believed that the ultimate goal of magic was to become a god—to obtain supreme power.
But Ian had shown him something different.
The true pinnacle of magic was never becoming a god at all.
What conclusion could possibly stir a wizard's heart more than that?
Especially when that conclusion came from a wizard who could wield divine authority itself.
Cam finally understood.
He looked at Ian again, and the awe in his eyes had transformed into a light of awakening.
Perhaps…
The history of wizards
Was about to turn to a new chapter from this moment onward.
(End of Chapter)
You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395