What had the black-robed wizard realized?
He had realized exactly where the ruins his teacher had shown him were located.
The black-robed wizard stood at the edge of the Shadow of Time, his robes fluttering in an invisible wind. Moments ago, he had witnessed those twisted, writhing, formless creatures.
Some had no eyes, yet somehow seemed able to peer into souls. Others had no mouths, yet whispered in voices cold enough to chill marrow.
They weren't creatures from Hell, nor were they creations of the Abyss.
They were corrupted beings.
They were grotesque mutations born after creatures tainted by those terrifying entities had rotted away within the Time Rift, warped by the corrupting magic they carried.
That's right.
Even now, the Ministry of Magic still didn't know exactly what those terrifying beings were. All they knew was that they were unspeakably evil, the lingering echoes of something even older, something beyond description.
Their very existence corroded the boundaries of reality itself.
They broke down logic.
They shattered sanity.
They lay completely beyond everything modern magic understood. This wasn't simply magic falling into darkness. It was as if some kind of living creature was using magic to hide something even more horrifying beneath it.
The black-robed wizard felt as though he had fallen into an icy abyss. He spun toward the Blind Wizard beside him, his voice hoarse like torn parchment.
"The ruins you discovered back then... the place that cost you your eyesight... it was here?"
"The Ministry of Magic was built on top of these ruins, wasn't it?"
The air seemed to freeze.
In the distance, the warped shadows let out silent shrieks, twisting even time itself. The black-robed wizard felt his thoughts slowly being soaked through by a thick, sticky darkness.
Those creatures hadn't come from the past.
They had never left.
They had been lurking beneath the foundations of the Ministry of Magic this entire time, feeding like parasites on the will and dreams of every witch and wizard who cast spells, twisting order itself into nourishment for madness.
"There's a reason for that. I never told you before because simply knowing this truth is a form of corruption. Yes... it's that hopeless, and that terrifying."
The Blind Wizard slowly nodded, a calm almost tinged with sorrow appearing on his face. A century ago, his eyes had turned to ash after he looked directly at what lay beyond the Gate. But that hadn't been failure. It had been the price of surviving.
"Continue. Watch until you've seen everything you're capable of understanding. After that, I'll answer your questions."
The Blind Wizard turned his attention back to his memories.
---
"Die, monsters! All of you, die!"
In the memory, Kag hurled his battle-axe without hesitation. The spinning weapon struck the monster squarely in the head.
But something even more horrifying happened. The creature didn't die. Countless tiny tendrils burst out from the split skull, trying to stitch the wound back together.
"They have incredible regeneration!" Lina cried as she cast Purification Aura. Holy light washed over the tendrils, melting them away like snow beneath the sun.
Saruman's eyes narrowed.
"Use fire and Holy Magic. They're afraid of pure energy attacks!"
The three worked together flawlessly. Saruman and Lina focused on controlling and weakening the monsters, while Kag finished them off with his enchanted battle-axe. After a grueling battle, they finally cleared the swamp of its immediate threats.
"These creatures are completely abnormal," Saruman said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Their biology goes against every law of nature."
Lina stared into the depths of the swamp, her voice trembling.
"What confuses me most is... how have they survived in such a sealed environment for so long? From what I can sense, this cavern has existed for at least ten thousand years..."
Kag nudged one of the monster corpses with his boot.
"Did either of you notice? After they die, their bodies decompose almost immediately and get absorbed by the swamp. It's like..."
"...a self-sustaining ecosystem," Saruman finished, nodding as his expression grew even grimmer. "A carefully designed... twisted ecosystem. I have a feeling we've only seen the tip of the iceberg."
They skirted around the swamp and continued deeper into the cavern.
The tunnel gradually sloped downward, becoming steeper and steeper. The walls on either side slowly changed into a smooth, unnatural material. It felt warm and polished like jade, yet gave off unsettling waves of energy that left everyone deeply uneasy.
"We're heading toward the Earth's core," Saruman estimated after judging their depth. "We've already gone deeper than any known magical ruin. There's something profoundly wrong about this place."
Lina suddenly stopped, her face turning deathly pale. "Wait... I can feel... something ahead... Something enormous. Something... ancient."
In the end, she couldn't resist activating her sensory ability again.
Kag tightened his grip on his battle-axe. "Friend or foe?"
"I... I don't know. I really don't know. It's beyond anything I understand. I don't even dare to truly sense it... let alone observe it directly."
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"It's just... there. Existing. Like a mountain. Or an ocean..."
Saruman took a deep breath. The tip of his wand glowed with a steady light. "No matter what, we keep moving forward. The truth is waiting ahead."
They rounded another bend, and all three froze at the sight before them.
The narrow tunnel was gone. In its place stretched an enormous space so vast they couldn't see its boundaries.
At the center stood a stone corridor whose beginning and end were nowhere to be found. It twisted and coiled in ways that defied geometry, forming an eerie, endless loop.
The walls were covered in those strange moving runes, each one radiating unsettling magical energy.
"...The Infinite Corridor,"
Saruman muttered under his breath. Fear filled his eyes, but so did the excitement of uncovering a monumental secret.
"The legendary passage connecting the Mortal Realm... to the Unspeakable Place."
Lina's crystal ball suddenly erupted with blinding light before going completely dark. She collapsed to the ground as silent tears streamed down her face.
"We never should have come... This is a forbidden place beyond all forbidden places..."
Kag slammed the butt of his battle-axe against the ground with a heavy thud. "We're already here. There's no turning back now." He looked at Saruman. "What do we do next?"
Saruman stared at the Infinite Corridor, which almost seemed alive. After a long silence, he finally spoke.
"We move forward. But remember this: from this point on, everything we see may overturn everything we think we know. Don't blindly believe what you see. Hold fast to your own hearts. And remember! Wizards are the strongest! There is nothing a wizard cannot overcome!"
Perhaps he had reached the same realization Ian once had. And now, he was putting that belief into practice.
But... watching this memory, the Blind Wizard wore an expression far too complicated to describe.
---
Inside the prison cell, the silver illusion shimmered gently.
The black-robed wizard stared at the Infinite Corridor, his entire body going rigid. Even beneath his hood, the shock he felt was impossible to hide.
"This is... This is the Abyssal Corridor recorded in the Ministry of Magic's highest-level classified archives!" His voice trembled with disbelief. "The legendary passage that connects to the Unspeakable Place. The Ministry spent centuries and exhausted every resource it had just to seal it."
He suddenly turned toward the Blind Wizard, his voice filled with complicated emotions. "Master... were you the one who first opened it? Was it you who uncovered this place all those years ago?"
Clearly, the Blind Wizard had never told him this before. That was why the revelation hit him so hard now.
The Blind Wizard, Saruman, gave a bitter nod. Though his eye sockets were empty, it almost seemed as if tears were flowing from them.
"Yes... my child. That reckless fool who believed he could uncover every mystery in existence... that fool was me."
His voice carried a thousand years of regret.
"What followed cost me everything. My eyes. My companions. My future. Now I regret it more than anything, but nothing can be undone. All I can do is spend the rest of my life trying to make up for that mistake."
His body trembled with pain as the memories he had buried for so long became the sharpest blades, cutting into his soul again and again.
The black-robed wizard instinctively stepped forward, as if to support him, but stopped in the end.
"Keep watching," the Blind Wizard said weakly but firmly. "Watch until the end, my child. You need to know the whole truth before you can understand what we're truly facing."
The silver light steadied once more, and the memory continued.
---
Standing before the Infinite Corridor, the young Saruman took a deep breath, forcing down the shock in his heart. He turned to his two companions, doing his best to sound confident.
"Kag. Lina. I know this is terrifying. But remember why we founded the Eye of Dawn. To explore the unknown. To uncover the truth."
Determination shone in his blue eyes.
"What lies before us... this mad ruin... it could rewrite the entire history of magic. We can't turn back now."
Perhaps, in this respect, he wasn't so different from Grindelwald. He was ambitious. And because of that, he would spend the rest of his life filled with regret.
Kag let out a heavy snort and tightened his grip on his battle-axe.
"We've come this far. We can't leave empty-handed. But Saruman, let me make one thing clear: if things go bad, we retreat immediately."
Lina was still pale, but she managed a small nod.
"My gift of prophecy is completely useless here. But this was our choice. So I'll stay with you until the end."
They encouraged each other, slowly regaining their fighting spirit. Then, the three of them cautiously stepped into the Infinite Corridor.
The moment they crossed the threshold, an overwhelming pressure settled over them, making it hard to breathe. The writing carved into the walls seemed to come alive, writhing ever so slightly whenever their eyes passed over it. It radiated a constant, low-level mental corruption.
"Don't stare at the writing for too long!" Saruman warned immediately. "It will affect your mind!"
Unlike Ian, none of them possessed exceptionally strong mental resistance. Their ability to withstand the corruption of these runes was limited, forcing them to move forward with extreme caution.
The corridor was even stranger on the inside than it had appeared from the outside. Although they seemed to be walking forward, they constantly felt as if they were going in circles.
Even worse, time itself flowed differently here. The hands of their pocket watches spun wildly, making them dizzy and nauseous.
"Over there!" Kag suddenly roared, swinging his battle-axe into the shadows.
A deformed creature lurking in the corner was split cleanly in two. It had the shell of a beetle but human-like arms. Even after being cut apart, it continued crying like a baby. The sound alone was enough to make anyone's skin crawl.
"That's horrifying!" Lina immediately cast a Purification Spell, the holy light dispersing the black mist rising from the creature's corpse. "These creatures... they're mutants created by the corruption in this place."
As they continued deeper, they encountered even more unimaginable horrors: mushroom-like monsters that spat acid, slime creatures that split apart and regenerated, and mimics capable of luring them with perfectly imitated human voices. Every battle was a desperate struggle. Not only did these creatures have grotesque forms, but they also possessed bizarre abilities that were almost impossible to guard against.
Clearly, unlike when Ian had come here, the corridor in this era was still filled with Aberrant Creatures.
"The way they attack... even the way their bodies are put together... none of it follows the laws of nature!" Kag panted after another battle. "They don't even match anything I know from anatomy!"
One of the flying creatures had sliced his arm with a razor-sharp scale, and the flesh around the wound had already begun turning black and rotting.
Saruman immediately cast a healing spell, but it barely worked. "The corruption here is too strong. Ordinary magic is being heavily disrupted."
In the end, he had to resort to an ancient form of White Magic before he was barely able to stop the wound from getting worse.
Lina was in even worse condition. Although she had protected herself with a Sealing Spell against most of the mental corruption, the endless whispers filling the corridor continued to erode her will. Her eyes gradually lost focus. From time to time, she would suddenly freeze, her mind going completely blank.
"Lina, stay with us!" Saruman caught her as she nearly collapsed, pouring pure magical power into her body. "We're almost there. I can feel it. The exit of the corridor is just ahead!"
It was obviously meant to comfort her, but it wasn't exactly a lie. In a place this terrifying, even a little reassurance could be the best medicine to keep someone from losing their mind. And the words did seem to give Lina a little strength; she steadied herself and gave a weak nod.
After an especially brutal battle, this time against a swarm of bizarre creatures that could manipulate shadows, the three of them finally saw the end of the corridor.
A gigantic stone door stood before them. Its surface was carved with incomprehensible patterns that radiated an unsettling magical aura.
It was unmistakable. Ian had been here as well.
A thousand years had passed, changing the outside world beyond recognition. Yet inside these ruins, it was as though nothing had changed at all. Perhaps it was because time flowed differently here, or perhaps it had something to do with the strange permanence Ian had sensed within this place.
"That's it! We've made it!" Excitement flashed across Saruman's face. "Every secret... every answer... I'm sure they're waiting behind that door!"
Kag's spirits lifted as well, despite the many wounds covering his body. "Finally! I don't want to spend another second in this damned place. Let's get whatever we're here for and leave as fast as we can!"
The three hurried toward the stone door. As they drew closer, the carvings became clearer, depicting twisted star charts, impossible geometric patterns, and the outlines of creatures that looked as though they were writhing in endless agony.
"These carvings are incredible..." Saruman studied them with fascination. "They seem to be describing some ancient prophecy."
Just as they were about to reach the stone door…
"AAAAAHHHHHH!!"
Lina suddenly let out a scream so desperate it tore through the corridor. The terror and despair in that single cry sent chills down both Saruman's and Kag's spines.
"Lina? What's wrong?" Saruman rushed over and caught her before she collapsed to the floor.
Only then did he realize something was terribly wrong with her. And as the Blind Wizard continued casting the memory spell, tears of regret streamed from his empty eye sockets.
(End Of This Chapter)
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