The entire city seemed to be built from enormous blocks of stone that radiated an ominous, ghostly green glow, assuming the material could even still be called stone.
Whatever the strange substance was, it formed structures twisted to the absolute extreme, completely defying Euclidean geometry. The entire city leaned at impossible angles, like a towering labyrinth on the verge of collapsing at any second, yet somehow standing for thousands of years.
Arches coiled like entrails, massive stone bridges linked different buildings with no apparent logic, and enormous, bizarre structures took on shapes that defied description.
From an architectural standpoint, it lacked any trace of beauty.
Deathly silence hung over the city, devoid of the slightest sign of life. It felt like the colossal corpse of an ancient giant, lying quietly beneath the murky yellow sky while radiating a desolate, blasphemous presence capable of driving anyone insane.
'"Avada Kedavra!"'
Accompanying a young yet chilling voice, a dazzling, ominous beam of green light shot up from within the city like a venomous snake tearing through the sky.
The killing intent laced within it was pure and absolute.
However, the brilliant green light wasn't aimed at Saruman and his two companions.
Like a living serpent, it moved faster than the eye could follow, tearing through the suffocating silence at the edge of R'lyeh before disappearing deep among the twisted buildings.
The spellcaster was clearly attacking an enemy inside the city.
"Haa... haa..."
The deadly danger they had braced for never arrived.
Saruman and Kag breathed sighs of relief almost simultaneously, though their hearts continued to pound wildly.
For that brief instant, the pure, cold, and utterly undisguised intent to kill contained within the spell had felt like a physical spike of ice piercing the distance between them.
Even their souls had trembled.
"Such... such evil magic! What kind of spell was that?"
Saruman's face turned pale, his fingers tightening around his wand until his knuckles turned white.
He was exceptionally well-read and had encountered all kinds of Dark Magic, but he had never felt a spell so direct and absolute, something that felt like death itself given form.
It brought no pain.
It caused no suffering.
It simply ended life, completely and utterly.
That extreme purity only made it all the more terrifying.
"This definitely isn't magic an ordinary Dark wizard could wield!" Saruman thought with absolute certainty.
In this era, the Killing Curse had yet to become a standard spell every Dark wizard carried in their arsenal. It was known only within a small circle and certainly hadn't spread as far as Africa.
Naturally, a spell that would one day be classified as an Unforgivable Curse was no simple matter.
Although 'Avada Kedavra' belonged to the modern system of charms rather than Ancient Magic, its sheer power was by no means inferior to the highest tiers of ancient spells.
After all, there was a reason the modern casting system had eventually replaced Ancient Magic, it possessed its own unique advantages.
"Evil?"
Kag's reaction was completely different from Saruman's.
Once he confirmed the attack wasn't directed at them, relief washed over the warrior's face, accompanied by a flicker of excitement.
"Who cares whether it's a Dark wizard or a Light wizard!" His voice was hoarse from the narrow escape, but filled with hope. "Running into another person in a place like this is great news! Thank God... this makes me feel safer than finding food and water. At the very least, it proves this place isn't completely inescapable. If someone can get in, there might be a way out!"
Kag's logic wasn't unreasonable.
To him, no matter how evil the magic was, the fact that its caster was 'human' served as a beacon of hope in this desperate situation. As long as they were human, there was at least a chance to communicate, negotiate, or even use each other.
Of course, Saruman understood magic far better than Kag, and he was nowhere near as optimistic.
His brows furrowed tightly, his silver eyes filled with unprecedented gravity.
"No, Kag. It's not that simple." He stared toward the district where the green light had vanished, sensing the faint but frightening magical residue lingering in the air. "The wizard inside... is extremely powerful. Even from this distance, I can clearly feel the terrifying amount of power packed into that spell. He's no ordinary wizard. The depth of his magic, the precision of his casting... I'm afraid he's far stronger than I am."
He paused, his expression shifting into deep confusion and disbelief.
"And... did you hear that voice? It was so young. That was clearly a boy!"
"How is that possible? How could a wizard that young possess power that far surpasses mine?"
Saruman had always taken pride in his talent and strength. He was a peerless genius who had already touched the threshold of the Legendary realm.
How could a boy with such a youthful voice be stronger than him?
It completely shattered everything he knew.
There was only one reasonable explanation: the person wasn't human.
Or perhaps the owner of that voice wasn't actually as young as he sounded.
Saruman was no fraudulent fool with an unearned reputation. He was an elite wizard who had mastered the deepest secrets of ancient Dark Magic. He knew full well that even if a child began meditating in the womb, drank potions the moment their umbilical cord was cut, and slept beside dragons every night to temper their mind, they still couldn't possess such pure, immense magical power.
Saruman's own soul had been forged like steel through thousand-year-old scrolls and living sacrifices. His spells could tear through space and summon falling stars.
So how could some wet-behind-the-ears brat be stronger than him?
Unless... the caster wasn't actually human.
Or perhaps an ancient monster had taken over a child's body.
After all, Soul Transference really did exist in this era, as did possession, much like Voldemort possessing Quirrell.
Of course, stealing a body was far more advanced than mere possession. Possession was just temporarily controlling a host, like borrowing a house to shelter from the rain. Body theft, on the other hand, completely replaced the soul. The original soul was destroyed, the new one took its place, and even the body's magical imprint could be reshaped.
Perhaps that kind of magic had been lost to future generations, or perhaps its side effects had proven too severe. Either way, the magic existed.
Saruman had personally seen a pure-blood witch seal her consciousness inside a crystallized phoenix tear as she lay dying, only to reincarnate ten years later in the body of a newborn. By age three, that child could silently make every portrait in an entire manor weep and wail.
There was an even more sinister technique: Soul Core Parasitism.
A fragment of a powerful soul would be implanted deep within another person's mind, lying dormant like a seed. Once the host's magical power grew to a certain point, the fragment would awaken and devour the original consciousness.
The technique required absolute precision, the slightest mistake would destroy both souls. But if it succeeded... the host might look like a boy on the outside, while the will of an ancient Witch King lurked within.
In an instant, countless possibilities flashed through Saruman's mind. Could the owner of that voice be something like that?
"If that person really took over a child's body, his cruel and terrifying nature might be far beyond anything we can imagine."
Saruman closed his eyes and concentrated, replaying the lingering echo of the spell in his mind.
There had been a strange rhythm to it. Part of it sounded like a child singing a nursery rhyme, yet it carried ancient syllables that felt completely out of place in this era, like a final prayer spoken before Atlantis sank into the sea, or a reversed incantation from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
To Saruman, this bizarre mixture was classic evidence of body theft. The speech habits of the new body were clashing with memory fragments from the old soul, creating a strange magical resonance.
In truth, Saruman had completely misunderstood the nature of modern spellcasting, but that was hardly surprising. People of this era had never encountered the modern charm system before, so he could only interpret what he felt using the knowledge he had.
Ian's magic reminded him of a dried corpse he had found deep within an Albanian forest fifty years ago. The inside of its skull had been covered in reversed runes, while a crystalline heart embedded in its chest was still beating.
The local Muggles had called it the "Talking Treant," but only Saruman knew the truth: it was an ancient sorcerer who had tried to use Druidic Secret Arts to steal the spirit of an oak tree. He had failed, but his remains proved that people had never stopped trying.
If there were failures, it wouldn't be surprising if someone had succeeded.
Of course, that wasn't the only possibility. Saruman shifted his thoughts to the alchemical knowledge he had gathered over the years.
Standing there with his eyes closed, his mind wandered in a new direction.
'Alchemy. Yes... alchemy.'
A child's body combined with tremendous magical power... there was another explanation. It might involve one of the ultimate pursuits of alchemists: immortality and rejuvenation.
He wasn't talking about superficial tricks like turning stone into gold or the Elixir of Life mentioned in school textbooks. He meant the true, forbidden arts of alchemy buried in ancient manuscripts, written in ink made from human bones and performed under the shadow of a lunar eclipse.
Saruman had once spent three full years in the Egyptian desert, exploring the ruins of a Temple of Hermes buried beneath centuries of sandstorms. There, he had deciphered the 'True Scripture of Soul Return', a scroll written in dragon's blood on human skin.
It detailed a technique known as Soul-Flesh Recasting.
Through seven stages of purification, nine Soul Strippings, and three dissolutions of the physical vessel, an aged, decaying body could supposedly be returned to the very beginning of life.
In theory, it wasn't just rejuvenation, it was a complete reconstruction. It was like taking a piece of iron that had rusted for a thousand years and forging it backward into untouched ore.
The genius of the technique was that it didn't merely extend one's lifespan. It offered true rebirth. Unlike the crude physical mimicry of Polyjuice Potion or the body-stealing methods that relied on taking someone else's flesh, Youthful Rejuvenation was designed to restore the caster's 'own' body to its youth while preserving all their memories, power, and consciousness.
If someone had used a similar method, it would explain how someone with the body of a child could completely overpower him.
However, the price of such magic was exceptionally cruel. Anyone willing to use it was far from a good person.
Every attempt required the life force of a pure-blood infant as a catalyst, while a third of the caster's own soul had to be burned as fuel. If the ritual failed, their soul would shatter into fragments that could never be restored, cutting them off from reincarnation forever.
It wasn't just ruthless to others, it was equally ruthless to the caster.
Saruman had personally witnessed the fate of an alchemist who attempted it. The man successfully completed the first six stages, smoothing his skin to match a youth's while tripling his magical power. Yet on the final night, everything fell apart. His body became young again, but his soul was torn so severely that it could no longer bond with his restored flesh.
Under the full moon, the man became an empty shell, endlessly babbling nursery rhymes from his childhood. There was no trace of intellect left in his eyes, only a desperate longing to return to his nurse's arms.
That was precisely why Saruman had never dared attempt the technique himself. He understood all too well that while flesh could be reshaped, the soul was far harder to tame.
Yet now, hearing that young voice cast such a high-level spell made his heart stir. What if someone had perfected a method to merge the two, a technique that preserved the depth of an ancient soul while unlocking the full potential of a young body?
Just how many lives would someone have to sacrifice to perfect magic like that?
Granted, there were other methods of rejuvenation that didn't involve quite so much bloodshed. For instance, combining alchemical body reconstruction with Soul Transference, first using alchemy to purify and rejuvenate one's original body, then using a secret technique to transfer the intact soul into the newly forged vessel.
That could also achieve true rebirth, though the risks remained immense. If the compatibility between soul and body fell below a certain threshold, the mildest consequence was wild, unstable magic. At worst, the caster's personality would shatter completely.
Yet despite his youthful voice, the caster of that spell showed no instability whatsoever. His magical power flowed as smoothly and naturally as a great river, meaning his soul and body were in near-perfect harmony, as if they had always belonged together.
That didn't match any of the usual side effects of rejuvenation.
"Could it really be... 'that'?"
Saruman continued deciphering the stone tablet while keeping his attention divided. Perhaps his pride simply refused to accept reality, but that youthful yet immensely powerful incantation kept echoing behind his occlumency shields. Like the tolling of a great bell, he couldn't shake it off.
He was no longer considering just body theft or rejuvenation. One by one, even older, more forbidden possibilities began taking shape in his mind.
What if that child hadn't been 'born' at all?
What if he had been 'created'?
Among alchemists, there was one ultimate goal passed down through whispers, universally recognized as the absolute pinnacle of their art.
It wasn't turning stone into gold.
Nor was it immortality.
It was Life Alchemy, reaching directly into the domain of the Creator.
Using the seven great metals to represent the seven attributes of the soul, the five elements to build the foundation of the body, the power of the stars as a guide, and Phoenix Tears as a medium, life itself would be created inside a Perfect Geometric Array.
This wasn't some beast bred through potions, nor a corpse puppet stitched together with Dark Magic. It was a genuine miracle of creation, a living being brought forth from nothing, born entirely from pure magic and the laws of alchemy.
Saruman had once discovered a crystal tablet covered in spiral runes inside a forgotten ruin of Atlantis. According to the inscriptions, ancient alchemical sages had tried using a Philosopher's Stone as a core, combining the magical imprint of a pure-blood wizard, the pure will of a unicorn, and an uncorrupted human egg. At the exact moment a lunar and solar eclipse converged, they activated the Crucible of Life.
If the experiment succeeded, the resulting child would be born with flawless magical pathways, capable of perceiving the true essence of magic without ever having to learn it. What flowed through their veins wouldn't be red blood cells, but liquid magical power.
Such a being might look like a child on the outside, but internally, they would be the physical embodiment of alchemical laws. They wouldn't suffer from accidental magic during adolescence, nor would they blow up cauldrons due to emotional outbursts, because even their emotions would be precisely calibrated alchemical variables.
Their strength wouldn't come from training. It would come from design.
In a way, it was similar to the genetic engineering of later eras, different methods, but the same core concept. Magic could be used to construct life forms too; the requirements were simply far more demanding.
(End Of This Chapter)
You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395