Professor Filius Flitwick carefully set the dark stone fragment down upon the velvet-covered table.
Its edges were rough and jagged, as though torn from a greater whole by brute force. The surface bore a strange, dull sheen — a mixture of dried blood and ancient dust that seemed to have endured a thousand years.
Yet what truly made the dueling master's expression so grave were the runes carved upon it.
They were incomplete, twisted, like living things writhing in pain. Every stroke emanated a bone-deep malice. Merely gazing upon them made the air in the Dueling Club feel thick and suffocating.
The moment Alan's gaze met the surface of that stone fragment—
Time itself seemed to slow.
All sound and light from the outside world faded, dissolving into a blur. His consciousness was wrenched free from reality, drawn into an infinite abyss of darkness and silence.
This… was his Mind Palace.
In the next instant, that silence erupted into flame.
Those incomplete, twisted runes magnified infinitely within his mental vision — every stroke, every curve, so vivid it sent shivers down his spine.
They were no longer mere symbols. They writhed like living entities, pulsating with corrupted logic — fragments of "malicious code" infused with both intellect and insanity.
Then, a cold, emotionless thought surfaced within the core of Alan's mind:
Target confirmed.
Ancient algorithm fragment: "Logical Labyrinth."
Information source match — The Fortress of Thought, Third Edition, page 472, Note Seven.
Match accuracy: 98.7%.
Confirmed.
His Mind Palace — a grand mental construct built from absolute reason and limitless knowledge — now functioned like a supercomputer beyond the reach of this age, roaring to life with unimaginable processing power.
"...I see."
In the real world, Alan's lips barely moved, his voice little more than a whisper.
His body remained utterly still; even his pupils did not waver. Yet deep within them, a storm of data surged and burned across the expanse of his consciousness.
Within his Mind Palace, countless databases of fundamental rune syntax were called upon simultaneously — every formula, every magical law gleaming like constellations across a boundless mental sky.
Command: Initiate reverse-engineering protocol.
Target: Rune fragment 'Logical Labyrinth'.
Step One: Fragment Deconstruction.
Every incomplete rune on the stone was torn apart by his will, disassembled into its most basic magical grammar units. Twisted lines straightened. Hidden nodes surfaced. Deceptive structures peeled away layer by layer.
Step Two: Semantic Analysis.
Each elementary unit was compared at high speed against the base rune library, its magical functions instantly identified.
"Repulsion." "Distortion." "Recursion." "Disguise." "Implantation."
Each was labeled with chilling precision.
Step Three: Structural Reconstruction.
The disassembled fragments began to rearrange within his Mind Palace — not following the malicious, misleading order on the stone, but adhering instead to the fundamental logic of magic itself.
He sought to restore the code to its original, pure form — before corruption had taken hold.
Countless rune structures flashed through his thoughts — combinations, simulations, collapses, reconstructions.
One false path after another was exhausted and discarded. One logical trap after another was identified and marked as hazardous.
Such a process would have consumed a lifetime for any modern runic scholar.
But within Alan's mind, under the crushing weight of absolute computation, all of this occurred — in the blink of an eye.
In the real world, scarcely ten seconds had passed.
The storm subsided.
Alan's pupils refocused, and the endless streams of data faded, leaving only crystalline clarity — an omniscient calm. He lifted his head to look at Professor Flitwick.
That gaze was tranquil and fathomless, yet it carried a pressure that bordered on divine omniscience.
Under that stare, Professor Flitwick — the battle-hardened, unshakable dueling master — felt his chest constrict, his breath momentarily seize.
"Professor," Alan said evenly, his voice calm yet resonant. "You were right."
It took Flitwick a full second to find his voice again; his throat felt parched.
"...What do you mean?"
"This rune sequence can indeed be used to construct a mental assault."
Alan's tone was precise and analytical, dissecting the matter like a master surgeon.
"Its principle," he continued, "is the same as the chess game we just played. It doesn't crush the target's mind with brute force — it's subtler. More lethal. It infects."
He paused, then added quietly:
"It implants a logical virus into the victim's mind."
"This virus rewrites the target's most fundamental cognitive logic. For example — it could make the subconscious believe that 'one plus one equals three,' or that 'up is down.' Once implanted, the victim's mind will try to reconcile this contradiction... endlessly."
"In doing so, their thoughts spiral into infinite recursion — a logical black hole that consumes their sanity, until the mind collapses entirely."
By the time Alan finished, Professor Flitwick's face had gone deathly pale.
He had spent decades studying that fragment, sensing its danger — yet never once had he come close to understanding it this completely.
And Alan had done it… in mere seconds.
Alan paused, then pressed on — his next words shattering even the calm of that revelation.
"But attack," Alan said softly, "is only its most primitive use."
There was a strange, almost divine clarity in his tone — the tone of a creator studying his own work.
"Every virus," he continued, "has a corresponding antivirus program. Through the reverse-engineering I just performed, I discovered that this rune system possesses an almost perfect logical autonomy. Its offensive nature comes from how its energy pathways are configured for invasion and overwriting."
He paused, his dark eyes glinting with an unmistakable spark — the light of creation.
"But if we reverse those energy flows," he said slowly, "change the direction from output to input, from invasion to filtration... and modify the three key nodes responsible for validating logical autonomy…"
He smiled faintly.
"Then it wouldn't just attack. It could construct something entirely new — a defense beyond anything in existence."
"A Thought Firewall — unbreakable, self-sustaining, and absolute."
Alan didn't give Professor Flitwick even a moment to recover. His words flowed onward, clear and resolute, carrying the weight of revelation.
"A mental defense system capable of automatically identifying, analyzing, intercepting, and even reflecting any hostile psychic intrusion."
Words alone could never capture its magnitude.
To prove that his theory was no mere abstraction, Alan raised his right hand.
He didn't use his wand.
His fingertip itself became the most precise magical conduit in the world.
He began to move it slowly through the air.
With each motion, glowing runes bloomed into existence — lines of liquid silver light, pure magical energy taking visible form.
But these runes were not like the corrupted, twisted ones etched into the ancient stone.
They were new — elegant, flawless, harmonious.
The first rune stabilized in the air, steady as a foundation stone.
The second appeared, linking seamlessly to the first through a fine thread of radiant energy.
Then a third. A fourth. A fifth.
Each stroke flowed with the effortless rhythm of music — graceful, confident, and perfectly measured.
Dozens, then hundreds, of runes emerged, connecting, nesting, spiraling into a three-dimensional formation that shimmered with impossible beauty — a masterpiece of logic and order.
It was a structure so intricate it seemed alive: a vast constellation woven from light and magic.
And when Alan drew the final stroke — closing the last circuit of the array —
"Hum—"
A soft sound echoed deep in the soul of every person present.
It was not a sound of the physical world, but a resonance of completion — the very rule of Order itself acknowledging its birth.
The radiant rune array shone brilliantly for a moment, then began to fade.
Layer by layer, the light dimmed, folding in upon itself — until it vanished entirely, as though the space around it had absorbed it into being.
Nothing visible remained.
And yet, everyone could feel that something fundamental had changed forever.
Professor Flitwick stood frozen.
His mouth hung open; no words came out. His thoughts were a blank void.
Decades of study.
Decades of confusion, of tireless searching and fruitless hypotheses.
That cursed ancient mystery — the malignant enigma that had haunted him half his life —
Had just been unraveled, reversed, and reborn before his eyes…
By an eleven-year-old boy.
No — Alan hadn't merely solved it.
He had deconstructed it, reorganized it, and transcended it — turning an ancient weapon of madness into a fortress of reason.
For the first time in his long, illustrious career, the world-renowned dueling master — celebrated for his intellect and finesse — felt something deeper than shock.
It wasn't awe.
It was reverence.
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