Alistair sat with his back against the tree, chewing slowly. The cooked beef was passable—tougher than what he'd prefer, but enough to silence the sharp ache in his stomach.
He licked his fingers clean and leaned back, letting his eyes drift up toward the sky.
Still clear. Still bright.
"Three hours walking, six scans, plus fire magic and cooking runes… and I'm still not recovering," he muttered.
He raised his hand again, forming a small mote of light between his fingers. It flickered weaker than usual—thin, unfocused.
Mana still flowed in the environment—thick and unstructured—but his body wasn't absorbing it.
...Why isn't my core pulling it in?
He closed his eyes and drew inward, focusing on the state of his own mana circuits.
Empty.
No cycling.
Just... static.
His brow furrowed.
"Even in deep-void fields, there's some ambient draw. I should at least be passively regenerating..."
He pressed his palm to the grass beneath him. It thrummed with mana, heavy and raw, like a saturated sponge.
But it didn't move into him.
"…It's just sitting there. I can feel it, but it won't flow."
He stood up slowly.
Not alarmed. But something close to unease crept in.
"Am I... cut off from the ley system? Or is this world just built differently?"
He glanced at his hand again. Formed a basic flare spell—low cost.
The sigil sparked, flared, and vanished.
His reserves dropped.
Still no recovery.
"Tsk. This isn't good."
If I keep casting like this, I'll run dry.
A slow exhale left his chest as he stared out at the horizon once more.
First no people. Now no mana flow.
"...Where the hell did that crystal send me?"
"if things keep on like this i might just die from mana loss.."
He adjusted his robe, brushing the dried dirt from the hem. The wind blew gently across the plain, bending the tall grass in waves, soft and slow.
"I need to conserve what I have left," he muttered.
He flexed his fingers, quietly checking the circulation in his palm. No tingling, no flicker of internal draw—his core remained silent.
This isn't normal.
Normally, even in cursed zones or old-world deadlands, a mage of his level could force some amount of pull. But here, it was like the mana refused him. Not resisting. Just... ignoring.
It's not rejecting me. It's like it doesn't even recognize me.
He looked to the horizon again. No buildings. No spires. No signs of magical architecture.
Just an endless, too-perfect wilderness.
"…I need to find something. A formation, a shrine, a ruin—anything that uses mana the way it's supposed to," he said aloud, just to break the silence.
He began walking again. The sun hadn't moved much—if at all.
He checked the position. Still nearly overhead.
"How long has it been? Three, maybe four hours? Yet the sun's barely shifted?"
The more he walked, the more disconnected it felt.
This world was like a painting. Alive and still at the same time. Flowing mana, bright colors, high detail—yet no people, no motion, no time.
His pace slowed.
"…What if this isn't just a different region," he said quietly, "but a different world entirely?"
He stopped.
The idea hadn't truly settled until now.
His thoughts circled the memory of the crystal. The glyphs. The pull. The sudden warmth and light. The shift.
"This could be a sealed plane... or a constructed realm. Or even…" He frowned.
He didn't like that thought.
He rubbed his temples. "Either way, if I can't absorb mana… I won't last long."
Chapter 2 – Part 2: The Ruin and the Broken Eye
The grass gave way to thicker terrain. Trees clustered closer together. Vines coiled over heavy trunks, and the shadows grew deeper with every step.
Alistair slowed as the light dimmed unnaturally.
He narrowed his eyes. The mana changed here. It grew heavier… colder.
And wrong.
He extended his senses outward—cautious, not probing. The currents didn't resist him. They simply bent around him, as if conscious and avoiding contact.
"Dark-aligned?" he muttered under his breath.
Not quite.
The signature wasn't infernal. Nor necrotic. It wasn't tethered to death or sin. It was older. Primitive. Malformed. Like a splintered echo of true mana—coalescing only where light refused to reach.
"This place is steeped in unnatural shadow…"
He paused. Considered turning back.
Then he saw it.
Movement.
Lurching between the trees came a figure. Humanoid, in shape only. Pale skin stretched tight over bloated limbs. Empty sockets glowed with ember-orange light.
An undead.
Alistair didn't flinch.
Instead, something like relief stirred faintly in his chest.
"If there are undead… there were corpses. And if there were corpses…"
He allowed himself a small smile.
"Then there were people."
No undead could form without a necromantic anchor—a soul's shadow, even if broken.
But something felt off.
Their bodies were… wrong. Limbs moved in stiff, jerky arcs. Their torsos were too squared. Their proportions were unnatural—thick-limbed and over-formed, like animated statues made by a half-blind apprentice.
"Crude constructs?" he muttered. "No sigils. No runes. No summoning glyphs."
He narrowed his eyes.
"Just shaped flesh… given motion?"
"either way i don't even have magic left to cook let alone fight"
He didn't approach.
He watched.
Then circled wide through the underbrush, leaving the creatures behind.
And that's when he saw it.
Past the tree line, half-swallowed by vines and roots, stood a temple.
A ruin.
Stone. Moss-covered. Old—very old. But undeniably crafted by intelligent hands. Weathered bricks formed archways and collapsed stairwells. Decorative carvings lined the outer wall, dulled but not erased.
Alistair's pulse quickened.
"…Finally."
He moved quickly, brushing aside the vines as he stepped through the broken entrance. The architecture was unfamiliar—unlike Kingdom marble, Dominion obsidian, or Dwarven granite. But it held purpose. Structure. Memory.
A shrine to something forgotten.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
Still, he entered.
The air changed instantly. Colder. Stale. Dust floated in shafts of light cutting through cracked stone. Roots wove through the floor like veins, creeping toward something below.
He moved carefully. Each step placed with precision.
He'd raided his share of ruins during the Great Continental War. He knew how to walk like someone who wanted to live.
And there it was.
A chest.
Plain. Wood reinforced with iron bands. No sigils. No runes. No glow.
But something in his gut twisted.
His eyes scanned the room. There—
A faint glint beneath the moss. A tripwire, almost invisible. Threaded across the floor and angled toward a small, rusted dispenser built into the wall.
Alistair almost laughed.
"These people really thought I'd fall for this?"
He stepped over the wire and approached the chest.
Then—he stopped.
There it is again…
The moment his fingertips touched the surface of the chest , his world tilted.
Pressure dropped.
Light bent.
He staggered slightly, catching himself with his other hand.
"Time magic…? No, wait. Spatial? No—it's both."
Layered enchantments. Dense, deep. Threads wrapped around the object like folded dimensions—nested, compressed, bound.
His heart skipped once.
He opened the chest
His vision blurred.
Symbols—foreign and jagged—floated before his eyes, rotating in slow, agonizing rhythm. The floor rippled. The air broke apart like glass.
Alistair stumbled back.
His breath caught.
"What—?! No. No, no, this can't be an illusion. My eyes—!"
His right eye blazed—the Eye of the Fallen dragon king , bound to his soul through blood oath.
His left surged with power—of his Magic Eye , enchanted for absolute truth.
Together, they saw through all illusion, all misdirection.
And still—what he saw remained unchanged. the rune magic of the chest fighted his eyes and gave him immense pain the chest had space-time magic he felt something was there
No illusion.
It was real.