The two days following Silas's warning were thick with a quiet, anxious tension. The easy peace of the Inn had evaporated, replaced by a watchful silence. Leo found he couldn't focus on his aura practice; his mind kept replaying Silas's words. A specialist in analysis… deconstruction… finding a loophole. It was the kind of threat he understood far better than a glowing warhammer. Brute force was simple. A legal or systemic attack, however, was a nightmare he knew all too well from his past life.
Lyra spent more time in the main lobby, her hand never far from the hilt of her sword. Her stoicism was a mask for a deep-seated unease. She had faced the Order's power her whole life, but the thought of its most brilliant minds picking apart the secrets of her only refuge clearly disturbed her. Silas was flitting and restless, his tail a constant, twitching barometer of his anxiety. He would repeatedly check his whispering stones, his network of spies providing no new information. The Duke and his hired expert were a ghost, their approach silent and unknown.
On the third morning, as Leo was staring blankly at the [Renovations] menu, unable to muster the enthusiasm to plan, the Spirit Guide's voice bloomed in his mind.
Master. A vessel of significant magical and material Value is approaching the property line.
The trio exchanged a look. Showtime.
Leo walked to the grand entrance, flanked by Lyra on his right and Silas on his left. He didn't command the doors to open this time. Instead, he focused his will, and a section of the dark, opaque wood shimmered, becoming as clear as glass. It was a new trick he'd been working on, a one-way window to the outside world.
Through it, they watched as a vehicle emerged from the swirling mists. It was a carriage, but it moved without horses, gliding silently over the strange ground. It was an opulent, absurd creation of polished mahogany, gold leaf, and gleaming crystal. Blue lines of energy pulsed beneath its chassis—a piece of high-end, magic-tech engineering. It came to a silent stop a respectful fifty feet from the Inn's invisible boundary.
The door opened, and Duke Carrington stepped out. He looked less imperious than before, his usual arrogance replaced by the eager, anxious expression of a man relying on a hired specialist. He turned and offered a hand to the passenger emerging behind him.
The man who stepped out of the carriage was the Duke's opposite in every way. He was elderly, with a neat, pointed white beard and hair that flowed down to his shoulders. He wore deep blue robes embroidered with complex, silver constellations that seemed to shift and twinkle. He didn't lean on a staff, but instead, three fist-sized crystals floated in a slow, perfect orbit around his head. He was Archmage Theron Valerius, and he carried himself not with the arrogance of power, but with the supreme confidence of a man who believes he is the smartest person in any room he enters.
"That's it, Archmage," the Duke said, his voice a faint sound even through the Inn's walls. He pointed an accusatory finger. "That's the blasphemous structure. It swallows magic whole and defies all known laws. Dispel it. Erase it from existence."
Valerius did not look at the Inn. He looked at the ground, at the air, at the strange, colourless flora that grew near the property line. He adjusted a magical lens that floated in front of one eye, his expression one of academic curiosity.
"Patience, my dear Duke," the Archmage said, his voice calm and condescending. "Destruction is for journeymen and barbarians. True mastery lies not in demolition, but in deconstruction. First, one must understand the nature of the lock before one can forge the key."
He raised a hand, and the three crystals orbiting his head whirred to life, moving into a triangular formation in front of him. "Let us see what we are dealing with."
Inside, Lyra drew a sharp breath. "The Trinity Lenses," she whispered, her voice tight. "A legendary diagnostic tool. It is said they can perceive the very weave and weft of magic itself. He is not attacking. He is… reading."
Leo's heart, which had been surprisingly calm, began to beat a little faster. This was it. The intellectual assault.
Valerius began to chant, his words precise and clipped, like a professor dictating a complex formula. The three crystals glowed, projecting intricate beams of light that converged in front of him. From that point of convergence, a beautiful, complex web of ethereal blue energy began to spread out, like a spider spinning a web made of pure light. The threads were impossibly fine, each one humming with analytical power. The web expanded rapidly, covering the fifty-foot distance in an instant, and drifted toward the front of the Inn.
It was the most sophisticated piece of magic Leo had ever seen, a tool of pure information. It was designed to map every ward, every enchantment, every ounce of power in a structure.
The web of light touched the invisible boundary of the Inn's domain.
And nothing happened.
There was no explosion, no flash of light, no resounding clang of magic hitting a shield. The threads of the diagnostic spell simply… stopped. Where the ethereal blue energy of Valerius's spell met the empty air of the Inn's property, it vanished. It didn't bounce off. It didn't dissipate. It was unmade, erased from existence as neatly as if it had been snipped from reality with a pair of cosmic scissors.
The Archmage's chanting faltered. His eyes widened behind his magical lens. He pushed more power into the spell, and more threads of blue light shot forward, only to meet the same fate, vanishing into nothingness at the exact same invisible line. He was casting a net into a sea that wasn't there.
"Impossible," Valerius breathed, his academic composure finally cracking. He let the spell die, and the floating crystals dimmed, returning to their slow orbit around his head.
The Duke looked frantic. "What is it? What's wrong? Why isn't it working?"
The Archmage ignored him, his gaze now fixed on the Inn with a burning, obsessive intensity. The earlier confidence was gone, replaced by the voracious curiosity of a scholar who had just discovered a phenomenon that defied all known principles of his field.
He did not look defeated. He looked fascinated.
"It is not a shield," Valerius murmured to himself, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. "A shield resists. This… this is a null-field. A true null-field. The foundational laws of magic here are… different."
He turned to the Duke, his eyes gleaming with intellectual fervor. "My dear Duke, this is far more interesting than I could have possibly imagined. Your payment is accepted. I will solve this puzzle."
Inside the Inn, Leo let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The immediate danger had passed, but a colder, more profound sense of dread settled over him. The Archmage wasn't giving up. For him, the real work had just begun.