He drew the heavy tome out from the shadow of the shelf.
The pages were made of an extraordinary material—parchment so supple it defied belief, yet strong beyond measure. Each sheet lay smooth as if new, without a curl or blemish, the only mark of its age being a faint yellow hue that whispered of centuries past.
In this sealed chamber, belonging solely to him, Alan did not look for a desk or chair.
He simply sat upon the floor, leaning against the cold stone wall, and spread the tome open across his knees.
All the noise and light of the outside world had been cut off; only the scent of ancient dust and faint parchment fragrance floated in the air. His entire world was now compressed into the book before him.
The first line came into view.
With just that single line, Alan's Mind Palace—renowned for its calm and perfect order—shuddered violently.
The theory of Occlumency that he had known so well, that the modern wizarding world revered as gospel, was denied outright, arrogantly dismissed at the very opening of this book.
The writing, sharp and merciless in logic, dissected the existing methods of mental defense.
Whether it was emptying one's mind to create a blank void, or raising an impregnable mental wall—
"Foolish."
The word was written bluntly upon the page.
"Inefficient, and utterly naïve."
The author's judgment carried an authority that allowed no dispute. An empty room only revealed its hollowness at a glance to any invader. A lone wall, however sturdy it appeared, could only ever be shattered beneath a stronger will.
This, the text claimed, was nothing but a passive, fragile defense waiting to be broken.
Alan's breath caught faintly in his chest.
That very ability—the construction of mental walls—was what he had always taken pride in. Yet in the author's eyes, it was nothing more than a child's trick.
Suppressing the turbulence of his thoughts, Alan forced himself to continue reading.
True ancient Occlumency, the book declared, was not a mere defensive spell.
It was an active art, an architecture of the mind, offensive in nature.
The word "architecture" made Alan's pupils contract.
Its central principle was not to "resist."
But to ensnare.
Not to "hide."
But to mislead.
It demanded that the practitioner, within their own mental world, construct a vast, intricate maze of thought—filled with traps of logic and paradoxes.
Any will attempting to pry into your mind would not encounter your true memories.
Instead, they would step into endless corridors of fabricated recollections, all designed by your own hand, each indistinguishable from reality yet contradicting one another.
An intruder might see you being chased by a dragon in childhood, and in the very next breath, see you ruling the Ministry of Magic just yesterday. They might discover a path leading toward your deepest fear—only to find it spiraling into an endless paradox, a cycle as insoluble as the riddle of "the chicken or the egg."
The invader's spirit would wander these false halls endlessly, led astray by false clues, ensnared by flawed logic.
In the end, their will would be consumed, trapped utterly within the labyrinth.
Perhaps even destroyed, devoured by the very logical traps of the maze—lost forever.
A perfect, self-sustaining firewall…
The brilliance of the concept detonated like thunder within Alan's Mind Palace.
His mental fortress of memory nodes and logical chains began to hum violently, shaken by this revolutionary idea. It was not an upgrade—it was upheaval from the very foundation, a total reconstruction.
His blood surged; a feverish urge to create gripped him wholly.
Without hesitation, he began.
Following the book's guidance, he embarked on a project so vast it bordered on impossible: the construction of the grand Labyrinth of Thought.
He placed his existing Mind Palace at its very core, the foundation of the labyrinth.
Step One: Construct the outer defenses.
He summoned his memories, weaving around the palace's outermost layer a façade of misleading recollections—a deceptive camouflage meant to confuse.
He wove the memory of being punished at age seven in a Muggle school for talking back to a teacher, but he altered the details: the teacher's face became that of Professor Snape. Then he constructed—
The next memory he wove was of seeing Lilia—not with her wand in hand, but holding a carrot instead.
These memory fragments were carefully scrambled, their logic twisted, riddled with misleading details.
Alan sank deeper into the ecstasy of creation, a pleasure akin to Genesis itself. His mental power surged with unprecedented efficiency.
When the surface-level disguise was finally constructed, he turned the page, ready to continue learning how to build the labyrinth's core—the most dangerous region of all.
His fingertip slid past the penultimate page.
Then, it touched… nothing.
The fever of creation froze instantly.
Alan's movement halted.
Lowering his gaze, he fixed his eyes on the end of the book.
The final page, where the most crucial content should have been recorded, was gone.
In its place was a neat, smooth cut, as though sliced away by the sharpest of magical blades.
It was no accident of tearing.
It was deliberate, calculated destruction.
That missing page had almost certainly contained the method for constructing the labyrinth's core singularity of logic—the decisive trap that could annihilate any intruder.
Without it, everything Alan had built so far—this embryonic, dazzling labyrinth of memory—was nothing more than an ordinary maze without an exit.
It could confuse. It could drain.
But it could not inflict any lasting damage.
It lacked the final, fatal snare.
A cold tide rose in his chest, mingling disappointment with frustration.
At that very moment, a rapid series of emotionless, electronic chimes echoed within his Mind Palace.
[Warning: Core theory missing. "Fortress of Thought" project construction failed.]
Harsh red script flashed before his awareness.
[Main Quest Updated: Rebuild the Fortress of Thought.]
[Quest Requirement: Find the missing page, OR, through independent deduction, create the core method of the Thought Labyrinth.]
Red was replaced by radiant gold.
[Side Quest Triggered: Search for the Missing Page.]
[Ultimate Quest Activated: Absolute Lord of Thought.]
[Quest Objective: Construct a perfect, unbreakable, absolutely secure dominion of the mind.]
The cascade of prompts, glowing alternately in gold and crimson, circled within his inner world before etching themselves into the deepest walls of his Mind Palace.
The surrounding air fell silent once more.
Alan slowly, inch by inch, closed the incomplete tome.
The faint snap of its pages shutting rang sharp and clear in the stillness of the chamber.
His gaze lingered on the smooth scar where the missing page had been, his eyes dark and fathomless.
This book…
This page, torn with surgical precision, that carried the secret of the core…
What it concealed was not merely a lost magic.
It pointed toward a secret.
A secret far larger—and far more dangerous—than anything Alan had imagined.