Corvis Eralith
The outskirts of the floating island of Xyrus were, unsurprisingly, vastly different from those of a conventional terrestrial city.
Once the dense sprawl of houses and academy buildings finally gave way to a makeshift "countryside," there was very little land left before reaching the sheer edge of the island—a dizzying precipice that plunged all the way down towards the lands of Sapin far below.
Here, where the space was insufficient for proper agriculture and urbanisation had not yet encroached, mages trained rigorously alongside their beast bonds.
I walked along the rural extension of one of Xyrus City's main thoroughfares, observing the myriad flying mana beasts swooping through the sky in perfect synchrony with their masters' commands.
It isn't called the Magical Capital of the World by chance, I mused inwardly. Every available inch of Xyrus was ruthlessly optimised by, and for, mages.
Leaving the bustling urban centre behind me, I turned my focus towards locating the Mosque of Dawn.
It was the first of the two ancient dungeons I needed to visit, situated at the edge of the eastern sector of the island—the Fire Ward, one of Xyrus City's four element-named subdivisions alongside the Water, Earth, and Wind ones.
Here, exactly where the sun, Mordain, rose every day, the Folk of Calm Currents had once erected one of their two grand cathedrals.
From what Avicenna had explained, I reasoned that these structures were the Djinnic equivalent of Earth's most monumental sites of worship, not unlike St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
I came to a halt as I crested a short hill. There, at the very eastern edge of the floating island, lay my target. Avier silently descended from the sky, landing gracefully by my side.
It had once been a massive cathedral, its architecture a breathtaking fusion—marrying the sweeping arches and intricate geometry of Middle Eastern mosques with the grand, theatrical scenography of Baroque churches.
Or, at least, that was what my imagination supplied. In reality, the only thing standing before me, precariously overhanging the easternmost precipice of Xyrus, were the shattered, weathered ruins of what that glorious structure had once been.
Yet, gazing at the rubble, I could mentally rearrange the scattered pieces like a massive jigsaw puzzle, effortlessly filling in the gaps that the Asuras had completely erased from existence.
However, the site was far from abandoned.
"The academy utilises these ruins as advanced practice fields, far more complex than those available on campus," Avier explained softly. "I humbly beg you pay no mind to the children, Great Lord."
Sweeping my gaze across the ruins, I saw exactly what the wyvern meant. Upper-year students from the academy were busy navigating a rigorous training exercise through the fallen sections of the Mosque of Dawn.
The massive, broken stone slabs had been strategically moved and repurposed to create unique, challenging environments for their combat lessons.
Out here, far from the fragile infrastructure of the school and the bustling city, the students could fully practise their magic without restraint—obviously under the watchful eye of their instructor.
I looked up. Circling the skies upon the back of her beast bond—a Flare Hawk I remembered from the novel being named Torch—was Vanesy Glory.
She was one of Xyrus Academy's most capable combat professors, and a woman destined to become a captain of the Dicathian Army in the brutal war that followed the devastating school attack by Draneeve and his lackeys.
"Is it possible to stop the lesson?" I asked Avier. "I don't want anyone getting caught in the middle of what is about to happen."
My plan was quite simple. I would capture this exact moment in time with Retrocurrent, trigger the Reset, and raid the resurrected dungeon as fast as possible.
Once I retrieved the Greatrune, I would Unleash the captured memory immediately afterwards, returning back to a time before all of this happened (hopefully the traveling of Insight through the river of time would work for Greatrunes too).
"That can be easily arranged, if you so wish, Great Lord," Avier agreed, bowing his feathered head before taking flight towards Vanesy Glory.
I briefly wondered how the wyvern intended to convince the stubborn professor to halt her lesson without the ability to speak, but that was not my concern right now.
Instead, I focused inward and whispered the word of command:
"Capture."
A Bubblespell folded in on itself, collapsing tightly around my mana core as it anchored this precise moment within the river of time.
As I stepped towards the ruins-turned-training-ground, I could already feel the latent echoes of the ancient Djinnic structure thrumming beneath the earth: waiting eagerly for the Justiciar to finally trigger its resurrection.
—
Barely a minute had passed, and I was already a blur of motion darting through the Mosque of Dawn.
All around me, the ancient cathedral was rapidly rebuilding itself in reverse, chunks of masonry flying through the air to reconstruct the grand architecture as I ran.
Emerald wind streaks trailed in my wake. I was little more than a brushstroke of green mana, propelled ever forward by the favourable gales of my Wind Surfing.
Avicenna! I called inwardly, my mental voice sharp with urgency. I am inside the Mosque of Dawn. Where do I need to go to find the Re-Construction Greatrune? Don't ask questions, just tell me.
'The Mosques of Dawn and Dusk possessed complex systems of underground catacombs where numerous Pacisophists were laid to rest,' the Sage explained swiftly, adapting to my pace. 'The ancient tomb of Mage-Caliph Zayrus is what you are searching for.'
I gave a curt nod. Just ahead of me, a massive, shattered pillar of the Mosque repaired itself from the scattered rubble, violently shooting upward to resume its original, load-bearing position.
I ducked smoothly beneath the rising structure, narrowly avoiding being crushed by several tons of ancient Djinnic stone.
To the catacombs it is! I declared in my head, immediately shifting my trajectory.
—
Two minutes had passed since the Reset began, and I was speeding through the rapidly reforming tunnels deep beneath the Mosque of Dawn.
I slashed Fiorwato in wide arcs to shatter the myriad urns that suddenly blocked my path. The ancient pottery was piecing itself together out of thin air, shards flying erratically through the subterranean corridors to reform their original shapes.
I have never witnessed a Reset affecting such a massively damaged structure before, I thought, ducking beneath a hurtling clay lid. Avicenna! What exactly are all these urns?!
Even as I asked the question, another cluster of pottery reconstructed itself directly in my way. I slashed the air with my blade, sending forth a powerful gale of wind to forcefully blast the narrow tunnel clear.
'The Folk of Calm Currents cremated their dead,' Avicenna explained calmly over the rushing wind. '"To make them one with Mordain's fire," our chaplains would say. It was a sacred tradition dating back to the first days of the Cult of Mordain; we never abandoned it. Even the Vaultlamp you currently carry, which houses my consciousness, was designed to mirror our crematory urns.'
I... I am destroying the resting places of hundreds of Djinn? I gulped hard at the horrifying realisation.
But I forced myself to quickly swallow the shame of my desecration: REtrocurrent would drown my sins in the river of time the moment I was done here and only Fate itself would remain as witness of my actions.
I continued to push through the ever-expanding corridors of these catacombs.
—
Three minutes in, a large door of shining Djinnic steel, the very same metal that comprised the teleportation portals and the deepest gates within the Beast Glades, barred my path into what was surely the sanctum sanctorum of the Mosque of Dawn.
I raised my boot and, heavily augmenting muscle and bone with mana, I kicked the steel. Once: the metal bent. Twice: the heavy door creaked violently under the impact. Thrice: I punched a jagged hole straight through the Djinnic steel.
With a swift flourish of wind magic, I wrenched the gap open wide enough to pass through.
"Apologies for the mess," I murmured into the gloom as I stepped inside, slowing my pace to admire the ancient tomb.
Opening before my eyes was an immense subterranean sanctuary carved directly into a vast cavern of pale, weathered stone.
Its towering walls and jagged ceiling disappeared into the darkness far above, while brilliant shafts of sunlight—piercing through the overhanging precipice of the floating island—seeped through deep fissures in the rock, illuminating the ancient chamber.
Slender stone columns crowned with perfectly rounded, smooth spheres lined the aisle on either side.
At the far end of the sanctuary, a monumental arched doorway had been carved directly into the cavern wall.
Shallow channels and perfectly still pools stretched across the floor, flawlessly reflecting the pale stone and the shafts of light from above.
Their glassy surfaces were scattered with countless delicate Mordainflowers—the same radiant, sunray-yellow blooms that dominated the Nexus Garden in the Hearth.
Here, they formed winding, vibrant paths through the solemn sanctuary.
I walked in a hushed, religious silence towards the massive doorway at the far end: the tomb of Mage-Caliph Zayrus, and the resting place of the Re-Construction Greatrune.
Before I could reach my objective, however, a deafening series of thuds echoed through the cavern. Twelve massive, heavy objects crashed onto the stone floor all around me.
I spun around. The smooth, round spheres that had surmounted the decorative columns were coming to life.
Avicenna? I called inwardly, drawing Fiorwato from its cane-sheath. Did the Folk of Calm Currents employ... security golems in the Mosque of Dawn?
'Security golems? What? No,' Avicenna replied, his mental voice laced with genuine bewilderment.
The boulder-like mana beasts—for what else could they be?—suddenly unfurled like armoured armadillos, revealing strange, bipedal creatures hidden within their spherical shells.
They possessed flat, pugnacious snouts like bulldogs, clusters of unblinking insectoid eyes, and jagged hooves.
These twelve beasts, abruptly brought back to life by the incomplete Reset and sensing an intruder in their newly reformed den, immediately charged.
They folded themselves back into tight, armoured spheres and launched themselves at me like cannonballs.
With a sweeping, circular motion of my arms, I raised Fiorwato high above my head. With every quarter of the blade's rotation, a new element ignited along the length of the gemsteel.
The Flame of Sapin, rushing water, howling wind, and grinding earth all sang in perfect unison, roaring a violent song of the elements as they impatiently waited to be unleashed.
I swept Fiorwato forward in a brutal two-handed grip, and the Quadra-Storm was cast.
—
Receiving the Re-Construction Greatrune happened instantly, and brutally.
Just as with the keystone containing the Quadra-Elemental Greatrune that Fatima had brought with her from the Relictombs, I suddenly felt copious waves of Insight crash against the shores of my mind.
Filtered by Retrocurrent, intricate lattices of runes slowly but surely started to etch themselves across my skin; this time, they originated from the centre of my forehead.
And exactly like the Quadra-Elemental Greatrune, the crushing weight of the Insight was terrible, burning my head and rapidly overheating every neuron.
I desperately softened the overwhelming migraine with Trucewater, the rich, teal, deviant form of water mana flooding the delicate mana channels that supplied my skull and brain.
The healing effects of Inner Current helped prevent my brain from melting from the inside out, but they did little to alleviate the blinding pain.
"Re-Construction... taken..." I muttered, feeling the searing spellform finally settle over my face and sink beneath my flesh. "U-Unleash."
A teal Bubblespell exploded outward, and in the next blink, I found myself back on the grassy hilltop before the scattered ruins that once housed the Mosque of Dawn. Avier rested on the ground, waiting patiently for the Highprince of the Asclepius Clan to issue a command.
As for the Greatrune...
Through a sort of third eye, I could gaze beneath my clothes and perceive it. There, etched onto my spine just above the four interlocking sections of the Rubik's cube that formed the Quadra-Elemental Greatrune, was a new spellform.
Its colour was a muted teal, perfectly matching my Trucewater. It looked like a stylised compass measuring something across an unfurled, curving map, its elegant folds mimicking the crests of a rushing torrent.
The compass had its pivot planted firmly on a continent roughly shaped like Dicathen, while its drawing pencil rested upon another landmass roughly shaped like a skull; Alacrya, I immediately recognized.
It was a depiction of grand planning, of projecting influence over Pax Coronata, the name the Djinn had given to this world upon which I had been living for the past ten years.
I forced myself back to the present. Pressing a hand hard against my eyes to stave off the lingering migraine, I turned towards my next destination: the Mosque of Dusk, where the second half of Re-Construction awaited.
—
Avicenna, how does this "two-halves" thing about the Re-Construction Greatrune work? I asked the wise Djinn as I battled my way through the Mosque of Dusk; a cathedral that was starkly different from its Dawn counterpart. How did you resolve that problem?
I swept Fiorwato in a deadly arc, cleanly bisecting a Snarler. Those insidious E-class mana beasts were truly everywhere on this continent.
'The Djinn who received the Re-Construction Greatrune often split it with their animal bonds,' Avicenna explained, confirming the theory I had brewing in the back of my mind. 'Others, though, chose to share the burden with fellow Djinn.'
Then I already have a solution for that, I declared, more to myself than to the Sage. Berna, my Guardian Bear, was going to be the secondary receiver of Re-Construction—just as Regis had been for Arthur's Godrune of Destruction during the novel's events.
I rolled backwards, narrowly avoiding two Snarlers as their overextended jaws snapped shut on the empty air where I had just been.
Looking at the two ugly creatures, a Sapinese saying crossed my mind—a mantra coined by Adventurers venturing into the Beast Glades:
"If it snarls, it falls."
That alone proved just how insidious and pestilential these mana beasts were. At some point, the Adventurer's Guild had even started paying a bounty for every ten Snarlers killed.
I pointed two fingers at the surviving pair and let off two small, high-velocity Bubblespells that pierced their skulls like bullets, instantly killing the beasts.
'Avicenna, for the love of Peace,' I lamented inwardly, wincing at the cacophony of snarls echoing from the endless horde still flooding into the chamber—a darker, far more eerie analogue to the Mosque of Dawn's sanctum. 'Was Focularsa also plagued by disgusting, shrieking creatures with bloodshot eyes? We call them Snarlers.'
I dodged to the right, slashed Fiorwato, and decapitated another Snarler. Then, thrusting my offhand towards the rushing horde, I unleashed the full, unbridled might of the Flame of Sapin; its lion-like roar utterly eclipsed their annoying snarls.
When the roaring fire subsided, only ashes remained of the E-class mana beasts.
'The description you give is grimly familiar to me,' Avicenna said in a low voice, heavy with a mixture of sorrow and pity. 'We called them Ghouls.'
Ghouls? I echoed.
I swept my arm upwards, causing dozens of jagged earth spikes to suddenly erupt and impale the next wave of arriving Snarlers.
(I pleasantly noted that these spikes hadn't been conjured from the existing stone floor, but rather manifested entirely from my own mana—it seemed the Re-Construction Greatrune was already subtly altering my capabilities).
I don't like the sound of that, I added.
If my Earthen knowledge of mythology was of any use, then the reason behind such a name was bound to be exceptionally bleak.
Ah, Justiciar,' Avicenna sighed. 'The creatures you call Snarlers are but the amalgamation of the ill deeds of the Asuras given form. Since the dawn of the Folk of Calm Currents, we have wondered why such violently hateful creatures could exist. The true answer came far too late—only when the Djinn were already set to join the ranks of the pain that makes the Ghouls.'
I blanched at the grim explanation, bringing my heel down hard to crush the skull of the largest, and hopefully last, of the Snarlers.
So this is how Dicathen mourns the lives of its slaughtered children? I asked.
'That is a tragically apt way to put it, Justiciar,' Avicenna said softly. 'The Mosque of Dusk was dedicated to this very purpose—a sanctuary to pray for all those who died before the Djinn ever came to be.'
I walked in silence down the final corridor leading to the chamber I sought.
'The Folk of Calm Currents actually knew about the countless purges of the Indrath Clan?' I asked, genuinely surprised.
'We knew we—and the ancestors of your people living in the Forest of Gaia—were not the first civilisation to walk Focularsa or Mausoleia,' Avicenna replied. 'We too, just as you explained to me, had something similar to what your people call us: Ancient Mages.'
That made terrifying sense. It perfectly mirrored my meta-knowledge from the novel; the Asuras of Epheotus (the Indrath Clan, truly) had been systematically purging entire species from the face of the world the moment they deemed them dangerous to their dogma.
Just as modern Dicathians looked back at the ruins of the Ancient Mages, I now discovered that the Ancient Mages themselves had their own long-dead precursors.
I firmly decided not to pry further into the matter. It was a bleak, abyssal truth I did not want to dwell on right now.
I finally stepped into the deepest vault of the Mosque of Dusk, ready to acquire the final piece of the puzzle and Unleash the Bubblespell I had Captured earlier.
The moment I laid hands upon the second half of the Re-Construction Greatrune, I instantly felt its crushing weight attempting to anchor itself to my mind.
But instead of letting the torrential Insight consume me, I seized control with REmould, forcefully redirecting the volatile stream of knowledge.
Reaching deep into my mana core, I connected with my soul-bond. Even from leagues away, I could feel Berna's warm, steadfast gentleness.
Consider this a... retroactive gift, girl, I mused inwardly as I channelled the Greatrune's vast spellform directly into the Guardian Bear's consciousness.
Through my many reckless uses of Retrocurrent, I already knew Berna could faintly feel the echoes of an erased timeline.
I was highly optimistic she could safely maintain her grasp on the Greatrune, even as I actively cancelled the very moment I granted it to her.
"Unleash."