Kag silently digested everything he had just learned.
He looked back toward the lake, the very place they had entered seeking power and knowledge. Now it just looked like an abyss that had swallowed countless secrets and unimaginable horrors.
And Raven was down there in the deepest part of it, facing the monster that had nearly destroyed them with a single glimpse.
Silence fell over the three of them, leaving only the sounds of the jungle night. The initial relief of surviving gradually faded, replaced by a heavy weight of helplessness and fear.
There was nothing they could do. All they could do was stand on the sidelines and stare in awe at a battle unfolding in an unknowable dimension, a battle far beyond anything they could imagine, let alone influence.
"He will win," Saruman said, breaking the silence.
The prematurely aged wizard didn't speak loudly, but his voice was unwavering, as if convincing himself, or perhaps stating a fact that simply hadn't happened yet.
He turned to Kag and Lina. His dim yellow eyes glimmered in the dark with a look that seemed to have seen through the ways of the world, yet still held absolute faith.
"Why... are you so sure?" Kag couldn't help asking, though he desperately wanted to believe it.
Saruman looked up at the night sky, as if staring at some thread of destiny beyond the stars. He spoke slowly, every word ringing out against the quiet night:
"Because he is Raven. The messenger who walks between the end and the beginning. The only clear shadow passing through chaos and darkness. The Raven who buries the Old Ones and guides the coming dawn."
His voice carried an ancient rhythm, like a prophecy from a forgotten era.
"If fate truly has an end, then the one standing at that end will surely be him. So when facing a nightmare of the Old Ones crawling out from its ancient slumber..."
Saruman looked back at the deathly still lake. His voice was absolute, leaving no room for doubt.
"The one who wins will definitely be him. After all... he is the End of All Things. The Raven standing at the end of fate."
As his words faded, even the jungle seemed to go quiet for a moment.
Lina clasped her hands over her chest and bowed her head in silent prayer. The mark on her chest pulsed with a faint, cold sensation, but somehow it brought her peace.
"That's right! He saved us!" Kag clenched his fists. "That's reason enough for me to believe in him!"
He lowered his head too, offering his simple faith and a warrior's respect to the unknown battlefield and the Ancient Supreme who had saved them.
They had survived because Raven's wings had touched them. And now, those wings that shielded fate itself were deep in R'lyeh's darkness, locked in a decisive battle against the most ancient nightmare.
Could prayers from another dimension, faint as starlight, pierce through endless madness to give the Raven of the End even the slightest edge? No one knew. All they could do was wait.
---
"Come, Cthulhu. Show me your rage."
The dark-green flame dancing on Ian's fingertips cast a faint glow across his face, highlighting his changed appearance, and his altered state of mind.
The Fantasy Anchor Point belonging to the Dark Emperor had faded the moment he escaped the Dreamscape and returned to reality. Like a receding tide, it withdrew into the deepest part of his soul, remaining as a latent trait and power source without taking physical form.
The person standing atop R'lyeh's crumbling ruins was now Ian Prince, a wizard who had walked out of Hogwarts, endured countless trials, seized Authority at the edge of madness, and stepped into the Legendary rank.
He was no longer clad in dark, imposing armor. Instead, he wore a dark traveling robe, slightly damaged, but still neat, embroidered with fine mithril thread in patterns that intertwined the four Hogwarts House crests.
The weapon in his hand was no longer a blade of dark light, but a wand, an ancient wand with wooden grain that seemed to pulse with flowing starlight. An Elder Wand.
It was an extension of his magic and will. More importantly, it was his link back to his homeland, a world of fairy tales and endless possibilities.
Exhaustion from his battle in the Dreamscape still lingered on Ian's face, alongside the unnatural flush from devouring the Fire of the Old Ones. But his eyes had regained the sharp clarity and determination of a Hogwarts wizard, burning with an unyielding will.
'Rumble! Rumble!'
Ahead of him, Cthulhu's true form was fully rising from its sleeping palace.
The sight defied language. It wasn't just "huge", its very existence warped scale and logic. Covered in slick scales and clinging seaweed, its body looked like a mixture of rotting flesh-mountains and colossal stone. Like a moving mountain capable of shattering the mind itself, it filled Ian's entire field of vision.
Countless tentacles, each as thick as an ancient giant tree and covered in suckers and grotesque growths, sprouted from beneath its body. Some churned the dark-green seawater, whipping up terrifying whirlpools that seemed to connect sea and sky. Others swayed slowly through the air, tearing open the fabric of space with every twitch to reveal a chaotic, pulsing void behind it.
Enormous wings rested folded behind the creature, looking as if stitched together from rotting leather and bat membranes. Though not yet fully spread, their shadow already blanketed most of collapsing R'lyeh. Within that darkness echoed blasphemous hymns and the death cries of countless beings.
Most horrifying of all was the nightmare's "head." Its vaguely humanoid shape was distorted beyond recognition. Where a mouth should have been, indescribable tentacles writhed, while above them burned two dim green "eyes", cold, evil fires like malicious stars rising from the universe's deepest abyss.
And they were staring right at Ian.
That gaze contained more than the rage over stolen power that Ian had felt in the Dreamscape. There was also a cold curiosity toward this anomaly, and a faint, almost imperceptible trace of greed.
The greed of a predator discovering rare prey. Or an exquisite delicacy.
"Wiiizard..."
A message struck Ian's mind. It wasn't really a voice, but a heavy, viscous force crashing into his soul, carrying millions of years of accumulated madness and arrogance.
"Thief... Stealer of the fire... Your soul carries a strange scent... Not pure chaos, nor complete order... It is contradiction... Sweet... The scent... of hope?"
Cthulhu didn't speak human language, but it had its own way of communicating, and having seized the Authority of an Old One, Ian understood every word.
'What the hell does that mean?!'
Ian's heart hammered. Not from the pressure of Cthulhu's voice, but from the words themselves.
'The scent of hope?'
Why would Cthulhu, a god representing ultimate chaos and madness, crave the traits in Ian's soul that belonged to Hogwarts? To a fairy-tale world? Why would it call them 'sweet'?
There was no time to ponder it. The attack had already arrived.
Cthulhu's thickest tentacle whipped toward him from the side without a sound, dripping thick, foul-smelling glowing fluid. Like a collapsing pillar, it moved at a bizarre speed and trajectory that completely defied physics.
'Whoosh!'
Before the tentacle even reached him, the raw physical force compressed the air around Ian until it exploded in deafening cracks. Space itself buckled inward. But far worse was the mental corruption radiating from the limb, a dense, suffocating wave of despair and madness trying to flood directly into his mind.
"Protego!"
Ian flicked his wand with a sharp, forceful shout.
This was no ordinary Shield Charm. Amplified by Legendary magic and infused with his grasp on the laws of protection, it was a vastly upgraded spell. A translucent spherical barrier snapped into place around him, complex runes flowing across its surface alongside faint dark-green flame patterns. The passive support of his Old Fire Authority made it exceptionally resistant to Cthulhu.
'BOOM!'
The tentacle slammed into the shield. A deafening explosion erupted. The barrier shook violently, runes flashing wildly as spiderweb cracks spread across its surface.
But it held.
"Pretty strong, aren't you?"
Ian's body swayed, his face growing paler, but he didn't step back. He could feel that the shield had absorbed far more than just a physical strike, it had also redirected a massive wave of mental corruption. That was the advantage of his Old Fire Authority: a natural resistance to, and understanding of, power from the exact same origin.
Cthulhu wasn't done.
Almost at the exact moment the tentacle struck, a dense cloud of dark-green vapor spewed from its writhing maw. It wasn't poison gas, but highly concentrated madness. Wherever it touched, R'lyeh's ruins twisted and softened like wax, growing eyes and mouths that shrieked with miserable laughter.
The vapor bypassed physical barriers entirely, cutting through space straight for Ian's soul.
"Chaos isn't your exclusive privilege!"
Ian's eyes narrowed. He traced a complex arc with his wand, not to block, but to guide. Activating his 37% Old Fire Authority, he held up one palm.
"With stolen fire, forge a wall of Order, Chaos Barrier!"
The dark-green flame in his palm expanded into a spinning shield of power, pitch-black at the center and ringed in dark green fire.
'Hisssss!'
The green vapor hit the shield. There was no impact, it was like throwing ice into a furnace. The green flames greedily devoured, tore apart, and converted the madness.
The shield's glow intensified. As the tamed madness was absorbed, the barrier grew stronger, nudging Ian's Authority completion up by a tiny fraction of a percent. His grasp on Cthulhu's specific power deepened with it.
"Wonderful! This feels amazing! 'Kekekeke!" Ian cackled like Voldemort.
That was the terrifying strength of the Fire of the Old Ones, and his biggest edge against Cthulhu's true body. It didn't just resist corruption from cosmic entities, it fed on it, turning that raw power into fuel for his own growth.
Of course, the process carried severe risks. Absorbing more chaotic essence than he could handle would still cause him to collapse. But Cthulhu was currently nowhere near full strength; having been forcibly awakened, it had less than a tenth of its true power available.
"Paradox - Existence Anchor!"
Ian didn't hesitate. Seizing the brief opening after blocking the second attack, he cast another spell. It wasn't an attack, but a reinforcement of his own existence, the realization of the Law of Paradox he had achieved upon reaching Legendary rank.
An invisible ripple spread outward, anchoring an absolute "point" around him.
'Ian. Here. Now. Existing.'
Past and future blurring, the erosion of order and chaos, anything touching that anchored space was rejected by logic itself. It wasn't invincibility, but it vastly boosted his stability against a monster that distorted reality and illusion.
Cthulhu's mental aura rippled sharply, its cold greed flaring.
"Contradiction... Paradox... An interesting toy... But your hope... That light... Makes me hunger even more..."
It didn't seem rushed to crush him. Instead, it observed him, savoring him. Perhaps even tempting him.
More tentacles swept in from every direction, each infused with a different power. Some crackled with black blasphemous lightning; others dripped acid that corroded time and space; a few turned completely transparent, trying to bind him on a conceptual level.
At the same time, the dark-green glow in Cthulhu's eyes flared. Two beams of condensed energy shot out, rays of dark fire capable of incinerating a soul.
'Hisssss!'
The rays crossed as they blasted toward Ian, corrupting everything in their path.
"Cheap tricks like that, and you dare show them off in front of Uncle Ian?"
Ian Apparated through the gaps between ruins and tentacles with godlike precision. Every time he reappeared, his wand moved. Amplified Severing Charms split into countless blades of brilliant white light, carving deep, burning wounds into the creature's hide. They couldn't sever the tentacles completely, but they slowed them down.
"Aguamenti!"
What poured from his wand was no longer ordinary water, but a stream of absolute cold drawn from the core concept of magic, bearing a chill capable of freezing souls. It slammed into the corrosive acid.
'Hisssss!'
The opposing forces neutralized each other, erupting into dense clouds of freezing mist.
As for the beams of evil fire, Ian didn't try to block them directly. He aimed his wand at a giant boulder carved with blasphemous runes.
"Transfiguration!"
The boulder softened and reshaped instantly. Rather than making a normal mirror, Ian forcibly imbued it with the concept of energy reflection, wrapped in the faint glow of his Paradox Law.
'RUMBLE!'
The rays blasted into the mirror. Most of their energy was deflected into the sky, vaporizing falling debris, but the mirror cracked instantly and shattered. The forced concept couldn't hold out long against an attack of that magnitude.
The battle devolved into a fierce stalemate.
"What's wrong? Is that all you've got?" Ian mocked. "You're nothing special, Cthulhu!"
Relying on his skill as a Legendary Wizard, the stability of his Paradox Law, and his Old Fire Authority, Ian danced through Cthulhu's relentless assault with remarkable agility, striking back whenever an opening appeared. He couldn't deal a fatal blow, but neither could the Old One pin him down.
His magic was draining at a terrifying rate, but his willpower remained rock-solid. In his mind, he pictured the towers of Hogwarts, starlight over the Great Hall, and the smiling faces of his friends. Those warm memories of his fairy-tale world shone like a lighthouse in the dark, fueling his mental resilience and powering the Light of Hope.
"Delicious... Delicious..."
Yet it was that exact Light of Hope that drew Cthulhu's gaze deeper and deeper.
(End Of This Chapter)
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