Above the volcanic crater, the air solidified.
Ash drifted away, dead and soundless.
Seven souls well-versed in ancient Dark Arts hung suspended in midair.
Their forms were twisted and broken, like beings forgotten by time. In their eyes burned ghostly blue flames, a light where Death and madness intertwined.
They were not ordinary Dark Wizards.
They were Dark Wizards who had died, and within the Misty Illusion Realm they belonged to the "Cognitive Shapers," wielding the oldest and most dangerous Magic—drawing from faith as their source, from cognition as their form, turning illusion into reality.
Seven dark silhouettes spread their arms at the same time.
They chanted an ancient sequence of syllables, the sound low and rasping, as though rising from the depths of Hell, carrying a pressure that could not be resisted.
Immediately afterward, a Thorn Crown, condensed from pure will, slowly took shape.
It was formed by countless tiny runes, every branch exuding an aura of decay and annihilation.
The Magic spun in the air.
Where it passed, even ash was corroded into poisonous dust.
A suffocating breath of Death spread through the air.
"Cognition is reality, will is laws."
"Wherever these thorns reach, all shall fall into the hands of the God of Death!" The Thorn Crown began to advance, slow yet unstoppable as it moved toward the crater.
Thirty Dementors sensed the threat and immediately lunged forward, attempting to intercept this crown that symbolized the end; yet at the very instant they touched it, they were destroyed.
Boom!!
No struggle, no resistance, not even the faintest trace left behind. Thirty Dementors were torn apart like scraps of paper, dissolving into motes of black mist that vanished in the air.
"Sss—"
The bodies of the Dementors disintegrated the moment they brushed against the crown, like dead leaves thrown into raging fire, turning to ash and smoke. No screams, no struggle—only silent annihilation.
"This power is really something."
Ian stood in the distance, witnessing everything, a chill rising in his heart. He could feel that this Thorn Crown was not merely an offensive Magic.
It was the manifestation of some higher-order existence—the materialized will of Death, an extension of the God of Death's power. Precisely because of that, the Dementors were so utterly fragile before it.
"The Wizards… are about to succeed." he murmured.
Just as the Thorn Crown was only ten meters away from the lava—the Raven still stood at the edge of the crater, its crimson eyes lowered, focused on the forging within the molten rock.
It seemed utterly unresponsive to the approaching threat.
As though this battle had nothing to do with it.
After casting many more of its own feathers into the lava, the Raven finally raised its head. Its gaze pierced through space, fixing unblinkingly on Ian.
"Why not try a strike across time and space?"
It spoke.
Its red pupils were like blood.
They stared into a point in the void. Ian seemed to see the junction of future and past, and the Raven's gaze was drawn back from that intersection, then cast into an even farther-flowing river of fate.
This was the first time the Raven had taken the initiative to speak to Ian.
At the instant its words fell, the entire world seemed to have a pause button pressed. Ash ceased to fall, lava solidified, the Dark Wizards' Spells froze mid-utterance, and even the shattered bodies of the Dementors hung motionless.
Time no longer flowed, space no longer extended.
Everything was still.
It was as if history itself were waiting for Ian's answer.
The Raven's power seemed to be at work; it needed no emotion, for it had already transcended emotion. It needed no language, for its will had long since permeated all of time and space.
Ian was stunned.
He had not expected to be dragged into this fragment of history, nor had he expected the Raven to converse with him directly. He lowered his head and looked at his own palm—the Magic Wand was still in his hand.
Could he really interfere with the past?
"What should I do?"
He did not know the answer.
But he knew he might have to make a choice; only then would the surrounding history resume its flow, and only then could he find a way to withdraw from this scene of the past.
"Let's have some Fiery Fire."
A blazing flare burst from the tip of his wand, a bizarre blue gas-flame like that of a stove glaringly conspicuous, jarringly out of place in this black-and-white world, yet incomparably dazzling.
The flame streaked across like a meteor, ramming straight into the Thorn Crown. Ian's strike was like a hand plucking the strings of sedimented history, setting everything back into motion.
"Boom—!"
The crown shattered the instant it touched the flames; those runes woven from cognition crumbled one by one, the entire crown breaking apart in midair, turning into specks of black dust that scattered on the wind.
"What's going on?"
"Our attack was affected by something?"
"I can't see! What on earth is interfering with us!?" The Dark Wizards hadn't even grasped what had happened before their Spells were forcibly cut short.
The backlash made their souls quake violently, nearly falling apart.
"It actually worked?"
Ian stared blankly at this scene.
Had he really altered this piece of history?
Yet this was clearly only a projection of the past; he should not have been able to interfere in the slightest. However, once the Magic was cast, it truly seemed to have crossed time and space to deliver the Spell into the past.
Too fantastical.
Too bizarre.
To the point that Ian's mind almost stalled. He stood at the edge of this dead-silent world, staring at the boiling volcano, staring at that silent Raven.
He finally understood one thing: what he saw was not merely the replaying of the past. In this black-and-white world, the Raven alone possessed color because it was the variable.
All else in black and white could not be changed.
Because they were only the process, not the ending.