The green flames were spinning.
Jerry kept his eyes closed.
Cassiopeia's golden nectar was still slowly releasing its final restorative effects into his bloodstream.
Every muscle in his limbs was in a state of relaxation bordering on languor.
The teleportation channel of the Floo Network formed a tunnel of green light around him as countless fireplace images flickered past at high speed...
Those fireplace frames flashed by, each staying for only a few hundredths of a second.
It created a visual effect similar to the scenery outside a train window receding rapidly.
He was counting the fireplaces.
The seventy-third.
The seventy-fourth.
The seventy-fifth...
The Floo path from Cassiopeia's manor to Hogwarts passed through a total of ninety-one relay fireplace nodes.
At normal teleportation speeds, the entire journey took about twelve seconds.
The seventy-eighth.
The seventy-ninth...
The color changed.
Jerry's eyes snapped open in a tenth of a second.
The tunnel of green light... that standard emerald-green teleportation channel composed of Floo magic...
An irregular stain appeared directly in front of his field of vision.
The color of that stain wasn't green, but a murky, faintly pulsating amber.
It looked like a festering wound.
The stain was expanding.
Starting as a point no bigger than a fist, it swelled to a diameter of over two meters in less than half a second...
It completely covered the cross-section of the teleportation channel in front of Jerry.
The rotation stopped.
It wasn't a gradual deceleration... it was an abrupt halt.
Jerry's body lurched forward violently due to inertia.
But he was immediately held in place from all directions simultaneously by an invisible force...
It was as if countless hands reached out from the air, grabbing his shoulders, arms, waist, and thighs.
They pinned him directly in the center of the teleportation channel.
The fireplace images of the Floo Network all vanished.
The surroundings turned into a void.
Not darkness... but a void.
A pure spatial vacuum without color, light source, or reference points.
There was no ground beneath Jerry's feet, no ceiling above his head, and no walls around him.
He was suspended in a space devoid of physical coordinates.
The only things he could perceive were his own body and that invisible binding force squeezing in from every direction.
Jerry completed a spell with his right hand in zero point two seconds.
A Shield Charm formed a semi-transparent, faintly glowing spherical shield around his body.
The moment the shield took shape...
Crack.
An extremely crisp sound, like the shattering of crystal, came from somewhere in the void.
Then a second sound.
Crack.
A third. A fourth.
A fifth!
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
Continuous, dense shattering sounds erupted from every direction around Jerry simultaneously.
It was as if dozens of glass panes were being smashed around him at once.
Points of light appeared.
In the void... above, below, left, right, front, and back of Jerry...
Dozens of tiny points of light flickered to life at once.
The colors of those light points were inconsistent... some were dark red, some deep blue, some ashen white...
But their shapes were all identical: irregular, polyhedral, resembling the geometric forms of natural mineral crystals.
World Crystals.
Jerry recognized them the instant he saw those points of light.
They were the wreckage left behind by destroyed worlds.
When a world collapses completely—whether due to natural decay, magical cataclysm, or war...
The spatial foundation that constitutes that world does not disappear entirely.
In the final stages of collapse, they condense into an extremely dense, crystalline substance... World Crystals.
Every World Crystal contains fragments of spatial information from its original world:
Dimensional parameters, physical constants, the flow of time, gravity coefficients...
All the foundational data defining a world is compressed into those thumb-sized crystals.
This substance has two primary uses in the magical world.
The first... and most common... is as the core material for the Floo Network.
The essence of how Floo powder establishes spatial connections between different fireplaces...
Is using the spatial information stored in World Crystals to "trick" the topology of real space.
It creates a temporary spatial shortcut between two points physically far apart.
Without World Crystals, there is no Floo Network.
The second use...
Spatial Capture Devices.
By arranging multiple World Crystals in a specific geometric pattern within a Floo Network teleportation channel...
One can use the resonance of spatial information between crystals to create a temporary, enclosed pocket space inside the channel.
Any teleportation target passing that point will be "peeled" out of the normal Floo channel.
They are then trapped in that pocket space.
This was a trap.
A spatial trap specifically designed for Floo teleportation, set in advance.
Jerry's Shield Charm began to suffer pressure the moment those World Crystals lit up.
It wasn't a magical attack... a Shield Charm could block magical attacks...
It was the compression of space itself.
Those World Crystals were synchronously releasing their stored spatial information.
That information overlapped, interfered, and resonated in the void.
It formed a rapidly contracting spherical spatial cage.
The inner walls of the cage were closing in on Jerry's Shield Charm.
Cracks began to appear on the surface of the shield...
Not because the power was insufficient, but because the Shield Charm is a magical construct meant to counter magical attacks.
But spatial compression isn't magic... it is a physical phenomenon...
It is the residual spatial laws of a dead world forcibly overwriting the physical parameters of the current space.
The Shield Charm was powerless against it.
Pop.
The shield shattered.
The semi-transparent barrier burst like a popped soap bubble.
A ring of silver-white shards exploded around Jerry's body, dissolving completely into the void in less than a second.
Jerry turned his palm toward the nearest World Crystal...
That dark red, pulsating polyhedron releasing spatial information...
"Reducto!"
The red beam of the Blasting Curse shot from his wand tip, hitting the crystal dead center.
The crystal didn't shatter.
The red beam was absorbed the moment it contacted the crystal surface...
Like a drop of water falling into a sponge...
Not even a ripple of backlash was produced.
A World Crystal is not a magical creation.
It is the condensation of space itself.
Attacking space itself with magic is like trying to smash "gravity" with a hammer...
Conceptually, it simply doesn't work.
Jerry's teeth clenched.
His left hand pulled something else from his pocket...
A microscopic ashen crystal, much smaller than those World Crystals...
It was an emergency World Crystal fragment he carried, used to tear open a temporary spatial rift in dire situations.
He crushed the fragment between his fingers.
Crunch.
The fragment disintegrated into a cloud of ashen powder in his fingers.
The powder hovered in the void for an instant before automatically arranging itself...
It formed a miniature spatial rift, no larger than a palm.
On the other side of the rift, one could see...
Absolutely nothing.
The rift collapsed under the pressure of the spatial information fields released by the surrounding World Crystals just 0.3 seconds after forming.
The miniature spatial exit was squeezed flat like a balloon under massive force.
It twisted, deformed, and then vanished with a pfft before Jerry's eyes.
No way out.
The spatial cage continued to contract.
Jerry could feel it... that force squeezing in from every direction was growing stronger.
A faint, even pressure developed on the surface of his skin, as if he were being packed into a shrinking box.
His eardrums began to feel the change in pressure.
Pop.
Another crisp sound.
But this time, it didn't come from a World Crystal... it came from the "wall" of the spatial cage.
The inner wall stopped contracting when it was about three meters from Jerry.
Then... a crack appeared on the inner wall.
It wasn't a broken crack... it was a clean, door-like rift that had been cut deliberately.
The rift split open about two meters from top to bottom, then unfurled to both sides.
It formed an elliptical opening.
On the other side of the opening...
There was light.
Not the pulsating glow of those World Crystals in the void...
But a real light source from a physical space.
Warm and yellow, like a wall sconce or a torch.
A silhouette stepped through the opening.
It was a woman.
She was about one meter seventy-two tall, wearing a sharply tailored, dark gray combat robe...
Jerry recognized the style; it was standard field equipment for the Auror Office.
The fabric was treated with anti-charm spells, capable of resisting most low-level offensive curses.
The collar of the robe was turned up, hiding her chin and neck.
A wide leather belt was fastened around her waist, with two wand holsters hanging on it—one on the left, one on the right...
A wand was tucked into each holster.
A dual-wielder.
Her hair was a deep red... not a dyed bright crimson, but a natural, dark shade like aged red wine...
It was cut to shoulder length, the ends curling inward slightly.
Her face was long, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes.
Her eyes were an extremely rare, near-amber light brown.
She looked about thirty-two or thirty-three years old.
There was no expression on her face.
Behind her, two more silhouettes stepped through the opening.
The second woman was shorter than the first... about one meter sixty-five... but more robust.
She wore a combat robe of the same style, but the color was deep blue instead of dark gray.
Her hair was black, tied into a tight ponytail.
Her face was round with soft features, but her gaze was incredibly sharp...
That sharpness wasn't innate; it had been honed by years of combat experience and alertness training.
Her right hand was already gripping a wand.
The tip was leveled at Jerry's chest.
The third woman...
The tallest of them. At least one meter seventy-eight.
She wasn't wearing a combat robe.
She wore a deep green hooded cloak that looked more like casual daily wear.
The hood was down, revealing straight, waist-length silver-gray hair.
Her face was incredibly pale... not a sickly pale, but that near-transparent fairness of someone who rarely saw the sun.
Her features were exquisite to a point of coldness...
A high bridge of the nose, thin and tightly pursed lips, and a pair of gray-blue eyes like a frozen lake.
She looked to be in her early thirties.
Three women.
All witches.
All armed.
All watching Jerry, trapped in the center of the spatial cage, with the scrutinizing gaze of a hunter assessing its prey.
The woman with deep red hair... clearly the leader of the three... took a step forward.
Her combat boots hit the void, yet produced a solid footstep... thump...
It indicated that the interior of this pocket space had been modified by them.
At the very least, there was a walkable "floor."
She stopped about two meters from Jerry.
Her amber eyes swept Jerry from head to toe.
The scan was fast... less than a second... but the information density was immense.
Her gaze started from Jerry's face, swept over his shoulders, chest, and waist...
It paused for zero point three seconds at the area below his waist...
Then it continued downward, scanning his thighs, knees, and calves, finally landing on his shoes.
That 0.3-second pause...
Jerry knew exactly what she had seen.
He had just come from Cassiopeia's place.
Although his zipper was up and his belt refastened, the volume of that thing was simply too massive...
Even in its fully flaccid state, the outline it formed in his trousers was too distinct to ignore.
Furthermore, Cassiopeia's golden nectar had just completed a full restoration of his body.
His blood circulation was in an extremely vigorous state.
That thing was currently in a state more engorged than a typical "soft"—a pulsing, swollen standby mode.
The woman with deep red hair withdrew her gaze.
Her expression remained unchanged... no surprise, no embarrassment, no emotional ripple whatsoever.
Professionalism.
"Jerry Rozier."
She spoke.
Her voice was low, her pace unhurried, every syllable enunciated with extreme clarity...
It was the specific way of speaking for someone trained in interrogation.
Every word was precisely weighed before being released from her mouth.
"Student at Hogwarts."
"Heir to the Rozier family."
"Prospective son-in-law to Cassiopeia Black."
Her right hand pulled a wand from the holster at her waist—twelve inches, dark wood, covered in fine runes...
The tip wasn't pointed at Jerry, but hung at her side.
"And..."
Her amber eyes narrowed slightly.
"A key witness in the disappearance of Selina."
Selina.
Jerry's pupils contracted by a millimeter.
The woman with deep red hair took another step forward.
A distance of one and a half meters.
"My name is Lydia Winter."
"A contemporary of Selina's."
Her voice produced an extremely minute, nearly imperceptible tremor when she said the name "Selina"...
That tremor wasn't fear, but an emotion suppressed to the extreme—a mix of rage and worry.
"These two..."
Her chin gestured toward the two women behind her.
"Ella Morris."
"Selina's partner."
The woman with the black ponytail... Ella... pushed her palm another inch forward.
A faint red light condensed at her wand tip.
"Nora Grey."
"Selina's roommate."
The woman with the silver-gray hair... Nora... didn't hold a wand.
Her hands were stuffed into her cloak pockets.
Her gray-blue eyes stared at Jerry like two blocks of ice.
Three women.
Selina's friends.
They had set the World Crystal trap in the Floo Network, waiting for Jerry to pass.
They knew Jerry would be returning to Hogwarts from Cassiopeia's manor tonight...
This meant they held information on Jerry's itinerary...
It meant they had informants in Cassiopeia's social circle... or they had been monitoring Jerry.
Lydia's wand rose.
The tip was leveled at Jerry's face.
"Where is Selina?"
Jerry stood in the center of the spatial cage.
His body was at its peak under the restorative effects of Cassiopeia's golden nectar.
But his magic was being severely suppressed in this pocket space composed of World Crystals...
The physical laws of the space itself were being overwritten by the residual information released by the crystals.
The transmission efficiency of mana had dropped by at least sixty percent.
He couldn't beat three fully armed, Auror-trained adult witches.
At least, not in this space.
Lydia's amber eyes stared at him.
Waiting for his answer.
The silver light condensing on Lydia's wand tip illuminated half of Jerry's face.
He didn't answer her question.
Jerry's gaze shifted from Lydia's amber pupils.
He scanned Ella and Nora behind her, then continued backward...
Looking toward the clusters of World Crystals floating and slowly pulsating deep in the pocket space...
Then he smiled.
It wasn't a smirk or nervousness; it was a laugh with a hint of helplessness.
Like discovering the neighbor's cat had wandered into his yard again.
"Since you're here... why not all come out?"
Lydia's eyebrow moved.
Deep in the pocket space... in the shadows between the floating World Crystal clusters...
Ripples appeared in the air.
Like someone surfacing from underwater.
The Disillusionment Charms were deactivated.
The first figure materialized from the shadows... a slender witch with short, light brown hair.
She had an old scar stretching from the corner of her left eyebrow to her cheekbone.
She wore the same dark gray combat robes as Lydia.
Her wand was in her hand, tip down, but her entire posture was like a drawn bowstring.
The second... half a head taller than the first, with dark skin.
Her black curly hair was braided tight against her head, with a silver earring hanging from her right ear.
Her combat robes were ink-black, with silver thread embroidered at the collar and cuffs...
That wasn't a standard Auror robe; it was a custom piece for a Senior Law Enforcement Officer.
The third...
Jerry's gaze lingered on the third person.
Mia.
She emerged from the shadows differently than the others...
No transition effect of a deactivating Disillusionment Charm, no ripples in the air...
She just appeared directly.
One frame the spot was empty, the next frame she was standing there.
Teleportation?
No... teleportation should be impossible in this pocket space locked down by World Crystals.
Some form of higher-level stealth art.
Mia's right hand was empty.
Her left hand held a wand... eleven inches, ash wood, the body pristine white.
The tip was slightly curved into a hook...
That was a standard CQC-type wand for the Auror Office.
The hooked tip was designed to snag an opponent's weapon or limbs during close-quarters combat.
She didn't speak.
Six people.
Jerry was surrounded by six fully armed witches.
Lydia, Ella, Nora... plus the three who appeared later...
They surrounded Jerry from six different directions in a near-perfect hexagon.
The spacing between each pair was about two meters.
The distance between each of them and Jerry was about three meters.
A standard Auror encirclement formation.
Jerry's right hand still gripped his wand.
But he didn't raise it.
His left hand... his empty hand... slowly rose.
His five fingers spread.
Palm facing up.
The dark metal ring on his right index finger lit up.
Light surged from the runic patterns on the ring's surface.
It traveled along his index, middle, and ring fingers, all the way to his wrist.
Ice blue.
At the same time...
A silver bracelet on his left wrist lit up as well.
Crimson red.
Two types of light... ice blue and crimson... flickered on his hands simultaneously.
They looked like two different-colored flames burning between his fingers.
Lydia's pupils contracted.
"Watch out..."
Before her voice even landed...
A crimson ball of light erupted from Jerry's left palm.
The ball of light was about twenty centimeters in diameter, its surface churning with flowing patterns resembling magma.
It wasn't launched... Jerry simply pressed his palm down forcefully...
Boom...!
The light ball slammed into the "floor" of the pocket space.
The entire pocket space shuddered violently.
Those World Crystals suspended in the void were slapped by an invisible giant hand.
They all produced a simultaneous, violent jolt.
Several smaller crystals were even shaken loose from their original positions.
They tumbled into the "below" of the void.
Centered on the impact point of the light ball, a ring of crimson shockwave radiated outward along the "floor" of the pocket space...
It moved with extreme speed...
Covering the entire bottom of the space in zero point three seconds.
The six witches jumped simultaneously.
Lydia had the fastest reaction...
Her feet left the ground 0.1 seconds before the shockwave reached her position.
Her body performed a half-flip in the air.
Her right hand's wand traced a silver arc during the rotation...
"Confringo!"
The Blasting Curse.
An orange-red beam shot from her wand toward Jerry.
At the same time...
Ella launched an attack from Jerry's right rear.
Her black ponytail whipped into a horizontal lash during her rapid movement.
Her wand traced a complex runic pattern with three intersection points in the air...
"Reducto Maxima!"
The Enhanced Blasting Curse.
A column of deep red light... at least three times thicker than a normal Reducto...
It roared as it erupted from her wand tip.
Jerry flicked his right index finger.
Just a flick.
As if flicking a speck of dust off his finger.
The ice-blue ring released a transparent, nearly invisible arc of fluctuation the moment his finger flicked...
The fluctuation radiated from his fingertip, forming a transparent barrier about two meters in diameter in front of him, subtly refracting the light.
Lydia's Confringo slammed into that barrier.
Ding...
A sound so crisp it felt unreal, like crystal glasses clinking.
The orange-red Blasting Curse was completely absorbed the moment it touched the barrier...
Reflected?
Deflected?
No, absorbed!
...Like a pebble thrown into a bottomless pond, leaving not even a ripple.
Ella's Reducto Maxima arrived from the right rear.
Jerry didn't turn around.
His left hand swept behind his body...
The crimson light on his bracelet flashed...
An identical transparent barrier materialized out of thin air behind him...
Ding...
The Blasting Curse was absorbed.
Two attacks.
Two finger flicks.
Both neutralized.
He hadn't used his wand.
All six witches noticed this.
A flash of alarm crossed Lydia's amber eyes...
Her gaze moved rapidly between Jerry's hands...
Right hand gripping a wand but never having used it from start to finish...
Left hand empty, yet both defenses had originated from it...
The jewelry on his hands.
The ring.
The bracelet.
She saw it.
"Wandless magic... no..." Lydia's voice suddenly turned sharp.
"Enchanted artifacts! He's wearing enchanted artifacts!"
"All units, take note... close-range attacks are ineffective... pull back... crossfire...!"
The moment the command was issued, the six witches reorganized their formation within a second.
The original hexagonal encirclement doubled in radius...
The distance between everyone and Jerry opened from three meters to six...
Simultaneously, they paired off, forming three pairs of crossfire combinations.
Lydia and Ella were in a group.
They occupied the positions directly in front and to the right of Jerry.
The witch with short light brown hair and the dark-skinned witch formed a team, taking the positions to Jerry's back-left and dead center-back.
Nora and Mia teamed up, occupying the positions to Jerry's direct left and back-right.
The three groups opened fire simultaneously.
Six spell-beams shot toward Jerry from six different directions and six different angles at the exact same moment.
Red.
Blue.
Silver-white.
Deep purple.
Gold.
Emerald green.
Six colored beams traced six straight trajectories through the void of the pocket space, converging on a single point...
Jerry pressed the fingers of his left hand together and flipped his palm upward...
The second ring on his right ring finger lit up.
This ring was different from the one on his index finger... it was silver, with no runes on the surface, only a black gemstone about three millimeters in diameter embedded in the setting.
The instant it was activated, the gem shifted from black to a dazzling, pure white...
Light Burst.
A miniature ball of white light, no more than ten centimeters in diameter, shot out from the ring and flew about a meter above Jerry's head...
Then it exploded.
Boom...!
White light swallowed everything.
An explosion... yet without a shockwave, without heat, without debris... only light. Pure, overwhelming white light that filled every corner of the pocket space in a tenth of a second.
The six witches were blinded simultaneously.
Human pupils require at least zero point five seconds to contract when faced with a sudden, intense light... and during this 0.5-second visual void... wizards were just as vulnerable.
Jerry moved.
His body vanished from its spot.
It wasn't a teleportation... his feet remained on the "ground"... but a high-speed movement reinforced by magic that bordered on the physical limit.
His figure became a blurred afterimage in the white light, charging in a straight line from the center of the encirclement toward the weakest direction...
The gap between Nora and Mia.
The white light dissipated.
The vision of the six witches returned.
The center of the encirclement was empty.
"He..."
Ella's voice had only just begun...
"Over here."
Jerry's voice came from directly behind Nora.
He stood less than a meter behind her.
His left palm was positioned at the back of Nora's head... no contact, but the distance was only two centimeters... the crimson glow from his bracelet dyed Nora's silver-grey hair red at that range.
Nora's body froze.
She could feel the heat emanating from the back of her head... that scorching sensation produced by high-concentration magic gathering at close range.
"Don't move," Jerry said, his voice not loud.
Lydia's wand was aimed at Jerry... but she didn't fire... Nora was blocking the way.
A stalemate.
It lasted for about three seconds.
Then Mia moved.
Her action was without any warning... her body switched from static to a full-speed sprint.
Her combat boots hit the "ground" of the void with a muffled thud.
Mia charged at Jerry with a speed so fast she left a blurred afterimage in the air... the hem of her combat robes whipped backward, torn by the airflow... her ash-wood wand in her left hand fired no spells... she held the wand horizontally across her chest, the hooked end of the tip aimed at Jerry's wrist...
Close Quarters Combat.
Mia chose melee.
On a battlefield where all her teammates chose long-range spell attacks... and against an opponent who clearly possessed powerful long-range defenses... Mia chose to get right in his face.
Jerry withdrew his left hand from the back of Nora's head... he turned...
Mia had already arrived.
The hooked tip of the ash-wood wand lunged for Jerry's left wrist... aimed at the silver bracelet glowing with crimson light...
Jerry's left hand jerked back, while his right hand blocked upward from below...
Their forearms crossed in the air.
Clack!
The muffled sound of bone hitting bone through skin and clothing.
Mia's strength was greater than Jerry had anticipated.
Her forearm felt like an iron rod; the force of her block nearly knocked Jerry's right hand aside.
The crossed-forearm posture lasted for less than half a second...
Mia's right knee slammed upward.
Her knee... capped with the hard guard of her combat boot... went straight for Jerry's abdomen.
Jerry's waist leaned back, avoiding the main force of the knee strike, but the knee still scraped across the surface of his abs... the hard guard of the combat boot gouged a mark into the fabric of his white shirt...
Their bodies grew closer and closer in this rapid sequence of offense and defense.
The crossed forearms became a shoulder collision. The shoulder collision became chest-to-chest contact.
Mia's fighting style was incredibly ferocious... she never created distance after an attack but continued to press in, filling the gaps with elbow strikes, knee thrusts, and headbutts.
Jerry was forced into the field he was least proficient in... pure physical combat.
Mia's left hand... the one holding her wand... hooked Jerry's right wrist from below.
The hooked tip of the ash-wood wand precisely snagged the edge of the wand holster in Jerry's cuff... then she twisted hard...
The wand Jerry held in his right hand—the one he hadn't used once—was ripped out of his sleeve along with the holster, spinning twice in the air before landing on the "ground" three meters away.
Disarmed.
But Mia immediately noticed a problem...
Jerry's expression hadn't changed at all.
The panic or anxiety that a disarmed person should have... even for a fleeting moment... was completely absent from Jerry's face.
The wand he had lost... had never been used from the start.
Mia's realization didn't have time to turn into action...
Jerry's left hand spread its five fingers, his palm pressing against Mia's chest... through her combat robes...
The bracelet lit up.
Boom...!
A crimson shockwave erupted from his palm, hitting Mia's chest dead-on.
Mia's body was shoved away from Jerry... not flying... but sliding backward at high speed for about five meters... her combat boots gouged two deep scratches into the "ground"...
But she didn't fall.
Her feet were nailed to the ground; though her upper body lurched back from the impact, her core abdominal muscles pulled her center of gravity back within a second.
At the chest of her combat robes... the spot where Jerry's palm had directly hit... a fist-sized hole had been burned, its edges still glowing with faint sparks.
Through that hole, one could see...
Not skin.
Another layer of fabric.
Black, skin-tight, some kind of high-elasticity athletic material.
She was wearing two layers.
Mia looked down at the burned hole in her chest, her dark green eyes narrowing slightly.
Then, her gaze locked onto Jerry again.
"Not bad."
Her voice was hoarse and low, like sandpaper dragging across metal.
Just then...
Crack-boom...!
A shattering sound louder than any before, like an entire continent breaking apart... came from directly beneath the "ground" of the pocket space.
Cracks appeared under Jerry's feet.
Not ordinary cracks... cracks in space itself. The edges were not broken matter, but a distortion, like a torn oil canvas, with spatial cross-sections curling at the edges. The interior of the rift was not darkness... but a murky, ashen glow, like a static screen filled with dust.
It was a dead world.
A miniature dead world, destroyed and leaving only residual spatial fragments... suspended directly beneath the "floor" of the pocket space.
The magical impact generated by the previous battle... especially Jerry's high-powered wandless casting... had exceeded the structural load limit of the pocket space, causing the underlying spatial foundation to snap, tearing open the barrier between them and this dead world below.
The rift expanded.
The "ground" beneath Jerry's feet vanished...
He fell through.
"Jerry...!"
Lydia's voice came from above... but it was too late...
Jerry's body was sucked into the spatial rift, like a stone falling into a river, tumbling at the edge of the rift before disappearing into that murky, ashen light.
Mia did not hesitate.
She ran three steps toward the rift... and leaped in.
"Mia...!"
Ella's scream was cut off the instant she dived into the rift.
The Dead World.
Jerry's body tumbled through the ashen void for about two seconds before hitting a hard surface with a thud.
He landed on his back.
Pain radiated from his spine through his nervous system to his whole body... but the residual effects of Cassiopeia's golden nectar were still active... the pain was suppressed to a negligible level within zero point five seconds.
He opened his eyes.
The "ceiling"... if it could be called that... was about four meters from his face. It was a plane made of some ashen, concrete-like but not quite concrete substance. The plane was covered in irregular cracks, with a faint, pulsing grey light seeping from them... the residual spatial energy of this dead world flowing through the gaps.
Jerry propped himself up and sat.
He looked around.
This space... the wreckage of a dead miniature world... was about the size of a medium classroom.
Roughly fifteen meters long, eight meters wide, and four meters high.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were all composed of the same ashen, semi-transparent substance, covered in cracks and protrusions like a cement board that had been repeatedly folded and squeezed.
Gravity existed... but the direction was wrong.
Jerry could feel his body being pulled "down," but that "down" wasn't perpendicular to the ground; it was tilted slightly to the right by about fifteen degrees.
This meant that if he stood straight, he felt a constant, slight urge to topple to the right.
The air was thin.
Not absent... but the oxygen content was noticeably lower than normal levels.
He had to inhale harder to get enough air.
The air smelled dry, like a mix of old books and dust... the scent of a world that had been dead for untold years.
There was no light source.
The only light came from the ashen grey micro-glow seeping from the cracks in the walls and floor.
The amount of light was extremely weak, only enough to barely outline the surroundings; details were lost in the shadows.
Jerry stood up.
He had just steadied himself when...
Thump!
Another sound of a heavy weight falling.
About five meters from him...
Mia fell through a crack in the "ceiling."
Her landing posture was far more graceful than Jerry's... feet first, knees bending to buffer the impact, one hand bracing the ground. The entire landing was nearly silent... Auror tactical landing training.
She straightened up.
The two of them stared at each other in the ashen micro-glow.
Distance: five meters.
In this cramped, tilted, oxygen-deprived wreckage of a dead world, there were only the two of them.
The rift above... the entrance they had fallen through... had already closed. The ashen substance seemed to have a self-healing capability, slowly growing and extending at the edges of the rift until the opening was completely sealed.
No way out.
At least, not for now.
Mia's dark green eyes appeared nearly black in the ashen light.
She scanned the environment... walls, ceiling, floor, cracks... then returned her gaze to Jerry.
Her left hand still gripped that ash-wood wand.
Jerry's hands were empty.
The wand that had been stripped from him was still in the pocket space above.
But he didn't need it.
Mia took a step toward Jerry.
Her combat boot made a dry clack on the ashen floor.
"Answer Lydia's question."
Her voice was exceptionally clear in the tiny space... no echo, the air was too thin, and the sound decay was much faster than in a normal environment... every word sounded compressed, short, and powerful.
"Where is Selina?"
Jerry didn't answer.
Mia took another step.
Four meters.
"I don't want to stay in this hellhole too long.
There's maybe twenty minutes of oxygen left."
Her wand rose... the hooked tip reflected a sliver of cold light in the ashen gloom.
"Within twenty minutes... you will either answer my question... or I will beat you until you do."
Jerry watched her.
The ring on his right index finger flickered slightly... tentatively releasing a trace of magic...
The ring did not respond.
Or rather... it responded, but extremely weakly.
The spatial laws in this wreckage of a dead world were completely different from the normal world... the efficiency of magic conduction wasn't just suppressed by sixty percent... it was over ninety percent.
The enchanted jewelry on his hands had become little more than ordinary ornaments in this environment.
Mia seemed to see through his attempt.
The corner of her mouth moved... not a smile... but a slight relaxation after confirming a judgment.
"In the wreckage of a dead world like this, magic is almost unusable."
Her voice was flat.
"I know.
I'm the same.
My wand can only output about a tenth of its usual power here."
She slid her wand back into its holster.
"So let's be fair."
She raised her hands.
Empty fists.
The starting stance of close quarters combat.
The look in Jerry's eyes changed.
Not fear... not nervousness... but a calm acceptance after evaluating all options and confirming that "the optimal solution is a fight."
He also raised his hands.
They squared off in the ashen micro-glow for two seconds.
Then Mia moved.
Her starting speed was incredibly fast... the sole of her combat boot scraped against the ashen floor with a harsh screech... her center of gravity dropped, shoulders forward, her right fist rising from her waist...
A standard lead jab.
But it was only a feint.
Her right fist pulled back before fully extending... the real attack came from her left leg... a sweeping roundhouse kick from Jerry's blind spot... the lower left... aimed with lethal speed at the side of his knee.
Jerry's knee pulled inward, avoiding the main force of the kick... but his shin was still caught... the top of the combat boot scraped a burning trail of pain across his leg.
He didn't retreat.
He moved forward.
In the window before Mia could fully retract her kick... her weight temporarily pinned to her right leg, left leg in the air... Jerry lunged forward one step, his left shoulder slamming into Mia's chest.
Thump...!
The shoulder ram connected.
Mia's body was knocked back two steps... but her balance didn't break... her right knee bent, absorbing the inertia of the retreat like a spring... then her hands grabbed Jerry's left arm from both sides.
Ten fingers locked onto his forearm and elbow joint.
Arm lock.
The moment she grabbed Jerry's arm, Mia's body began to spin... her waist pulled her entire upper body through a 180-degree turn... twisting Jerry's left arm into an agonizingly awkward angle... then her back pressed against Jerry's chest... her hips bucked back...
The start of an over-the-shoulder throw.
Jerry's body was lifted off the ground by her rotation and waist power... his feet left the floor...
But his right hand hooked Mia's belt the instant he was airborne.
He wasn't thrown.
Their bodies became entangled.
Mia's back was flush against Jerry's chest... her hands still locked on his left arm... his right hand hooked into her belt... as they lost balance, both bodies crashed to the right simultaneously...
Boom...!
Two bodies slammed into the ashen floor.
Mia was on the bottom.
Jerry was on top.
His right hand slipped from her belt during the fall... instead bracing against the floor to the right of Mia's head... his left arm was still locked in Mia's hands... his entire weight pressed down on her.
The distance between them...
Zero.
And in this extreme physical contact...
Mia felt it.
Her buttocks... firm and wrapped in combat robes and under-layers... were pressed tight against Jerry's crotch. At that point of contact, there was a...
A massive bulge whose hardness and temperature should not have existed in such a situation, thick enough to be bewildering, extending upward along the cleft of her buttocks.
Mia's grip on the arm lock loosened for a tenth of a second.
That 0.1 second wasn't deliberate... it was an involuntary distraction produced by her brain receiving an anomalous signal from the nerve endings in her ass.
That thing... through Jerry's suit fabric and her own combat robes... the sensation of it pressing into her gluteal cleft... was too big.
Not just "relatively large" or "on the bigger side."
It was "this can't possibly be real."
The width of that object nearly covered her entire gluteal cleft... stretching from her tailbone all the way further up... even through two layers of fabric, she could clearly feel its outline, its hardness, and its heat.
Hot.
Burning hot.
At least two to three degrees higher than normal body temperature, a scorching heat generated by blood rushing beneath the skin at high speed.
Mia's throat bobbed.
Her arm lock tightened again... harder than before... trying to use pain to drown out the distracting sensation coming from her rear...
Jerry's left arm jerked outward the moment she applied pressure...
He broke the lock.
Their bodies rolled on the floor... this time Jerry was on the bottom, Mia on top... she was mounted on his waist... hands pinning his shoulders... knees kneeling on the floor at his sides...
Mount control.
A standard Auror ground-control position.
But in this position...
Her perineum... through the fabric of her combat robes and under-layers... was pressed directly onto that terrifying ridge at Jerry's crotch.
Her entire center of gravity.
Fifty-five kilograms of body weight.
All of it was pressing down on that object.
Mia's inner thigh muscles tightened involuntarily.
The tightening was physiological... nothing to do with combat... it was an instinctive reaction of her body after feeling an overwhelming pressure against her perineum.
The object deformed slightly under the pressure of her weight... but the deformation was extremely limited... its hardness was already approaching a full erection... even in this oxygen-depleted, non-erotic, hostile combat scene.
Mia's dark green eyes flicked down... just for a second... then snapped back to Jerry's face.
The information in that one look was enough to make her brain crash...
The thing inside the crotch of the boy she was straddling was larger than any adult male she had ever seen.
Absurdly large.
Her breathing faltered. Not because of the lack of oxygen... though it was indeed thin... but because of a certain physiological reaction from deep within her body that she absolutely refused to admit, something entirely unrelated to the fight.
Heat was spreading upward from her perineum... the exact spot pressed against Jerry's ridge.
Jerry lay on the floor, looking up at Mia straddling him.
The ashen micro-glow seeped from the cracks in the surrounding walls, illuminating Mia's silhouette as she looked down at him... her short dark-blonde hair, her rugged jawline, her nose slightly tilted to the left, and those dark green eyes struggling to remain calm but already showing a faint tremor.
His hands were pressed against the outside of Mia's thighs.
Ten fingers, through the fabric of her combat robes, gripped the mid-section of her thighs.
Mia's thigh muscles tensed violently the moment his fingers touched them.
Jerry did not try to break the mount.
He just lay there, hands on her thighs, looking up at her.
Oxygen was failing.
The air in this dead miniature world was growing thinner at a slow but steady rate.
Twenty minutes.
Maybe less.