Damian jolted awake, his stomach dropping with the violent sensation of a long fall.
He scrambled to his feet, quickly scanning his surroundings. The rest of the expedition team was gone.
The magical bonfire in the center of the camp now burned with an eerie, ash-white flame. Beyond the small circle of light, the world was swallowed entirely by the endless, oppressive Grey Mist.
Damian had been dragged back into the mysterious dimension.
As expected, it happened again, he thought grimly. At least that terrifying Spectral White Stag isn't here.
Gripping his wand tightly, Damian vigilantly scanned the swirling fog beyond the camp's perimeter.
The environment within the mist looked completely different from his last visit. This cemented his theory: he was inside the "Divine Realm" that Jack White had accessed using the forbidden Ritual of Dream Entry. Just like in Jack's fragmented memories, the realm was saturated in fog and bizarrely mutable.
According to Jack's grimoire, a wizard using the dark ritual needed to find a glowing spatial rift to escape. These rifts acted as anchor nodes where the Divine Realm temporarily intersected with the physical Wizarding World. The areas surrounding these stable nodes were classified by the Mining Brotherhood as "Treasure Lands."
Casting the ritual from different physical locations deposited the wizard into different areas of the realm. Sometimes, even using the exact same entry point threw the caster into completely uncharted territory. Therefore, getting permanently lost in the mist was the highest risk of the forbidden magic.
But Damian didn't share that fear. His mysterious metal disc anchored his soul, allowing him to pull himself back without needing a physical rift. Since he possessed a built-in escape hatch, his exploration of the Grey Mist was entirely safe.
He decided to actively explore the perimeter.
Stepping into the fog, he was met with a bizarre sight. The terrain was composed entirely of giant, smooth stone pillars featuring jet-black bases and dark red, vein-like patterns.
Stranger still, the pillars were floating freely in the air, forming disjointed platforms of varying heights. Glancing down through the jagged gaps between the stones, Damian saw nothing but an endless, bottomless abyss of Grey Mist.
The massive stone structures were drifting slowly, grinding against one another. When Damian looked over his shoulder, the ash-white bonfire and his campsite had completely vanished, replaced by more drifting monoliths.
So once I step out, the entry point shifts? he realized.
Unwilling to test his luck with the bottomless drop, Damian tapped into his otherworldly runic magic. He conjured an Invisible Hand—a construct of pure, localized force—to lift himself safely into the air and carry him forward.
It didn't take long to encounter the local residents.
They were bizarre creatures composed of the exact same black-and-red stone as the pillars. They resembled massive rhinoceros beetles, each roughly the size of a cauldron. The oversized horns on their heads featured a sharp, spiraling pattern like an industrial drill bit.
The swarm quickly took notice of the intruder. Over a dozen of the Unicorn Stone Beetles drifted toward him, though their speed was sluggish. Their heavy stone wings were completely stationary; they simply levitated through the mist like the pillars, just at a faster pace.
Damian flicked his wand, casting a blazing Incendio. A torrent of flames engulfed the vanguard of the swarm.
When the fire cleared, the Unicorn Stone Beetles were completely unscathed.
Immune to elemental magic? he thought, his eyes narrowing. He fired off a concussive Stunning Spell, the red light striking a Unicorn Stone Beetle dead-center, but it simply absorbed the spell without flinching.
Realizing traditional hexes were useless, Damian commanded his runic Invisible Hand to fly backward, easily outpacing the sluggish swarm and creating a safe distance.
The creatures in this realm were fundamentally bizarre—they were completely insulated against magical energy. Recognizing that the beetles and the floating pillars were made of identical material, Damian paused his flight and fired a Transfiguration spell at a nearby rock formation.
The stone didn't even shimmer.
He understood now. The unique black-and-red stone possessed absolute anti-magic properties.
Pulling a solid iron weight from his pocket, Damian used his runic Invisible Hand to hurl the metal at a nearby pillar from a great height.
CRACK! The heavy iron ball struck the pillar with massive kinetic force, leaving a deep, fractured crater in the stone. Damian smirked.
The stone was immune to magical energy, but it wasn't immune to physics. As long as he used his magic flexibly, he could simply orchestrate pure, blunt-force physical attacks.
With a quick wave of his wand, he Transfigured the iron ball into a massive, heavy warhammer. His runic Invisible Hand firmly gripped the handle just as the Unicorn Stone Beetles closed the distance.
Damian swung the conjured hammer like a wrecking ball.
The brutal physical impact shattered several Unicorn Stone Beetles instantly, sending their jagged remains plummeting into the bottomless abyss below. Within moments, the massive hammer had pulverized the entire swarm.
Damian floated closer and picked up a chunk of debris. A faint red light, visible only to him, seeped from the stone and was greedily absorbed by the metal disc in his mind.
By touching the rest of the fragments, he absorbed enough ambient energy to fuel a complete dimensional crossing. It was roughly the equivalent energy required to travel between his original world and this magical one.
Because the Divine Realm physically overlapped with the Wizarding World, jumping between the two cost only a fraction of the energy required for true, cross-universal transit.
Examining the fragments, Damian confirmed his theory. When he tried to push a trickle of mana into the stone, it violently repelled the energy. He even tried slipping a piece into his pocket, but the Undetectable Extension Charm violently rejected the anti-magic stone.
He clicked his tongue in disappointment. Since he couldn't store it magically, he couldn't carry much of it back. Despite its relatively low physical durability, a material that completely neutralized spells was incredibly valuable.
"Portus," Damian muttered, pointing his wand at a large chunk of debris.
He hoped to create a Portkey to anchor the location, but the spell fizzled into nothing. The spatial fabric of the Divine Realm was far too unstable to anchor spatial magic.
Giving up on the idea, he resolved to simply memorize his physical coordinates in the real world, hoping to find a pattern later. He commanded his runic Invisible Hand to lift him higher, continuing his aerial trek through the mist.
After several minutes of flight, a colossal dark shadow loomed in the fog ahead.
Closing the distance, Damian laid eyes on a towering, thirty-meter-tall tree made entirely of the anti-magic stone. The structure eerily mirrored the Bird-Chirping Pines from the Winter Forest, complete with dozens of hollow knots dotting its massive trunk.
As Damian drifted closer, his blood ran cold.
Pouring out from the hollow knots was a massive, churning swarm of hundreds of Unicorn Stone Beetles.
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