The boy's voice echoed in Saruman and Kag's ears, clear and unmistakable.
At that moment, as if sensing something, or perhaps by pure coincidence, the figure crouching on the ground froze. Then, slowly, he turned his head.
Time seemed to stop.
Saruman and Kag's pupils contracted sharply. They saw his face.
He looked incredibly young, still carrying traces of boyish innocence. His skin was pale, his nose sharply defined, and his lips set in a firm, cool line.
But it was his eyes that caught all their attention.
They weren't the bright, innocent eyes of a child.
They were as deep and still as a bottomless lake, reflecting no light at all. Only an unfathomable calm remained, a calm that seemed forged through endless ages and countless deaths.
A few loose strands of black hair hung across his forehead, making his strikingly handsome face look almost unnaturally beautiful. And just as unnaturally cold, like a sculpture carved from marble.
His almost unreal good looks, combined with the heavy, mountain-like aura radiating from him, as though he had become one with the surrounding death and madness, created a strangely harmonious contradiction.
Calmly, without the slightest hint of emotion, those deep eyes swept toward the massive pillar where Saruman and Kag were hiding.
He had found them.
In that instant, both Saruman and Kag felt their blood turn to ice.
It was like being casually glanced at by an ancient beast that had slept since the dawn of time.
The overwhelming difference in their power and the very nature of their existence crushed them so completely that they forgot how to breathe.
'So... this is what a Legendary is...'
Young Saruman's heart trembled with terror. The shock of that single, casual glance wasn't limited to the younger Saruman and Kag inside the memory.
---
A thousand years later, deep beneath the African Ministry of Magic...
The black-robed man, who had been silently watching the ancient memory, shuddered as though struck by invisible lightning the moment Ian's face became clear.
"T-That's impossible!"
His horrified cry rang out, loud enough to drown out the faint sounds within the memory itself.
The Department of Mysteries wizard instinctively took a step forward, as if getting closer would let him see more clearly.
The sudden movement betrayed just how shaken he was. His hood slipped back slightly, exposing a grotesquely mutated face covered in gray-green scales, twisted in utter disbelief.
"We live in a world of magic, my child." Old Saruman turned his empty eye sockets toward him. Though blind, he seemed to sense every shift in his student's emotions.
"Master..." The black-robed man's voice trembled. His eyes remained locked on Ian's young, cold, impossibly handsome face. "That face... those robes... he... he's..."
A memory flashed through his mind.
Not long ago, while hunting down the escapees in the Upper Prison Layer, he had glimpsed fragments of the prisoners' memories. In those shattered images, he had seen a black-robed youth with icy eyes.
Ignoring every ancient protective barrier and spatial seal as though they didn't exist, the boy had simply walked into the deepest forbidden region of these ruins like a ghost.
That was why he recognized him.
At the time, he had dismissed the boy as an arrogant prodigy who had mastered an unknown ancient teleportation technique, or perhaps nothing more than a collective hallucination created by corruption.
To keep the secret buried, he had hunted down and executed every potential witness.
But now...
Within this forbidden memory from a thousand years ago, a memory his own master had personally experienced, he was seeing the exact same face. The same youth. The same black robes. The same soul-chilling coldness.
This couldn't be a coincidence.
"Master..."
The black-robed man slowly turned toward the motionless old Saruman, his voice dry as sandpaper against stone.
"That man... the one who just entered the deepest part of the ruins we've been guarding... you... you already met him a thousand years ago? How is that even possible?"
Everything he believed had been turned upside down.
How could someone cross a thousand years without changing at all?
The same face. The same clothes. Even the same presence.
Had this man truly lived for an entire millennium?
Or were the depths of these ruins so hopelessly twisted that time itself had become entangled, connecting different eras?
Blind Saruman slowly nodded in response to his student's shocked, confused questions. There was no surprise on his weathered face, only the calm of someone who had long since accepted a cruel truth, and a hint of exhaustion.
"Yes. I've met him before. The first time was at that very moment, in the central square of R'lyeh, when he turned and looked toward the place where we were hiding."
The old wizard's voice was calm and worn with age.
"And seeing him again just now has helped me understand a few things... about these ruins, about time, and about where all of us may truly stand."
His voice grew even quieter.
"You already knew he would come? Today?" the black-robed man asked urgently.
"No. I didn't 'know'."
Saruman gently shook his head.
"It was a deduction... born from observation and logic. Once you've brushed against the edge of certain domains, once you've personally witnessed time behaving abnormally, and once you've spent centuries replaying every detail of the past over and over... ideas that once seemed impossible gradually become clear."
He paused, carefully choosing his words, as though trying to explain a concept too complicated for ordinary language.
"Back in R'lyeh, when my younger self first saw his face and felt a power that completely surpassed the understanding of that era, I was overwhelmed by shock and confusion. But after experiencing more... after losing certain things, and gaining knowledge I should never have possessed... I slowly realized something."
His voice carried the quiet resignation of someone who had seen through fate itself.
"He wasn't a Legendary from the ancient era. He was... a visitor from the other side. R'lyeh, or rather, these ruins themselves, have an abnormal spacetime structure. Time here is folded. It doesn't simply connect the past to the future. Under certain conditions, it forms a temporary... closed loop."
"A closed loop?" The black-robed man repeated, struggling to keep up.
"A Möbius strip of time," Saruman explained.
"The beginning and the end are joined together. Cause and effect become inseparable. My younger self saw him in R'lyeh. That was the result. And today, a thousand years later, he entered these ruins and somehow returned to R'lyeh. That may have been the cause. Or perhaps cause and effect were always one and the same, happening simultaneously."
The black-robed man felt dizzy. Time magic was already one of the deepest and most forbidden fields of study. Saruman's explanation went far beyond anything he could comprehend.
"So... you didn't stop him from entering the deepest part because... you already expected this? You believed his arrival was... destined?"
"I wouldn't call it expectation."
A bitter, self-mocking smile tugged at Saruman's lips.
"It was more a matter of accepting what couldn't be changed. When the Eye of the Heart sensed his arrival, when I felt the same aura of death I remembered from a thousand years ago, only now even more refined and profound, I knew that trying to stop him would be pointless. It might even have been... the wrong choice."
His empty eye sockets seemed to gaze into the distant past, yet also at the chamber wall only a few steps away.
"Besides... a Legendary who could single-handedly wipe out countless Old Ones' Spawn in a place like R'lyeh... a man who left such a profound mark a thousand years ago, only to appear again today exactly as he was... and you expect this broken old body of mine to stop him?"
Saruman slowly shook his head, his voice holding deep reverence, mixed with emotions too complex to describe.
"More importantly... I understand more now than I did back then. Fifteen years old... Heh. A fifteen-year-old Legendary. Back then, I wondered if he'd used some secret art to preserve his youth. But now... I think I finally understand. For certain beings, age has never been a measure of power. The word 'impossible' simply doesn't apply to them."
Saruman's outlook had changed completely from the man he had once been. The black-robed man could understand why, and yet he was still stunned.
"...A fifteen-year-old... Legendary..." he murmured.
Even though corruption had long since eroded him and his will was far stronger than that of ordinary wizards, he still couldn't stop the shiver that rose from the depths of his soul.
It all felt utterly unbelievable.
He had spent his life guarding this secret, fighting against corruption. More than anyone, he understood the terrible price required to make even the slightest progress along that path.
And yet that man had reached the Legendary realm, a level countless wizards dreamed of, one many believed had long since become impossible, at only fifteen years old.
"In this age..." the black-robed man said, still unable to accept it. "Magic power is at its lowest ebb. The path to becoming a Legendary has practically become a myth. How could someone like him possibly exist...?"
"There are always a few beings who stand apart from everyone else, my child."
Saruman's voice was calm, carrying the wisdom of countless years.
"The laws of the world may be absolute to most people. But for a very small number of individuals, those laws are merely toys to be broken, surpassed... or rewritten. From the moment such people are born, the word 'impossible' loses all meaning. Our knowledge. Our experience. When faced with true anomalies... they are pitifully inadequate."
The old wizard spoke with a quiet resignation the black-robed man had never heard before.
The brilliant silver-robed genius who had once believed he could uncover every mystery had changed after a thousand years, the death of his closest friend, his own sacrifices, and witnessing horrors beyond all understanding.
The youthful ambition had long since been worn away. In its place remained a deeper, clearer understanding... and a far heavier sense of helplessness.
"I see..." The black-robed man fell silent for a long time, slowly digesting everything he had heard.
Looking at his blind master's face, a face that somehow seemed capable of seeing through everything, another question surfaced. One far heavier than the last. One that concerned the meaning of their own existence.
"Master..." His voice was hoarse.
"If his arrival is part of this closed loop of time...
if it was always destined...
then what about us?
For generations, the Department of Mysteries has guarded this place, cleansed corruption, protected its secrets... and people like me... we end up becoming this."
He lowered his gaze to his own twisted body.
"...Was the purpose of our existence... simply to ensure that, at this moment, he could successfully return to the past? To the R'lyeh that exists in your memories?"
It was a question aimed at the very heart of everything. A question about whether their lives had possessed any meaning beyond serving fate itself.
Saruman quietly "looked" toward his student. After a long silence, he slowly nodded, then shook his head.
"Yes... and no." His answer was almost cryptic. "Preserving the integrity of this loop, ensuring that what is meant to happen does happen, may indeed be part of our duty. It may be necessary to maintain a fragile balance. But..."
He paused. For the briefest moment, it almost seemed as though a faint light flickered within his empty eye sockets.
"Destiny may exist. But it is never completely fixed. A perfect loop, one without the slightest flaw... means endless repetition. And endless despair. But what if... one variable were introduced into that loop? A variable that should never have existed... or one whose importance had been greatly underestimated?"
"A variable?" The black-robed man's spirits lifted immediately.
"I devoted my entire life to studying forbidden knowledge, unraveling the mysteries of time, and touching taboos that should never have been touched. I paid with pieces of my very soul. I did not do all that merely to cling to life... or simply to guard a secret."
Saruman's voice was low and unwavering, as though suppressing an obsession that had accumulated over an entire millennium.
"I have been searching... or perhaps trying to create... that variable. Someone, or something, that might tear open a crack in this seemingly predetermined loop... and create a different future."
Old Saruman had never sounded more serious.
"What is this variable?" the black-robed man asked eagerly. He felt as though he were about to uncover his master's greatest secret.
But Saruman didn't answer. Instead, he slowly raised one withered hand. The faint blue magical light dancing at his fingertips grew brighter again, gently swaying as it pointed toward the unfinished memory suspended in the air.
"Watch the rest first, my child." The old wizard's voice returned to its usual calm. "See everything that happened back then. See the roles we played within that closed loop... and the price we paid. Then perhaps you'll understand what I mean by that variable... and why I need you. Why I need you to do what you're doing now."
His words carried unquestionable authority, but hidden beneath them was a deep sense of expectation.
The black-robed man took a slow, deep breath, forcing down the countless questions churning inside him. He knew the answers lay at the end of the memory that had yet to unfold.
He turned his eyes back to the ghostly blue projection floating in the darkness.
Within the memory, Ian had already turned away. The distant observers no longer seemed to interest him. His attention returned to the intricate magic circle on the ground.
Meanwhile, young Saruman and Kag remained hidden behind the massive pillar, holding their breath, not daring to make the slightest movement.
(End Of This Chapter)
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