Chapter 554

The three hired thugs lay on the ground as the alarm bells rang and a light shone on them. They had barely touched the warehouse's reinforced loading doors before the kinetic tripwires snapped, sending them hurling away.

A moment later, the side doors flew open. About six apprentices rushed into the alley, with short swords drawn and adrenaline pumping. The element of surprise was lost. The thugs scrambled backward, cursing, but the alley was tight, and the apprentices had the advantage near the loading dock.

A brief, chaotic scuffle followed. Steel clashed against steel. A thug shouted in pain as a short sword bit into his shoulder. Within seconds, the three men were disarmed and pinned against the brickwork, their hands bound with coarse hemp rope.

That’s all I can do. I’ll have to trust this mysterious guard Aris is counting on to be able to deal with the rest.

If the Rapier wasthe Prestige warrior he’d sensed upon entering Trelan, then all should be well.

Nick stood up, satisfied with his work. He had dismantled the plot with a handful of basic spells, so no one should look for him if they even suspected foul play beyond Aris’.

He turned east, intending to navigate the rooftops back to his rented room at the inn and get some sleep before finally leaving the city.

A pulse washed through the ether.

Nick hung suspended between two buildings. The pulse was completely silent, with no physical force behind it, displacing no air or stirring dust in the streets below. It was a pure ripple on the spiritual plane, passing through Trelan like water through a sieve, with no one the wiser. No one but him.

He extended his senses, traced the wave's origin, and found it radiating from the northern wall of the fortified estate he had identified upon entering the city. The witch.

For a moment, he considered ignoring it. He’d felt no side effects afterward, and no one’s soul seemed tainted, but that power had been dark. Not from the abyss, fortunately, but dark nonetheless. It felt like a deep, lightless ocean, and even if it wasn’t, it was a work of significant complexity. He couldn’t immediately divine its purpose, but he didn’t think anyone would go that far just to send ripples out.

A summoning? No, it didn’t feel that precise, as if it lacked a target. So what was it?

Curiosity overrode his desire for rest, and Nick pivoted, abandoning the route to the inn. He moved swiftly across the skyline, a shadow flying above all, invisible to mortals below.

The witch’s estate loomed against the city wall. It was a large compound of dark granite, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence topped with cruel spikes. Protective arrays surrounded the property, so mighty that even he couldn’t ignore them, not even in his astral form.

Nick landed silently on the branch of an elm tree overhanging the outer wall, his eyes fixed on the iron bars as he studied the flow of mana.

Interlocking runic circles formed a cascading web of triggers. A brute-force breach would detonate the array, level the street, and summon every guard in the district, not to mention the thousands of constructs he could feel lying in wait just beneath the ground.

Despite himself, Nick leaned closer, drawn to the spellcraft. Even if he couldn’t enter, it was still laid bare to his senses, and within a minute he found the anchor points, the subtle seams where the defensive layers overlapped.

He extended a hand, feeding a microscopic sliver of his own mana into the nearest seam and mimicking its frequency to match the dormant runes. It took time, but he gently pried the overlapping layers apart, creating a temporary gap in the barrier just large enough for a man to slip through.

That was too easy. It felt much more complex and resilient. Did it let me through?

Now genuinely involved, he dropped from the branch, slipped through the gap, and landed on the manicured grass of the inner grounds. Above him, the wards snapped back into place, seamless and undisturbed.

Yeah, she let me through. Alright, I’ll bite.

With a thought, he activated his cloak and walked toward the estate's center, where he felt the lone presence.

This chapter was taken without the author's permission from where the author publishes the story. The author's page is the proper place to read it.

He entered a walled garden of pale, night-blooming flowers and raked black gravel. The moonlight shone brightly here, far more than outside, and he felt the stirrings of a light-gathering ward.

In the center of the garden stood a woman who looked to be in her sixties, though she was likely much, much older, given the depth of her power. She wore a simple, elegant dark silk gown. Her silver hair was pinned up in a complex arrangement, revealing the sharp lines of her neck and jaw.

She held her hands suspended over a stone basin. A sphere of dark, dense fluid floated between her palms, churning and folding in on itself, as if drinking in the moonlight and darkening its surroundings.

It felt like the pulse, so that was one mystery solved.

Nick stopped at the edge of the gravel, keeping his presence muted, and watched.

She continued her work for some time until the wards rippled. She clicked her tongue, set the sphere back in its basin, and dispersed the gathering light with a wave.

“After announcing your arrival at the city gates and demanding the attention of the clerks and the guards," she said, clearly addressing him yet not turning around. “One would think you’d know better than to skulk through the dark like a common footpad.”

Nick remained silent. She didn’t know where he was, but she could tell he was nearby, which was more than anyone else had managed when he used the Stillness. For a moment, he was tempted to sink fully into its effects and vanish without a trace just to show her up, but curiosity kept him there.

The witch turned slowly. Her eyes were pools of obsidian, reflecting no light, and swept across the courtyard.

"I felt the ripples of your entry into Trelan, Nicholas Crowley," she said, lacing her hands together at her waist. "I admit, I am mildly impressed. You have evaded my gaze multiple times, flitting about the city unseen. It is a commendable feat of stealth for a mere boy. But I would ask what brought you this way.”

Nick let the Stillness drop, allowing his physical form to coalesce from the shadows. He kept his hands loose at his sides, ready to summon the [Saga of the Storm Caller] at a moment's notice.

"I was curious about the pulse," he said, his tone conversational. “It wasn’t very subtle,” he couldn’t resist adding.

"Curiosity is a dangerous luxury," the witch replied, her obsidian eyes sweeping over his dark coat and the star-metal medal on his chest. “I can see why you’d feel it, since you warp the ether simply by existing, but you should know better than to poke what you cannot understand.”

"Many people have been warning me as of late," Nick noted, mildly annoyed. Lasazar’s attempt had been more than effective enough. Was there no end to busybodies sticking their noses into his business?

"I have no interest in your fate," she cackled. "I am merely telling you that you are not ready, not for what awaits you at the end of your journey, and certainly not for me.”

She raised a single finger. Nick’s blood sang with lightning.

The very fabric of reality inverted. A wall of absolute rejection pushed outward from the garden’s center, catching Nick in its grip before he could unleash the storm’s wrath.

The sensation was dizzying. Up became down; distance collapsed into a single point. This was no mere teleportation. His very point of existence had been rewritten, yet it never affected him directly. [Blasphemy] didn’t even stir.

Nick blinked and found himself on the street, fifty yards beyond the estate gates. The wards along the fence hummed with renewed energy, sealed tight. He knew he wouldn’t slip past them again—if he’d ever managed it in the first place.

He stared, running a hand over his jaw. He felt his mana thrum, eager to meet the challenge. He could anchor the [Saga of the First Flame] to the concept of ruin, batter the wards to ash, tear the wrought iron from its stone foundations, and carve a path back into the garden.

Instead, he let out a slow breath, easing the tension in his shoulders.

It was a matter of priorities. This kind of battle would attract attention, and, unfortunately, he wasn’t even sure he could win. There was no strategic value, and he had no quarrel with the woman, only a passing curiosity about her work.

Not ready, he mused, turning away from the gates. We will see.

He walked back to the inn, spent the rest of the night in deep meditation, fortified his mind against the lingering disorientation from the spatial displacement, and began working through plans for how he should react to such an event.

Spatial magic had, once again, moved up the list of what he should study. His iron ring burned on his finger, and he sighed in defeat as dawn broke.

“Yes, I will study you; no need to get huffy.”

After breakfast, Nick gathered his few belongings, settled his tab with the innkeeper, and walked out the eastern gates before morning merchant traffic could clog the road.

He resumed his journey along the King's Highway, moving a bit faster than his previous leisurely pace by channeling kinetic mana. The landscape shifted back to the rolling plains and scattered copses of trees that marked the beginning of the central provinces.

By midday, a strange sensation prickled at the edge of his awareness. Nick slowed his pace and closed his eyes to isolate the feeling.

Interestingly, it didn’t seem to have a precise origin; it felt like it came from everywhere at once.

He pulled off his leather glove and stared at the plain band of his spatial ring for the second time that day. Though he’d yet to unravel its secrets, he was very familiar with the feel of its mana, and the sensation that had drawn his attention was remarkably similar, though on a vastly greater scale.

The World was stretching thin.

Nick checked his maps, cross-referencing his position. An uncultivated stretch of terrain lay a dozen miles northeast of the main highway, an area marked simply as the Starlit Caves.

He considered what he knew. Natural spatial distortions were rare, especially this far into civilized lands, but he could think of one thing.

If the leylines were surfacing, their power would certainly warp space, and he hadn't been strong enough to sense them that deeply the last time he’d been in a place like this.

A dungeon was forming. It had just begun, considering the lack of suffocating power.

The prospect sparked genuine excitement. Newly formed dungeons were chaotic, incredibly dangerous, and saturated with unclaimed resources. They offered monster cores, rare alchemical flora, and a ton of experience points.

It was the ideal environment to test his refined Saga spells without risking collateral damage.

Almost without realizing it, he adjusted his course, left the highway, and struck out across the open plains.

He covered the distance quickly as the terrain grew progressively rougher. Gentle hills gave way to sharp outcroppings of stone. The vegetation thinned and grew hardy, clinging to the rocky soil.

Two hours later, Nick crested a rocky hill and looked down into a wide, bowl-shaped valley, now more certain than ever that his initial assumption was right.

The entrance to the Starlit Caves was a yawning black fissure in the side of a cliff. But the valley floor was far from empty.