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{Chapter: 124: Rise From The Dead}
The Wizarding World's Homeland – The Endless Sea
Far across the turbulent waters of the world, hidden deep within the forbidden reaches of the Endless Sea, lay a mysterious and forsaken island. For countless ages, its shores had been concealed by an ever-present wall of thick gray fog—unnatural, oppressive, and laced with ancient magic. Sailors spoke of this place in whispers, calling it a cursed land where compasses spun wildly and voices of the dead rode the wind.
But today, that eerie silence was broken.
A dull, grayish light—neither the sun nor moon—descended from the heavens, casting an unholy glow upon the swirling mists. The very air trembled as a strange phenomenon occurred: the boundaries between the material world and the alien void began to blur. Space itself rippled unnaturally, like a reflection disturbed on the surface of still water.
From this chaos, something began to form.
With a soft groan of bending metal and creaking time, a large black coffin forged of obsidian-like metal slowly phased into existence on the desolate shoreline. Strange etchings, glowing faintly in an otherworldly green hue, crawled across its surface like living veins. The object radiated immense power and an ancient, suffocating dread.
Then came the sound—"Huahua…"
It wasn't wind. It was liquid, viscous and thick, flowing rapidly within the sealed coffin. And then came the mist, dark and oily, slowly seeping out through the seams as the liquid pressure increased. The fog that clung to the island stirred, curling like the breath of something ancient waking from a long slumber.
"Boom… Boom… Boom…"
The air pulsed with rhythmic, haunting vibrations. Like distant war drums. No—like a heartbeat.
The metal lid trembled, then shifted with a loud screech.
With a thunderous clang, the coffin burst open from within.
A figure emerged—gaunt, skeletal, barely more than skin stretched tight over brittle bones. His body was desiccated, shriveled as if a thousand years of hunger had gnawed at him in his sleep. His chest expanded and contracted heavily, each breath sounding like grinding stone. The rhythmic thudding—boom-boom-boom—was the sound of his heart, echoing with unnatural force. He was alive… barely.
His eyes, once vivid, were now lifeless orbs—pale, hollow, and devoid of emotion. Yet as they scanned the mist-shrouded island, a spark of recognition stirred within.
And then, he raised his head toward the sky and screamed.
It was not a cry of pain. It was a summons.
All at once, the energy from the surrounding seas surged toward him. The wind howled as ancient sigils carved into the very stones of the island began to glow, channeling the converging power into his body. Waves trembled. Clouds cracked open. Whales in the depths screamed in terror and fled.
The heavy fog, which had cloaked the island since time immemorial, scattered like a curtain being torn apart.
The dead island breathed again.
His body began to transform—muscles inflating like a corpse resurrected, flesh regrowing rapidly, fueled by torrents of magic and soul energy. Blood flowed, skin restored, and vitality surged. Within seconds, the withered skeleton became a youthful man in his early twenties, though something still felt profoundly wrong.
His skin was a pale porcelain, etched with glowing runes that shimmered faintly across his chest, shoulders, and especially his forehead. They pulsed in rhythm with his heart. His hair grew out like black ink spilling down his back, damp and heavy with magic. And his eyes—those soulless, hollow eyes—now glimmered with intelligence… and pain.
As power swirled around him, he stood still, as if waiting for something. Then came the memories.
Images flashed before his eyes, impossibly fast—his past life, recent events, decisions made in haste, spells cast in desperation. His resurrection ritual had worked, but not without cost.
A translucent screen materialized in front of him, casting a cold white light against his face. It projected scenes from three days before his death, playing back at an accelerated speed, almost imperceptible to the untrained eye.
He absorbed it all silently, watching himself fall, watching himself die.
A wave of emotion flickered across his face—confusion, realization, and finally grim understanding.
A voice echoed through the void.
"I just died once, and as expected, I lost a segment of my memory. That part must have been sealed deliberately by me… perhaps because I feared it would interfere with my resurrection."
Moments later, multiple other presences flickered into being around him—ancient minds, powerful, conscious. Not physical bodies, but condensed wills of the other high-level members of the Wizard Council, manifesting through thoughtforms to meet him.
They surrounded him like ghostly monarchs.
One, speaking with a voice like a thunderstorm behind a velvet curtain, asked, "Do you have a hypothesis about the enemy's method?"
He did not hesitate.
"Yes," he replied, his voice calm but sharp as a dagger. "I have narrowed it to a few terrifying possibilities: complete mind control, forced personality rewriting, memory manipulation… or worse."
He gestured, and the screen replayed the moment of his death. "From the instant I was struck to the moment I activated the self-destruct spell and the resurrection protocol… only ten seconds passed. There was no visible attack. No magic detected. No defense was triggered. Nothing left a trace."
He turned to the other Councilors, voice grave. "For someone like me to make such a decision—to annihilate the [Alsop Star] completely, to sacrifice all lives on board without hesitation—I must have judged that even resurrection would not protect us if things continued. Something had already reached me internally. Mentally. Spiritually. That… is far more terrifying than any spell."
He looked down, clenched his hand, and continued, "The wizards aboard must have already been compromised beyond saving. This was no individual attack. This was widespread. An entire region, perhaps an entire mindset was changed in a flash."
The leader of the Council, a being of unimaginable arcane depth, coalesced into a humanoid form. The glow of millions of runes circled him like a crown of knowledge.
"If even an eighth-tier wizard—one of our finest—can only resist for ten seconds," the leader intoned solemnly, "then the enemy's weapon must be beyond comprehension. Either we are dealing with a ninth-tier divine entity… or a weapon of such invasive thought manipulation that even our magical barriers are obsolete."
Another voice whispered, one of the shadowy minds in the ring.
"Should we consider activating [Karl's Hatred]…?"
The question lingered, ominous.
A pause.
The man who had just returned from death said nothing for a while. Then, slowly, he turned his gaze toward the horizon—toward the war that had yet to come, and the weapon that had claimed him.
"Yes," he said finally. "We should prepare it… but only as a last resort. We must first understand the nature of the enemy. Something has changed in this war."
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