Thorns of Chaos

The sky above the village began to lose its color. The clouds were no longer gray, but dull like old flesh. The birds stopped singing. The dogs stopped barking. Time felt… twisted.

In the midst of this, Veyrn returned.

He came alone. Without an army. Without guards.

Bringing only a roll of black cloth, a single iron rod, and a gaze that made the air stop moving.

The villagers dared not ask.

Rivan saw him from afar, and knew immediately: this was no surveillance visit. This was an execution.

Inside the village hall that was beginning to "breathe," Veyrn stood alone. He unrolled the cloth, revealing something that was only used in the most extreme circumstances:

The Rite of Space-Stopping (Version Three).

An ancient form of sealing magic—not killing a portal, but killing the location where it could grow.

The effect?

The village would disappear. From maps, from memory, from history. As if it had never existed.

And everything within it… was buried.

That night, Veyrn gathered the remaining elders. He spoke briefly.

"You have two choices. Die in a world that is destroyed, or die to keep it intact."

The villagers protested. Some wept. But everyone knew: what was happening was no ordinary oddity. This was no longer magic—it had touched the edge of dimensions.

And the only way to seal it… was to destroy its starting point: the village itself.

Rivan came to Veyrn as night fell.

"If you seal the village," he said, "you also kill the only person who can still stop Zeo without destroying everything."

Veyrn stared at him flatly.

"And who is that?"

"Me."

Veyrn did not laugh. But his tone was cold:

"Do you think you can save the world by touching that same darkness? You are no savior, Rivan. You are merely an unbroken pawn."

Rivan stared at him without backing down. "Then let me be the pawn… that hits the king."

And that night, unbeknownst to anyone, two plans began to play out simultaneously:

• Veyrn: Seal the village. Destroy the roots. End it all.

• Rivan: Face Zeo. Close the portal from the inside, even if it means blowing himself up.

And somewhere else, in the middle of a field where nothing could grow, Zeo laughed softly.

Because the two sides began to push against each other.

And the door… began to open wider.

Few slept that night. But Rivan didn't sleep at all.

On his left hand, the magic symbol of the Book of Broken Mirrors kept moving—pulsing like an open wound. He knew what it meant: the portal was becoming active, and Zeo's body was most likely no longer the property of a single soul.

But he also knew one important thing:

Every portal has a birth point.

Not where Zeo lived, not where the first victim was found, but the initial location where magic broke through the boundary. The point where reality first wavered.

And to find it, Rivan had to follow the twisted path of magic.

He walked alone out of the village, to the first place he had felt something "wrong" since all this began: the riverbank, where the head of the first victim had been found.

He had thought it was just a symbolic murder. But now, he realized:

The ground there held dimensional residue. Invisible to the eye, but felt in the body—like personal gravity.

He pressed his hand to the ground, then began to cast a detection spell from within his body. But not an ordinary spell. This was mirror magic, which reflected the path of magic into the mind.

As soon as he uttered the keyword, his eyes closed by themselves.

And the world changed.

In an instant, Rivan saw the village from above—but not an ordinary village. This was a split version of the world: the structure of the ground was like nerves, the rivers became streams of black blood, and in the middle… a shapeless hole. A "blind spot" of reality.

Its location: beneath the roots of a dead tree in the middle of a field.

The place where Zeo had once burned, then left it alone.

The place that now… began to pulsate.

Rivan opened his eyes. His breathing was heavy.

He knew what it meant:

The center point of the portal was not Zeo. But the land. Zeo was just the key.

And if he wanted to stop everything, he had to go there.

Not physically.

But through magic… merging briefly with the web of chaos itself.

At the risk: losing his mind. Or worse, becoming Zeo's replacement as a portal.

But Rivan had no choice.

He stared at the sky that was no longer completely blue.

"If I have to be crazy… at least I'm crazy enough to stop it all."

And he began drawing the reality binding symbol on his own chest.