“What are you talking about?”
In the empty hall, Charlotte’s voice trembled slightly, echoing between the neatly arranged bookshelves.
The crow with the ruffled feathers did not answer her.
It only stared fixedly at Charlotte, mechanically repeating those unsettling words.
Just then, a heart-pounding tremor suddenly erupted outside the hall.
The threads that had been emitting a faint blue glow were suddenly torn by some invisible, violent force, twisting and flickering wildly.
Amidst the play of light and shadow...
The scene before Charlotte’s eyes changed.
She saw herself wearing a sharp, capable uniform with a strange badge pinned to the collar.
It wasn't ordinary clothing; it was a type of armament she had never seen before.
The scene shifted again without warning.
A massive sense of weightlessness hit her.
She found herself suspended in mid-air.
Below was a solitary white lighthouse standing on a reef.
However, the top of the tower, which should have been emitting a warm white light...
At this moment, it was flashing with a piercing, frenzied crimson glow.
It looked like a bleeding eye, spinning madly in the dark of night.
And in the pitch-black water surrounding the lighthouse...
A scene that made her skin crawl appeared.
Countless white-shelled creatures swarmed from the ocean floor in a dense mass.
Accompanying them...
Were all sorts of bizarre, deformed sea monsters with sharp fins, tentacles, or gill slits.
They were like an unstoppable black plague, covering the sky and the earth.
Without exception, they were all crawling slowly but firmly toward the horizon, toward the coastline of that vaguely visible giant city.
Charlotte felt a suffocating sense of despair.
She subconsciously floated forward a few steps, wanting to see the situation at the lighthouse more clearly.
But then she saw a figure that made her heart stop.
It was Elias.
It was her brother.
He was covered in blood, lying lifelessly beside the cold stone steps of the white tower.
His chest was not rising or falling; he looked like a piece of discarded rag.
“Brother!”
Her vision was instantly blurred by tears.
Charlotte shouted in grief, desperately running toward the fallen figure.
Only, she couldn't make a sound.
All her cries were swallowed whole by this eerie space.
Just as she was about to touch her brother...
A massive, overwhelming gust of air hit her from behind without warning.
Charlotte was knocked directly to the ground, rolling several meters away.
In her panic, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a bone flute as white as jade scattered near her brother’s limp hand.
Before she could think, she jerked her head up, instinctively identifying the source of that terrifying air current.
Her pupils shrank abruptly.
High above the sea...
A massive figure stood floating quietly in the sky.
It was an angel!
Or rather, a mythical creature that transcended the limits of human cognition.
Its face was blurred, but behind it...
A pair of massive wings stretched out, blotting out the sky.
One side was pitch black, pure enough to swallow all light; the other side was a brilliant white that stung the soul.
A Two-Colored Angel.
It floated there silently, facing the misty sea where monsters were churning in the distance.
Charlotte struggled to her feet with difficulty, looking in the direction the angel was facing.
In the depths of that thick, seemingly living mist...
She could vaguely see the shadows of several sailing warships slowly approaching.
At that moment...
The angel moved.
It slightly raised its hand.
A massive scythe, woven from black and white energy, instantly took shape in the sky in a truly staggering display.
The scythe was hundreds of meters long, carrying an aura of destruction that could crush anything in its path.
It swung a massive horizontal slash toward the distant sea!
In this silent space, Charlotte could clearly feel it.
The shockwave, compressed from absolute power, was like a physical blade, instantly sweeping across the entire sea.
The seawater formed a massive tsunami dozens of meters high, surging backward.
The silt on the ocean floor was kicked up.
Some shallow shoals, where the water was not deep enough, were even exposed, revealing land and reefs covered in barnacles as the sea receded.
The power of a single strike.
The densely packed mutated monsters didn't even have time to let out a single wail.
Under the sweep of this energy, without exception, they were all turned into dust and scattered with the wind.
However...
When that peerless black-and-white blade light made contact with whatever was inside that thick mist...
It seemed to collide with another massive force.
The incomprehensibly huge impact caused the entire sea to be neatly split in two.
The mist was also dispersed by the shock.
In that instant when the mist was torn apart...
Charlotte saw the terrifying existence hidden behind the sailing warships.
It was a monster capable of making one’s sanity collapse.
Half of its body looked like an amalgamation of countless marine creatures—tentacles, scales, shells, and fins, all stitched together in a chaotic mess.
But the other half of its body...
Was a perfectly proportioned, even divine-looking human male torso.
On that half of its skin, bolts of lightning were flowing.
What was most bone-chilling...
Was that in the very center of the monster’s chest...
Grew another pale human face!
That face had its eyes tightly shut, its expression twisted as if it were enduring extreme agony.
Just as that unspeakable marine creature turned its head toward Charlotte...
The Two-Colored Angel floating in the sky also noticed her, the uninvited guest.
The angel made no extra movements.
It only gave a gentle wave of its hand in her direction.
Swoosh!
Charlotte only felt her vision go black.
By the time she reacted again, she had already escaped that suffocating battlefield.
She had arrived in a strange world that seemed to be constructed entirely of obsidian.
Looking up...
Was a vast, boundless, and brilliant starry sky.
Looking down...
Was an obsidian floor, smooth as a mirror, clearly reflecting the galaxy overhead.
It was as if she were standing in the center of the universe.
Treading on the stars, with the firmament above.
The shock from that god-level collision just now was too great.
Her brain was still buzzing, and her heart was pounding wildly.
However...
Before she could catch her breath for even a second...
Charlotte suddenly felt something "come alive" deep within her body.
It probed outward.
Like some invisible plant roots, it took deep root into the smooth obsidian ground beneath her feet.
Immediately following that...
A mysterious, profound pattern...
Centered on where she was rooted, spread across the obsidian ground like a spiderweb.
It extended all the way to the horizon, where the starry sky met the ground.
At the same time...
A massive, complex influx of strange knowledge, carrying a certain ancient majesty...
Flooded into her mind, crudely and without warning.
【Arcane Affinity】!
【Arcane Filter】!
【Arcane Blade】!
【Detect Arcane】!
【Arcane Trick】!
Five crystal-clear spell names, along with their corresponding construction circuits, were instantly imprinted into the depths of her consciousness.
Charlotte clutched her throbbing head.
This... what exactly were these things, all containing the word "Arcane"?!
Why did they suddenly appear in her head?!
Before she could sort through this mountain of information...
Her hearing began to gradually recover.
Real sounds from the outside world were like fine threads, pulling her back from that strange obsidian world and into reality.
“Heart rate is returning to normal.”
“Spiritual fluctuations are stabilizing...”
Several people in white robes seemed to be moving around the bed, their voices carrying a clear sense of relief.
“The patient is awake!”
A crisp female voice shouted with some surprise.
“Quick, observe if there are any lasting effects, and watch for spiritual rejection reactions.”
Charlotte slowly opened her eyes.
Her vision gradually shifted from blurred to clear.
It was the white ceiling of a hospital room.
Out of the corner of her eye, she seemed to glimpse a familiar shadow flash past the door.
She felt a strange sense of emptiness in her heart.
“How are you feeling, child?”
A caregiver asked gently.
Charlotte didn't answer immediately.
She closed her eyes and felt her body.
In her mind...
The spell circuits for those oddly named spells were still clearly displayed in her consciousness.
It was as if they were instincts she had been born with.
At this moment, the red-haired girl finally had a realization.
These are spells?!
So... when I was little...
The bedtime stories were all true?!
“I... I’m fine.”
Charlotte opened her eyes and answered somewhat weakly.
Just as she was feeling astonished and overwhelmed by this world-shattering discovery...
Creak.
The door to the room was pushed open.
A familiar lady strode in.
“Lottie!”
Cecil’s voice carried a hint of concern.
“Ms. Cecil!”
Charlotte looked at her with surprise.
In this unfamiliar place, and having just experienced a life-or-death crisis...
Seeing someone she knew was ultimately reassuring.
However...
Charlotte keenly noticed...
There wasn't much relief on Ms. Cecil’s face.
Instead, it held a certain unnatural stiffness.
Cecil walked to the bedside and looked at this girl who had just stepped over the threshold of the supernatural.
She took a deep breath, her tone becoming serious to the extreme.
“Lottie.”
“Prepare yourself mentally.”
“What I’m about to say next...”
She stared into Charlotte’s eyes.
“You will have to decide for yourself.”
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