Only the finest witches and wizards ever made it into the Department of Mysteries. People like that weren't just powerful; they were brilliant.
So even with his mind slowly being consumed by corruption, the black-robed man immediately caught the implication hidden in old Saruman's words. His sanity was slipping away, but his intelligence hadn't left him.
His head snapped up.
Even though Saruman couldn't see him, he stared fixedly at his teacher's unnervingly calm face. A terrifying thought flashed through his mind.
"...Professor!"
His voice rose sharply with emotion.
"Have you... have you already figured something out?"
"About this place... about the corruption... about that closed loop... even... your own fate?"
"You just said this was part of the plan... Have you been planning this all along? You... you almost sound like... like you want..."
He wanted to say, 'You want to die.'
But the words caught in his throat. He couldn't force them out.
At the same time, he couldn't understand it. Even if his teacher died, how could that possibly undo the regrets of the past? He was an exceptionally powerful wizard, but without reaching the Legendary realm, there were simply truths beyond his understanding.
Saruman didn't answer immediately. Instead, he slowly gave the slightest nod.
The movement was so subtle it was almost impossible to notice, yet it landed with crushing weight, confirming the most unbelievable suspicion in the black-robed man's heart.
"Yes."
"I need a death."
For the first time, the old wizard's weathered face revealed an expression the black-robed man had never seen before.
It was impossible to describe; there was the exhaustion of someone who had lived through a thousand years, mockery toward the chains of fate, an unshakable resolve to attempt the unknown, and beneath it all, a strange anticipation, as though he were finally approaching the end of an impossibly long journey.
Silence filled the chamber.
Fragments of the truth crashed together inside the black-robed man's mind, but no matter how hard he tried, they refused to form a complete picture.
Still, he understood one thing: he had just brushed against the deepest, most secret, and most insane plan his teacher had concealed beneath a millennium of time.
And everything now rested on the "mission" he had to carry out.
"Do it, my child."
Saruman's calm voice echoed through the deathly silent chamber, as casually as if he were asking someone to brush a speck of dust from his sleeve. Just five simple words, yet to the black-robed man, they were more unbearable than the maddest whispers of R'lyeh, heavier than any Killing Curse.
His grip on his wand tightened until his knuckles turned white, his entire arm trembling. Hidden beneath the hood, his distorted face twisted in agony. His slit-like pupils contracted violently, filled with pain, struggle, disbelief... and the anger of someone driven into a corner.
"...Professor." His voice was barely audible. "I... I can't."
He simply couldn't do it.
The moment he raised his wand toward his teacher, memories of the past flooded back, memories of happier days, feelings he could barely remember anymore. Those memories had become precious.
Not only were they one of the few things keeping his mind stable, they were also what he treasured most.
How could he destroy them with his own hands?
His whole body shook.
"You can't?" Saruman's empty eye sockets faced him, and for the first time, there was the faintest trace of disappointment in his voice.
"You're still the same, my child. When the time comes to make a decision with absolute reason, to sever your emotions, you always hesitate. Back in Northern Europe, when that villager had been completely consumed by the living Curse and was about to erupt, you hesitated. As a result, two Aurors who went to investigate lost their lives."
"And in the Northern Sea, while pursuing that dark wizard who was experimenting with forbidden flesh magic... at the very end, he begged for mercy. You paused for a single second. That one second gave him the chance to unleash a corrupting plague meant to drag everyone down with him."
"Your kindness and your compassion are admirable qualities. But on this path... at certain critical moments... they become your greatest weakness. They will kill more people. And eventually... they will kill you too."
The old wizard's words were like an icy surgeon's scalpel, cutting cleanly into the deepest wound the black-robed man had always tried to hide.
Every failure. Every sacrifice caused by his hesitation and soft heart. Those memories had haunted him night after night, and they had become one of the greatest demons feeding the corruption slowly consuming him from within.
The black-robed man trembled even harder now, not from fear, but because every word had struck home. Shame and self-loathing churned inside him.
"That's different, Professor!" he rasped. "This isn't like those missions! They were enemies. They were sources of corruption. But you... you are..."
His voice broke.
"What am I?"
Saruman cut him off, his voice rising just enough to make every word impossible to ignore.
"I am an old monster who has lived for over a thousand years. Blind. Body and soul hopelessly entangled with the corruption of R'lyeh. A monster sitting watch over the greatest source of danger in this world."
"My very existence is a threat. No one knows how much longer I can stay sane. No one knows when the corruption sleeping inside me will awaken completely and drag not only this place, but the entire world, into madness."
Each sentence struck like a hammer, pounding against the black-robed man's resolve. Saruman was deliberately adding weight to the decision before him; the harsher his words became, the more he hoped to force his student to act.
"Look at yourself," Saruman said sternly. "The corruption inside you. The pain. The struggle. Do you think I haven't noticed?"
"Every time you carry out a cleansing mission, your hands are stained with more than the blood of those prisoners. Each one chips away at your sanity. Your humanity. You're already standing on the edge of collapse."
"And my existence... my secrets... the corruption that may be lurking within me... they're the final straw that could break this world."
"Eliminating me isn't just your duty. It's also your chance to free yourself, if only for a moment, from this endless torment."
His words were exaggerated, but they weren't entirely untrue. More than anything, though, he was giving his student every possible reason to go through with it.
"No... no, that's not true..."
The black-robed man staggered back until his shoulders hit the cold stone wall, struggling to breathe. Saruman had stripped away every excuse he'd been hiding behind.
Yes. He was afraid. He was suffering. Every single day he fought the whispers of madness and the grotesque changes spreading through his own body. From the perspective of pure duty, removing his teacher, the greatest potential source of disaster, was unquestionably the correct decision.
But... this was his teacher.
"Then... at least tell me why!" He suddenly looked up, desperation filling his voice. "Professor! At least tell me why you... why it almost seems like you're 'waiting' for this!"
"Why do you keep saying it's part of your plan? Why won't you fight back? Why won't you try another way? This can't be another one of those corruptions that drive people insane just by looking at them!"
"Give me a reason! A reason that will let me... let me do this... without losing my own mind afterward."
His voice echoed through the chamber like a desperate roar. He needed an anchor, something greater than his own emotions. A reason powerful enough to carry him through the act of killing his own master.
Saruman fell silent. He could hear the desperation in his student's voice, the pain of a man standing on the verge of breaking.
He knew the consequences. Without an explanation, the black-robed man would either refuse to act, causing the entire plan to fail... or force himself to do it anyway, only to be consumed by guilt, accelerating his own corruption and perhaps unleashing an even greater catastrophe.
After a long silence, the old wizard's severe tone softened. In its place remained only deep exhaustion... and a faint trace of hidden fervor.
"So be it..." He let out a long sigh, one that seemed to carry the weight of a thousand years. "If you truly want to know... if you need a reason... then I'll tell you."
"I'll tell you what I've really been studying all these years. And perhaps... it will overturn everything you think you know."
The black-robed man held his breath, every ounce of his attention fixed on his teacher. He knew he was about to hear the greatest secret Saruman had ever hidden.
"You've studied history, my child," Saruman began, his voice taking on the calm cadence of a professor delivering a difficult lecture. "You know the fundamental law of time. It cannot be reversed. It cannot be changed. The past is amber, forever frozen. The future is mist, forever shifting. That is common sense. It is one of the fundamental laws that governs this world, isn't it?"
The black-robed man nodded instinctively, even though he knew his teacher couldn't see him.
"For almost every living being... and for the stable operation of this world itself... that is indeed an unbreakable law." Saruman paused. "But... are the laws of the world truly absolute?"
Saruman lowered his voice, every word carrying an almost hypnotic power. "What happens when someone reaches a certain level of strength? When their understanding touches truths deliberately hidden away? When they gain access to... tools that exist outside the world's laws, or perhaps, above them?"
"I spent seven hundred years searching. I wandered through forgotten ruins, deciphered forbidden texts whose names alone would drive ordinary wizards insane... and even made dangerous bargains with ancient beings that weren't human."
"I wasn't only researching how to resist the corruption of R'lyeh. I was studying time itself."
"I wanted to understand the paradox that began in R'lyeh. Why did Ian Prince, from a thousand years in the future, appear before me a thousand years in the past?"
"In the end, I discovered that time isn't as absolute as we believe. It's more like a great river. For those swept along by the current, there is only one direction. But for those capable of stepping out of the river and standing upon its banks... traveling upstream, downstream, or even altering one of its smaller branches isn't entirely impossible."
"Especially in places where space-time itself is unstable. Places where vortices and loops naturally exist... like R'lyeh."
Saruman spoke calmly, as though explaining a simple fact.
The black-robed man's entire understanding of the world was crumbling.
"...Change history? That's impossible! Every study of temporal magic agrees that interfering with time leads to catastrophic and unpredictable consequences!"
Because he understood the subject so well, the shock hit him even harder. Changing history? The very idea was absurd. Even Dumbledore would have thought such a thing impossible before meeting Ian.
The black-robed man wasn't as gifted as Dumbledore, and neither was Saruman. In terms of sheer breadth of magical knowledge, neither of them could compare to Dumbledore. It would have been stranger if he 'hadn't' been shaken.
Of course... for reasons known only to himself, old Saruman had reached this discovery before Dumbledore ever did.
Now... he was Legendary.
"Believe me, my child. That consensus belongs to ordinary people. It's the conclusion reached by those limited by their own knowledge and power. For a true Legendary... for someone who holds the key... 'impossible' is merely the first obstacle."
"In the deepest chamber of the Raven Ruins, I found far more than rune fragments and maps. I found... revelations concerning Raven itself."
Once again, Saruman spoke the name that had defined his entire life.
"Raven..." The black-robed man repeated it under his breath, remembering the reverence with which his teacher had spoken of that mysterious existence before.
"It isn't a creature. At least... not entirely." Saruman's voice became distant, as though he were describing something that defied mortal comprehension. "It is a symbol. A concept. An existence that walks along the edge of time itself, linking together countless branches of possibility."
"In records so ancient that even mythology has forgotten them... Raven is described as the keeper of memory, the herald of omens, and the ferryman who guides travelers across the rifts of time."
Even Saruman's understanding of Raven was incomplete. But compared to almost anyone else, he had uncovered far more. Very few people knew even this much about Raven's true nature and powers.
As he spoke, Saruman slowly slipped a thin, weathered hand inside his plain gray robe. When he withdrew it, something rested quietly in his palm.
A feather.
About a foot long. Pitch black.
Yet it wasn't black because it absorbed light. It was a deeper, stranger darkness, as though it swallowed the gaze itself, warping the faint light around it into an abyss with tangible form.
Its edges weren't smooth, either. They were jagged and uneven, as though countless years, or some unimaginable force, had slowly eroded them away. Across its surface flowed threads of dim silver light, so faint they were almost invisible.
An overwhelming aura of mystery radiated from it.
The black-robed man had only to look at the feather before he felt something brush against his soul. It was as if an invisible hand were pulling him toward an endless sea of memories and dreams.
Neither he nor Saruman truly understood what the feather was. But if Ian had been standing there... he would have recognized it instantly.
The object in old Saruman's hand... was nothing less than one of 'his own feathers'.
Or rather, a feather from the time when 'he had been Raven'.
Within it slept a power... great enough to overturn fate itself.
(End Of This Chapter)
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