The drawer gently closed, and silence returned to the study. Only the tireless flames in the fireplace continued to flicker, giving off faint, steady crackling sounds.
Sagres rose and walked to the centre of the room, then slowly closed his eyes.
He could feel the surging river of magic within him, a torrent formed from the combined magic of wizards from the School of Withering, clerics from the Church, and even goblins.
At that moment, it churned and swelled, pressing against every boundary of his body like a restless sea, eager to be shaped and guided in an unprecedented direction.
He understood that creating magic capable of traversing time and space was, in some ways, even more difficult than reversing life and death.
Life and death might simply be two aspects of consciousness projected onto reality. Interfering with time, however, meant using mortal power to pry at the foundations of the universe itself, a direct defiance of causality.
He did not know whether he would succeed.
And deep within him lay an ultimate question he had always avoided.
More than ten years ago, when he first realised that he could "customise magic", he had wondered whether he should create a spell that could take him back to the world he had lived in before transmigrating.
The magical world was full of danger, backwardness, prejudice, and bloodshed.
He had countless reasons to leave.
But he never did.
He had not even made a single serious attempt.
It was a kind of instinctive procrastination that even he could not fully understand.
As though, so long as he never touched the question, he would never have to answer where he truly belonged.
After all, as a transmigrator, he should have possessed an overwhelming desire to find a way back to his "original world".
Yet reality was the exact opposite.
It was contradictory and absurd.
He had once been an ordinary person living in an ordinary town. An accident had thrown him into a world filled with magic, and he had become a wizard.
Over the years, he had mastered powerful magic, explored the mysteries of this world, and become an influential figure in the magical world.
Yet he had never thought about returning to that town.
Not even once.
Not even just to take a look and confirm whether "he" was still there.
He seemed to be afraid.
Afraid that the little boy who should have been born would no longer appear because of his "departure".
If "he" had never existed, then what would become of all his memories of childhood, of that town, of that ordinary yet very real period of his life?
Would they all become castles in the air, baseless illusions?
His very existence would lose its original anchor.
But what frightened him even more was the opposite possibility.
What if that little boy had been born exactly as he should have been?
What if that child had grown up along the same predetermined path, living through everything he himself remembered experiencing?
Then what was he now, this wizard who wielded powerful magic and hovered between life and death?
A redundant shadow?
A copied consciousness?
An echo accidentally severed from the timeline?
Were his memories, his emotions, everything that made him who he was, nothing more than a theft and imitation of another "self's" life?
This fear concerning the nature of his own existence surpassed any Dark Arts or formidable enemy.
So when the Time-Turner unexpectedly sent him back to this era, he had not been in any hurry to return.
Somewhere deep in his subconscious, he even felt that remaining at this "wrong" point in time might not necessarily be a bad thing.
Because for him, it seemed to make no fundamental difference where he was.
By his own careful reckoning, more than twenty years had passed since his transmigration.
His age in both worlds had quietly become the same.
Many of his memories from before transmigration were gradually fading and blurring.
Whenever he dreamed at night, he could no longer even tell which part had been his real life.
That was why he now tried not to sleep.
Only twenty years had passed, and things were already like this.
What about thirty years from now?
Forty?
When he grew old and frail, would everything before his transmigration feel like nothing more than a fleeting dream?
His emotions surged like a tide, but his hands did not stop moving.
Powerful magic flowed from his fingertips, transforming into thousands of shimmering silver threads that rapidly intertwined in the air, outlining a complex and dazzling rune.
The rune slowly rotated, attempting to tear through the barrier of space.
But just as it was about to take shape, it suddenly trembled violently, flickering erratically as though it might vanish completely in the next moment.
Would he succeed?
Sagres did not know.
He only felt that he could no longer keep running away.
This was not merely about returning home. It was also about giving himself an answer, the ultimate answer to who he was, where he came from, and where he would ultimately go.
If he truly succeeded, he would go back.
Back to that distant world.
Back to the town that had grown somewhat blurred in his memories.
Back to see his former self.
Sagres suppressed the thoughts swirling through his mind and closed his eyes.
A faint glow of magic began to swirl around him like flowing water.
Time lost its measure, and space blurred at the edges.
He felt his consciousness being pulled and stretched, as though he were drifting through an endless silver galaxy.
Countless fragments of time and space, threads of destiny, flowed, collided, vanished, and were reborn all around him.
He was like a sailor navigating through a storm, with only that elusive will and his relentless pursuit of an answer serving as his compass.
After an unknown amount of time, the dazzling magical radiance began to contract and condense along a fixed trajectory.
The violent torrent of energy gradually became docile, as though an invisible hand were combing and weaving it into shape.
A powerful sense of disorientation struck him.
Sagres felt his consciousness being abruptly pulled back into his body.
He opened his eyes hazily.
The study was still the same study, and the flames in the fireplace were still dancing.
His gaze subconsciously fell to the back of his left hand.
There, a mark was glowing softly from within.
It was an intricate symbol.
At its centre was a Möbius strip formed from flowing silver light, a single strand with no front or back, no beginning or end, symbolising infinity and cycles.
An Ouroboros encircled the Möbius strip, its head joined to its tail. Every scale was clearly visible and lifelike.
If one stared at it long enough, one could even see it slowly devouring its own body.
This symbol was a unique spatiotemporal coordinate as well as the physical manifestation of a stable and powerful form of time-travel magic.
Its magical structure was extraordinarily stable, deeply branded into his flesh and soul, merging with his own magic.
So, he had succeeded.
Another nearly miraculous form of magic had been born.
Sagres quietly stared at the rune.
He felt none of the joy he had expected, only a calm that bordered on emptiness, along with the relief of finally reaching a conclusion.
This was not merely a tool that could take him back.
It was also a key to answering his questions.
He gently brushed his fingers over the cool rune on the back of his hand.
The light faded, gradually sinking beneath his skin.
"Won't you try it?"
A familiar voice came from the chair in front of the desk, carrying a faint hint of amusement.
"Perhaps before long, you'll never have another chance to use it."
Every hair on Sagres's body instantly stood on end.
An unprecedented sense of danger washed over him like ice water.
His wand instinctively slid into his hand, its tip flashing with sharp light as he aimed it directly towards the source of the voice.
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