The telescopic staff connected with bone and flesh.
Victor moved with economical precision, swinging his weapon in a tight arc that caught the first Dark cultist squarely in the skull. The impact was decisive—the cultist dropped like a marionette with cut strings, unconscious before he hit the ground.
At the same moment, Abel grabbed the wrist of a second cultist who'd thrown a punch at his face. Instead of fighting the momentum, Abel used it, pulling the man forward while bringing his other elbow up in a sharp strike toward the exposed abdomen. The cultist gasped, all air driven from his lungs. Abel finished with a precise uppercut to the chin.
The man fell unconscious before he could process what had happened.
Victor turned, expecting to see Abel in trouble. Instead, he found his new partner already standing over his defeated opponent, checking for other threats. Victor's eyebrows rose slightly. He nodded once—a gesture of professional respect.
"I thought you were purely magical," Victor said, his accent becoming more pronounced as he spoke faster. "I didn't expect you to have legitimate fighting skills."
Abel brushed dust from his clothes. "No one wrote a rule saying sorcerers have to stand still and blast away with magic. For someone as powerful as the Ancient One or Agatha, they don't need anything but spells—pure magical force solves everything. But me? Right now, mixing physical technique with magic is more practical. It's faster. It's efficient."
Victor considered this thoughtfully. He'd grown up isolated, training alone, with no peers his own age. But Abel—Abel was his age. A sorcerer his age. Fighting with the same level, the same practical approach to power.
For the first time in his life, Victor felt the genuine stirrings of friendship with someone his own age.
The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. "Then let's keep moving."
They pressed forward together.
Against ordinary Dark Church cultists with no special power, Abel and Victor were devastating. Victor's combat magic—primarily trance and confusion spells combined with his physical agility—was perfectly complemented by Abel's wandless casting and combat training. They moved through the village like a coordinated unit, dispatching enemy after enemy without wasting effort.
But then everything changed.
The next cultist they encountered had something very wrong with him. A vivid red mark burned into his forehead—not a tattoo, just something seared into flesh. His eyes showed cracks radiating outward, as if something inside him was struggling to break free. The aura around his body was pitch black, rippling with visible power.
This one had genuinely absorbed the energy coming from the Dark dimension.
Victor immediately switched to serious magic. His hands came together, and he began chanting in an ancient language that Abel didn't quite recognize. Fire sparked between his palms, building in intensity. Then Victor dropped low, pressing one palm to the ground and another to the wall beside him.
Fire spread from his hands like a crack through stone—a fault line of flame that raced across both ground and wall, rushing toward the cultist.
The explosion was violent and instantaneous.
Flames erupted upward, and Victor's expression showed the certainty of victory—until the smile on his face froze.
The fire vanished.
Not burned away—consumed. The cultist stood unharmed, a deep red light radiating from his forehead, a black aura surrounding his entire body. That aura had absorbed every ounce of Victor's magical fire without letting a trace escape.
The cultist had taken the explosion as if it were nothing.
"Abel," Victor said, and Abel could hear the edge in his voice—not fear, but genuine recognition of threat—"he's very strong."
"I understand," Abel replied, already reaching behind his back. "I've encountered Dark Dimension energy before. I know what we're dealing with."
His wand came free. The moment he gripped it properly, Victor could feel the shift—Abel's reserves suddenly became stable and cohesive, multiplying in practical power by orders of magnitude. The wand was just a focus, but it was an extraordinary one.
Victor studied the simple wooden instrument and nodded. There were countless forms of magic in the world, and he'd learned long ago not to dismiss what he didn't understand. "Since you understand their power, let's work together. We'll end this."
"Agreed."
The cultist rushed them.
Abel moved first, planting his feet and raising his wand. He whispered a single word—a Transfiguration spell spoken so softly Victor almost missed it.
The ground in front of Abel rippled. It warped and distorted like ocean waves, the earth rising and falling in impossible patterns. The cultist's footing became unstable. His balance was thrown completely off—he had to drop low, pressing himself against the ground just to remain stationary.
Victor seized the opening.
Fire bloomed in both his palms—two fireballs burning with aggressive intensity. He released them in rapid succession, both aimed at the struggling cultist.
The Dark Church member stretched out black tentacles—literal appendages of dark energy erupting from his body. The tentacles intercepted the fireballs, absorbing their heat. But Victor had known they would. He'd needed the distraction—the moment when the cultist's attention was divided.
The tentacles carried him up the wall, away from the distorted ground.
Abel responded instantly. He pointed his wand upward and spoke with clear precision: "Wingardium Leviosa."
An invisible force seized the cultist mid-climb. His body went rigid as magical gravity locked around him, lifting him higher into the air despite his struggling tentacles. He was suspended now—helpless—pulled upward by magical force that cared nothing for his strength or his Dark Dimension power.
Victor's palms came together again, and this time the energy between his fingers was different—electricity instead of fire. Lightning sparked between his hands, building in intensity. He pushed his palms forward, and the electrical discharge burst outward like a lightning gun.
The black aura tried to absorb it. But electricity moved at the speed of thought—far faster than the cultist could redirect his power. The lightning struck his suspended form. His entire body went rigid with current. His skin charred; white smoke rose from the smoking flesh.
The cultist fell from the air, hitting the ground motionless.
Dead.
Abel waved his wand once, and the ground returned to normal—earth settling, ripples smoothing, reality reasserting itself.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Victor looked at Abel, and Abel looked back. There was mutual acknowledgment in that gaze—recognition that each of them had just fought at their limit, and together they'd overcome something neither could have defeated alone.
They continued deeper into the village without speaking, moving with renewed urgency toward the core area where the dimensional crack had to be located.
That's when the darkness came.
It swept over them like a tidal wave—not shadow, but something more substantial. A wave of pitch-black energy that consumed light and space and sound. Abel felt it wrap around him like tentacles, pulling him away from the physical world.
Everything inverted.
When his eyes adjusted, Abel found himself in a dimly lit space that made no sense at all. A vast hall with no walls he could see. Colors flowed above like water—rippling patterns that reminded him of a void, like he was standing inside the gaps between stars. The air itself felt wrong: heavy, ancient, fundamentally not of Earth.
Victor was gone.
Abel was alone.
And Abel understood with sudden, crystalline clarity: he'd been pulled into the Dark Dimension itself. Not fully—this wasn't Dormammu's realm. But close. Somewhere in the threshold space where the Dark Dimension bled into reality. Somewhere near the dimensional crack—the reason for this mission.
This was territory he'd never encountered before..
And he was alone.
END CHAPTER 29