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Dumbledore stood on top of a reef.
The sea breeze stirred his silver-white robes while Fawkes perched quietly on his shoulder. In the massive crater before him stood the three-metre-tall giant who had first accurately spoken his name:
Albus Dumbledore.
And then...
After his questioning...
She uttered a name that Albus Dumbledore would never have expected to hear:
"Ariana."
The Titan woman pronounced it in future English, not the language of this era. She was still lying at the bottom of the crater, her face buried in the sand, as though she had no desire to face reality.
That single word was like a stone dropped into the center of a lake, sending ripples through Dumbledore's heart.
Ariana.
The name struck his mind like lightning, instantly awakening memories he had sealed away for many years. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm.
"Ariana…" He repeated softly, his gaze growing increasingly complex. His thoughts churned like a storm, fragments of memory flashing through his mind.
That little girl.
Her laughter, her fear, and the tragedy of that summer.
Dumbledore knew all too well what that name meant. She was his younger sister, a presence that had never truly left his life. But this name should not have appeared in this era, and the Titan before him should not have known it.
He did not believe Ian to be the kind of person who would discuss such matters with a Titan.
Perhaps...
Had this Titan spied on his memories? Or Ian's?
At that moment, Albus Dumbledore's heart was far from calm. Countless possibilities and judgements surged through his mind.
However, the chaos in his thoughts made it impossible for him to think clearly.
The air seemed to freeze.
Dumbledore's breathing stalled for a moment, and his knuckles turned white.
He forced his voice out between clenched teeth.
"How do you know that name?"
He carefully examined his memories, but there was no sign of intrusion.
In response...
Claire did not answer immediately.
Instead, feeling that she had built up enough suspense and presence to make people forget her embarrassing fall from the sky, she simply climbed out of the crater.
She reached out and gently stroked the gigantic phoenix that had landed beside her.
Her silver hair set off the golden-red feathers, making her look like a goddess from myth. Looking at Dumbledore, her gaze was deep and distant as though piercing through time itself.
"Steady your mind, Professor." She said softly, her tone unexpectedly gentle. "I know what that name means to you."
Claire lifted her head. Dirt still clung to her face, but her eyes held an unfathomable depth.
She was very good at putting on a show.
"That is indeed surprising."
Dumbledore's chest rose and fell sharply, but he quickly forced himself to calm down. Years of experience enabled him to regulate his breathing and regain control of his emotions.
He spoke again, his voice returning to its usual steadiness.
"Are you a seer?"
Claire nodded.
"A seer older than wizards?"
She nodded again.
"A prophet among the gods?"
This time, she hesitated.
Claire's lips curved slightly upwards. She revealed a smile that was just as deliberately enigmatic.
"Yes," She said, her voice carrying an ancient authority. "I am the world's first seer. I was granted authority over the future by the Creator."
As for matters concerning the Creator...
She had only ever spoken of them to Ian.
However...
Even without knowledge of the hidden Titan epic, Dumbledore felt no curiosity at that moment. His mind was entirely occupied with thoughts about the Titan seer.
Meanwhile...
The two children.
Bud and Odin looked at each other in confusion, clearly unable to grasp the meaning of these words.
"What is the Creator?" Bud couldn't help but ask.
Claire looked at them, a smug smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
"The Creator is the entity that created everything." She lowered her head towards them, her expression suddenly becoming lively, like that of a strict teacher who has just decided to tell an interesting story.
She crouched down. Even squatting, she was still taller than Dumbledore, but she tried her best to lower herself and gently tapped Bud on the nose.
"Just as I created your world, I am your Creator. But above me, there is an even higher-level Creator; that one is the true source of this world."
The Titan woman did not bother to hide anything.
The two children listened in a daze, barely understanding, but they saw the enormous phoenix, the Phoenix God, slowly approach Claire and affectionately brush her shoulder with its wings.
Dumbledore stood where he was, silent for a long while. His gaze shifted between Claire and the two children, but his thoughts had already pierced beyond the scene before him...
Flying towards a far more distant past and future.
As for the topic of the Creator, the old headmaster showed little interest, and that was only natural. After all, later wizarding research had suggested that ancient times had seen numerous so-called Creators.
They were, essentially, beings who had mastered biological alchemy.
Nothing particularly shocking.
Of course...
That was only from Albus Dumbledore's perspective. For the children of that era, the concept of a 'Creator' was incomprehensible.
They only understood what was within their grasp.
"You're actually the Phoenix God's friend! Heavens! You're the trainer from the legends!" Odin exclaimed, having arrived at his own interpretation of the Titan woman Claire's identity.
"Oh! Then this tall elder sister is our patronus too, right?"
Bud immediately pulled her younger brother down to kneel and pressed their foreheads to the ground in reverence, just as they had done when worshipping the phoenix earlier. In their ingrained understanding, a trainer and their partner held equal status.
Now...
Seeing the relationship between the Phoenix God and the Titan woman Claire, even though the two children had no idea what gods were or what a Creator meant, it did not affect them placing Claire on the same level as the phoenix.
Clearly, the two children believed that Claire was simply the Phoenix God's trainer-partner.
This was the way of thinking that was habitual among the island's people.
Even other adults would likely have reached the same conclusion. Amused by their reaction, Claire reached out to ruffle their hair.
"Good children."
As the creator of humanity, Claire naturally felt great affection for the children.
The slight awkwardness she had felt earlier dissipated completely at that moment. She straightened her back, and a look of satisfaction appeared on her face as if she had finally found a sense of honor that truly belonged to her.
Dumbledore remained silent as he watched all this unfold. After a long while, he finally spoke again in a low, cautious tone, voicing his own conjecture.
"Can you pierce time and speak with people of the future?"
Dumbledore's guess was perfectly reasonable. After all, in the eyes of wizards, the Titans were an ancient race of gods, and the seers among them might truly possess abilities that human seers did not.
To this...
Albus Dumbledore considered this the most likely explanation.
However..
Claire looked at him, and a faint, eerie light flickered through her eyes.
"At least within my understanding, no one can pierce time and converse with people of the future," She said, rejecting Dumbledore's idea, and then proceeded to explain.
"Time is not a straight line, but an ocean. The past, the present and the future all flow within it. I can see where they converge, and I can hear their whispered voices."
"But most seers cannot touch regions far from themselves. Of course, I am not like most seers, I am the progenitor of all seers, the first to hold this power."
"I can dive into any depth, any region."
"However, not every wave is willing to respond to my call. Nor can I see every landscape within this ocean, let alone pinpoint my exact position."
The Titan woman, Claire, grew increasingly adept at maintaining her air of profound mystery.
That said...
What she spoke of was knowledge of considerable depth and value.
Dumbledore's gaze became ever more profound upon hearing that.
He finally understood that the Titan woman before him was far more than just a powerful ancient god. She was the source of something older and far more mysterious.
Perhaps she was even a key node connected to the fate of the universe itself?
Night gradually deepened. A sea breeze brushed softly across the shore and the Phoenix God began to circle in the sky, its golden tail feathers shimmering gently in the moonlight.
Dumbledore glanced at Fawkes, his companion, who was still tracking the ancient phoenix.
"So then... why do you know that name?"
He still had not received the answer he truly wanted, the one that weighed most heavily on his heart. Claire sensed this, too, and a faint smile appeared on her face.
"Because of the phoenix, I once witnessed the birth of the Dumbledore House. Naturally, I also saw Ariana; she will be the last member of the Dumbledore House."
"And at the same time..."
She paused slightly.
"She will also be the ancestor of the Dumbledore House... the origin."
Her words were earth-shattering. Claire's gaze became strange, carrying a hint of amusement as she spoke.
"Albus Dumbledore, she is not just your younger sister." Claire spoke softly.
"She is your ancestor."
A revelation like a thunderbolt erupted in Dumbledore's mind and his breath abruptly caught.
…
In a world of black and white…
Silence reigned like death itself.
There were no colors, only a realm woven of gray and white, as though the entire space had been frozen in time, making even breathing feel unnecessary. The air carried an atmosphere that did not belong to reality.
Like the whispering of some ancient will.
"Death God."
Ian stood upon ash-colored land, gazing at the pitch-black volcano before him. Beside the magma, the Death God hammered away, swinging a hammer into pale flames.
Yes.
The Death God was bent over forging something, gripping a hammer made of bone and fire. With every strike, a crisp sound rang out, like metal colliding against each other.
With every swing, a spray of solidified dark-red chains burst forth. Those chains twisted and coiled in midair, eventually transforming into ancient runes that sank deep into the volcano.
"Clang…"
The sound rang out with piercing clarity in the silence.
Just as Ian tried to draw closer, the Death God suddenly raised his head. His gaze pierced through space and time, locking straight onto Ian.
"Raven." The Death God spoke in a cold, hollow voice that seemed to rise from the abyss itself, sending a chill through Ian as if an icy wind were seeping through the cracks in the world. Ian's entire body stiffened and his heart nearly stopped. The Death God's gaze cut straight through the ashen air.
Yet not at him.
The young wizard almost instinctively took a step back.
But...
He quickly realised that something was wrong. He wasn't being watched or addressed. Ian's keen perception analysed the scene at once: the Death God's crimson eyes were not fixed on him.
They were fixed on...
Behind him.
"Raven…" The Death God repeated the name in a low voice, his tone laced with a complicated mixture of anger and deeply buried anticipation.
Ian hurriedly turned around.
Against the stark black-and-white sky, a jet-black raven flew in. Its feathers were like night and its eyes were blood red. Its wings cut through the silence, stirring invisible ripples in the air.
A raven.
A true raven.
Ian's breath caught. He had seen this bird before, of course, he could even transform into it himself. But now, seeing the raven in motion with his own eyes, he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity well up inside him.
It was as if it had appeared in his dreams countless times.
"You should not exist in this world. You are not a lifeform of this world." The Death God's voice rang out again, low and hoarse, like the wailing of countless ghosts woven together.
"Do not come to disturb me." The Death God was driving it away.
Yet the Raven gave no response. It merely circled above the volcano, its red eyes gazing down at the chains in the Death God's hands. Its posture was proud and cold, like that of a judge.
Ian stared blankly at the scene.
A strange, indescribable resonance trembled deep within his soul.
Without realizing it, he took a step forward. The ash beneath his feet cracked softly.
The Death God's gaze still did not see him, and it was as though the two existed in different, non-overlapping timeframes, the stark black-and-white palette once again emphasizing that Ian was standing in the past.
The Raven flew incredibly fast.
Before Ian could sort out his thoughts... the raven suddenly let out a piercing screech.
Its wings beat violently as it dove straight down!
Its target was not Ian... but the Death God.
Ian stood frozen, watching the scene unfold, an intense sense of dissonance rising in his chest.
Was this a long-delayed reunion or a clash of destiny?
The Raven drew ever closer, its wings whipping up a violent gale. Its eyes were as deep as an abyss and gleamed with an intelligence far beyond that of any ordinary bird.
The Death God slowly rose to his feet. Casually lifting the bone hammer in his hand, he seemed to have long foreseen this moment.
"So you've finally come…" He murmured, his tone no longer cold, but carrying a trace of sly cunning.
In the next instant, battle erupted. The Raven plunged downward like a bolt of black lightning, charging straight at the Death God!
The Death God did not dodge. Instead, he met it head on, his freshly forged scythe slicing through the air with a shrill howl.
The two forces collided in mid-air, unleashing a silent shockwave. The Death God sneered as he swept out the newly forged scythe, its chains snapping like venomous serpents towards the raven. At the moment of impact, the black-and-white space shook violently. Countless fine cracks split open across the ashen land, revealing the void-like darkness behind it.
Ian lost his footing and fell to his knees. His vision blurred for a moment; when he looked up again, the raven had broken through the chains and was now flying straight towards the Death God's throat with its sharp beak!
"You think you can win?" The Death God's voice dripped with mockery.
The raven did not answer. Instead, at the very last moment… It abruptly changed direction and lunged straight at Ian!
Ian had no time to react.
The raven's blood-red eyes were already right in front of him.
"Wake up."
Its voice… Was exactly the same as Ian's own.
(End of chapter)