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As the Raven swept toward him, Ian lowered his head and stared at his own hands. His fingers trembled, just slightly, but enough for him to notice.
He felt as if a thin membrane covering the world had been torn away, allowing him to glimpse a truer outline of reality beneath, and his consciousness became clearer than ever before.
However...
When the Raven had finished its first exchange with the Death God and turned its gaze towards him, Ian's mind went blank for a moment. He had thought that he existed outside the bounds of this world, a stray thread in the tapestry.
But now... it seemed the Raven could look into the future from within a frozen history.
A suspicion arose in his heart.
In this black-and-white world...
Only the Raven's eyes possessed a crimson hue that did not belong to the surrounding tones.
"Wake up."
The Raven's voice echoed in Ian's mind like a spell tearing reality apart; it seemed to come from the very edge of the world and that voice carried an irresistible will.
It was like fate itself was calling to him.
It felt strangely familiar to Ian, yet it also carried a trace of resistance, this truly was a talking bird. Claire, the Titan woman, had not been wrong about the Raven.
And...
The Raven's voice had an extraordinarily deep, resonant timbre.
"Who... are you?" Ian asked in a low voice.
The Raven did not answer. It merely beat its wings lightly, its tail feathers brushing through the air and leaving behind faint ripples.
Ian's heart jolted violently.
This was not an ordinary 'wake up'.
It was a far deeper awakening, not from sleep, but from illusion, from a false reality. Ian felt his thoughts waver.
In the next second... the world collapsed.
Not slowly, but instantly.
The black-and-white sky cracked like frozen glass. Jagged shards hung suspended in the void for a heartbeat before dissolving into ash the moment they touched his skin. The ashen land beneath his feet caved in. He felt himself falling, yet there was no wind or sound, only eternal silence.
Then...
Everything stopped, and Ian snapped his eyes open.
The world had shattered, yet its outline remained perfectly intact.
His surroundings were still that interwoven realm of black and white. Between sky and earth, there were no colors, only grey and white forming an endless void.
The air was filled with a scorching atmosphere, and the ground beneath his feet was hard as iron. In the distance stood a massive, dormant volcano. Inside its crater, black mist churned and magma boiled, like a slumbering behemoth about to awaken.
He realized that he was still standing on the edge of the crater.
The Death God, who had once stood atop the high tower, had disappeared. The scythe he had just forged, emanating an aura of death, had vanished without a trace. The Raven that had dived down was also nowhere to be seen; not even a shadow of its feathers remained. The black-and-white palette still blanketed the entire world, as though time here had been frozen forever at that moment.
"Raven…" He whispered its name, his heart pounding uncontrollably.
The bird's gaze and the word 'wake up' had been terrifyingly real. But if it truly was a message of some kind, then why was he still trapped in this strange monochrome world?
Why hadn't he reached the correct colorful Twilight Zone?
...
Inside the crater, pitch-black magma churned soundlessly, devoid of heat or light, only a thick, ink-like darkness slowly writhing. The air was heavy with the stench of sulfur.
Yet, strangely, there was not the slightest trace of heat.
"What was that just now?"
Ian's voice echoed within the empty crater, but there was no reply. He lowered his head to look at his hands, which were still rendered in black and white as though his entire being were trapped inside an old monochrome photograph.
He looked around.
He tried to find even the faintest clue. But there was nothing... no chains, no signs of forging, and not even a trace of where the Death God had once stood.
It was as if everything that had just happened had never occurred.
Had Ian triggered something the moment he entered the Twilight Zone, allowing him to witness an even older past?
That sounded a bit convoluted.
But it was clear to Ian that what he had seen was definitely not something he should have encountered in the Twilight Zone. It might have taken place in an even more distant era.
He had merely seen it for reasons unknown, possibly due to some influence from the Titan woman, Claire, or perhaps because his presence in the past had triggered a chain reaction of some sort.
Either way...
Ian knew he had most likely glimpsed another long-buried secret. That era must have been unimaginably ancient, perhaps so ancient that no life had yet reached the Twilight Zone.
After all, Ian had seen it.
He had seen the Death God forging his iconic scythe, a weapon that was not yet fully complete. Just how far back in time that was, no one could say.
In any case, it was certainly far earlier than this ancient epoch, at a time when the gods themselves had not yet become gods.
This also explained why he had wandered there for so long without encountering a single soul, not even the voices of animal spirits.
Life itself had probably not yet been created by the Titans.
The Twilight Zone had not yet been formed and only a few 'native inhabitants' existed within it.
"I wonder if the Death God, or the Raven, took part in dividing up the Creator," Ian speculated. He was extremely curious about such matters.
Since the Titans had originally encountered Earth's Creator and even obtained authority from that Creator, it naturally implied that all authority on Earth had once been concentrated in the Creator alone.
Perhaps...
Someone had taken creation.
Someone had taken death.
And perhaps a bird had snatched away certain powers as well?
All of this was nothing more than Ian's speculation. He had no idea whether his guesses were correct, though they were not without foundation.
Even though the world around him was still black and white, Ian could clearly sense the difference between the 'past' he now inhabited and the one he had been in moments ago.
Why was the air cold?
There was a reason.
In the previous black-and-white world, there had been no living beings at all.
Unlike now.
Now, things that were neither alive nor dead wandered at the foot of the mountain.
Ian stood at the edge of the volcano, gazing down at the land below.
The monochrome world remained silent and still, as though the entire universe were frozen in time. The distant mountain ranges were blurred, like erased pencil sketches.
The air was filled with a piercing chill; it was not just cold, but something deeper, born of despair itself and seeping from the soul's depths.
He narrowed his eyes and looked towards a swirling mass of shadows at the foot of the mountain.
Those were Dementors.
Their figures resembled tattered cloaks drifting in the air, despite there being no wind. They had no faces, only hollow hoods concealing something that devoured all light.
The Dementors wandered aimlessly and slowly among the ruins. Even so, the faint traces of their movement confirmed one thing: the wizarding theory that Dementors originated from the Twilight Zone was correct.
Of course...
Ian still had no idea what the Dementors were doing here. He guessed it might have something to do with the volcano's ability to forge objects. Perhaps the Dementors had been captured and forced into labor, used as some kind of unwilling workforce?
"Was the Death God forging that scythe here to deal with the Raven?"
Ian recalled the scene he had witnessed earlier. He was still standing in what appeared to be the same place.
Suddenly, the magma within the crater began to churn violently.
Black bubbles burst and reformed. It was as if something were being brewed.
Because he was still some distance away, Ian could only see the magma rolling and boiling deep within the volcano, with tiny bubbles continuously surfacing. And between those bubbles...
Something seemed to be rising and sinking.
Very quietly.
The Death God was gone. The Raven had disappeared too. The surroundings looked eerily calm, as if the impending battle had never happened.
Yet Ian's memories were crystal clear: the newly forged scythe, the shockwave that had torn through space, and the silent yet terrifying standoff between the Death God and the Raven.
"This is really bizarre... What exactly am I experiencing?"
Ian slowly walked towards the edge of the crater.
His footsteps left faint marks in the monochrome ash. The ground was cold and hard underfoot, stirring up fine dust with every step; it was like walking on the remnants of history itself.
The spot where the Death God had once stood was completely empty. There was no forge, no chains, not even a footprint.
It was as though that confrontation had never happened.
However, when he looked into the volcano, he saw that the pitch-black magma was churning unnaturally. Within the thick, viscous flow, he could faintly make out something rising and sinking.
At first... he thought it was merely the shadow of the magma.
Until, a long, slender wooden stick slowly surfaced, then sank back down again.
Ian's breath caught.
'An old wand?'
Before he could think further, another object emerged from the magma: a jet-black stone, smooth as a mirror and completely unaffected by the magma's erosion.
'The Resurrection Stone.'
Immediately after that, a third item appeared...
A tattered cloak that spread slightly in the magma before slowly sinking again.
'The Cloak of Invisibility.'
"The Deathly Hallows?!" Ian's voice trembled with disbelief as he forced the words out of his throat.
The three Hallows, legendary artifacts said to have been personally forged by the Death God were actually rising and sinking within this bizarre black-and-white volcano, as if being reforged or tempered by some unknown force.
'Why?'
'Why were the three Hallows here?'
They floated in the black magma, untouched by it, instead emitting a faint glow as though undergoing some kind of mysterious baptism.
Just as Ian raised his wand, wondering if he could interact with this world and retrieve the objects...
The sky suddenly darkened.
A colossal shadow descended from the horizon, blotting out the heavens. The chill of death instantly enveloped the entire volcano, obscuring half the sky and casting a deep, oppressive shadow over everything below.
Death God.
He descended once more, his enormous form hovering above the volcano's mouth. He held the scythe horizontally in his grasp, his crimson eyes sweeping across the surroundings, yet strangely, he still failed to notice Ian, who was right there.
Perhaps...
The Death God did not possess authority over time.
That power... to look from history into the future belonged only to the Raven.
Ian held his breath and remained completely still.
Finally, the Death God's gaze settled on the boiling magma. Slowly, he extended his bony, jointed hand and stirred the pitch-black slurry. With his movements, the three Hallows surfaced and sank intermittently.
It was as if they were being 'simmered'.
Yes.
The Death God extended one hand and gently stirred the magma.
It was as though he were brewing some forbidden potion. With each stir, strange ripples spread out, and within those ripples, faint images appeared.
Clearly...
He was infusing the three Hallows with some kind of power that Ian did not understand. Just as the wizarding fairy tales said, the Death God had truly forged the three Hallows with his own hands.
Ian still remembered that story.
The three wizard brothers had used their magical skills to evade Death.
The Death God appeared and gifted them an "Elder Wand", a "Resurrection Stone" and an "Invisibility Cloak".
The eldest brother, who obtained the Elder Wand, became arrogant and overbearing. He was killed by another wizard in an inn; his soul was taken by the Death God and the Elder Wand vanished without a trace.
The second brother received the Resurrection Stone. He returned home and used it to revive his beloved, only to discover that reality did not align with his desires. Heartbroken and disillusioned, he took his own life, and the Death God claimed him as well.
The third brother, who was humble and cautious, received the Invisibility Cloak and lived quietly. When he grew old, he passed the cloak to his son and calmly departed from this world with the Death God.
That was the tale of the Deathly Hallows in its entirety.
In the wizarding world, it was a story that everyone knew by heart, though it was clearly an embellished tale.
Of course… Stories are born from reality.
From this perspective, it is clear that the author of The Tales of Beedle the Bard knew something. Many of the stories in the collection have deep layers of meaning.
Of course, Beedle the Bard was not a diviner, a seer, or a prophet. He was simply a wizard with exceptional literary talent. His place in the Harry Potter canon is well established.
Beedle the Bard lived until the 15th century.
Judging by his long lifespan, he must have been an outstanding figure, much like Nicolas Flamel. The two even interacted. Beedle was the author of magical fairy tales, most famously The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
This book was similar to Grimm's Fairy Tales in the Muggle world, a bedtime storybook for children. Almost every wizard had read it as a child.
There were, of course, exceptions: Hermione and Harry had not read The Tales of Beedle the Bard as children because they had grown up in the Muggle world. For this very reason, Ron was quite pleased to finally own a book that he had read but which Hermione had not.
This alone showed that the book truly belonged to the foundational literature of the wizarding world.
Beedle the Bard was born in Yorkshire, England.
The only surviving woodcut depicts him with an exceptionally thick beard. This raises an important question: how did Beedle know the story of the Peverell brothers?
Since Voldemort was a descendant of Cadmus Peverell, the second brother, and Harry was descended from Ignotus Peverell, the third brother, it is clear that...
The three Peverell brothers truly existed in the wizarding world.
In this context, Beedle did not fabricate his stories entirely out of thin air. Rather, he refined literary works based on real prototypes.
In truth, Beedle was a bit like Pu Songling in the magical world, both gathered stories from others, compiled and polished them, and ultimately produced a famous collection of tales.
At least, that's how Ian saw him.
Beedle presented certain truths in the form of stories. The three Hallows were certainly items manufactured by the Death God.
Moreover...
They seemed to have had certain profound curses added to them. Not the kind of curse that kills outright, but something far more insidious and difficult to detect, yet with a far greater cost.
Ian even saw the Death God add a fragment of Raven feather to the process. He could not tell whether that feather came from the Raven he had seen earlier.
"Fate, then…"
Ian pondered the meaning and authority represented by the Raven.
Even stranger was the fact that the Death God would occasionally lift his head and glance towards the sky, his movements carrying a trace of vigilance.
'Was he afraid of being discovered?'
Ian's thoughts raced. If this was a projection of the past, then the Death God was secretly reforging the Deathly Hallows at that very moment. The one he feared...
...was likely the Raven.
The creature that had once confronted him.
Just then, the Death God abruptly stopped. He raised his head sharply and looked into the distance. Although he had no facial features, Ian could sense it.
He had sensed something.
Without hesitating, the Death God moved forward. He seized the three Hallows, his enormous black robe flaring open as he shot into the sky and vanished into the grey horizon.
The volcano instantly returned to silence. Only the magma continued to churn soundlessly, as if nothing had happened.
Ian stood where he was.
Suddenly, he understood.
Why was this world still black and white?
Because...
He was witnessing yet another fragment of the past: A past that included even the Death God's secret schemes.
(End of chapter)