The gale whistles.
Yellow sand swirls.
Mountains and rivers overturn.
Everything is burning.
Ian saw a meteor pass through his body, crashing into the ground at his feet; it was merely an echo from the past, unable to harm him at all.
However.
Those who inhabited the same time as this disaster were not as fortunate as Ian; the earth crumbled, the world shook, and towering, majestic buildings continuously collapsed.
Volcanoes began to awaken, lava spewing like an angry fire dragon, painting half the sky red, turning most of the ancient city into a fiery purgatory.
The cataclysm consumes all traces of life and civilization.
Ian heard countless cries for help, screams, ear-splitting shrieks, gripping his heart, as blood and flames drove an entire nation into the abyss amidst the catastrophe.
"Save me! Save my mom!"
A girl with a little yellow dog cried beside Ian.
Between fluctuating moods.
Ian instinctively reached out to offer help, but his hand passed through the already illusory image, only grasping a handful of black sand returning to silence.
"Damn illusion! What's the trick here!" Ian watched the fine sand slip from his fingertips, and the small girl before him helplessly engulfed by flames, unable to change her fate.
An inexplicable anger arose within him.
He watched as flames and meteors consumed the sunless kingdom, and watched as torrents and floods washed away every trace of the kingdom's existence after the disaster.
The waves were fierce, the torrents high; they came, then left, leaving a desolated, broken earth. The once bustling traffic, prosperity turned into a desert. None were spared, nothing remained—an entire nation plunged from the human world directly into an abyss never to be bright again during the cataclysm.
Ian could see.
Because he followed the city's perspective.
It kept descending, kept descending, the entire nation fell into the world of the dead. As if some indescribable force banished it from the human realm into this darkness and despair.
A nation along with its people all plunged into the abyss. The wind is the only sound here. It howls, roars, swirling black sand that blocks out all hope.
Huge commotion.
Carrying a bleak and desperate meaning.
The wailing people, the crying children, the ear-piercing men and women, their noises so loud, making Ian unable to bear and cover his ears.
"I must have seen some forbidden history…" Ian saw the girl with the little yellow dog again, but she and the ancient city had both fallen into the world of the dead.
Some knew what had happened, some remained ignorant. In short, their noise and the fall of the entire nation seemed to awaken some sleeping existence in this area.
The blood moon quietly appeared, like a watching eye. It seemed somewhat drowsy, as if still weary, being awakened for the first time in countless years.
"Heh heh heh heh heh~"
Suddenly.
Just when Ian was unclear about why his feelings were so clear, a sudden, extremely abrupt and disruptive sound pierced the air, revealing a black figure emerging from a crack.
"Damn it! Scared me!"
Ian grabbed the uninvited black phoenix, pinching its neck, holding his companion, finally the disturbing, eerie scream abruptly stopped.
"You actually can freely traverse the boundary between life and death, that indeed fits the ability a true Phoenix should have." Ian stuffed the black phoenix directly into his robe.
Just as he prepared to continue observing the echoes of the past surrounding him, perhaps influenced by the black phoenix's appearance, everything began to gradually wane.
The city, the ruined streets, the shouting people, the pitiable girl and her little yellow dog, everything instantly froze and then began to dissipate like a mirage when the breeze blew.
Like a fragile dream, first the city's edges blurred, the originally tragic scene on the street vanished instantly, everything returned to the black sand forming them.
The lines elucidated by Ian's Patronus Charm also fragmented, becoming specks of light and, like the black sand, slowly blown afar in the dusty wind.
As if it never existed at all.
Everything returned to silence.
Yet, as Ian tightly squeezed and held his robe, not wanting the black phoenix to emerge and screech again, he was stunned to discover a remnant tower appeared in the distance after the black sand dispersed.
"Curious, indeed, previously it wasn't there." Ian could barely identify the outline of the tower, seeming like the shelter tower presented in the echoes akin to the illusion realm.
Many legends have climbed it, presumably to delay the arrival of the cataclysms. Such a structure, in Ian's view, must be a masterpiece among Alchemy Creations. After all, it can temporarily resist the catastrophe of a natural disaster beyond human capability, something Ian had never heard of in the Hogwarts library.
Just as Ian hesitated whether to go over and take a look, weighing whether it was just another echo of the past.
"Heh heh heh heh heh~"
The black phoenix failed to emerge from the place Ian covered, yet it still found a way, burrowing through Ian's robe and rapidly crawling from under Ian's feet.