The golden blade erupted from the portal behind Alythess with perfect timing.
The ambush caught even the veteran Eredar by surprise.
Fortunately, she’d survived countless wars across the Great Dark Beyond. Centuries of battle had taught her that a powerful spellcaster who neglected close combat usually didn’t remain alive for very long.
At the last possible instant, she stepped forward, twisted sideways, and caught the Ancient One’s conjured blade across the shaft of her staff.
Metal screamed against magic.
Without hesitating, Alythess channeled fel energy between them.
A compact explosion burst outward.
The blast wasn’t intended to injure.
It simply forced the two apart.
She immediately retreated.
Despite her formidable reputation as a High Warlock, Alythess had always preferred to fight at range. Compared to Salyssra, her close-quarters skills were noticeably weaker.
Keeping her distance from someone who could match Salyssra in melee was simply common sense.
Watching this exchange from the doorway, Evenson nodded once...
Then immediately turned around and walked back inside.
"Forget making an entrance."
He shut the door behind him.
"Nobody is luring me out of my fortress."
"Nobody."
The fortress had been anchored with dimensional wards.
The Ancient One’s portals couldn’t open inside.
Which meant remaining indoors was unquestionably the safest life choice available.
A soft laugh drifted across the room.
Clea, still weak enough that she could barely sit upright, watched him retreat with obvious amusement.
"...You’re scared."
"What?"
Evenson’s face twitched.
"Of course not."
He folded his arms with exaggerated dignity.
"I’m simply listening to my instincts."
"And my instincts are making excellent decisions."
He nodded firmly to himself.
"Yes."
"This situation requires long-term strategic planning."
He wandered farther into the fortress as if that somehow reinforced his argument.
Clea smiled faintly.
That’s the Evenson I know.
No matter how dangerous things became, he remained unmistakably himself.
Her determination only hardened.
She would save him.
No matter what it took, she would pull his soul away from those two demonesses.
Outside, the Ancient One slowly raised both hands.
The world answered.
Buildings twisted.
Roads folded.
Skyscrapers rotated like enormous gears.
Entire city blocks shifted, overlapping one another in impossible arrangements.
The section of street where the three combatants stood rose into the air, transforming into a vast circular platform suspended amid an ever-changing labyrinth of mirrored spaces.
The Eredar Twins looked around with open curiosity.
They could tell the buildings themselves weren’t truly moving.
Each structure remained perfectly stationary within its own pocket of reality.
Instead...
Space itself was moving.
Layers of reality continuously exchanged places, folded together, and separated again.
It was an astonishing display of spatial manipulation.
Alythess slowly looked back at the Ancient One.
"I’ll admit..."
"I underestimated you."
Until now, she’d considered the Sorcerer Supreme disappointingly limited.
The Ancient One possessed immense magical reserves.
By Alythess’s estimation, her raw mana rivaled even the greatest archmages of the Council of Six.
Perhaps even Antonidas himself.
Yet she’d seemed to use that power in painfully straightforward ways.
Stronger shields.
Sharper blades.
Then charging directly into melee.
The magical techniques themselves lacked variety.
Compared to the sophisticated spellcraft developed over tens of thousands of years on Azeroth, her repertoire had seemed... primitive.
Of course...
That comparison wasn’t entirely fair.
Magic on Azeroth had evolved across millennia.
From the ancient troll empires onward, generations of geniuses had refined and expanded countless schools of arcane knowledge.
Thousands upon thousands of mages had built upon one another’s discoveries until an extraordinarily complete magical tradition emerged.
The Ancient One had never possessed that luxury.
Everything she knew had largely been discovered through her own efforts.
Her disciples certainly weren’t contributing much to magical theory.
Most of them struggled just to master what she had already taught.
Given those circumstances...
Her achievements were extraordinary.
Still, Alythess had initially dismissed her spellcasting.
Now...
Watching reality itself bend so effortlessly beneath the Ancient One’s will...
That arrogance vanished.
She had never seen anyone manipulate space so naturally.
Perhaps...
Only the legendary Guardian Medivh might have demonstrated such effortless mastery.
"You are unlike any spellcaster I’ve ever encountered."
Alythess inclined her head.
"I, Alythess the High Warlock, acknowledge you."
"You truly deserve the title of greatest mage in this world."
She glanced toward Evenson’s fortress.
"That young warlock still has a long road ahead before he reaches your level."
The Ancient One answered with equal composure.
"You are also unlike any demon I have ever encountered."
"And unquestionably the strongest I have faced on Earth."
Her previous experiences with demons had established a simple pattern.
Violence.
Brutality.
Mindless aggression.
If a problem could be solved by hitting it harder...
Demons generally stopped thinking there.
The Eredar Twins shattered every expectation.
They possessed elegance.
Grace.
Refinement.
Even in battle they remained calm, analytical, and disciplined.
They fought like master tacticians rather than berserk monsters.
"We are Eredar."
Salyssra frowned.
"Don’t compare us to those brainless beasts."
She sounded personally offended.
Perhaps because she’d lost the previous exchange in melee.
Perhaps because she genuinely despised being grouped together with lesser demons.
"Also..."
She smiled coldly.
"Don’t assume control over space guarantees victory."
"Our understanding of dimensional magic may surprise you."
She stamped one hoof against the floating platform.
The fragmented cubes of space beneath her immediately stabilized.
The shifting terrain froze solid.
The Ancient One hadn’t rearranged reality merely to confuse them.
Every fold concealed hidden spatial traps.
One careless step might send an opponent tumbling through an unseen portal.
A desert.
The bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Inside an active volcano.
Anywhere.
But Eredar warlocks had marched alongside the Burning Legion through countless worlds.
Opening, breaching, and stabilizing dimensional pathways was hardly unfamiliar territory.
Salyssra’s single step locked the surrounding space firmly into place.
The trap had been neutralized.
Alythess drew herself up proudly.
"You are unlike any spellcaster I’ve ever encountered."
"I, Aly..."
She stopped.
A puzzled expression crossed her face.
Turning toward her sister, she frowned.
"...Wait."
"Doesn’t it feel like I’ve already said that?"
Behind the Ancient One’s back, hidden from everyone’s view, a small green magical circle rotated around her left wrist.
Like the hands of a watch...
Running backward.
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