The rainy night had yet to end. Ian and Kalan hid in a corner of an Abandoned Clock Tower in the eastern part of the city.
The surroundings were shrouded in a pale-blue Magic Barrier—it was a Concealment Barrier Ian had personally set up. It could not only mask their presence, but also distort vision and perception.
Even high-level wizards would struggle to detect it without special means of detection.
"She only collects wizards... but why specifically the 'living' ones?" Kalan was still steeped in terror, his voice trembling. "Where is she taking them? Beneath the temple? What exactly is down there?"
Ian furrowed his brows and was about to answer when his entire body suddenly tensed.
He sensed it—a gaze beyond description.
He abruptly looked up through the barrier toward the end of the street. The Ghost Bride was slowly moving forward, dragging five pitch-black coffins behind her. Her footsteps remained silent, her red veil fluttering gently in the wind. Yet at that very instant, she suddenly stopped.
Then, she slowly turned her head.
That paper-pale face, those hollow eyes burning with red light, locked precisely onto the clock tower—as though they had pierced through the barrier, the shadows, and the distance, stabbing directly into Ian's soul.
"Impossible... With Triple Concealment Charm and the Spatial Distortion Barrier combined, even if Dumbledore himself came, it should take him at least three minutes to break my magic." Ian muttered, his voice filled with disbelief and astonishment. "The barrier wasn't triggered, and no Magic Power Fluctuation leaked out... How did she find us?"
"Found. You." The Ghost Bride's mouth corners tore open to her ears. Golden Sand gushed from her eye sockets, forming countless tiny eye-shaped patterns in the air.
Her facial skin split apart like rotten flesh, her mouth stretching all