Time Pierced Through

In outer space, there is an asteroid hanging in low Earth orbit.

The shape is irregular and sharp, like a piece of ore that has been cut by great force.

The long axis is about 40 kilometers, and the short axis is more than 20 kilometers. The surface has a dark gray metallic texture of Star Iron. The lines of the alchemical circuit are engraved all over the outer shell of the asteroid, which glows dark red in the darkness of space.

The sunny side is illuminated by the sun and has a strong metallic texture, and the scale structure on the surface can be seen clearly.

Dark red, one piece on top of the other, each piece is a fragment of the carapace shed by Baruk, fixed on the shell of Star Iron by Alchemy.

There is only the light of the circuit on the back side, and the dark red lines slowly pulse in the darkness.

The Star Iron frame was pulled back by Regulus himself from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It took billions of tons of meteorite iron to be refined to a sufficient purity for decades.

The interior has been hollowed out, and the core is embedded with humanity's most advanced propulsion system and the wizard's most complex alchemical circuit.

The asteroid rotates slowly in space, rotating once every twenty minutes.

The gravitational neutralization circuit designed by Regulus is deeply embedded inside the Star Iron frame. Its mass is offset by Magic Power and has no impact on the earth's tides and orbit.

In the distance are the wreckage of the orbital dock. The scaffolding and docking bay left over from the construction phase are floating in the vacuum and no one has cleaned them up.

He stood at the highest point of the asteroid's shell, with the Baruk carapace fragments and Star Iron alloy beneath his feet, the pure black deep sky above his head, and the earth behind him, blue and white, hanging quietly.

Silver Light on the body surface has a new reaction in the space environment. High-energy particles from the solar wind collide with Constant Shield Charm. Each impact will knock out an extremely small Light Point, which will light up and then disappear.

Countless Light Points were flashing and extinguishing at the same time. Light Points were denser on the side facing the sun, and Silver Lights were excited brighter, with a thin halo around the edge.

Cosmic rays are heavier than solar wind, and occasionally a particle with higher energy will pass through and hit Silver Light, blasting out a slightly larger bright spot, ripples spread, and then disappear.

He stood quietly, Silver Light flowing, surrounded by silent particle bombardment, and beneath his feet was what billions of people had spent decades building for him.

He didn't feel much at all, just like when he walked out of Hogwarts school. He had had enough of staying in one place and it was time to go to the next one.

There are no followers, no companions, no one can follow him. For more than 130 years, throughout the ages, he is the only person standing here.

Baruk lay on his shoulder, looking at the earth with eight amber eyes, and made a sound.

At the last moment before starting, Regulus felt something.

It's very weak, a thread from the past, stretching out from the depths of the timeline, extremely thin and extremely far.

Someone is scanning the future in the past, and the tentacles of precognitive ability slide through time, groping forward, deeper and farther, rising and growing weaker.

That tentacle cannot reach here. Its the Master died in 1998. He cannot see the future after death, and the timeline is broken there.

The tentacles swayed at the break point and couldn't be reached. They retracted a little and stretched out again, but still couldn't reach.

But Regulus felt it.

He reached out his hand, grabbed the tentacle, and pulled it.

Nurmengard.

Alps Deep in the vein, a black stone tower stands on the top of the mountain.

The tower body is made of rough stone with very few windows. The entrance at the bottom is closed all year round. Clouds and mist drift from the middle of the tower body, cutting the upper half into a gray-white silhouette.

The cell on the top of the tower, with stone walls and iron windows, is dark and the light is gray and white.

There was a wooden bed, a few old books stacked in the corner, with cracked spines and yellowing pages. A small fire was burning in the fireplace, and the firelight cast dancing shadows on the wall.

Grindelwald is sitting on the edge of the bed.

In his early sixties, his blond hair has begun to turn gray, spreading upwards from his temples, but it is not completely white yet, and the contours of his face are still sharp.

It has only been a few years since I came here, and my body is still strong.

His back was against the stone wall, his eyes were half closed, and his sight was not in this room.

The tentacles of precognition stretched out from his consciousness, passed through the stone wall of the cell, passed through the tower of Nurmengard, passed through the clouds and mists of the Alps, and slid forward along the timeline.

Blurry images passed before his eyes.

Most of the possible fragments, figures, events, sounds, and colors could not be seen clearly. Occasionally, one or two frames would freeze briefly, allowing him to see a profile or a scene clearly, and then they would shatter again.

He is used to it. He has been doing the same thing since he was imprisoned. He has nothing to do but watch.

The tentacles stretched forward, farther and farther, and the picture became increasingly blurry. After reaching a certain point, the front turned into a gray-white nothingness.

In 1998, he died.

The timeline was cut off there, and his precognition could not reach the world after his death.

The tentacles were dangling there, out of reach, and he was about to take them back.

Then something grabbed him.

A force came from far ahead, from the future that he could not reach, from the other end of the time rupture after his death. That force grabbed his precognitive sight and pulled him forward violently.

He can't break free.

The strange-colored eyes suddenly opened wide, and the body froze on the bed.

His eyes were forcibly pulled past the breaking point in 1998, past his own death, through time that he could not reach, ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred years, and then he was thrown in front of a picture.

He saw darkness, endless darkness, and stars scattered in the darkness, densely packed, more numerous than any night sky he had ever seen.

A modified asteroid rotates slowly among the stars.

A man stood on the top of the asteroid, with gray eyes and Silver Light wrapped around his body. Countless Light Points were flashing and extinguishing in the Silver Light.

The Dark Lord is looking at him.

Grindelwald's breathing stopped.

He has predicted countless futures, seen wars, seen deaths, and seen the rise and collapse of empires.

He is the one who sees, and will always be the one who sees. Standing on the bank of time, looking downstream, no one has ever looked back from the downstream to look at him.

Now those gray eyes stared at him through more than a hundred years.

Quiet, unruffled, without anger, without kindness, without any human emotion he could identify, just watching.

Then the Dark Lord helped him move his sight down, down, down, from among the stars to a blue-white planet, the Earth.

He saw the fractured Himalayas, saw the densely packed buildings on Ganges Plain, saw the orbital elevator, and saw the creation of billions of people.

He saw an integrated earth, a wizard holding the entire human civilization in his hands, and then left without looking back.

Grindelwald's pupils contracted, and the air in his chest got stuck halfway.

The two people looked at each other across time, Grindelwald more than a hundred years ago, and Regulus more than a hundred years later.

Regulus looked at him.

He knew this man, Gellert·Grindelwald, a prophet, a revolutionary, a prisoner locked in a tower he built, a figure from more than a hundred years ago. There was no intersection or relationship between them.

My heart, which had already cooled down, started to feel curious. I haven't felt this way for a long time.

He stretched out his finger, and a spell was sent back from the future to the past along the thread of time.

Passing through more than a hundred years, passing through the blank space after Grindelwald's death, passing through the breaking point in 1998, it fell on the man sitting beside the bed in Nurmengard's cell in 1946.

Grindelwald felt that something in his body had been rewritten.

A piece of information appeared in my mind out of thin air.

The cells in his body had an extra command when dividing, the attenuation of telomeres was suppressed, and every beat of the heart was steadier, stronger, and more powerful than the last.

His life span was extended.

Regulus Take your hand back.

He doesn't care what Grindelwald will think or do after reading it, or whether it will change a certain boy at a certain node in another timeline.

What he was curious about was another thing. If Grindelwald had changed the past, would the person standing here still be him?

Is time a line or a network? Will this node branch off into another path?

He wasn't sure, which might be why he did it.

With a wave of his hand, the line of time was broken, Grindelwald's sight was bounced back, and the moment in Nurmengard's cell was reunited.

Regulus turned around.

The Baruk carapace fragments under his feet were shaking slightly, and the alchemical circuit inside the asteroid began to operate at full power, and the lines on Star Iron changed from dark red to bright gold.

Light spilled out along the gaps in the scales, and the entire asteroid lit up in space.

The hatch slid open silently, and he stepped down without looking back. Baruk made a sound on his shoulder.

The earth shrunk, from a blue and white sphere to a marble, to a needle-sized Light Point, and then was swallowed up by starlight.