The Ultimate Struggle

Below, black-robed wizards of the Revival Society swiftly retreated, slipping into the shadows like startled rats.

But beneath the all-encompassing light of the Day of the Three Miracles, the violent disturbance of elemental particles made their concealment spells look hopelessly crude. There was nowhere to hide.

After a brief lull, some came to their senses. Greed and the urge to kill overcame their fear.

A chase between wizards erupted. Explosions of elemental magic and surges of mental power wove a symphony of death through the air.

Crack!

The sharp sound cut through the silence.

Inside the Miniature Secret Realm Space hung the strange mingled smell of formalin and an ancient herb.

Bernal stopped working at his laboratory bench. A flicker of scrutiny entered his eyes, calm almost to the point of indifference, as he considered this unknown variable.

He turned toward the sound and slowly picked up a silver hourglass he used as a simple timer.

It was no ordinary hourglass, but a construct fashioned through the solidification of a spatial law. A neat crack now ran through its middle, and its silver sand drifted outward as though weightless instead of falling.

"A disturbance in the laws... or magnetic resonance caused by the arrival of some high-energy life-form?"

Bernal studied the hourglass. A vague sense of foreboding began to grow in him.

It was not mortal fear, but a wizard's instinctive wariness of a situation beyond his control.

"Is this the prophetic gift of the Gray Elf Bloodline?"

As a wizard in pursuit of truth, Bernal never put blind faith in intuition. He preferred to call it "the subconscious mind's ultra-rapid processing of environmental information."

He picked up his notes. His quill scratched across the parchment as he briefly recorded the current frequency of the energy fluctuations, the time,