Ascetic Training and a Visitor

Clack—

It was more than the sound of something heavy striking the ground. It was like the only heartbeat in a dead world.

Lead-gray clouds hung low. Beneath a stifling sky that seemed close enough to touch, Dago stood atop a massive, dark-red boulder.

Veinlike mineral seams covered its surface, pulsing faintly beneath his feet.

He slowly opened his right hand, and cold magic surged without a sound.

Masses of black liquid ice crystal burst from between his fingers, defying gravity and every rule of fluid motion.

They landed silently, but the instant they touched the ground, it was as if some violent, twisted soul had been poured into them.

The metal was no longer lifeless. It raced across the wasteland, its surface reflecting the gloom of the leaden clouds.

Some masses of ice crystal even tore open along their backs and sprouted sharp, thin metal wings. With a teeth-grating screech, they soared through the low air like mechanical birds gone haywire.

This was control over matter taken to its limit: willpower forcing reality to bend.

The living metal spread around Dago in an instant, forming a precise encirclement.

At a carefully calculated moment, Dago flipped his hand as though closing his fingers around an invisible chess piece.

"Gather."

A low hum sounded in the air.

Every animated crystal immediately defied its own momentum and flowed toward a single point in a nauseating rush. They devoured and fused with one another, finally becoming a strange humanoid figure over five meters tall, with three heads and six arms.

It had no facial features. Its smooth faces, like unpolished bronze mirrors, reflected Dago's impassive expression.

Each of its three heads held only two bottomless, black-hole eyes. There were no eyeballs within, only two swirling vortices of magnetic force.

Dago raised his head