Black Prison Castle.
Before the inner castle.
The rising of the two suns brought light back to Black Prison, but it also tore deep rifts across this world's Earth Veins. Lava surged through those cracks, painting swaths of deep red across the barren ground; baleful energy surged through them as well, adding countless mottled black patches amid the red.
The Magic Power born with the suns churned wildly. The tectonic plates of the entire world were dragged and shifted by earth dragons chasing that Magic Power, tearing huge holes one after another in the ancient castle's once-stable defensive arrays.
The largest breach lay before the inner castle.
It was a triangular enclave, like a wedge that had smashed through the eggshell of the entire defensive system. It had crossed the defensive arrays of both the outer and main castles in succession, forcibly embedding itself from outside the castle beneath the inner castle walls.
This "enclave" had formed from fractured Earth Veins and shifting crustal plates. Newly born Magic Power pouring from underground surged recklessly, severely disrupting the reconstruction of Black Prison Castle's defensive arrays. At the same time, muddy groundwater and lava erupted together, intertwining and steaming into billowing clouds of dense mist.
Because the mist obscured the wizards' vision and hindered repairs to the arrays, Black Prison Castle had specially deployed a group of wizards to stand at the breaks in the walls on either side. Together, they cast large-scale Fire Spells and Great Wind Spells, attempting to disperse the mist.
In theory, mist created when groundwater was scorched by lava should have been easily dried by Fire Spells or shredded by Great Wind Spells.
Yet after more than a hundred wizards jointly cast several spells, they discovered that the mist showed no sign of dispersing. Instead, it was