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Chapter 145 - Chapter 145: Mapping the Madness

The interrogation had been quick and efficient.

The Reaver's words echoed in Nero's mind long after the man's body had crumbled to ash.

Nero incinerated the corpses with elemental fire, reducing them to nothing.

No evidence left behind. No trail to follow.

The Shatterveil was more than just a broken city full of monsters, it was a living labyrinth, shifting like a breathing beast. 

Landmarks appeared and disappeared, the ruins rearranged themselves after mana storms, as if the island itself conspired to trap its inhabitants.

There were no maps.

But Nero intended to make one.

Not a normal map, a dynamic one.

He'd done something similar at Hogwarts, where his enchanted parchment had tracked people, secret passages, and even the castle's subtle magical tides. 

But this, he could feel in his bones, would be infinitely harder. 

The Shatterveil seemed to recoil from any attempt to pin it down.

Nero sat cross-legged on a crumbling rooftop, high above the broken streets. 

The soot from the burned Reavers had already scattered, carried off by the wind. 

He conjured a blank parchment and pressed the tip of his wand to its surface. 

The Shatterveil was infinitely more hostile, which would make the mapping that much harder, but it didn't matter.

He would try to bend the chaos to his will.

His focus remained sharp as he conjured a blank parchment and pressed the tip of his wand to the surface.

He whispered an incantation, a modified version of the enchantments he'd once used at Hogwarts. 

But this time, he wove threads of his spatial magic into the spell, lacing it with his barrier technique to try and stabilize the chaotic flow of magic around him, anything to anchor the spell.

But the Shatterveil's magic resisted. 

Where Hogwarts had welcomed his touch, here the land seemed to push back, warping the spell's structure and bleeding chaos into the weaving.

The parchment glowed faintly, but nothing appeared.

Nero closed his eyes. 

He drew on the feeds from his shikigami, partitioning their vision through his Occlumency and mentally stitching the fragmented images together. 

He tried to force the map to form.

Broken streets, twisted towers, the prominent landmarks: the Broken Tower, the Hollow Tree, the Bone Fields, the Bleeding Stair, the Sunken Courtyard.

As he pushed harder, the parchment flickered to life. Lines of ink sketching jagged paths and familiar shapes. 

But as quickly as they appeared, the map blurred, snapped, and rearranged itself. 

Landmarks drifted, roads vanished, entire neighborhoods seemed to melt and reform.

It felt as if the Shatterveil itself was rejecting his attempt, violently resisting being pinned down.

An idea struck him. 

Unlike Hogwarts, he could not treat the city as one living creature.

Here, the landmarks themselves were the city's true anchors, its bones in the storm.

If he could somehow tether the map's magic directly to each landmark, the rest of the map might be able to rearrange itself when the land shifted, always finding a new balance, a breathing map, a cartography of change.

He focused, reaching out with his magic, attempting to link the map to each distant landmark through his shikigami's eyes. 

But as soon as he tried, he felt the Shatterveil's resistance, its magic refused to bridge the distance. It was like trying to grasp a shadow from across a canyon: the connection slipped, unstable and weak.

The parchment stabilized for a moment, showing a rough, pulsing layout, but the image constantly wavered, blurred, and corrected itself. 

It was never stable for more than a breath.

Nero let the spell fade, the unfinished map still trembling with hints of possibility. 

It wasn't a true failure. 

Now he understood.

To anchor the magic, he'd have to go to each landmark himself, physically stand there, study the site, and forge the connection in person. 

Only then could he hope to build a map that could breathe with the city's shifting bones.

For now, there was nothing more to do. 

Nero settled back against the broken stone, letting the chill of night seep through his cloak. 

He let his mind rest, reviewing every lesson, every new danger, and the shape of the city that flickered behind his eyelids.

His shikigami wheeled overhead, their vision steady and silent, as the city's ambient noise grew sharper with nightfall. 

He allowed himself a few hours of uneasy sleep, trusting his barriers and the instincts that had kept him alive this long.

Hours passed in the slow, shifting gloom.

Then, as dawn fought to break through the haze, Nero saw them.

One of the eagles spotted figures moving through the ruins, hunched and distorted. 

At first, Nero thought they were more Reavers, but as the eagle circled lower, he realized the truth.

They weren't human anymore.

Twisted remnants of wizards who had stayed too long in the Shatterveil. 

Their bodies had warped under the constant exposure to unstable magic, bones jutting out at unnatural angles, skin stretched tight and cracked like old leather. 

They crawled on all fours, their mouths gaping open, eyes glowing with dim, flickering light.

They moved in packs.

Hunting.

Nero's pulse quickened, but he didn't panic.

He slowly backed away from the rooftop's edge, lowering his body to the stone. 

He suppressed his magic as best he could, letting his presence sink into the ruins like another forgotten fragment.

They couldn't see well. But they could feel magic.

He waited, heart hammering, as the creatures crawled beneath the building. 

They sniffed the air, limbs twitching, jaws clacking together with wet, clicking sounds. 

One of them lifted its head, the skin on its neck splitting as it stretched too far, exposing raw muscle and sinew.

It lingered.

Sniffed again.

Then it moved on.

Nero didn't move for a full ten minutes after they were gone.

Then, with a silent exhale, he slipped back against the crumbling wall and reinforced his barrier, caution never leaving him. 

As he let his nerves settle, his gaze swept the horizon, searching for his next objective.

There, rising above the chaotic sprawl of ruins and twisted rooftops, he caught sight of it: the Hollow Tree. 

Even from this distance, its pale, gnarled trunk towered above the city, branches like skeletal arms clawing at the sky. 

It was unmistakable, older and stranger than anything else in the Shatterveil.

Nero's gaze hardened with resolve.

If the cursed clan's territory lay near the Hollow Tree, that was where he would go next.

He would approach carefully, observing from a distance, learning what the map could not yet show.

If he could reach them, maybe he'd find something no one else had, a piece of the puzzle. 

The cursed clan could be the key to unraveling the Shatterveil's chaotic magic. 

Or stopping Malrik's ritual.

Either way, he couldn't ignore it.

He packed his supplies, adjusted his gear, and called the Shikigami eagles back to his side. 

The paper creatures fluttered around him, perching on his shoulders and arms.

Nero stood, stretching his aching limbs.

Then he descended into the ruins.

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