414. Cruel Fate

The ice wall was thick, too much actually. It took them an hour of walking and melting to reach the last stretch. But what was to come after that they had not expected even in their wildest dreams.

*CRACK* *BAM*

As soon as the last thin sheet of ice broke, a strong gust of wind blew them a few steps back. It was like a plane being suddenly depressurised. But in a few seconds, it became normal as the tunnel they had dug got filled with air as well.

And when they opened their eyes to look forward, they remained wide open, as did their jaws. The sight was beautiful, mysterious and confusing to them.

"H-How is this possible? Where did all this come from?" Emma exclaimed.

In front of them was a vast mountainous space, in a distance was a giant castle that seemed to be made entirely of ice. Over the castle was a light source replicating the effects of the sun. The scale was humongous, yet they could see that the entire thing was shrouded inside that ice wall.

"I can't believe it, did my ancestor build all this? If he did then dying from a pathetic potion mistake is seriously too embarrassing," Ragnar commented.

"There is strong magic, that's for sure. Let's go in and see." Severus became the voice of normality and walked forward. Magnus, however, remained mindful of any traps but found none. It was as if they were just on normal land.

The closer they got to the castle the more in awe they were. It seemed to have been left alone for too long as excessive ice was covering it, reducing its charm. However, going against the common practice of doors magically opening, the castle for the most part felt dead, other than the presence of strong magic here, everything seemed lifeless.

They had to push the doors open to enter the castle. From the inside, it looked even more beautiful. The light from the outside was dispersing around the ceiling inside and making it look bright but not so much that it hurt the eyes.

"I can't believe it, this place is too beautiful to be made by that old ancestor of Ragnar," Emma muttered.

"What do you mean? I can not make pretty things?" It hurt right in the poor boy's heart.

"Shhh... look around first," Magnus stopped them from bickering. The castle had all kinds of crude furniture, normal bedrooms with beds made of ice. Kitchen with real metal utensils. There was no fireplace, however.

"Seeing the number of utensils, definitely more than a single man lived here." he deduced.

After looking around the entire floor, they started to go up. One by one, they reached the highest floor of the highest tower. There was only one room here, the ice-door appeared straight where the stairs ended, and it was locked.

He cast an Alohomora spell on it to open. *CLACK* It did just that, the sound came from inside it. Magnus pried it open slowly, ensuring no traps were there and the door was also heavy. He was always suspicious about everything recently.

"It... looks like an office," he muttered, being the first to enter. However, there was just one book available, that being on the table, under the palm of a man's skeleton. The Skeleton still had clothes, however, and they seemed to be crude robes made of sheepskin.

"Let's see, a book. Ragnar, you go find your treasure," Magnus went ahead and read it. He put the skeleton hand aside and opened it, the writing instead of being a common language or old language, was basic rune language.

The first page read, "The Last Wizard Of Undercastle." It turned out to be the biography of the guy sitting here. Magnus took the book and sat on the side, on the floor resting his back with the wall. As it was the top floor of the tower, the artificial sunlight was ample to read. Emma and Severus also sat beside him, interested in knowing about this place.

"Read it aloud," Severus requested.

Magnus did just that, "My name is Zenith Urasilus. I am the last surviving member of my community. I am the 110th generation of the first settlers. Due to the lack of materials, we could not make many books, all our magic and teachings were verbal.

"But, as my last days approach, I hope to convey what happened to the one who finds this one day. I will start from the beginning, the words passed as they were spoken by the first settler, Heradas Urasilus. I do not know how your years are numbered, so I shall try to tell what the sky looked like the last time my ancestors saw the stars outside.

"The crude diagram you see now on the page depicts the location of two star patterns, one we called Plough, it has three stars making a crude line and four making a four-walled shape. They are connected. And the other we call cross, and it appears in the southern skies. It has four stars, two each making a line that intersects each other.

"If you compare my diagram with the current position of these stars, you may understand a rough estimate of when my ancestors arrived in this place."

As soon as Magnus saw the drawings, he closed his eyes and tried to skim through all his memories of astronomy classes from his first day in Hogwarts. Their teacher was a Centaur, the best of the best astrologists.

After a few seconds, his eyes opened abruptly, "Holy crap, FUCK! This is not just ancient, THIS IS PREHISTORIC! The star pattern in this diagram was present roughly around 50,000BC. T-This book... predates any written material ever found on Earth. Humans were still stone age people during this time."

"Then... how did he make this paper?" Severus inquired

Magnus continued to read to find some answers, "My ancestors, about 100 wizards, were a part of a group of thousands of men and women who were trying to get to the land of legends in the West, one filled with forests and prey to hunt.

"They did cross this narrow landmass surrounded by sea on both sides, frozen in some places. They were able to establish a village in the new lands we called the New World. There were strange animals that no one had ever seen. They caught them and started domesticating.

"However, things started to change when normal people started creating strange folk religions, making anything they don't understand a god. They started calling the Sun, Moon, Earth, the Wind, the Rain, the Thunder and even Harvest of animals, gods. For strange reasons, they started hating the wizards and accused them of stealing god's blessings from the rest.

"This made the group of 100 wizards leave the common people. They tried to settle elsewhere, but there were common people in almost every habitable location, claiming large parts of lands as their territory and banning them from living there.

"Tired and frustrated, they returned to the land bridge that separated the east and the west. They decided to punish the humans for their foolishness and destroyed the land, making the sea pass through it. After that, they build themselves a castle under the sea, placed inside ice walls.

"But you reap what you sow. By the time they tried to leave the ice walls again, walls had become so strong that no amount of their strong spells could break it. At the same time, the castle they made with magic started to affect anything that was made of ice, making the walls even stronger.

"For a time we had enough livestock. We bred them with magic, we survived and thrived in our own little world. We studied, researched with what little things we had. At our peak, we had a thousand people, but then... something happened and all our livestock started dying. A disease, most likely, but we had no expertise in treating animals. With their death, our populations started to decline.

"I, Zenith, was 10 years old when my father, the last of us, died. I am now 110 while writing this, this... solitude has started to creep into my mind now, making me a hazard to myself. So I used the ashes of my ancestors to create these strange thin sheets. I do not know what year I am in or what occurred outside, I only want to tell the world, Zenith Urasilus was here, he was strong and didn't break until the last breath.

"Now, in the following pages, you shall find the entire family line of all my first 100 ancestors until they connect to me. Then you shall find all the magical knowledge we knew or developed. And in the end, you will find the key to my vault under the castle. It has staffs of all my ancestors. If you have any use for them you may, if not, destroy them.

"Thank you for finding me, kind stranger, may your magic always be strong."

Magnus closed the book after skimming through all the pages, there was not much extra knowledge that he already didn't know. After all, what can a group of wizards stuck in a small prison of ice create? All their researched and invented spells were related to survival.

Severus pitied the man, "To live for a hundred years, all alone in this insane place, this man had brain made of steel."

Magnus looked at the skeleton, being the last person alive, nobody was there to bury him. "You know what, let's take that skeleton and give him a proper rest in the fresh air. He couldn't see the sky while alive, maybe in his death, it will grant him peace.

Emma asked a question just then, "Mag, how come you were able to get inside but they couldn't go out? They were able to destroy some sort of land bridge after all, so they must be pretty strong."

[You can see ice-castle, skeleton and the book on Discord - https://discord.gg/DgHkrAn OR see them on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mister_immortal_novel]

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Special thanks to *DougErNuts* *Oluwatimileyin Olayemi* *BirdRant* *Franklin Walley* *Brennan Tubbs*