Damian asked, "What exactly is the Gap World?"
Tower Spirit Zero continued its synthesized explanation.
"Long ago, an evil god from another world invaded the Wizarding World, launching a catastrophic planar war."
"Eventually, the Ancestor of Time, Aemon, struck down the foreign god."
"That war shook the foundation of the Wizarding World itself. The sheer magnitude of the clash between the Ancestor of Time and the evil god mortally wounded the world's very source."
"Once the source was damaged, the world's ambient magic began to bleed away," Zero explained. "Fewer wizards would be born in the future, and their magical potential would continuously shrink."
"To compensate for that immense loss, the Ancestor of Time shattered the evil god's home plane and forcefully fused its remnants directly into the Wizarding World."
"In his grand design, the future world would become a twin-layered plane: the original Wizarding World acting as the surface, and the Gap World serving as an inner layer capable of hosting truly mighty beings."
"The gray-mist realm you currently stand in is the product of that fusion."
"Here, the two worlds mingle, bearing distinct traits from both the Wizarding World and the evil god's twisted realm."
"This Wizard Tower was personally left behind by the great wizard, the Ancestor of Time, Aemon," Zero concluded. "After the world's source was broken, the surface Wizarding World could no longer sustain high-ranking wizards. To stem the bleeding of its magical essence, Aemon anchored his tower right at the threshold of the Gap World."
The Ancestor of Time, Aemon!
In the ancient days, high-ranking wizards bore grand titles tied directly to their magical mastery. This great wizard had clearly excelled at manipulating the very fabric of time.
Damian was genuinely startled. The foundational magic he practiced every single day was the Aemon Basic Meditation Method! He couldn't help but wonder if they were named after the exact same person.
In Zero's tale, Aemon was so unfathomably mighty that he could shatter entire planes and weave them into a new world—a realm of power Damian couldn't even begin to comprehend. It felt almost impossible to connect that level of god-like power with a mere basic meditation manual given to apprentices.
Damian frowned, catching a glaring inconsistency. "Zero, you said this tower has been corroded by the gray mist for tens of thousands of years. Yet, the historical archives state that the planar war happened only a few millennia ago. The dates don't match."
The history books Damian had read extensively mentioned the ancient war, but none of them had ever spoken of an "Ancestor of Time." They only told vague tales of a brutal planar war between the Wizarding World and an alien realm.
That war had been utterly savage. The ancient wizards had successfully repelled the invaders, but the world's source had been deeply wounded all the same.
Tower Spirit Zero replied smoothly, "The residual power of the evil god lingers heavily here, continuously mingling with the lingering might left by the Ancestor of Time."
"Under their combined, conflicting influence, time, space, and life within this Gap World are constantly twisting toward the unknown."
"When the two planes first fused, time here was incredibly chaotic. A single day passing in the outside world might have seen a hundred years pass within this realm."
"Now, time has finally stabilized, but space remains in absolute turmoil," Zero assured him. "Given enough time, the spatial fabric will eventually settle as well, and the Gap World will merge seamlessly with the surface Wizarding World."
Damian realized it at once. This was exactly why he couldn't Apparate or use a Portkey here—the underlying spatial fabric was still violently unstable.
This also meant the strange, horrifying creatures he had encountered were not natural spawns. They were monstrosities born of the evil god's lingering corruption.
Perhaps they had once been normal beings, warped and twisted into nightmarish forms by that dark power over thousands of years.
Damian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Zero, you said Aemon anchored his tower at the entrance to the Gap World. So, this specific spot was originally the threshold."
"Does that ancient entrance have anything to do with the Winter Forest in the outside Wizarding World?"
After all, he only slipped automatically into the Gap World when he fell asleep inside the Winter Forest. He strongly suspected the forest was geographically tied to that hidden gate.
"Winter Forest?" Zero synthesized. "Searching... Data missing. No entry for 'Winter Forest' found. Please repair the archive or manually create a new entry."
Zero could offer no direct answer.
Damian guessed at a possibility. He reached into his robes and drew out a parchment map—a detailed chart of the entire continent. He held it up and asked, "Zero, can you visually scan this map?"
"Yes."
A beam of bright blue light shot from the tower's archway, sweeping meticulously across the parchment in Damian's hands.
"Map data recorded... Cross-referencing topography... Complete," Zero announced. "Your 'Winter Forest' occupies the exact geographical coordinates of what was known as the 'Barren Wastes' several millennia ago."
"The primary entrance to the Gap World once lay precisely in those wastes. The Barren Wastes were the main battlefield of the planar war; after the conflict, the land was utterly decimated. No forest stood there."
"In theory, that heavily corrupted land could not have naturally bred a dense forest within a mere few thousand years. The Winter Forest must have arisen under the influence of some unknown force—most likely an unexpected side effect of the two worlds continuously merging."
Damian nodded in agreement. Since he only crossed over into the Gap World while sleeping in the Winter Forest, that explanation made perfect logical sense.
He pressed on, eager for answers. "Then how does one physically pass from the Winter Forest into the Gap World?"
"The physical gate is not currently open," Tower Spirit Zero replied. "You arrived here via spatial coordinates provided directly by the Hub Crystal."
The Hub Crystal? Damian's heart jumped. "Is the Hub Crystal a blue gem?"
"Yes. The Hub Crystal is a blue, many-faceted stone. Whoever holds it gains full, absolute authority over the Wizard Tower. Many of the tower's core modules can only be accessed through it."
Damian rubbed his chin, a smile ghosting his lips. Sure enough, the cracked blue crystal that had been absorbed by the metal disc in his mind was the tower's Hub Crystal.
If the blue stone had been left behind by Aemon, then the red crystal—and perhaps the mysterious metal disc itself—might also be ancient relics belonging to the great wizard.
When he had first extracted the blue crystal from the shadow entity, it had been heavily cracked. Yet, once it was set into the metal disc, some mysterious, profound force had perfectly restored it.
He recalled Aemon's grand title: the Ancestor of Time.
Perhaps that restorative force had literally been the power of time itself, reversing the crystal to its original, undamaged state.
Back in the Hogwarts World, the enchanted portrait of Merlin had explicitly told him he bore a trace of temporal power. The legendary portrait had even used that latent force to send him back into the past.
It was highly likely that the true source of that temporal power was the metal disc resting in his mind.
As for the energy stored within the red crystal, Damian guessed it was pure spatial force—after all, every time he crossed between worlds, the red crystal's energy reserves were heavily depleted.
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