Chapter 1476: Disappearance

The figures of Wasp and Night Owl suddenly vanished into the boundless, endless darkness, as if they had stepped across some invisible boundary. Beyond that boundary lay a “world” utterly different from this silent city shrouded in thick fog.

By leaving the fog, they had also left behind the warped space-time twisted by supernatural phenomena.

Modir Wilde remained standing quietly on the misty street corner. He hadn’t followed the two young agents but stayed at the edge of the fog’s domain, carefully observing the misty border where Wasp and Night Owl had disappeared. Recalling the strange phenomena that occurred as they crossed that boundary, he finally murmured with a hint of realization, “So it’s a discontinuity in space-time. No wonder… it seems this entire space is no longer part of the real world.”

Silence surrounded him; no sound answered the old mage’s muttering. Then, unexpectedly, he chuckled and turned to look at an empty spot beside him. “The sun still has some time before it fully rises. I can stay here with you a while longer.”

After his words, the air remained still, but the gray-white fog around them suddenly stirred with an unusual flow. Then, pale letters appeared on a nearby wall: “You really didn’t miss a thing.”

“At first, I didn’t notice either. This strange environment affected my senses, but I have experience—some… rather unusual experience,” Modir said calmly. He found a relatively clean spot nearby and sat down on the ground. “You weren’t really waiting in some ‘safe place.’ You were right there beside them, weren’t you?”

“…Before they evacuated, I returned to the base, but by then I couldn’t contact them. I spent a long time trying to send messages until I finally realized I could communicate by leaving writing on physical surfaces,” the words on the wall quickly extended. “At that moment, I knew I couldn’t go back.”

Modir was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked, “…How did you end up like this?”

“The northern district was the first to be engulfed by the fog. I was inspecting an abandoned warehouse at the time—when I noticed the abnormal thick fog outside, I chose to hide inside and wait for it to clear. That was my biggest mistake. After that, the courier knocked on the warehouse door, and I disappeared into the fog along with the building. Then… I was left here.”

“You didn’t want them to know the truth just to spare their feelings?” Modir shook his head. “They’re trained agents of the Intelligence Bureau. Even if they knew your situation, they would still complete their mission—I can see that. Besides, the changes happening to you are critical intelligence. You should have let them take it out…”

“If they knew what happened to me, they’d be trapped in the fog too, unable to cross that discontinuous boundary again,” the pale letters wrote. “This fog… is very unusual. It exists beyond the border of reality and illusion. The power of mind and cognition intertwines with the mist. The more you know inside it, the harder it becomes to escape this secret realm.”

Modir’s expression grew serious, but he quickly responded, “Then how did you know it was safe to tell me all this? Aren’t you worried I’ll get trapped here too?”

“…You weren’t really here to begin with, were you?” The pale letters continued, and though they were just words, Modir felt the writer’s smile behind them. “For you, this is just a dream. You’re still lying warmly in your bed back in Winterhold.”

“So it is,” Modir stroked his beard and sighed softly. He had suspected something like this before but wasn’t certain until now. “No wonder the flow of magic felt strange when I cast spells, and why my mental defenses never fully formed… If my mind was in a dream state from the start, it all makes sense.”

He frowned slightly and spoke to the empty street, “But how did you come to know all this? I don’t know much about your Intelligence Bureau, but I doubt you’re a great archmage or a scholar of the supernatural, nor an expert in this kind of resistance. And this fog is so bizarre— even real experts wouldn’t uncover so much in such a short time, right?”

“…The fog itself told me many things,” the writing began again. “When I became part of this place, I naturally came to know certain things, even directly sensed some ‘truths,’ like your real state. But as for the principles behind it… sorry, I don’t know. Like you said, I’m no expert.”

“You don’t know, but I can guess a little. I think this so-called ‘fog’ might have originated from an extraordinarily vast… ‘mind.’ It’s even possible the fog itself is part of this immense consciousness,” Modir said solemnly, thinking it through. “Only that could explain why you know things inside the fog that shouldn’t belong to you, and why knowing those things traps you here forever.”

“An extraordinarily vast ‘mind’?!” The pale letters conveyed shock. “What kind of mind could wield such terrifying power, even enveloping an entire…”

“God,” Modir said calmly.

The writing on the wall fell silent, as if the writer was stunned. Modir thought of the shadow dwellers he had seen before, the strange courier figures seemingly linked to the Shadow Realm, the houses consumed by black flames in the fog, and the bizarre fact that he had somehow entered this “Violet City” in a dream. These clues fluttered through his mind like pages in the wind, then suddenly merged into a whole.

“I think I understand why I came here in my sleep,” the old mage sighed softly. From the corner of his eye, he saw the sky beyond the fog growing brighter with dawn’s first light. The sun was about to shine on this world, and the darkness at the fog’s edge was nearly gone. He watched quietly and said softly, “It seems here, dream and reality have completely merged.”

He turned to the empty air beside him, a trace of apology in his voice. “Sorry, I meant to keep you company, but I ended up talking about so many dull things.”

“No, I find it quite interesting,” the pale letters wrote again. “Few have the chance to converse with a learned and experienced adventurer like you, to discuss and unravel a mystery. It’s a precious experience for me.”

Modir said nothing for a moment, letting the peaceful moment linger. Sitting in this fog-shrouded city of Prandel, he watched the dawn’s light slowly spread from the coastline. In his long, fragmented career, he had witnessed countless strange and wondrous sights—flames burning beneath the earth, surging magical currents at the edges of alien realms, elemental rifts tearing through the clouds—each breathtaking.

But even compared to those, the dawn in this foggy city would leave a deep mark on his memory.

An unseen companion waited here with him to witness this moment beyond the mortal world.

“…Time’s almost up,” Modir broke the silence suddenly. “Anything you want to say? I can’t bring you back, but I can carry your final words to those you care about.”

“…I have no one to care for. I’m an orphan—no parents, no siblings. Twenty years ago, Director Amber rescued me from the jaws of wild dogs in a dark alley. She gave me a chance…” The writing paused briefly, then continued, “If you ever meet her, tell her ‘Silver-Eyed’ Corrod completed the mission well, as always.”

“I’ll remember. I’ll tell her next time I see her—and about the intelligence you gathered here,” Modir said slowly. “That information… is extremely important.”

“That’s good.” The writing was brief.

Modir exhaled softly, stood up, and squinted toward the brightening sky deep within the fog. Daylight was about to break in the real world. When light covers the land, shadow forces retreat, and the fog will return to where it belongs. If his guess was right, this would be the last sunrise for the city of Prandel.

Just like the Thousand-Tower City, Palansanto, and Coldsea City—likely vanished forever.

A chill drifted in from the inner city. Modir glanced back and saw black flames shooting skyward, burning the entire city within the thick fog. The slender figure of the courier flickered within the blaze, and countless shadow dwellers—amorphous black mist beings—shuttled between the flames and fog. The whole city was being rapidly consumed by the fire, a terrifying yet silent scene—like a dream about to shatter, quietly fading away.

The old mage sighed—regrettably, he wouldn’t witness the final scene.

He had to wake up.

The next moment, just before the black flames could spread to the end of the street, Modir’s figure suddenly vanished from the foggy street, as silently as when he had arrived.

Wasp and Night Owl stared blankly back toward where they had come from. The cold sea wind howled across the bare beach. Morning sunlight spread over the ocean, flooding the land with brilliant light. But all they saw was the rugged, rolling wilderness.

The Violet Border City of Prandel, once standing on this coastal edge, was gone— not destroyed, not abandoned and collapsed, but without a trace. Not a single broken brick, not a wisp of smoke or life remained.

As if Prandel had never existed here at all, as if for centuries or even millennia, this had been nothing but a barren wilderness—a coastline in its primal state.

Since leaving that strange fog, this was all they had seen. The two Intelligence Bureau agents waited here a long time but neither the legendary adventurer nor their “manager” appeared.

It was as if they had been forgotten—forgotten on this bare, primitive shore.

But Wasp already had a faint suspicion, and she believed Night Owl did too.

“The manager didn’t come out… nor did Lord Modir,” she heard Night Owl whisper.

But neither she nor Night Owl was truly worried about the legendary adventurer’s safety—after all, he was that very adventurer of legend.

“Prandel City has vanished,” Wasp whispered. “As if it never existed.”

“This beach, southeast of Prandel, can’t be mistaken by the terrain,” Night Owl glanced back toward the sea breeze. He saw the small waves whipped by the wind crashing against the black rocks. Under the sunlight, the beach looked untouched, pristine, as if no one had ever set foot here. He clearly remembered that although this wasn’t the harbor, there used to be some coastal facilities here. Now, even those outside the city had completely disappeared. “No city, no port, no violet blooms…”

Just then, another gust of sea wind blew inland from afar. Wasp instinctively looked up, following the breeze. In the growing brightness of the sun, she suddenly saw a faint mist hovering at the edge of what had once been the wild outskirts of Prandel City. The thin fog seemed to seep in from another dimension—abrupt and striking.

For a brief moment, she almost believed Prandel City was returning. She even began to doubt herself, wondering if she was trapped in an illusion—that Prandel hadn’t disappeared, the coastal facilities were still there, and she and Night Owl were merely caught in a spell. The real scene was about to reappear before her eyes—but the next second, the fragile mist quickly dissolved.

Within the fading fog, a figure seemed to wave at her. She didn’t even have time to confirm if it was a hallucination before the last wisp vanished under the sunlight.

Shaken from her unrealistic daydream, she immediately felt the bone-chilling sea wind stealing the warmth from her body in relentless waves.

Back in Prandel City, the sea breeze had never been this cold. The city itself had shielded them from nature’s full force. But now, the two intelligence agents would have to face the challenge on this wild, untamed land.

All supplies had already been taken away by the thick fog—and the “messenger” within it.

“What do we do now?” Night Owl’s expression was grave as he looked at Wasp. “By command protocol, it’s your turn to give orders.”

Wasp’s voice was low and steady. “…The mission isn’t over. We have to survive and report what happened here to headquarters.”

“That’s going to be difficult—every communication device disappeared along with the city. All transportation vanished too. We can’t swim across the strait—it’s winter now,” Night Owl stated bluntly. “The next cargo ship from the northern port won’t arrive until next week.”

“Then we focus on the first priority,” Wasp took a slow breath and lightly patted her face. “Find a way to survive.”

(End of chapter)