PROLOGUE

Despite the sunless day, the sky was still bright for the light was being reflected by the white coating of the environment. But not warm for the village was covered with snow. All is white. Even the trees, the houses, cottages and carriages were capped with snow – like some ice cream dessert – and the sky was also white filled with winter clouds.

The houses' chimneys were like forever puking white smoke in the air; at least they made the whole place warmer in sight. The breeze was not as cold as it had been days ago when a snowstorm visited the village. It was a lot warmer but it was never been advisable to go outside naked or you would freeze in merely a minute.

People were starting to work outside. Some were fixing their carriages sunk in thick snow blankets. Some were opening their little stores of freshly baked breads. There were men of bulky bodies with big alive salmon on their shoulders talking to their fellow neighbors about the frozen lake they came from.

Children coated with thick sweater dresses were playing on the roads like they had not been gone outside for years. Their unique silver hair and vermilion eyes shone like gems soaked in the sea of milk; they became brighter as their wide smiles appeared.  In all, the village was starting to come alive again, because they were all anticipating for the coming sun that hid from them for so many months.

Miles from the village, on top of a hill was a gallant, iron igloo-shaped hermitage known by everybody in the village. The building was guarded by thick and tall walls of stone that got much taller because of the snow on top of it. The igloo-shaped hermitage was as pale as the cold weather. It was incredibly huge and stout compared to the houses in the village, maybe because it was not a simply built building as it looked like.

The plain white flag embroidered with two golden spheres touching each other as they form a horizontal 'eight' was a solid proof that the mansion was a White Frost's lair. The flag was wagging proudly in almost all places in the hermitage.

Inside were busy servants that walked up and down from left to right of the building. All was busy preparing for the big breakfast of their wizards. The wizards were the most powerful and the smartest members of the tribe. They were not really a big number. There were specifically twenty-two wizards in the building and all of them were going up now for a morning break; going up for the reason that they were working underground.

Their facilities were built under the building for safety and a little bit of secrecy. The wizards were not so aware of the time rules and preferred to have the break every morning then worked up all half day and all whole night; some even exceeded from that.

Underneath the building was a research facility divided into spacious rooms sorted by purpose. In the main laboratory were two men, ignoring the calls from above for breakfast. All of their co-wizards were above, enjoying the food and fresh air that they couldn't feel here under the ground. But they were so persistent that they insisted to have a few minutes of overtime.

"Bring more shockwaves."

"I'm bringing it. Negative signal."

The main laboratory was dark and messy. It was because they killed the entire energy source in the place, including the light source, while experimenting so that their energy sensor would be more sensitive to sense what they wanted it to sense.

The energy sensor was a dodger blue orb, bright as a flame that was roaming in an anonymous blank space, only the gods knew where, because the wizards were just seeing it through the monitor. The monitor was a giant oblique mirror-like frame that conquered the right wall.

"Add more. Double it perhaps." Lysidrian commanded for a thousand times as he looked intently at the monitor and glancing for some time in the meters beside it.

"It was doubled. Negative sig---Whoa-Wait! I'm sensing something," Jill's eyes narrowed as he explored the machine that was giving off shockwaves. ‘Just a little more...’                                                                                          

"Yes! We sensed a signal!" The young apprentice tousled his bushy silver hair as he realized that he was overreacting. It was not finished yet. The observation had just started actually. 

Lysidrian loosen his new red scarf and fixed his eyes on the monitor. He did some magic, manipulating the orb in the monitor and it roamed like it had its own life. He let it find the signal. The energy source they needed to prove that this research was no waste – that there was really a separate space that was connecting another world from another.

‘A space that never has the rules of distance and time.’

“The abyss.”

At first, the orb was like roaming for nothing. Not a thing could be found except darkness. Nothingness. But then, the signal became stronger and stronger even without Jill adding shockwaves to increase its visibility. The young wizard looked at the orb then to his Magnus Lysidrian. He couldn't help but be astounded to the Magnus' dedication and expertise to their experiment.

"Magnus...?"

Lysidrian was just silent and seriously serious like he had never been before. The blinking of the red light in the meter indicated a strong signal. A strong energy source was being sensed but where was it. The blinking of the meter followed the beat of Lysidrian's heart, it was like the own beep of the meter.

Thump. Thump. Thump. He was really excited but something inside him was still afraid. Afraid that it was just a false alarm.

Then, unexpectedly the monitor had been filled with a blinding light. It brightened the whole room and lighted the hallway outside. The two wizards were too late to block their eyes and they felt sudden blindness. When their sight came back, Lysidrian hurriedly snapped at the monitor just to see that the orb was gone.

"Magnus?" Jill asked for the second time and Lysidrian answered silence just again. But after a couple of minutes, he sighed triumphantly while grinning from ear to ear.

"That...That was the abyss. The orb has been eaten by another space. It was transported into another place!" he said not scratching the wide smile he couldn't dare to hide.

 *** Weeks later ***

Tears left Lysidrian’s eyes. ‘I never thought it would end up like this.’ He knocked the ground and a giant pentagram laid on the floor catching the whole piece of the machine. The machine was an octagon-based cubicle that had eight posts connected to each edge of the octagon. The pentagram was  glittering blue, it made Lysidrian's hair and clothes float.                                                                                

Lysidrian wiped his tears then whispered unknown words in the air. He was yielding a spell. He closed his eyes as he felt the power flowing from him then into the pentagram he just drew. Runes and ancient strip of poems appeared from the pentagram coating the machine. The runes and strips were like giant snake enveloping the unmoving machine. The room glowed brighter and brighter as runes ate the target. The pentagram floated a little making it higher than the ground at an inch or two.

While concentrating on making the spell, Lysidrian heard banging attacks from the outside of the ice walls he made. The attacks were from different people. ‘The guards, tsk.’ After a few minutes, he heard a cracking eruption and just then he knew that they had made a hole on his wall.

"What are you doing!"

An angry voice echoed in the room and then Lysidrian opened his eyes. He faced the people behind him who shouted and Simone, Lord Celio and some other guards appeared. Lysidrian's face had no hint of any emotion. Everyone on that room knew what it meant. The face he used to wear when he's fighting.                                                                                                                                                        

"It is some kind of self-destruction spell," Lord Celio said while gritting his teeth. The wrinkles on his aged face seemed more visible now that he was angry.

Simone, who looked confused, asked his friend Lysidrian of what was he planning to do. The Magnus didn't answer; he turned his back and walked inside the pentagram. Simone and Lord Celio were really nervous of what he was doing. Why he had covered the laboratory with thick ice shields? And why did he perform a self-destruction spell on the machine? Did he lose his hope on making the machine into reality?  But they were not thinking of what would happen to Lysidrian but what would happen to the machine that seemed much developed now than the last time they saw it.

"Shoot him! The spell isn't done yet." shouted Celio to Simone. Simone was at first thinking. Lysidrian was his friend after all, a childhood pal. But it was his father who commanded him, their leader, and the machine was at risk too. So, he rocketed ice blades to Lysidrian.

Lysidrian was caught off guard and got hit on his right shoulder. He looked to Simone and eyed him pitifully. Lysidrian was thinking of his friend, of how this old fart influenced his good-hearted son. How the war poisoned their very minds.

Lysidrian understood what this two felt. He felt it too.

Inside the pentagram, Lysidrian couldn't hear anything. He looked for the activation button of the machine.

"It's good that I could experience my own invention," Lysidrian said while smiling bitterly. The pentagram that was embossed on the floor and ceiling of the octagon cubicle glowed gold. The eight posts glowed also of the same hue and brightness. Then in a matter of seconds, a floating reddish-purple fog appeared inside the cubicle.

Outside, Celio and Simone just watched Lysdrian. The doubts of Lysidrian loosing hope vanished. ‘He made it’, Simone thought in awe. They were thinking that they would be seeing the first flight of the dream machine. Behind the coating runes they saw the machine produced an unfamiliar fog that slowly turned to thick plum clouds.

"The abyss," was all Celio uttered.

It produced unknown wind whips; cold winds that smelled lifeless. They couldn’t make any move because they were nailed with their faces in amazement. Shining like the sun in a day they just watched as this abyss ate Lysidrian. First his right hand, skipping from the state of being concrete as it got in touch with the fog, his hand turned to fog also copying the color of his skin. Lysidrian twitched a little but continued. Then he soaked his left hand too....and both arms.... And without any warning, Lysidrian was sipped by force.

At the very moment after that, the self-destruction spell gleamed red from its center – the symbol of its activation – not a time to react, the room busted in a loud explosion.