The Mystic Well Sanctum was no longer a simple artisan's shop. It had become something else entirely—half laboratory, half fortress, and wholly devoted to unraveling the secret behind the talisman key. Inside the reinforced back chamber, Felix Mavis stood hunched over an obsidian worktable, spiritual threads suspended in the air around him like fine silk caught in a storm.
Six weeks had passed since he first identified the epic-tier talisman as a dimensional key. Now, a new goal burned in his heart: to craft a companion talisman—one that could locate the dimensional barrier this key was meant to unlock.
He didn't sleep much. Between refining his cultivation technique and testing dozens of spiritual constructs, Felix only paused long enough to sip bitter herbal brews and swallow restoration pills. The Breath of the Mystic Vessel allowed him to multitask his mental processes; it was the only reason he hadn't collapsed under the sheer complexity of his research.
The original talisman floated nearby, trapped inside a containment array. Felix didn't dare tamper with it again—not after the first backlash, which had scorched a line of black through his desk and seared half the warding glyphs on the wall.
On a wide scroll before him, he drew the final lines of the seventy-third resonance talisman attempt.
He activated it with a breath of refined Qi.
For one hopeful heartbeat, the scroll pulsed with violet light. Then it cracked, imploded, and vanished in a burst of void sparks.
Felix exhaled. "Failure again."
He slumped back, skin pale, and let his head rest against the wall. The ink fumes and spiritual pressure had become almost comforting. He barely registered Rin entering the chamber.
"Felix? It's the third day without rest. Even cultivation can't keep this up."
"I'm close," he whispered. "It's not just the resonance. There's a secondary interaction buried in the spatial layers. The key doesn't open anything by force. It syncs with an existing frequency—a hidden one."
Rin frowned and set down a fresh plate of medicinal dumplings. "Even your own talismans can't handle it. That last one nearly opened a tear."
"It did." Felix sat up, grim. "Just a crack. A slice of unreality. I saw beyond."
He looked down at his hand. The veins in his palm shimmered faintly with silver. The backlash had altered his internal flow temporarily.
Using the essence transcription talisman. They spoke of multi-layered access gates, harmonic convergence seals, and keys designed to restrain rather than unlock.
He returned shaken. The more he read, the more he realized that the talisman wasn't made to open a passage freely. It was designed to survive opening something immensely dangerous—something sealed away by deliberate, multi-cultivator intent.
He needed a new approach. Not as a talisman artisan.
As an architect of spiritual frameworks.
Meanwhile, the Sanctum thrived.
With Rin managing orders and Seris training the newly hired guards, Felix's absence in public didn't slow business. Customers came from neighboring cities seeking Mystic Flame Talismans and the newer Barrier Anchors—a defensive talisman line Felix had created in a rare moment of peace.
Under the cover of a moonless night, bandits disguised as a merchant caravan launched an attack on the Sanctum.
They didn't make it past the courtyard.
Seris, silent and swift, along with Captain Garron and the other guards—now bearing refined talismanic capes and reinforced barrier medallions—easily dispatched the attackers. Felix, when informed, barely nodded before returning to his notes.
His fame grew without his consent.
The Mystic Well Sanctum was no longer just a shop.
On the 91st attempt, Felix used Void Serpent ink mixed with crystalized spatial dust. He had bartered one of the original talisman's fragments to obtain the rare materials from a secretive black-market.
He constructed the resonance matrix not as a mimic—but as a listener.
He placed the strange talisman on the altar stone, surrounded it with containment crystals, and drew a small cut along his palm. Qi-infused blood dropped onto the central glyph.
The scroll pulsed.
Then thrummed.
The air grew still.
A faint resonance, Distant. But it was there.
Not a portal, but a memory.
The scroll flared, casting light across the room. Felix staggered back as the glyphs spun and reformed midair, coalescing into an ancient sequence of images.
A battlefield. Mountains cracked and floated. Sky torn by purple lightning.
And at the center, a dozen cultivators stood in a circle. They held talismans like the one Felix studied.
Behind them, a massive obsidian gate. Sealed. Etched with one name in jagged script: Veyradorn, the Sleepless Seal.
The vision twisted. Felix saw beasts—twisted, dark, and shifting between shapes—screaming within the void beyond the gate.
Then black.
He collapsed.
When he awoke, Seris was holding a sword at the doorway, while Rin clutched his arm. The Sanctum trembled. Even from outside, they had felt the backlash.
August stormed in ten minutes later, four imperial captains behind him.
"Master Felix? Are you okay?"
Felix rose unsteadily. His voice rasped. "We were wrong. It's not a vault nor a treasure."
He reached into his robe and dropped a fresh talisman on the floor—this one marked with the symbol from the vision gate.
"It's a prison. An old one. The kind sealed by multiple sects long ago. Veyradorn is a name from forgotten history."
August's expression darkened. "You saw what's inside?"
Felix nodded. "Shifting monsters. Sealed with layered dimensions. Designed not just to keep people out—but to keep them in."
A deep silence.
Then August said, "We sent scouts north of Redmarsh Vale yesterday. Two never returned. One came back... screaming. Said the forest watched him."
Felix stood tall despite the ache in his bones. "Then it's waking up. Whatever's in there."
Seris stepped forward, voice like stone. "Do we seal it again? Or destroy the key?"
Felix shook his head. "We may not have a choice. The key's already resonating. That realm knows and it remembers."
August turned to his men. "Prepare the Knight Council. No more scouts. No more games. We secure the area and wait. Felix…"
"Yes?"
"Can you make another key?"
Felix stared at him and slowly shook his head. "I can't replicate it. Not even close. This talisman is above my league. It's on a level we barely understand."
August frowned. "Then how long until the seal opens?"
Felix answered quietly, "We don't know how many years are left before the seal completely opens. Maybe four or five years left? We don't know."