Mystery: The Stranger

Chapter 1 The Stranger in the Mist

The damp, bloody smell mixed with the stench of rotting vegetation felt like a cold snake crawling into my nostrils.

Snow Serin opened his eyes abruptly in the mud, his limbs and bones feeling as if they had been repeatedly crushed by a heavy hammer—his magical power was so thin that it was barely enough to keep his consciousness from sinking.

He pushed himself up from the ground, the rough linen cloth chafing his palms until they ached. The tattered robe was stained with mud and dark red bloodstains; it was nothing like the Shadow Robes he wore in Azeroth. His waist was empty. Where his soulstone pouch and Shadow Dagger should have hung, only a cold piece of cloth remained.

As far as the eye could see, there were ruins: charred wooden beams leaned precariously in the mud, dark red bloodstains spreading in the rain, meandering into tiny streams. The unfamiliar sky was as dark as ink, devoid of sun or stars, with only a faint hint of crimson visible. A hazy mist, carrying a subtle malice, seemed like countless eyes lurking in the shadows, watching.

This is not Azeroth.

"Hiss—" A sharp whistling sound came from the left. Snow rolled to the side with the instincts ingrained in his bones as a warlock. A dark shadow grazed his shoulder and crashed into the broken wall behind him, shards of stone splattering all over his face.

The creature resembled a human, with sickly bluish-black skin, fingernails as sharp as blades, eyes burning with eerie green flames, and drool dripping from its mouth—lacking the putrid smell of the undead, it was a heartless being.

Snow's heart tightened. His magic power was now depleted, and he couldn't even conjure the most basic Shadow Bolt. All the soul fragments he had collected in the past had been lost. To deal with this monster, he had to squeeze his own soul out of himself.

Although I was extremely unwilling, reality didn't give me any time to breathe.

Enraged, the man with the broken heart roared and lunged forward, his claws aimed straight for his throat.

"Damn it!"

"Pain!"

Snow gritted his teeth, a dim gray-purple light flashing in his eyes. He chose the lowest-cost Shadow Word: Pain, which was almost instantaneous and had a very low cost, making it a must-cast for Shadow Priests at the start of a fight, similar to Curse of Agony. It was quite effective against these low-level Mindbreakers.

The moment the grayish-purple light touched the creature's flesh, the dark blue monster trembled violently. A chilling, piercing pain spread through its veins. It wasn't fatal, but it made the monster's movements suddenly halt, its claws deflected, and its frenzy was tinged with unbearable stiffness and agitation.

Snow seized the opportunity to dodge, looking down at his right hand. A faint black line had appeared on his palm, and deep within the line, a mini black dagger was slightly warm.

It's Saratas.

The infamous Void Spirits of Azeroth are known for bewitching their hosts and devouring souls.

Why is this guy still here? Snow's heart sank, but he didn't have time to think about it. He immediately poured a little bit of magic power into it. The black lines on his palm suddenly lit up and finally condensed into a black dagger phantom about an inch long, which floated in his palm.

The dagger is made of what appears to be the claw bone of some kind of creature, its surface covered with twisted runes, emanating a faint aura of emptiness, and its sharpness is beyond doubt.

Snow raised his hand and easily sliced ​​open the head of the heartless one. Before he could use his soul extraction technique, the dark dagger in his palm stirred first, instantly devouring the heartless one's soul.

Snow frowned, and could only let Saratas absorb soul energy to recover for the time being.

"I saw some very interesting scenes."

A seductive whisper rang in his ears. Of the soul energy devoured by the dagger, thirty percent flowed back into his body through the contract. At the same time, a large number of fragmented memories, sorted out but still chaotic, suddenly crashed into his mind:

—"The Black Emperor Solomon has fallen, and the entire empire has crumbled..."

—"The followers of the fallen God are besieged by other churches and scattered into hiding..."

—"The whispers of the abyss grew clearer; the priest said that a great being was about to descend..."

"—Don't go near the Valley of Judgment, demons roam there..."

The Solomon Empire? A Fallen God? The Abyss?

Snow looked up sharply at the churning malevolent mist in the sky, and an unbelievable thought crashed into his mind: This is the world of the Lord of Mysteries, the Fourth Age, the Age of Gods, the chaotic world of the Northern Continent after the fall of the Solomon Dynasty!

The power of the Sunwell's explosion was so terrifying that it kicked him out of Azeroth.

This is impossible!

"Look what you've done!" Recalling the cause and effect, Snow's expression turned cold and stern, making no attempt to hide his anger, and he directly questioned the existence of the dagger.

His current predicament is inextricably linked to Xaratas.

In my memory, everything went smoothly. Quel'Thalas fell, and Arthas led the Scourge to raze Silvermoon City and head straight for the Sunwell.

That is a powerful and pure source of arcane energy in Azeroth, containing pure and vast life energy, spatial energy, and soul energy.

At the moment of the explosion, the energy of the Sunwell leaked out wildly. Taking advantage of the high status of the Dark Dagger, Xalatas rushed forward to devour the surging energy of the Sunwell. His greed and haste caused the energy to overload instantly, spacetime became unstable, and the dagger itself underwent a mutation, tearing through spacetime and directly taking the dagger away.

According to the fixed timeline of Azeroth, Snow Serin had already completed his destined path, discarding the Dark Dagger amidst the chaos, and was even beginning to retreat. However, because Xal'atath had a backup plan, Snow's contract with the dagger wasn't completely severed. The energy difference was too great, and Snow couldn't escape at all, being swept into an unknown spacetime rift...

All of this is Xaratas's fault.

I'd rather be in Azeroth than with the Lord of Mysteries!

"If you hadn't thrown me into the center of the explosion, none of this would have happened!"

Snow's malice seemed too obvious, and the whispers from inside the dagger were unusually unsettling.

"I just want you to suffer a little. You won't die anyway, so what's wrong with getting blown up?"

Si Ruo retorted without hesitation, looking at the dagger in her hand, feeling utterly absurd and as if she were being played by fate.

"My dear Snow, if you had even a shred of conscience, you should thank me."

Seemingly sensing the unease hidden in Snow's words, Xalatas's voice returned to its seductive languor, "Even though you have betrayed me so despicably, I have not abandoned you. I even shared some of the power of the Sunwell that I had drawn with you, so that you would not be swallowed by the Void and could still speak rudely to me in this new world."

"You used to be such a lovely child, protected by the Holy Light, and the people of Stormwind all thought you would be the next..."

The whispers in his ear naturally began to affect Snow's emotions, as if in this foreign land, Saratas was someone he could rely on, someone he should share memories of the past with, someone he could trust and support...

"Shut up."

Snow didn't want to hear her recount the past; he focused only on the most pressing question, his voice turning somber: "Can we go back?"

That's the most important thing; he'd rather struggle in Azeroth than come here.

Even if he wasn't free, at least he wouldn't face the dilemma of being disliked by both sides in Azeroth.

He + Xalatas + Blade of the Dark Empire, no matter how you look at it, looks like the second Chaos Child who stripped naked on Earth, he doesn't look like an Earthling at all.