Albion POV
The morning air was crisp as our team gathered at Magnolia's train station. Mt. Hakobe loomed in the distance, its snow-capped peak catching the early sunlight. I tried not to think about the motion sickness that was about to hit me as we boarded the train.
"Everyone ready?" Mirajane asked, shouldering her pack. She was back to her usual gentle demeanor, though I could still sense the underlying steel beneath her kind smile.
"As ready as we'll ever be." Erza replied, checking her equipment one final time.
"REAL MEN ARE ALWAYS READY!" Elfman declared, striking a pose that made several other passengers stare.
"Big brother, you're embarrassing us." Lisanna giggled, tugging on his arm.
Kuroka perched on my shoulder, eyeing the train warily. "You sure you're going to be okay, nya?"
"I'll manage." I said, though I was already feeling queasy just looking at the locomotive. "It's just a couple hours to the base of the mountain, shouldn't be a problem."
As we found our seats, I noticed Erza watching me with concern. "Motion sickness?"
"Dragon slayer curse." I confirmed with a grimace. "All of us get it."
"Even with seven different types?" she asked.
"Especially with seven different types." Kuroka said helpfully. "The conflicting magical frequencies make it worse, nya."
The train lurched into motion, and I immediately felt my stomach drop. This was going to be a long trip.
---
Two hours later
Mt. Hakobe Base
I stumbled off the train on shaky legs, grateful to be on solid ground again. The mountain air was thin and cold, carrying the scent of snow and something else—something that made my dragon slayer senses tingle with unease.
"Feeling better?" Lisanna asked sympathetically.
"Much better." I said, taking deep breaths of the crisp mountain air. "Thanks for not laughing at me."
"Why would we laugh?" Elfman asked, genuinely confused. "Motion sickness isn't unmanly. It's just unfortunate."
"Right." I said with a small smile. "So, what exactly are we investigating?"
Mirajane pulled out the job request. "According to the client, there have been strange lights appearing around the upper slopes of the mountain. Blue and white flashes that don't match any known magical phenomena. Plus, the local monster population has been acting erratically."
"Erratically how?" Erza asked, ever the tactician.
"Fleeing the mountain en masse." Mirajane continued. "Which is unusual because Mt. Hakobe monsters are typically very territorial."
"Animals have good instincts." I said, feeling that familiar chill again. "If they're running, there's probably a good reason."
"Only one way to find out." Kuroka said from my shoulder. "Up we go, nya."
The path up Mt. Hakobe was treacherous, covered in ice and snow despite the relatively mild weather at the base. Erza had requipped into her Winter Coat armor, while the Strauss siblings seemed largely unaffected by the cold.
"Takeover magic helps with temperature regulation." Lisanna explained when she noticed me shivering slightly. "Perks of demonic transformation."
"That is useful." I said, channeling some of my [white dragon slayer magic] to warm myself. The holy element had an interesting side effect of providing warmth without the destructive heat of fire magic.
We'd been climbing for about an hour when Elfman suddenly stopped, his nose twitching.
"Something's wrong." he said, his usual boisterous demeanor replaced by alertness.
"What do you smell?" Erza asked, hand moving instinctively to her sword.
"I smell fear." he replied grimly. "Lots of it. And something else... something that doesn't belong on this mountain."
I enhanced my own senses, drawing on all seven of my dragon slayer magics to get a clearer picture. The scents hit me like a wall—terror, panic, and underneath it all, an strange metallic smell that seemed almost... artificial.
"Over there." I said, pointing toward a rocky outcropping ahead. "Something's hiding behind those rocks."
We approached cautiously, and what we found made my heart sink. A family of yetis—normally aggressive monsters that ruled these slopes—were huddled together in obvious terror. The largest one, presumably the father, was shielding what looked like two young ones with his body.
"They're terrified." Lisanna whispered, her natural empathy for creatures shining through.
"But of what?" Mirajane wondered.
As if in answer to her question, a brilliant flash of blue-white light erupted from higher up the mountain. The yeti family whimpered and pressed themselves further into their hiding spot.
"That light." Erza said, squinting up toward the peak. "It doesn't feel like any magic I'm familiar with."
"It feels..." I paused, trying to identify the sensation. "Empty. Like it's pulling something in rather than pushing something out."
"That's oddly specific." Kuroka noted.
Another flash, this one stronger and longer-lasting. In its wake, I could swear I felt something shift in the very air around us—as if reality itself had hiccupped.
"We need to get closer." Mirajane said, though I could hear the uncertainty in her voice.
"I agree." Erza nodded. "But we need to be careful. Whatever's causing this, it's powerful enough to scare an entire ecosystem."
We continued our ascent, leaving the terrified yeti family to their hiding spot. The higher we climbed, the more frequent the flashes became, and the more unsettled I felt. There was something fundamentally wrong about the energy I was sensing—like it belonged to a completely different world.
"Look at that." Elfman said, pointing to a section of mountainside that should have been covered in snow.
Instead, the rock was completely bare, as if something had simply erased the snow from existence. Not melted it, not blown it away—just made it cease to be.
"That's not possible." Erza said, running her hand over the bare stone. "There's no residual heat, no signs of magical interference..."
"It's like the snow was never there to begin with." I said, feeling increasingly uneasy.
"Magic doesn't work like that." Lisanna said, though her voice carried a note of doubt.
"Normal magic doesn't." I corrected grimly.
We pressed on, finding more and more evidence of this strange phenomenon. Patches of missing snow, rocks that seemed to flicker in and out of focus, and most disturbingly, sections of the mountain path that led to... nothing. Just empty air where solid ground should have been.
"This is getting dangerous." Mirajane said, and for the first time since I'd known her, I heard genuine worry in her voice.
"Maybe we should go back." Lisanna suggested. "Report what we've found and let someone else handle whatever this is."
"No, not yet." Erza said firmly. "People are counting on us to investigate this. We can't turn back just because things are getting strange."
"Strange is putting it mildly." Kuroka muttered.
Another flash, the brightest yet, erupted from what looked like a cave entrance about a hundred meters above us. This time, the effect was impossible to ignore—for just a moment, I could see through the mountain itself, as if it had become transparent.
"Did everyone else see that?" I asked, though the looks on their faces already confirmed it.
"The mountain just became... see-through." Elfman said, sounding shaken.
"That's not normal." Lisanna said with the kind of understatement that would have been funny under different circumstances.
"We're close to the source." I said, pointing toward the cave. "Whatever's causing this, it's in there."
"Then that's where we're going." Mirajane said, her determination overriding her concern.
As we approached the cave entrance, I noticed something that made my blood run cold. The opening wasn't carved by nature or tools—it looked like it had been torn open by some immense force, leaving jagged edges that seemed to shimmer with residual energy.
"The walls." Erza said quietly, running her hand along the cave entrance. "They're not stone anymore."
She was right. What should have been solid rock had the appearance and texture of crystallized air—translucent, fragile-looking, and completely unnatural.
"This feels like a really bad idea." Kuroka said, her usual confidence replaced by obvious nervousness.
"Most of our best adventures usually start with bad ideas." I replied, trying to inject some levity into the situation.
"That's not reassuring, nya."
We entered the cave, and immediately I knew we were in over our heads. The walls pulsed with that same blue-white light, and the air itself seemed to ripple like water. Gravity felt wrong, as if we were standing on the side of a cliff instead of level ground.
"Stay close everyone." Erza ordered, and for once, no one argued with her authority.
At the center of the cave, we found the source of the disturbances. A massive crystalline structure, roughly the size of a small house, hovered three feet off the ground. It rotated slowly, each turn sending out waves of that reality-warping energy.
"What is that thing?" Lisanna breathed.
"Nothing good I am sure." I said, though I had no idea how accurate that assessment was.
The crystal pulsed, and for a moment, I could swear I saw something else superimposed over our reality—a different cave, with different people, in what looked like a completely different world.
"Did anyone else just see—" Mirajane started to say.
She never got to finish the question. The crystal suddenly flared with blinding light, and I felt a pulling sensation unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Not physical force, but something that seemed to be trying to tear at the very fabric of what I was.
"Everyone out!" Erza shouted. "NOW!"
We ran for the cave entrance, but the pulling sensation was getting stronger. Behind us, the crystal's rotation was accelerating, and the light was becoming painful to look at even with our eyes closed.
We burst out of the cave just as another massive pulse erupted behind us. This time, the effect was visible across the entire mountainside—reality flickered like a candle flame in the wind.
"We need to get back to the guild right away." I said, breathing hard. "Master Makarov needs to know about this."
"What do we tell him?" Elfman asked. "That we found a reality-warping crystal that shouldn't exist?"
"We tell him the truth." Erza said grimly. "And hope he knows what to do about it."
As we began our descent down the mountain, I couldn't shake the feeling that we'd just encountered something that would change everything. The crystal, the reality distortions, the way it had tried to pull at us...
Whatever was happening on Mt. Hakobe, it was just the beginning.
"Hey Albion." Kuroka said quietly as we walked. "That thing in the cave... it felt familiar, didn't it?"
"What do you mean?" I asked, though I had a sinking feeling I knew exactly what she meant.
"Like we've seen something similar before. It seemed familiar to me but I can't really place it."
I stopped walking, pieces of a puzzle suddenly clicking into place in my mind. The pulling sensation, the reality distortions, the way it had tried to affect our very existence...
"We need to get back to the guild." I said, urgency creeping into my voice. "Fast."
Because if I was right about what we'd just encountered, then everyone I cared about was about to be in terrible danger.
And there wasn't going to be much time to prepare for what was coming.
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Third Person POV - Fairy Tail Guild Hall
The afternoon sun streamed through the guild hall windows as the usual chaos continued around the main floor. Natsu and Gray were in the middle of their daily argument, this time over whose turn it was to clean the dishes, while Happy provided unhelpful commentary from his perch on the bar.
"It's definitely your turn, flame-brain!" Gray insisted, already down to his underwear despite the argument only starting five minutes ago.
"Says who, ice princess?!" Natsu shot back, flames beginning to dance around his fists.
"Now, now boys." Master Makarov said from his position on the bar, though he seemed more amused than concerned. "Let's not destroy the guild hall before lunch."
"They've been at it for an hour." Levy sighed from her table, looking up from her book. "You'd think they'd get tired eventually."
"This is nothing." Cana said, taking a swig from her barrel. "Wait until they start the drinking contest tonight."
"Speaking of which," Wakaba said, blowing a smoke ring, "shouldn't Mira's team be back by now? Mt. Hakobe isn't that far."
"They said they'd be back by evening." Levy replied. "Though knowing that group, they probably found something interesting to investigate."
"Or Elfman challenged a yeti to prove his manliness." Macao added with a chuckle.
"ACHOO!" Happy suddenly sneezed so hard he fell off the bar. "Aye, something's making my whiskers tingle!"
"That's probably just dust Happy." Levy said.
But Master Makarov frowned slightly, his experienced senses picking up something the younger guild members missed. There was a subtle shift in the magical atmosphere around Magnolia—nothing dramatic, but noticeable to someone who'd been sensitive to magical currents for as long as he had.
"Master?" Levy asked, noticing his expression. "Is something wrong?"
"It's probably nothing." Makarov said, though his tone suggested otherwise. "Just... keep an eye out for when they return. I have a feeling they might have quite a story to tell."