Year 3917 of the Almanac of Ages, in a remote rural region

The battle began before the spell.

The peasants, those twenty brave souls guided more by desperation than hope, charged against the bandits emerging from the fortress. Their battle cries transformed into agonizing screams when the brigands' blades sank into unprepared flesh. The village chief's young son fought with the blind fury of one who has nothing to lose. His woodcutter's axe fell upon a bandit's arm, severing it cleanly in a fountain of crimson blood, but these were the last moments of his courage. Three men surrounded him like hungry wolves, and his body was torn apart under the blows of their rusty swords, his entrails mixing with the mud of the land he had loved so much.

I had warned them not to fight. I had told them to stay back. But they had to try - they had to prove to themselves they could be more than victims. And now, as they fell one after another, their screams of agony echoing through the valley like a chorus of the damned, I understood that this was the real reason they had come: not to win, but to discover they could still fight.

The bandits laughed, sure of their victory, unaware they were about to become witnesses to the apocalypse.

I moved, and with that movement, I felt the ancient spell keeping me alive falter. Each step was a compromise with death itself.

The first step made the earth tremble with such violence that some of the combatants lost their balance. It wasn't an effect of mana - not yet. It was the weight of my presence, of what was about to happen. The second step brought an unnatural silence to the battlefield, as if the air itself was holding its breath. The third stopped time, crystallizing drops of blood in mid-air.

"Rise," my voice resonated like distant thunder, older and deeper than before. The wounded peasants, their flesh torn and bleeding, looked at me with eyes full of terror and hope. "Watch what true power means."

It was then that I began to weave the spell, and with it, I felt the weight of centuries crash upon me like an avalanche.

The mana didn't flow - it exploded from my body like an erupting volcano. The air became thick as mercury, charged with energy that made teeth crackle in jaws and burned the lungs of those who dared to breathe. The bandits tried to move, but their bodies were trapped like insects in amber. Some tried to scream, but their voices were devoured by the supernatural silence that enveloped the battlefield like a shroud.

The runes on my back awakened with primordial violence. Each symbol lit up like hot iron, burning through clothes and illuminating my skin which, before the terrified eyes of those present, began to show the devastating signs of time. It was as if centuries of compressed life were emerging all at once, claiming their tribute with fierce greed.

The runic circle I traced in the air was a portal to the abyss itself. Every gesture of my fingers left trails of acid green light that burned the air, creating symbols that violated the laws of nature. The runes intertwined in impossible patterns, forming geometry that made eyes bleed if looked at too long. The air itself seemed to scream, torn by each new symbol I added to the circle.

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My body aged visibly, skin wrinkling and stretching over bones like ancient parchment, hair becoming white as dirty snow. The runes on my body shone through the tatters of my clothes with blinding intensity, forming constellations of power that told stories of destruction.

"Watch," I said to the peasants gathering behind me, my voice now fragile as dry leaves but charged with power that made the air itself tremble. "Watch what it means to challenge an archmage who has lived too long."

I closed my fist, my fingers now knotted and marked by time.

The world itself screamed.

Energy exploded from the runic circle in concentric waves of pure destruction. The first wave transformed the air into incandescent plasma, vaporizing the eyes of those who looked directly at it. The second dissolved the fortress walls like acid devouring flesh, stone melting like wax under a flame. The third... the third erased from existence everything it touched with terrifying surgical precision.

The bandits had no time to comprehend their end. Their bodies disintegrated layer by layer: first the skin, then the flesh, finally the bones, each element dissolved into particles of green light that danced in the air like mad fireflies before vanishing into nothingness. Their souls, torn from their bodies with unnatural violence, dispersed in the wind like ash in a storm. The fortress didn't collapse - it was denied by reality itself. Where once stood a fortress, now there was only a perfect void, a hole in the fabric of existence so deep that eyes refused to look at it, sliding away like water on glass.

When the last wave of energy dissipated, the silence that fell was that of absolute void, of total absence.

Then, like water receding after a storm, I felt the power withdraw. The runes on my skin began to fade one after another, their green glow dimming like stars at sunrise. The aging process reversed with the same rapidity with which it had occurred: wrinkles smoothed out, hair returned to raven-wing black, skin regained its youthful elasticity. In mere moments, where before stood a bent elder, now stood again a young man in his prime.

I turned toward the peasants, the movement now fluid and graceful. They were still alive, protected from the apocalypse by a thin shield of mana I had woven around them. Their faces were masks of terror and wonder, not only for the destruction they had witnessed but for the double transformation they had seen unfold before their eyes.

The village chief, kneeling in the mud, raised his gaze to me. Recognition shone in his tired eyes, mixed with a new and deeper terror. "Malachai," he whispered. "The archmage from the stories. The legends... were true..."

"Legends are shadows of truth," I replied, my voice returned to its youthful timbre but maintaining an echo of that ancient power. "And the truth is that every power has its price. I have returned, and this is only a small demonstration of what I am willing to do."

I straightened up, the air still crackling with residual energy. The runes on my body, now almost invisible under young skin, pulsed weakly as a reminder of the power they contained. "When the kingdom's agents come, tell them what you saw. Tell them that the archmage of House Vedragun has returned. And this time, I won't stop, even if it should cost me much more than a few years of life."

The wind rose, carrying with it the smell of ozone. The peasants remained kneeling, witnesses not only to the beginning of something greater than themselves but also to the terrible price of power and its transient nature. They had tried to be heroes, and instead had become the heralds of a change that would shake the foundations of the kingdom.

The dawn of the storm had arrived. And with it, the return of a power that the world had forgotten to fear, embodied in a young man whose appearance now masked centuries of existence and a power that could bend reality itself.