Matt Mathews is the second son of Damien Mathews and Sately Alcrow. They are divorced. They are a broken family and it can't get busted more as it is...

Oh... It did.

Remembering that he is now a statue in all of his glory, he lambasted himself for the reality that his family has fragmented much further...

Matt Mathews will never see them again. Using his telekinesis, he wrote in the notebook of his predecessor continuing the tradition.

Kahowzki lived a long life.

But Matt? He will live a longer life.

It is a terrible truth, but Kahowzki doesn't want Matt to see it that way for life is a gift as much as it is a curse.

This is the philosophical equivalency of how goodness and evil are part of the same coin. It is only now that he is suffering, but it will never be forever.

Nothing is truly eternal and permanently constant in this world— the rise and fall is its plainest representation of what we will inescapably become.

Strong words, easy to say but hard to see through. Matt knows for he felt it himself as he lonely watched Kahowzki's dead body slowly decompose into a horrid sight.

Days passed as his mentor's flesh turn pale and cold.

Years passed as worms fester his mentor's skin.

Decades passed, and what's left is a husk devoid of Kahowzki's traces.

Contempt filled Matt's heart as he recall Kahowzki's solitude. Did his mentor also feel the same in the company of such a weird statue?

Must be.

But Kahowzki never showed it to Matt. The slightest contempt and derangement never caught Matt's attention. Did his mentor simply snuff the feeling of discomfort as age caught him?

Matt can't say.

Trapped in this warded trailer box for decades in a lifetime is certainly not a thrilling experience.

'Len... How are you? I suppose you are experiencing something similar to my plight, right? Sigh...'

Matt's complicated affliction offered him neither sleep nor freedom. It's a cage like the one his mentor is trying to break.

The only difference is that Matt's cage has another cage— the damnation of warded trailer box, the same cage his mentor was trapped and died into. Pluuus there is his wicked petrified state which proves to be as equivalently difficult to undo.

Challenging but manageable. Matt has years of knowledge cultivated through Kahowzki's teachings. He also has plenty of academic resources in the form of Kahowzki's research findings. Moreover, he doesn't lack the most valuable resources of all— time.

Matt has long lost track of time. Something that would naturally occur in the heat of research. His mentor was only able to track time accurately through a unique spell he casts at regular intervals. Matt can't afford such luxury given that he can't cast spells in his current form.

Limited by magic techniques, Matt forced himself to narrow his experimentation.

Modern magic offers a little solution to Matt's problems. This is mostly because Matt can't cast magic spells. As an alternative, Matt delved into the ancient magic of broken logic and natural incongruity— damn, it is hard!

Most troubling of all is the lack of a method to replenish his supply. His mentor made plenty of ink, papers, and supplies for Matt but they are not endless.

Sure, Matt can outlive his supplies, but what use is there in passively staring at nothingness? Even as a stone statue, this will be harmful to Matt's mental health

"Hmmm... There is no other way but to work with the mindset I will die if I don't find a solution to this."

Matt spent every second studying the memos his mentor stuck to the wall adjacent to him. Matt can neither see nor hear as a statue, but somehow he can tell— he can feel.

This is what allowed him to learn magic in the first place, which he shall gladly rely upon for the duration of his imprisonment.

With effort and his mentor's lifetime of experience, Matt dedicated himself to research, going over and over again the same material with an untiring mentality.

If he needs writing something, Matt used his telekinesis to write the notes he needed. He made the purest of ink dance in the air as it lightly touches the paper's surface. It also serves as a good practice for Matt.

It reached the point of perfection. Matt's control has reached the realm of myth, something he isn't clearly aware of.

But again, somehow he knows. Matt for some reason felt that he finally reached a breakthrough. It's not in his imagination that he can now accurately feel the undulations of magic, something unheard of even in the magic community.

Matt felt profound energy from his mentor's corpse. The husk seemed normal at first glance, a rotting yellow corpse, but further observation tells Matt otherwise.

It emanates active energy, secured in stasis. It's as if his mentor's soul is trapped.

Sigh... Even in death, he still remains trapped.

Matt felt sad for his mentor. This is... just... miserable.

Alas, an opportunity presents itself to Matt. Necromancy as an ancient and hated knowledge would allow Matt to perform reanimation. Two heads are better than one, they usually say.

But that would still be insufficient and... unethical.

Matt doesn't want to tarnish his memories of his mentor. There has to be another way.

Even with all of the time in this world, the wards remained unbroken. Matt has been tempted to reanimate his mentor so many times, and seek his advice. But chose not to, for Matt knows, it's pointless.

The wards are meant to be unbreakable— always will be. It's not perfection, but the truth.

And truths are nothing but imitations of what is perfect. Something that Matt ascertained the hard way.

Kahowzki was too focused on breaking the wards, he can't see the alternatives. This is how desperate Kahowzki was.

It tasted sour to Matt's tongue that such a deathtrap requires such simple-mindedness. It's a shame his mentor won't see his triumph over this conundrum.

Teleport. This is the solution.

T'is my woe, it's not as easy as it sounded in Matt's mind. Teleportation is an archmage level spell at the very minimum. A first of many problems notwithstanding the fact that Matt is severely limited to casting magic techniques and that he is not as proficient in the wards as he expected himself to be.

Matt felt that he has learned much from his mentor as much as he discovered by himself through reading the same materials over and over again.

If it is now, Matt is confident that together, they can come up with a fool-proof solution. Matt steels his resolve as he prepares a necromantic ritual to conjure Kahowzki, and maybe bind him to his dead corpse.

This is necromancy in a nutshell. Albeit new to this, Matt drew the ritual circle with impressive precision. A perfect circle, some geometry, and voila— a magic circle. It doesn't really make sense. The circle is purely aesthetic, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have any function.

Ancient magic is quite peculiar. There is not much logic to it given that magic itself is chaos. What ancient mages call magic, is simply their attempt of communicating with chaos. Geometric shapes and mystifying runes are some of the few avenues of connecting to chaos.

The chaos theory of magic is obscure and has little backing, but is still acknowledged by the community. It's because... it works.

That's all that Matt needs.

Dimensions beyond human comprehension, outliers of an unknown force, and the world laws churned as dark magic coalesces into a force that shall bring Matt's mentor back into the living.

The magic circle burned blue as Kahowzki's corpse was stripped of its flesh leaving the pure white bones in all of its glory.

What's so good about ancient magic?

That you can use them without the worry of mana consumption. There is no affinity to mana or talents required to perform them. They can be performed as long as you know the steps.

They are magic for the magicless.

Kahowzki is confused at first but after some while, he was able to gather his thoughts. Unused to his new form, he wasn't able to adapt quickly. But he was able to realize his current reality— he wasn't able to depart to the afterlife.

Well, not that afterlife is actually real, it's a matter of debate to many mages. But the point is, he remains trapped by the damn wards even after death.

"Good to see you, mentor." Writings in a piece of paper floated to Kahowzki. In there, are his only student's greetings.

Kahowzki didn't ask or bother to converse. It's not because he can't speak, which he currently is, but because he is curious.

Just how many years have passed since his death, and how far has his student progressed as a mage?

Kahowzki unceremoniously dived into Matt's research findings like a hungry hyena. Every time he switches to another paper or page, he gets surprised by the insights.

"I understand." The detective wrote on a piece of paper and then revealed it to Matt. Kahowzki can't speak because of his inexistent throat thanks to his form. But that didn't stop the two of them from communicating.

Matt prepared the ritual for the complicated teleportation, while Kahowzki meditated in anticipation of their freedom.

As an undead, Kahowzki can't feel any emotions anymore. Something that Matt is oblivious of, but the detective has strong regrets about the wards— as such are like that of a vengeful ghost. In a sense, he is currently haunting the warded trailer box. This explains his motivation.

The ritual is complete. Chaotic runes overlapped with geometric shapes and mystifying figures became the foundation of this magic.

An eerie blue glow strongly danced at Kahowzki's hollowed undead eye sockets. Mana blasted outwards with him as its center.

The wards in the trailer resisted, but it's useless. The out-of-the-box thinking of Matt and the archmage prowess of Kahowzki shall beat this damnable ward

And they did.

Matt felt a tug of force as he ricochets from this plane to another. He saw scarlet skies, dark murky oceans, skeleton castles, and all sorts of bizarre things as his statue-self and human-self phase between realities.

The landscapes struggled from the sandiest deserts, grassiest plains, and rockiest mountains— until the images settled in this wasteland of questionable coloration of the soil and acidic ambiance.

Weakness slowly encroaches on Matt's being. For the first time as a statue, Matt fell asleep.