You don't cast spells by the rules at all, do you?

Chris gave a sad smile: "It's useless, my friend. As long as they say you are, it doesn't matter if you are not."

Sean was confused: "Who are they?"

"Bang bang bang!"

"Bang bang bang!"

The door was suddenly knocked again, this time harder than before, like someone was hitting it with a fist.

Chris's face turned pale: "It's over, it's too late..."

Sean also became nervous: "Looking for you?"

"Bang bang bang bang bang!"

The banging on the door became louder and louder.

"Remember what I said, don't write any more!" Chris reminded Sean one last time.

As soon as he finished speaking, the door was slammed open. Sean looked in surprise at the two police officers who broke in - he thought they would be the men in black wearing sunglasses and looking ferocious, but they turned out to be police officers?

The two police officers didn't seem to expect that Chris was not the only one in the house. The shorter police officer quickly took out his ID and apologized to Sean: "I'm sorry, sir, we didn't know there was anyone living in this apartment. We are here to hunt down the patient who escaped from the mental hospital yesterday afternoon."

Sean: "?"

What do you mean, mentally ill?

Chris??

"Bah! You sons of bitches, don't even think about catching me!" Chris cursed, then recited a string of rolled-tongue characters, like some kind of spell, and then shouted: "Through the wall!"

He pulled up the sofa cloth, covered his head with it, and rushed to the wall.

"Boom!"

His movements were so fast that Sean didn't have time to react. There was a dull thud, and Chris' eyes rolled back. He had knocked himself unconscious, and his throat was emitting intermittent meaningless whimpers. He fell against the wall with his tongue hanging out.

The air suddenly became quiet.

Two police officers: “…”

Sean: "..."

He didn't even have time to be surprised.

So, this old friend of mine has been missing recently because he has been in a mental hospital?

...Damn, he almost believed what Chris said just now.

"I'm so sorry, sir." The short police officer signaled his companion to help the man and apologized to Sean again. "This is our mistake. We will give you the door as compensation and compensate you for the disturbance. When is convenient for you? Let's make an appointment and I'll have someone come to help you change the door?"

Sean's eyes were still on Chris. Although he was complaining in his heart, he also felt sorry for his old friend's experience.

"Can you tell me which hospital he is in?" he asked.

"Flores Hospital," the short policeman replied. "He's your friend?"

Sean nodded: "When he wakes up, please tell him that I will go to see him in two days and ask him to take care of himself."

"Let's fix the door this morning."

"Okay." The short police officer put his ID away and said, "Then we won't disturb you, sir."

Two police officers carried Chris away.

Sean looked at the leaky door, his mind flashing back to Chris' energetic look when he came to him with his bag two years ago and told him that he was going on an outdoor adventure, and he sighed softly.

"How could a good person become like this?"

With such a nice-sounding head, it is obvious that the person is seriously ill.

Sean thought about what Chris had said before and felt a little guilty. Maybe Chris's condition was caused by reading his novels.

Chris also pronounced the spell incorrectly. The string of old words with rolled tongue pronunciation was also a setting in his book, but the effect was not to pass through the wall - on the contrary, the string of affixes meant "to make something" hard, so even if Chris was a real wizard, he couldn't pass through it.

"It's really hard for him, oh."

After such a commotion in the middle of the night, Sean couldn't continue working. He simply tidied up the messy living room, sat back on the sofa, picked up the cup next to his laptop, and planned to drink a few sips of hot milk to calm his nerves.

But when he held the rim of the cup and poured the milk into his mouth, things once again went beyond his expectations.

He clearly saw that the milk, which should have been liquid, seemed to have solidified and was stuck in the cup. No matter how he slowly tilted the cup to almost ninety degrees, the milk did not move at all and not a drop of it slipped out.

Sean's eyes gradually widened and his heart beat for no reason.

"No way……"

boom!

Without warning, a crow suddenly smashed through the window glass and rushed into the living room. Its feathers were a fiery red, like a burning flame, it flew past Sean's eyes, smashed through the glass on the other side and flew out of the window.

Sean was so frightened that his hands shook and the cup fell to the ground.

"Snapped!"

The glass shattered, and the slag splashed all over the floor.

The milk still maintains its container shape, like a piece of hard iron.

……

Chapter 2 Hospital

At three in the morning, Biggs' apartment was silent.

The night leaked in through the gap in the glass window, infecting the light and surrounding Sean. An extremely absurd feeling rose in his heart. He looked at the milk block on the ground with a look of doubt and uncertainty, and his heartbeat was as heavy as a drum in his ears.

He swallowed, reached out his hand, and tried to touch the milk.

It was still warm, but it no longer had the thick and smooth texture of milk. Instead, it was as hard as steel.

And sharp.

Sean ran his finger along the edge of the milk cube, applying a little force and actually felt a stinging pain.

His fingertips were cut, and the bright red blood dripped into the solidified milk, but it was still able to dissolve bit by bit, like a bright red flower drawn on the pure white coffee.

Sean's throat felt dry and he suddenly felt that he might be sick.

Chris has the same condition.

Can milk really harden?

Chris is a real wizard who can perform magic. Is everything he describes in his novels also true?

The notebook screen was still on. When Sean looked up at the draft with black text on a white background, the characters seemed to come alive, spinning out of the screen. Each stroke was separated and then gathered together again, and in a trance, a gray girl's face was pieced together. She opened her lips slightly, as if questioning him why he forgot her.

Sean shook his head violently, and the illusion in front of him disappeared again, and the words were quietly arranged on the screen.

The blood-stained milk also returned to liquid form and flowed all over the floor.

There is also a fiery red feather in the corner of the sofa.

It seems to have been left behind by the crow just now.

To be more precise, this crow with flaming feathers is called "Flame Crow" in his book.

"Am I crazy or is this world crazy..."

Sean looked at the window in a daze. There was a hole on it that looked like it had been pierced by a giant bullet, and it was covered with cracks.

For a moment, he felt that what was shattered was not only the glass, but also his worldview.

Sean felt lost.

As a fantasy writer who often has similar dreams, he should be able to accept all this more easily than ordinary people. However, if it is true as Chris said, that all the stories in the dreams are real and have been his personal experiences, then what is his life now?

Or were these all things from his previous life, and he was a wizard in his previous life?

Sean was a little confused.

He didn't know whether he should believe it - or, should he realize that he was once a wizard?

The hour hand of the wall clock ticks.

The crow that had previously broken into the house did not appear again. Sean stared at the flaming feather in his palm and thought for a long time. He sat on the sofa until dawn. Finally, as if he had made some kind of decision, he clenched his fists, put down the notebook, got up and went back to the bedroom to change clothes.

The oversized slippers made a creaking sound as they stepped on the floor covered with broken glass.

He was going to find Chris.

Get things straight.

……

……

The weather in Holkodu in autumn is never very nice.

It was a morning without the sun. Dark clouds covered almost the entire sky, like a large ball of water-soaked cotton wool, dripping water continuously.

It's raining.

The cold wind blew the rain curtain sideways and penetrated into people's sleeves and collars. Passersby on their way to work shrank their necks and quickened their pace.

Their leather shoes stepped on the puddle of water, splashing water, as if stepping on a mirror. When they left in a hurry, the puddle was broken into pieces again, reflecting the deserted Flores Hospital on the street.

Sean stood outside the iron gate holding a black umbrella.

The security guard at the door asked, "Family members?"

"Friends," Sean replied.

"Do you have a certificate of relationship from us?"

"No, but you can ask him...if he wakes up."

"You should know that the patients here are not credible." The security guard reminded that the answers of mentally ill patients could not be used as valid evidence, but he still asked: "What's his name?"

"Chris Hendry."

"Wait a moment, let me ask."

"it is good."

The security guard picked up the phone and called the hospital.

Soon, a man in a white coat walked over quickly with an umbrella.

He glanced at Sean, then at the security guard. When he saw the security guard nod, he smiled, stretched out his hand through the crack of the iron gate and shook hands with Sean, and introduced himself: "Hello, sir, I am Chris's attending physician, Quill."

Sean also smiled and said, "Hello, Dr. Quill, I'm Sean, Chris' friend."

Quill wore a pair of small round glasses and had his brown hair combed neatly. His gentle appearance gave people the first impression that he was easy to get along with. He smiled and said, "The police officer who brought Chris back early this morning mentioned you and said you would come to see him in two days. I didn't expect it to be so soon."

"My boss notified me this morning that I would be on a business trip in two days, so I came here early." Sean explained with a smile, "It was a good opportunity to see how his injury is recovering."

"Honestly, not very good." Quill shook his head and added, "He's not really in a good condition to meet people right now, but if today is the only day you have time recently, I can make an exception and arrange a meeting for you two."

"Then I'll have to trouble Dr. Quill." Sean said.

"You're welcome."

Quill signaled the security guard to open the door and led Sean into the hospital.

In front of the main building is a large garden with a lot of fitness equipment and a shallow swimming pool. Usually, patients go here to get some fresh air, but today it was raining and it was too early, so no one came out. Only raindrops fell on the water, creating ripples.

"The police said he came to find you after he ran out of the hospital yesterday? How was it? Did he say a lot of weird things to you?" Quill chatted with Sean as they walked.

Sean didn't answer. He continued to talk to himself, "I can guess even if you don't tell me. I often chat with him. He always talks about colorful crows, coffee-flavored potions, alchemy, and black magic. He also treats that pair of old stockings as a treasure, saying that it can increase the speed of casting spells..."

Quill smiled and shook his head. "I've seen a lot of people with hallucinations, and your friend is the worst one."

"Is there any possibility of recovery?" Sean asked.

"It's difficult." Quill replied, "His condition is quite complicated. In addition to hallucinations, he also suffers from mania and a strong tendency to attack. Conventional treatments are no longer effective for him. After he woke up early this morning, we had to work hard to stabilize his mood."

"As long as it's stable." Sean played the role of an ordinary friend with only conventional knowledge.

"Being emotionally stable doesn't mean you can communicate normally." Quill sighed, and then said, "But it doesn't matter. Chris is my patient. I know his physical condition best. If you have anything you want to know, you can ask me."

Sean nodded: "Okay."

There are several buildings in Flores Hospital, but none of them are marked. He looked around and found several teams of security personnel in uniform patrolling in the rain. He thought that the mental hospital was just like what was portrayed in the movies, with extremely strict defenses.

"The conditions here seem good." He said as if he was investigating the environment.