Chapter 1

England

Great Britain. What a loaded word, home of 60 million non magical people, ruled by a queen, loved by the majority of its residents and absolutely abhorred by one Hermione Granger.

That hadn't been always so, Hermione's disgust wasn't for the land or even for the bad weather, no she hated the isles for its magical community. The British wizarding community had learned absolutely NOTHING of the last war. The war that had cost Hermione her closest friends and family and had left the young witch devastated, bitter and alone.
In the end it only took four months and five days for the magical community to go back to their old ways of slander, bigotry and embezzlement. Their favorite phrase 'Why fix it when it's not broken?' was being whispered through the halls of the British Ministry of Magic once more.
But it was broken; there was no way around it! The fundamental legislation of the British Wizarding world that should guarantee the protection and rightful punishment of its citizens was partially shattered under the feet of the sheep and the few parts that weren't, were so damnable twisted that the so called law suppressed the rights of the innocent while those that were rich enough to buy themselves out of trouble stayed in power and remained blameless.

The moment Hermione had realized this she had made up her mind; she would leave this all behind and never look back.

The brown haired witch just couldn't take it anymore. She was tried, frustrated and bitter, furthermore she was still reeling from the losses she had suffered in the last year and so she just didn't have the strength to fight against the bigotry and outrageous corruption and frankly she didn't want to. Should somebody else deal with their next Dark Lord because without a doubt there would be another and after that another until finally somebody fixed this damn system or the whole community was left in shambles of their own stupidity.

Elemental Nations

The first time Hermione had read about the Elemental Nations was during her research for Harry's first task during the Triwizard Tournament. The book that contained this particular fascinating topic was called 'Shield magic and what can go wrong' and had mesmerized Hermione for a whole weekend until Harry had come pale faced to her with the news that he was fighting dragons in the first Task!

In between the first and the second Task Hermione had then found some time to do a bit personal research for her own pleasure. She had been rather irritated that her 'me' time in the library had been disrupted by Victor Krum's visits but had stubbornly ignored the giggling fangirls to devote her attention to the fascinating topic of the Elemental Nations.
The Elemental Nations were essentially a pocket dimension, a copy of Earth that had been fitted in between time and space and was only accessible through a tightly secured entrance in the Tokyo region. It was cited as THE most prominent still existing but failed artificial dimension creation since the creation of Atlantis.

Hermione had been absolutely fascinated about this astonishing magical project that was baffling experts around the globe even today and had ordered several books from other libraries all over Britain through Madame Pince. The stern librarian had been very hard to convince to order said books, apparently there were some very valuable tombs under them but in the end had acquiesced. Though even Hermione hadn't been allowed to move them around Hogwarts, instead the librarian had enchanted an adjourning room to hold said books and in said room Hermione had spent nearly all her free time until Pince had to send said books back. There were a lot of different opinions about this topic and it took a while for Hermione to wade through the different conclusions and theories. In the end Hermione was relative sure to have at least a relative good grasp on the topic.

The Japanese pocket dimension was rumored to be the most extensive work of rune magic ever created. The man who had designed the rune arc had studied the mistakes of the Atlantians and was smart enough to put extensive shields around the pocket dimension. They were powered by the natural magic of Earth and the Elemental countries, he so prevented the collapse of the pocket dimension as it had happened in Atlantis. The only problem was that thanks to the vast amount of natural magic that radiated from the shields the soil and vegetation inside the artificial dimension became so saturated with it that it had started to change the people and creatures inside the dimension.
The authors of most of the books that the fifteen year old Hermione read at that time were quite disapproving of the man called Fukudo Ichirou. The Japanese born warlock and Rune Master was considered to be one of the most brilliant minds of his time, during his later years his numerous achievements earned him the honorary title of Rikudo Sennin, the Sage of the Six Paths.

Ichirou had led nearly fifteen hundred people in his pocket dimension during a time of unrest and war in Japan. Approximately five hundred of them had been wizards and witches and consequently the magic inside the dimension slowly started to change and adapt their physical make up, nature magic after all was known to have a mind of its own. As a result the magical humans lost their ability to use a focus while unknowingly to them their cores grew, the muggles on the other hand received more visible gifts, they gained a stronger immune system as well as developed inhuman strength and speed. Furthermore all children that had been born since the beginning of the colonisationreceived strangely vibrant hair and eye colors and in some cases even colored and oddly shaped birth marks.

Because of the loss of their powers the former wizards and witches instigated a civil war between themselves and it was during that time that the ninja and samurai clans started to develop in full; protection and assassins were in high demand.
It took Ichirou nearly fifteen years to unlock his changed magic and abilities and make use of it. To differentiate it from the old magic still existing on Earth the former warlock called the power Chakra, it was essentially a mixture of both spiritual and physical energy that was molded together and could be discharged through various points of the body.

Ichirou who had felt responsible for this war that tore the land apart and spilled blood everywhere, travelled through the continent and spread his knowledge about chakra to mollify the former magic users and stop the fighting. At first it helped and the fights became fewer and fewer but within a few years some of the former wizards became greedy and wanted more and more power and when they reached the potential of their new bodies they tried to amass the power in a different way. The group of nine warlocks and witches decided to directly tap into the nature chakra just like the Rikudo Sennin had done to create the Elemental countries, only to oversee a critical fact. Fukudo Ichirou had had tattooed hundreds of different Runes all over his body to prevent his death while creating the dimension. Those Runes stopped his body from being overwhelmed by the magic and prevented him from drawing to much at one go, because magic and chakra were so closely related in the beginning, the same applied to the new discovered force.

The nine magical users of varying strength had created a rune circle to suck chakra from the nature around it and then drew raw chakra directly into themselves. Within moments after starting the ritual they were overwhelmed by the nature chakra and their bodies and souls were twisted together until there was only one mindless beast with ten tails left. This beast rampaged through the land and destroyed everything in its way and changed the landscape of the dimension world permanently.
Unable to find a way to kill it, Ichirou finally sealed it into his own body to prevent any further damage and in the following years through mediation and careful tests he could detangle the nine souls inside the giant chakra mass. None of the former magic users' personality or memory had survived and even if it had the massive amount of nature chakra had dissolved their bodies completely, what had been left over was a massive chakra construct with a mindless need of destruction. To prevent said construct from attacking the people in the Elemental countries once more after Ichirou's death, said man split the chakra construct in nine entities which surprisingly developed their own consciousness after a few days, with time Ichirou had come to see those nine as his own children.

Before the Sage of the Sixth Paths died he hid the gateway to Earth, on the walls surrounding the Rune entrance he carved the story of his life along with a warning and of the effects the Elemental countries had on magical people.
For a long time travelling into the Elemental countries had been forbidden, the magical communities had feared that the transformation of one's magic could be contagious. It had taken quite some time until the various governments around the world had enough courage to explore said pocket dimension once more. They started to experiment with the effects of the dimension on magical prisoners that they had entered against their will into the Elemental countries. After decades of study they had finally concluded that it took at a minimum a year to change the magical core permanently into chakra and that a prolonged stay on Earth could reverse some the effects to a point. They still cautioned their people from entering Fukudo Ichirou's so called failed experiment but not exactly permitted them from entering it.
The Japanese magical government took care of the protection of the gateway and kept taps on the happenings inside of the dimension to this day, furthermore everyone that wanted to enter the Elemental countries had to be registered and put under silencing vows so that he or she couldn't talk about the Earth and magic no matter what happened to them inside.

To be honest the Elemental countries didn't even cross Hermione's mind when she converted all her money and the money that she had inherited from Harry from galleons into gold, jewelry and precious gems. She had planned a world tour to take her mind of the war and after travelling a bit and experiencing new things to settle in the Muggle world and lead a quiet and unremarkable life.
And exactly that was what she had been doing for two months until she met a Rune Master in Sweden by the name of Astrid Dalgaard. The forty something woman was sarcastic, quick minded and blunt, she badgered Hermione so long until her control broke down and the curly haired witch told her about how fucked up her live had become. The British witch poured her heart out to a total stranger that had sat down on her table on a whim.

At the end of the night Astrid said, "Shit happens, I know this doesn't help you one bit at the moment but believe me, even if it doesn't go away completely it will get better, though first you have to start moving on."

Hermione cancelled her portkey on the next day and extended her stay for another week. In the end she had stayed for three and a half years to study Runes and become a Master. The brown haired witch had learned many fascinating things from her mentor. Unfortunately Astrid couldn't help her with the original reason for staying, her mental state. The feeling of being lost didn't go away, Hermione just learned how to repress it a bit and when the loneliness got too much, how to numb herself sufficiently to grant her tortured psyche some relief.