A wizard stands to the side of a large spell circuit laid in chalk upon the floor of the large, circular chamber midway up the tower. In the circle's center sits a dais, upon which is a small glass sphere, roughly the size of a human fist. The sphere softly glows with a purple light, seemingly without a source, and small flickers of the beginnings of spell circuit formation can be seen across its surface, within it, and projected from it out to the walls of the chamber.
The wizard is reciting a lengthy spell, forming the circuits for it midair in their dark blue mana. The spell circuit flickers ever so slightly as it is completed, and the spell cast, activating the enchantment on the floor. Other spheres scattered around the room suddenly begin to glow a myriad of colors before the light is quickly stripped from them, visibly pulled into the sphere on the dais. It glows brighter as the half-completed spell circuits it's been forming are completed, the ones projected out of it suddenly folding into it until visually, it appears as just a swirling mass of light. It glows brighter and brighter as seconds pass, the mage looking on in awe and excitement.
"It worked! It actually worked! This is excellent, I'll be lauded as a genius-"
The orb quickly has a crack split along one side. The light within comes pouring out as if it were a liquid under massive pressure, but the spells within are maintained.
"What the-"
The orb suddenly, violently explodes. The mage is immediately reduced to ash, along with most of the tower, only leaving the lowest two floors of it intact. The surrounding land is turned to stone for miles in every direction, great spires rising from it of earth and metal.
Sitting in the middle of this newly formed wasteland is a pulsating mass of dark purple light. The spells within continue to swirl, forming loops of logic and pathways between each other, expanding out until finally...
Wh... what is this? it thinks to itself. Tendrils of that light begin to extend from it, probing its surroundings. What is all of this? Where am I? What am I?
The tendrils of mana begin to form into a shape natural to it, impressed into all magic in the distant past. Others trace over the stones and gems constituting some of the surviving structure and a few trinkets that weathered the blast. A body begins forming around the spell-brain: formed entirely of stone, with the shape natural to its ilk. Within a minute, a truly massive stone dragon, covered in crystalline and metal growths, has formed in the middle of the wasteland.