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Underneath Stonehenge, Time Unknown

Adam Clarke

I’d been in fights before. Tournament duels and the following attack in the final stage, the attack at the Village of Phantasime, and many skirmishes. But this— this was warfare on a scale that belonged in history books, not in my life.

The thunder of spells hitting stone and shield charms was deafening. Flashes of light turned the cavern into a strobing nightmare where shadows jumped and twisted. The air itself seemed to scream as hundreds of curses cut through it simultaneously.

Mahoutokoro’s elites fought like they were performing a deadly ballet. Their kirin dove and wheeled through the air, impossibly graceful despite their size, while their riders wove spells that struck enemy positions. I watched one of them— a young woman with her hair bound in a complex braid— send a beam of pure white light that cut through a Death Eater formation like a blade, leaving six bodies in its wake.

The Aurors were holding a defensive line on one of the stone bridges, their shield charms overlapping to create a barrier that the enemy volleys crashed against like waves. Tonks was in the center, her voice hoarse from shouting orders, coordinating their counter-fire with the kind of tactics that kept them alive second by second.

And we— the students who most likely shouldn’t have been here but were bold enough to— were doing what we could.

Harry was burning through his magical reserves at an unsustainable rate, his ancient magic carving paths through enemy formations. Each blast of power sent bodies flying, but I could see the strain in his face, the way his hands were starting to shake.

Hermione had given up on offensive spells entirely, instead focusing on transfiguration and environmental control. The stone beneath enemy positions would suddenly become ice, or sand, or nothing at all. She was fighting smart, multiplying her effectiveness by making the battlefield itself turn against our enemies.

The others, I couldn’t fully see, but from what I could see, all of them were fighting with the grim determination of people who’d already accepted they were going to die here.

I found myself dueling a high-ranking acolyte whose body was wrong in ways that made my skin crawl. Half his face was twisted, the flesh rippling and shifting like it couldn’t decide what shape it wanted to hold. Some kind of corruption— he’d been exposed to too much of the power Grindelwald was channeling, perhaps— it was remaking him into something that wasn’t entirely human anymore.

His spells came fast and vicious, each one carrying that same wrongness I’d felt from the whispers. When they hit stone, the rock didn’t just break— it rotted, crumbling to dust as if centuries of decay happened in seconds.

I transfigured the bridge beneath his feet, turning solid stone into loose gravel. He stumbled, and I followed up with a Bludgeoning Curse that should have ended the fight.

Instead, his deeply bruised flesh simply reformed around the wound, bones popping back into place with sounds that made my stomach turn.

“You cannot break me.” He said, his voice carrying harmonics that didn’t belong to any human throat.

So I didn’t try to kill him. I transfigured the air around his head into water and held it there while he thrashed and drowned standing up. When he finally stopped moving, I let the spell drop and immediately moved to the next threat.

“Thanks for the advice.”

I kept going, ignoring his corpse with the ease of someone who’d seen hundreds of them— and I had; enemies, and friends both. The whispers in my mind were growing stronger. Yes. Like this. More.

Around me, the battle was turning into a meat grinder. We were holding— barely— but every second cost us. An Auror went down screaming as a purple curse caught him in the chest. One of Akio’s riders fell from her kirin, her body hitting the cavern floor a hundred feet below with a sound I’d never forget.

Enemy reinforcements were pouring in from side tunnels. For every position we secured, three more opened up behind us. We were being surrounded, systematically cut off and isolated.

“They’re boxing us in!” Tonks screamed over the chaos. “We need to fall back!”

But there was nowhere to fall back to. The bridges behind us were already swarming with enemies. The tunnels we’d emerged from were being sealed by collapsed stone.

This was it. We’d bought our time, made them bleed, and now we were going to die for it.

I was preparing one final desperate spell— something big and destructive that would take me and as many enemies as possible— when I felt, rather than saw the shift in the battle.

The enemy forces were pulling back. Not fleeing, but reorganizing. Consolidating their positions.

They were making room for something.

A figure emerged onto the central bridge, and the temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. He was tall, aristocratic, with pale features and eyes that glowed an unnatural red. Even at this distance, I could feel the power radiating from him like heat from a furnace.

Voldemort had entered the battle personally.

And behind him, moving with the terrible confidence of someone who had never known defeat, came a second figure in gray robes.

Grindelwald.

Fuck.

“Hold the line!” Tonks screamed, her voice cracking with strain. “Reinforcements are coming! Just hold!”

But the line wasn’t holding. It was breaking, piece by piece, as fresh enemy forces poured in from every direction. The tactical advantage we’d gained from Mahoutokoro’s initial strike had evaporated. Now we were just forty exhausted fighters against an army that seemed to have no end.

I watched one of the kirin fall from the sky, a Cutting Curse having severed its wing. The creature’s rider managed to leap free before impact, but he landed badly and three Death Eaters were on him before he could raise his wand. His scream cut off abruptly.

“Akio!” I shouted, trying to reach the Japanese wizard through the chaos.

He was still airborne, but barely. His kirin was wounded, blood streaming from a gash along its scaled flank. Below him, Voldemort stood on the central bridge, his wand moving in almost casual patterns that sent curses flying with unerring accuracy. Every gesture he made meant that someone died.

And Grindelwald— Grindelwald wasn’t even fighting. He stood behind Voldemort like a general observing a training exercise, occasionally raising his wand to deflect an attack that came too close. The old man’s expression was one of mild interest, as if our desperate struggle was nothing more than a diversion from his real work.

That casual dismissal enraged me more than anything else.

“Harry!” I called out, blasting a chunk of bridge into the faces of advancing Death Eaters. “We need to push them back! Drive a wedge between— “

A Blasting Curse exploded near my head, close enough that I felt stone fragments cut into my cheek. I stumbled, nearly fell, and only Harry’s quick Shield Charm kept me from taking a follow-up curse to the chest.

“We can’t push anywhere!” Harry shouted back, his ancient magic crackling around him in visible arcs of power. “We’re barely holding what we have!”

He was right. Moody was down on one knee, still fighting but clearly wounded. Blood ran down his face from a gash that had destroyed his magical eye entirely— the prosthetic hung uselessly from its socket, sparking with disrupted enchantments. But the old Auror was still casting, still snarling orders at the younger fighters around him.

Mira was holding a flank with Draco and Fred, the three of them working in surprising synchronization. Mira transfigured, Fred defended, Draco struck— a rhythm they’d fallen into without conscious planning. But I could see them flagging. Mira’s spells were becoming less accurate. Fred’s Shield Charms were taking longer to form. Draco’s aristocratic mask had cracked entirely, replaced by naked desperation.

The enemy forces pressed closer. Voldemort’s red eyes swept across our position, calculating, and I saw the moment he decided we’d provided enough entertainment.

His wand rose, and the spell he cast wasn’t directed at any individual. It was aimed at the bridge itself— at the stone beneath our feet.

“Move!” I screamed, already knowing we were too slow.

The bridge exploded.

Not all at once— that would have been a mercy. Instead, it fractured in a rolling cascade, sections dropping away like dominoes. I felt the stone lurch beneath my feet and threw myself toward solid ground, my fingers scrabbling for purchase on rock that was already crumbling.

Harry caught my wrist, his grip iron-hard despite his exhaustion. He hauled me up with strength that shouldn’t have been possible, his ancient magic doing the work his muscles couldn’t.

But others weren’t so lucky.

Two officers I didn’t know by name fell into the darkness below, their screams echoing for terrible seconds before cutting off. Daphne went over the edge, but George moved faster than I’d ever seen him move. He caught her robes and dragged her back up, both of them collapsing on the remaining bridge section.

We’d been split into three groups, isolated on different sections of failing infrastructure. Tonks and half the Aurors were cut off on one side. Akio’s remaining riders were scattered across different levels of the cavern. And my group— maybe twelve of us now, with a couple of officers— clung to a section of bridge that groaned ominously with every movement.

“Adam!” An officer’s voice was sharp with panic. “The supports are going! We have maybe thirty seconds before—”

A Death Eater dropped directly onto our section, his wand already moving through the motions of a Killing Curse aimed at Harry’s exposed back.

I didn’t think. Didn’t calculate angles or tactical advantage. I just transfigured the stone beneath him into nothing, and he fell screaming into the abyss.

But his curse had already launched. The green light streaked toward Harry, and I knew— knew— that I was about to watch another person I cared about die.

Tony threw himself into the spell’s path.

The Killing Curse took him center mass, and Anthony Goldstein crumpled without a sound.

“No!” Hermione’s scream was raw with horror and grief.

I stared at Tony’s body, my mind refusing to process what I’d just witnessed. There was no time to mourn. No time to process. The bridge was still failing, enemies were still closing in, and we were still going to die here.

I fought like a man possessed. My spells tore apart the battlefield— stone became weapons, air became barriers, enemy positions became death traps. I was channeling magic at levels that should have burned me out, drawing on reserves I didn’t know I had.

The whispers in my mind were screaming now, no longer subtle. They were shouting encouragement, offering more power, promising that if I just reached a little further, took a little more, I could end this. I could kill them all.

Part of me wanted to accept. Tony hadn’t deserved that. After everything…

A wall collapsed near Tonks’ position. I raised my wand, prepared to shield her, but Voldemort was faster. His curse— some variation I’d never seen— struck three officers simultaneously. They didn’t die. They just… stopped. Froze in place like statues, their expressions locked in terror.

“Reinforcements are coming!” Tonks screamed again, and this time her voice broke on the words. She was lying. We all knew she was lying. But the lie was all we had left.

“We hold!” I shouted back, my voice hoarse from smoke and strain. “We hold until— “

Moody went down. A purple curse caught him in the chest, and the legendary Auror— the man who’d survived more dark wizards than anyone alive— collapsed onto the broken bridge. He tried to rise, made it to one knee, then fell again.

“Moody!” Tonks tried to reach him, but enemy fire drove her back.

The old man’s good eye found mine across the chaos. He gave me the smallest nod— acknowledgment, or approval, or maybe just goodbye— before a second curse struck him and he stopped moving entirely.

We were going to die here. All of us. The bridges were failing, our strongest fighters were down, and enemy reinforcements just kept coming. We’d fought beyond any reasonable hope of survival, and it hadn’t been enough.

It would never have been enough.

I backed toward Harry and Hermione, the three of us forming a triangle with our backs together. Around us, the others did the same— George and Daphne, Mira, Draco and Fred, the remaining Aurors clustering in a final defensive position.

“It’s been an honor.” Harry said quietly, his ancient magic still crackling despite his obvious exhaustion.

“Shut up.” I replied, raising my wand toward the advancing Death Eaters. “We’re not dead yet.”

But we would be. In seconds, maybe a minute if we were lucky. Voldemort raised his wand for what would clearly be the killing blow. Not a curse aimed at individuals, but something bigger. Something that would wipe our entire position off the map.

“I suppose the end, this time, is not the beginning for you, Adam Clarke.” Voldemort said.

I did not answer as the spell began to form, green light gathering in patterns that hurt to look at directly.

Then the world turned white. One moment we were facing our deaths in sickly green light, and the next— 

Light. Pure, brilliant, overwhelming light that seemed to pour from everywhere at once. It was so bright I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, could barely breathe.

And with the light came sound. Not noise— sound. A tone so deep and resonant it made my bones vibrate, made the stone beneath my feet hum in sympathetic frequency.

I heard Voldemort’s curse shatter against something, heard his hiss of surprise and anger, heard the enemy forces screaming in confusion.

The light faded slowly, and as my vision cleared, I saw what had saved us.

The cavern entrance— the one we’d fought through what felt like a lifetime ago— was no longer dark. It blazed with magical power so intense it was visible even at this distance. And through that entrance, pouring into the cavern like a tsunami of hope, came an army.

Not Grindelwald’s army. Ours.

Ministry robes in official purple and red. Order of the Phoenix members in their distinctive cloaks. International Aurors in colors I recognized from a dozen different nations. And at their head, his silver beard practically glowing with power, his wand raised and his expression terrible in its righteous fury— 

Dumbledore had arrived.

And he’d brought what looked like half the magical world with him.

Dumbledore’s arrival had shattered the enemy’s momentum. What should have been our massacre became a rout as Grindelwald’s forces found themselves trapped between our desperate defenders and fresh reinforcements who were anything but tired. The dark wizards fought, retreated, fought again— but the outcome was inevitable once Dumbledore entered the field.

As a few wizards tended to us, giving us potions and casting Healing Charms on us, I watched Dumbledore duel Voldemort across three bridge sections, their magic turning the air itself into a weapon. I watched Grindelwald fade back into the tunnels, clearly deciding that whatever awaited him in the ritual chamber was more important than this battle, and I watched as the army that had nearly killed us all scattered like smoke before wind.

Now I sat on a chunk of broken bridge, too exhausted to stand, surrounded by corpses and smoke.

Tony’s body lay beside me, covered by a shroud. Moody was somehow still alive, but near death, according to the Healer. Three more Aurors whose names I’d never learned were dead.

This was the price of our “victory.”

“Adam.”

I looked up to find Harry approaching, with Sirius Black right behind him. My godfather looked like he’d aged a decade— his face drawn, his robes torn and bloodied, but alive. Gloriously, impossibly alive.

I tried to stand and nearly fell. Sirius caught me, pulling me into an embrace that I returned with desperate strength.

“You idiotic, stupid brat.” Sirius murmured into my hair. “When I heard you’d led students into this— “

“I know.” I said, my voice muffled against his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He pulled back, gripping my shoulders hard enough to hurt. “Don’t you dare apologize for surviving.”

“Tony’s dead.” I pointed at the shroud beside me. “He’s dead, and it’s my fault.”

Harry stood awkwardly to one side, and I reached out to pull him into the embrace. For a moment, we just stood there— three people who’d survived when we had no right to, holding each other like the world might tear us apart again if we let go.

Remus Lupin found us like that, his robes scorched and his face gray with exhaustion. He didn’t say anything, just placed his hands on our shoulders and squeezed once. A wordless acknowledgment that we were alive, we were together, and that would have to be enough.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Remus said finally, his voice rough. “Either of you. You’re children. This isn’t your war.”

“It became our war when they attacked Hogwarts.” Harry replied, and something in his tone made it clear this wasn’t an argument he’d entertain.

I expected Remus to push back, to insist, to pull out the adult authority card that we were both too tired to fight against. Instead, he just looked sad.

“I know.” He said quietly. “Merlin help us all, I know.”

We might have stood there longer, trying to process what we’d just survived, but Dumbledore’s voice cut through the aftermath with gentle authority.

“Adam. Harry. A word, if you would.”

The Headmaster stood amid the ruins of the bridge, surveying the carnage with an expression that seemed to age him. His blue robes were pristine— the only person in the entire cavern who didn’t look like they’d been through hell— and his blue eyes held a terrible sadness.

Sirius and Remus moved to follow us, but Dumbledore raised a hand. “Please. Give us a moment.”

They didn’t like it, but they stepped back.

Dumbledore studied us both for a long moment, his gaze moving from Harry to me and back again. Whatever he saw there made his expression grow even more grave.

“You led students into battle.” He said finally, and I couldn’t tell if it was an accusation or simple statement of fact.

“Yes, sir.” I replied, too tired to muster a defense.

“Many of them died.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And yet, had you not acted, the initial assault would have failed entirely.” Dumbledore’s tone was impossible to read. “The barriers would have held. The ritual would have completed uninterrupted. Our world would have faced a threat unlike any in recorded history.”

I said nothing. What was there to say?

“Some will call you heroes.” Dumbledore continued. “Others will call you reckless children who got their classmates killed. Both assessments contain truth, and neither is complete.”

“Are you going to send us away?” Harry asked, his voice carrying an edge I’d rarely heard from him.

“I should.” Dumbledore’s expression was pained. “Every instinct I possess says I should send you back to the surface, place you under guard, and ensure you come nowhere near what lies deeper in these tunnels.”

“But you won’t.” I said, understanding flooding through me.

“No.” The Headmaster’s gaze met mine directly. “To do so now would wound more than it would heal. You have fought and bled for this cause. You have seen friends die. To tell you that your sacrifice meant nothing, that you must stand aside while others finish what you started—” He shook his head slowly. “That cruelty I will not inflict.”

Harry’s expression was unreadable, but I saw his shoulders straighten slightly.

“Albus—” Remus said, but quieted at Dumbledore’s raised hand.

“However.” Dumbledore continued, his tone sharpening. “You will follow orders. You will not take unnecessary risks. And if I or another adult commands you to fall back, you will do so immediately and without argument. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.” We said in unison.

Dumbledore nodded, then turned to address the broader group. His voice, when he spoke, carried clearly across the ruined battlefield.

“We have perhaps thirty minutes before Grindelwald completes his ritual. Every moment we delay costs us ground we cannot afford to lose. Those who can fight, prepare to move. Those who cannot—” His gaze swept across the wounded. “Guard our backs and tend to the fallen. They deserve that much.”

Around the cavern, the survivors began to organize. Ministry wizards coordinated with Order members. International Aurors who’d answered Dumbledore’s call compared notes on the enemy forces they’d already engaged. Healers moved among the wounded, doing what they could with limited supplies and even more limited time.

I watched Hermione kneeling beside Tony’s shrouded body, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Fred stood with his brother, holding onto him for dear life.

There was no time to mourn, no time to process anything. There was more death to deal. And so, we moved forward.

The tunnels leading deeper were different from the ones we’d fought through earlier. These weren’t carved— they were changed. The stone itself had been convinced to flow into shapes that hurt to look at directly, angles that didn’t quite make sense, surfaces that seemed to shift when you weren’t looking directly at them.

And the temperature kept dropping. With every step, the air grew colder, until our breath misted in front of us and frost began forming on the walls.

“Stay alert.” Dumbledore said quietly, his wand held ready. “The magic here is old and hungry. It will try to confuse you, to separate you, to turn you against each other if it can.”

“Cheerful.” Sirius muttered from beside me.

We encountered resistance almost immediately. Not soldiers or Death Eaters, but constructs which moved with jerky, unnatural motions. Spectral shades flickered in and out of existence, their touch leaving frost burns. Stone gargoyles tore themselves from the walls and attacked with mindless fury.

It wasn’t anything that would stop a prepared force, but everything was designed to slow us down, to wear us out, to make us waste precious seconds dealing with threats that didn’t matter in the grand scheme.

“Ignore what you can!” Moody would have shouted if he was still in the fight. Instead, it was an unfamiliar man who took command of the Auror contingent, his deep voice carrying authority. “Only engage if they block our path!”

We pushed through three more ambushes— each one smaller than the last, each one clearly designed more for delay than destruction. The enemy was falling back toward something, concentrating their forces at a single point.

The ritual chamber. It had to be.

The whispers in my mind were constant now, no longer subtle or occasional. They spoke in a language I shouldn’t understand but did, promising power and knowledge and secrets that would make me more than human.

Come… They said. We have been waiting so long. Come and see what you truly are.

I shook my head, trying to clear it, but the voices only grew stronger.

“Adam?” Harry’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “You okay?”

“Fine.” I lied. “Just tired.”

But Harry’s expression said he didn’t believe me, and the concerned glance he exchanged with Hermione confirmed it.

We kept moving, stepping over the remains of constructs we’d destroyed, wading through cold that sank into our bones and refused to leave. The tunnels were closing in, growing narrower, forcing us into single file in places.

And always, always, the whispers grew louder.

Soon, they promised. Very soon now.

I didn’t tell anyone what I was hearing. Didn’t mention that the voices spoke of things I’d never told anyone, that they were promising to show me truths about myself that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

Because part of me— a part I didn’t want to acknowledge— wanted to hear what they had to say.

The darkness got worse and worse, until it was nearly absolute. It wasn’t the darkness of a moonless night or a shuttered room— this was something else entirely. Something that existed independent of light, that would have persisted even if we’d conjured a thousand Lumos charms. It pressed against us like a physical weight, making every breath an effort, every step a small act of defiance.

Our wand-lights barely penetrated ten feet ahead. Beyond that, the darkness swallowed everything.

“Stay close.” Dumbledore commanded, his voice tight with concern I’d never heard from him before. “Hold formation. If we become separated in this place, we may never find each other again.”

The tunnels had changed again. The walls weren’t stone anymore— at least, not entirely. They flickered, shifting between solid rock and something else. Something that looked like frozen smoke, or shadows given substance. When my shoulder brushed against one, I felt cold that went deeper than temperature, that seemed to leech warmth from my very bones.

The Abyss was bleeding through. The boundary between our world and that liminal space between life and death was growing thin, and we were walking directly into the wound.

Closer… The whispers said, and I realized with growing horror that they weren’t just in my mind anymore. They were echoing off the walls, carried by air that tasted of ozone and copper. So much closer now. We can almost touch you.

I stumbled, catching myself against the wall before I could fall. The moment my hand made contact, the whispers exploded into a cacophony of voices— hundreds of them, thousands, all speaking at once in that language I understood without knowing.

They were showing me things— visions? Or maybe memories that weren’t mine. I saw a long hallway, filled with colors and shapes of all kinds. I saw a battlefield where wizards fought with magic that made modern spellwork look like children’s tricks. I saw a tower that reached into clouds that bled. I saw the ruin of a monumental building beneath a sky dark as pitch. Weaving through the images was a sorrowful melody, igniting my mind in ways I had never felt before.

Your soul remembers and foresees. The voices said. Even if you have forgotten.

“Adam!”

Hermione’s hand on my arm jerked me back to reality. I blinked, disoriented, and realized that everyone had stopped. They were all staring at me.

“You were speaking.” Harry said quietly, his expression tight with concern. “In a language none of us recognized.”

Ice flooded my veins. “I wasn’t— I didn’t mean to—”

“What are they saying to you?” Dumbledore asked, and his blue eyes held none of their usual twinkle. Only grim understanding and something that might have been pity.

“I don’t know.” I said, which was both true and a lie. I didn’t know the specifics, couldn’t translate the words they used, but I understood their meaning with perfect clarity. They were calling me to places I’d never been, recognizing me as something I’d never claimed to be.

“The Abyss speaks to those with certain… affinities.” Dumbledore said carefully, his gaze never leaving my face. “Tell me, Adam— have you always heard whispers, or is this new?”

“Since the barriers fell.” I admitted. “Faint at first. But the deeper we go, the louder they get.”

“Can you understand them?”

I hesitated, then nodded.

“Then you must not listen.” Dumbledore said firmly. “Whatever they promise, whatever truths they claim to offer— they serve their own purposes, not yours. Spirits do not give gifts freely. Everything offered comes with a price.”

But even as he spoke, the whispers were laughing. He fears what you might become. Fears what you already are. Does he know, we wonder? Does he understand what walks beside him, wearing a child’s face?

“I can handle it.” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

Dumbledore studied me for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “Very well. But if you feel yourself losing control, you will tell me immediately. That is not a request.”

“Yes, sir.”

We moved forward again, but I could feel eyes on my back. Harry and Hermione flanking me closer than before, clearly ready to intervene if the whispers became too much. Sirius and Remus exchanging worried glances. Even some of the Aurors I didn’t know were watching me with expressions that ranged from concern to suspicion.

The tunnel began to slope downward more steeply. The air grew colder still, and now we could see our breath crystallizing into tiny ice particles that hung suspended for seconds before drifting to the floor like snow.

Strange lights began appearing in the darkness— cold, pale things that flickered at the edge of vision. When I tried to look at them directly, they vanished, only to reappear seconds later in a different location.

Watching. The whispers explained unnecessarily. Always watching. The boundaries are so thin here. Soon they will not exist at all.

The echo of our footsteps sounded wrong. Not quite synchronized with our actual movements, arriving a fraction of a second too late or too early. Sometimes I could swear I heard footsteps that didn’t belong to anyone in our group— lighter treads, or heavier, or rhythms that didn’t match any human gait.

“Is anyone else hearing that?” Fred asked quietly, his voice tight with barely controlled fear.

“Echoes.” Kingsley replied, though his tone suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced. “The acoustics down here are— unusual.”

“That’s one word for it.” George muttered, wand grasped tightly.

The tunnel widened gradually, and the walls began to show signs of intentional construction again. Runes carved in patterns that made my eyes water, symbols that seemed to shift and rearrange themselves when I wasn’t looking directly at them.

He came here. The whispers said. The one you seek. The one who would bind us to his will. He carved these marks in our flesh and thought himself clever.

“What do the runes say?” Hermione asked, and I realized she was directing the question at me.

“I don’t—” I started, then stopped. Because I did know. The knowledge was just there, sitting in my mind like it had always been, waiting to be accessed. “They’re anchors. Designed to hold something in place that doesn’t want to be held. To force the Abyss to remain open even after the ritual ends.”

“How do you know that?” Harry asked, his voice rising in response to his tension.

“I don’t know how I know.” I admitted, which was the truth. “The whispers— they’re not just sounds. They’re… information. Knowledge flowing into my head whether I want it or not.”

Dumbledore’s expression grew even more grave.

“That is deeply concerning, Adam. The Abyss should not be able to impart knowledge so easily. Unless— ” He paused, studying me with an intensity that made me want to squirm. “Unless you already have some connection to it. Some existing resonance that it recognizes and responds to.”

He begins to understand. The whispers said approvingly. The old one sees what others miss. But even he does not know the full truth. Even he cannot guess what sleeps in the patchwork of your soul, Sunderer.

Still, we pressed on, and the whispers grew louder with every step. They were speaking continuously now, a constant stream of words and images and sensations that I had to actively push away to maintain focus on our surroundings.

They showed me more memories— always featuring people who looked disturbingly like me, or like they could be related to me. Showed me rituals performed in places that existed in the spaces between worlds. Showed me magic that operated on principles I’d never encountered in any book, that bent reality itself into shapes it was never meant to hold.

Your counterparts. The whispers explained. The ones who came before, now and after. They walked between worlds as easily as you walk between rooms. They spoke to us as you speak to your companions. They were ours, and through them, so are you.

“That’s not true.” I muttered under my breath.

Isn’t it? Then why can you understand us when others cannot? Why does your magic taste of boundaries and thresholds? Why do you stand at the edge of death so often and emerge unchanged?

I had no answer for that. Or rather, I had answers I didn’t want to examine too closely.

The cavern opened before us like the mouth of some impossibly vast creature, and at its far end, the tunnel network exploded into chaos.

Seven passages. Each one identical in size and shape, each one carved with the same unsettling runes, each one radiating that bone-deep cold that spoke of the Abyss bleeding through reality’s wounds.

Great. More tunnels.

Our group came to an abrupt halt, fifty-three exhausted fighters staring at seven identical choices with no clear way to determine which was correct.

“Bloody hell.” The Auror leader muttered, his deep voice carrying frustration that probably everyone felt.

“This is intentional.” Sirius said the obvious. “Grindelwald would have known we’d pursue him. This is designed to split our forces, to make us waste time searching each path individually while the ritual continues.”

“Or it’s designed to funnel us into a specific path.” The Auror leader spoke now, his tactical mind sharp despite the exhaustion pulling at all of us. “Make the right path obvious enough that we take it straight into an ambush.”

“We could split up again.” Someone suggested from the back of the group. “Cover multiple paths simultaneously.”

“No.” Dumbledore’s voice carried absolute authority. “We stay together. We have lost too many already to further division.”

The whispers in my mind had reached a fever pitch. They weren’t just speaking anymore— they were pulling, like invisible hands trying to drag me in a specific direction. The sensation was overwhelming, drowning out almost everything else.

I closed my eyes, trying to focus past the chaos. Seven tunnels. One of them leading to the ritual chamber. Six leading to… what? Death traps? Dead ends? More delay while Grindelwald completed his work?

Second, the whispers said clearly, cutting through the noise suddenly. The second path. That is where he works. That is where the boundaries will break.

My eyes snapped open, and I found myself staring at the second tunnel from the left. It looked no different from the others— same dimensions, same runes, same darkness that swallowed our wand-light. But the whispers were certain, pulling at me with magnetic insistence.

“That one.” I said, my voice carrying more confidence than I felt. “The second tunnel. That’s the right path.”

Silence fell across the group as everyone turned to stare at me.

“And how exactly do you know that?” An Auror I didn’t recognize asked, suspicion heavy in his voice.

“The whispers.” I admitted, because there was no point lying. “They’re pointing me toward it. Pulling me in that direction.”

“The voices from the Abyss are telling you which way to go.” An Auror— one I recognized as Kingsley Shacklebolt— said slowly. “And you think we should trust them?”

“I think they want me to reach the ritual chamber.” I replied, meeting his gaze steadily despite my exhaustion. “Whether that’s because they want us to stop Grindelwald or because they want to watch what happens when we get there— I don’t know. But they have no reason to misdirect us. If they wanted us dead or delayed, they’d send us down the wrong path.”

“Unless they’re playing a deeper game.” The first Auror countered.

“Everything is a deeper game at this point.” Sirius said sharply. “We’re fifty-three people trying to stop an apocalypse with an hour to spare. We don’t have time for endless debate.”

Moody would have scoffed at trusting information from the Abyss. Would have spent precious minutes analyzing each tunnel, looking for physical signs of recent passage, testing for magical traps. But Moody was down for the count, along with too many others, and we were running out of time.

Dumbledore stepped forward, his blue eyes fixed on the second tunnel with an intensity that suggested he was perceiving layers of reality I couldn’t begin to access. His wand moved, and I could feel magic radiating from him— not aggressive or destructive, but analytical. Seeking.

The seconds stretched out. Around us, the group waited with varying degrees of patience. Harry and Hermione stood close to me, their presence anchoring me against the whispers that continued their insistent pull. Remus had positioned himself near Sirius, the two of them communicating in that wordless way that came from years of friendship.

Finally, Dumbledore lowered his wand.

“No.” He said quietly.

The word hung in the air like a pronouncement of doom.

“No?” I repeated, confusion flooding through me. “But the whispers— “

“Are not lying.” Dumbledore finished, and his expression was grave. “That is what concerns me. Adam is correct— the second tunnel leads to the ritual chamber. I can feel the concentration of power emanating from that direction. The magical resonance is unmistakable.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Harry asked.

Dumbledore turned to face the group, his expression more serious than I’d ever seen it. “The problem is that the Abyss is actively guiding us toward its own emergence point. It is not trying to stop us or delay us— it is inviting us forward. That level of confidence suggests it believes our arrival serves its purposes rather than opposes them.”

“Maybe it thinks Grindelwald will kill us.” Remus suggested. “That we’ll arrive just in time to die and provide more deaths to fuel his ritual.”

“Perhaps.” Dumbledore acknowledged. “Or perhaps it believes that what we will witness in that chamber will serve its purposes in ways we cannot yet understand. The Abyss is patient, and it is subtle. It does not act without reason.”

The whispers laughed at that, their amusement echoing through my skull.

He knows us well, the old one. He has stood at our borders before, looked into our depths. He remembers what he saw. What he learned. What he sacrificed to turn away.

I filed that information away for later— assuming there was a later. 

“So what do you recommend?” I asked Dumbledore. “If we know that’s the right path but we’re concerned about walking into whatever the Abyss wants— what’s the alternative?”

“There isn’t one.” Kingsley said flatly. “We go forward or we go back. Those are our only choices, and going back means abandoning the mission entirely.”

“I agree.” Dumbledore said, though he didn’t sound happy about it. “We proceed down the second path. But we do so with eyes open to the possibility that we are not merely pursuing Grindelwald— we may be walking into a trap that was set before any of us were born.”

The pronouncement should have been terrifying. Instead, I felt a strange calm settle over me. We were past the point of turning back. Past the point of second-guessing or careful planning. We would go forward because going forward was all we had left.

“He’s right.” I said quietly, and felt the whispers surge with approval. “That’s the path. I can feel it.”

Tonks— battered and limping but still functional— moved to stand beside me. “Then we’d better get moving. Every second we waste is another second closer to whatever fresh hell Grindelwald’s cooking up.”

The group reformed, tighter than before. Those with the most magical reserves took point positions. The wounded moved to the center where they could be protected. Students— the few who’d survived this long— were positioned near adults who could shield them if necessary.

We entered the second tunnel, and immediately the temperature dropped another ten degrees. The whispers exploded into full voice, no longer subtle or gentle. They were screaming now, jubilant, welcoming me like I was returning home after a long absence.

YES. They roared. COME. SEE. UNDERSTAND. REMEMBER.

I stumbled, catching myself against the wall, and immediately regretted the contact. The stone wasn’t stone anymore— it was something else, something that existed in multiple states simultaneously. Solid and liquid and gaseous all at once, matter that had been convinced to forget what it was.

“Adam?” Harry’s voice seemed to come from miles away, though he was standing right beside me.

“I’m fine.” I lied. “Just— the whispers are getting louder.”

“How much louder?” Hermione asked, her concern evident even through my disorientation.

“A lot.”

“Stay focused.” Dumbledore commanded, his voice cutting through my disorientation. “Do not look at the walls. Do not try to understand what you’re seeing. Keep your eyes forward and your minds clear.”

Good advice. I tried to follow it, but the whispers wouldn’t let me.

Look. They insisted. See what we offer. See what you could become. See what you ALREADY are beneath the lie of mortality.

“It feels like the Hallows.” I muttered, not realizing I’d spoken aloud until I saw everyone sending me a look of confusion.

“Feels like what?” Harry said quizzically, but my eyes were on Dumbledore, who stopped so abruptly that people behind him nearly collided with his back. He turned to face me, and his expression was terrible— not angry, but deeply, profoundly concerned.

“What did you say?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

I blinked, realizing what I’d revealed.

“You heard me.” I said, unwilling to reveal any further.

He shook his head slowly. “We will speak of this later, Adam. At length. But for now, I need you to understand something: what you mentioned and the Abyss share certain characteristics because they both exist at the boundary between life and death. If you are sensitive to one, you may be vulnerable to the other.”

Vulnerable. The whispers mocked. As if this were weakness. As if this were anything other than your birthright.

“I can handle it.” I said, my voice stronger than I felt.

Dumbledore studied me for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “Very well. But the moment you feel control slipping, you will tell me. That is not a request, Adam— it is a necessity.”

“Yes, sir.”

We continued forward, but I could feel the weight of eyes on my back. Not just Harry and Hermione anymore— everyone was watching me now, waiting to see if I’d break, if the whispers would overwhelm me and turn me into something they’d have to fight.

The pressure was crushing.

And the whispers were relentless.

Soon… They promised. We are so close now. Can you feel it? The boundaries are paper-thin. One more push, one more sacrifice, and they will tear entirely. And then— oh, then you will understand EVERYTHING.

The tunnel began to glow. Not from our wand-lights, but from the walls themselves. A sickly greenish luminescence that pulsed in rhythm with something I couldn’t identify— not a heartbeat, but close. The breath of something vast. The slow, patient respiration of forces that existed beyond conventional life.

“Almost there.” I said, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. Distant. Like someone else was speaking through me.

“Adam—” Harry started.

“I’m fine.” I interrupted. “I’m still me. I promise. But they’re right— we’re close. Very close.”

The tunnel opened into one final chamber, and the sight that greeted us drove every other thought from my mind.

An antechamber. Vast and circular, its walls covered in runes that burned with actual fire— cold flames that consumed nothing but radiated power like miniature suns. The ceiling was lost in darkness that seemed to writhe and twist, alive in ways that stone should never be.

And in the center, set into the far wall like a door that had always been there and would always be there, was an obsidian portal.

Not carved from obsidian— made of it. Black stone so perfect it seemed to absorb light, shot through with veins of silver that pulsed in time with the rhythm I’d felt in the tunnel. The door stood perhaps fifteen feet tall and ten feet wide, large enough for multiple people to pass through simultaneously.

The whispers had stopped.

The sudden silence in my mind was so complete, so absolute, that for a moment I thought I’d gone deaf. But I could still hear my companions’ breathing, still hear the crackle of the burning runes, still hear the distant sound of… something… from beyond that obsidian door.

“This is it.” Dumbledore said quietly, his wand already rising. “The threshold. Beyond that door lies the ritual chamber where Grindelwald attempts to bind the Abyss to his will.”

I stepped forward, drawn by something I couldn’t name. The door’s symbols were flickering to life as I approached, silver veins brightening until they cast their own light. The pattern they formed was familiar— not because I’d seen it before, but because it resonated with something deep inside me. Like recognizing a song I’d never heard but had always known.

“Adam, wait— ” Hermione called out, but I couldn’t stop.

My hand rose seemingly of its own accord, reaching toward the obsidian surface.

The moment my fingers touched the door, the whispers returned— not as external voices, but as something internal. Fundamental. As natural and inevitable as my own heartbeat.

Welcome home. They said, and I felt the door begin to open beneath my touch.

We’ve been waiting for you.