I stared at the creature before me, and every instinct I possessed screamed at me to run.
I’d seen a lot in my admittedly short time in this world. Beautiful, wondrous things— the heart of Hogwarts pulsing with ancient magic, Thestrals taking flight in moonlight, the delicate soul threads that bound consciousness to flesh. I’d also seen horrific things. Corpses. Death. Some of which I’d caused myself. Not to mention the true nature of the void.
But even that knowledge hadn’t prepared me for this.
The entity floated among us, wreathed in smoke and shadow that moved with unnatural purpose, tendrils of darkness coiling and uncoiling like the creature was breathing them in and out.
None of us could move. Not a muscle. Not even to blink.
I tried to speak, to shout a warning, to do anything, but my jaw might as well have been carved from stone. Around me, I could sense the same paralysis gripping everyone else. Harry was frozen mid-step somewhere to my left. Sirius with his wand raised uselessly. Even Dumbledore and Grindelwald, those titans who’d been tearing the chamber apart moments before, stood like statues locked in their eternal contest.
The creature’s presence pressed down on everything, a weight that had nothing to do with physical mass and everything to do with the fundamental wrongness of its existence in our world.
Balrog? The thought appeared in my mind, unbidden. The creature reminded me of—
‘Balrog?’ The voice echoed back to me, and I felt my blood turn to ice. It was in my head. Reading my thoughts as easily as flipping through a book.
‘I have been compared to them many a time.’
I could feel its smile, though I couldn’t see one on that shadowed face. The amusement was there, alien and vast, pressing against my consciousness like a hand against glass.
Then the shadows ignited.
Flame erupted along the creature’s form, wreathing it in fire that burned without heat, without light in any normal sense. The flames were dark, somehow— a contradiction that hurt to perceive. Shadow and fire coexisted in ways that shouldn’t be possible, dancing across the entity’s body in patterns that seemed to shift between states of matter.
The fear that had been gripping me doubled. Tripled. This wasn’t the sharp, immediate terror of facing down Voldemort or fighting for my life against Grindelwald’s forces. This was something deeper, more primal. The kind of fear that lived in the oldest parts of the human brain, the parts that remembered when humanity huddled in caves and knew that things waited in the dark.
The creature continued its leisurely float through the frozen chamber, drifting past paralyzed wizards and witches with the casual grace of a shark moving through still water. And as it moved, I felt something else— a presence, vast and alien, brushing up against minds throughout the room.
It touched everyone.
I couldn’t turn my head to see the others’ reactions, but I could feel the creature’s consciousness sliding past mine as it moved from person to person. Human minds. Alien ones— I caught a flicker of Akio’s disciplined thoughts, rigidly controlled even now. Powerful minds and weak. Cruel and kind. Those full of hope, those drowning in despair. Minds brimming with love and others corroded by hate.
The creature sampled them all with the same casual interest, like a wine connoisseur moving through a tasting room.
When its attention had moved past me, I caught sight of its eyes for the first time.
They were white. Not the milky white of blindness or cataracts, but a white so deep and absolute it seemed to contain infinite depth. Looking into those eyes was like staring into the heart of a star, or the vast emptiness between galaxies. It was a white that could fit the full tenspan of the universe and still have room for more.
I wanted to look away. Couldn’t.
‘Well done.’ The creature said, and this time its voice didn’t just appear in my mind— it dripped through the air itself. The sound was like honey poured over rusted metal, warm and inviting yet carrying a faint, nauseating tremor beneath its sweetness. ‘All of you. Such dedication. Such sacrifice. Such delicious, beautiful chaos.’
It gestured with one shadowed limb, the movement fluid and wrong.
‘It is not every day that mortals breach the barrier into infinity. You should be proud. You have accomplished something remarkable.’
Then, impossibly, I felt warmth spread through my body.
The gash on my side— the one that had been steadily bleeding despite the potions and Healing Charms— closed. Just like that. The torn muscle knit back together, skin sealing over clean and whole. The bone-deep exhaustion that had been dragging at me, the mountains of bruises, the magical depletion that made every spell feel like lifting a mountain; they all simply… vanished.
I felt good. Better than good. I felt like I’d just woken from a perfect night’s sleep after a full meal. My magic, which had been scraped down to the dregs, surged back to something approaching full strength.
Around me, I heard gasps. Whimpers. Sounds of wonder and confusion as the same healing swept through everyone in the chamber. Injuries closing. Exhaustion lifting. Pain fading.
The creature had healed us. All of us.
‘There.’ It said, and that honey-over-metal voice practically oozed satisfaction. ‘Is that not better? You fought so hard. Suffered so much. But that pain is unnecessary now. That suffering, meaningless. I can give you so much more than pain.’
My mind raced, trying to understand. Why would it heal us? What possible reason—
Then I felt it. Underneath the relief, underneath the physical sensation of renewed strength, there was something else. Something that made my skin crawl even as my body celebrated its restoration.
The healing felt wrong.
Not wrong in the sense of being improperly done— my injuries were genuinely closed, my magic genuinely restored. Wrong in the sense that a smile could be wrong. The right shape, the right expression, but fundamentally incorrect in some essential way that bypassed logic and spoke directly to instinct.
This thing was offering us paradise, and every word of it was a lie.
‘You are ready.’ The creature continued, its voice taking on an almost reverent quality. ‘Ready to join a higher existence. Ready to transcend the limitations of this crude material world. Ready to experience what awaits beyond the threshold you have so obligingly opened.’
It spread its arms wide, shadow and flame flowing like silk.
‘A realm of breathtaking splendor awaits you. Where every desire blooms effortlessly, where suffering is unknown and joy is as natural as breath. A place where you need not struggle, need not fight, need not fear. All of existence laid bare before you, yours to experience for eternity.’
The words shimmered in the air, beautiful and terrible. I could feel them tugging at something deep inside, promising rest, promising peace, promising an end to all the pain and chaos and fear.
And I knew, with absolute certainty, that every single word was a lie.
Not in the factual sense— I had no doubt that the realm it described existed in some form. But the promise underneath, the implication that this was somehow good for us, that we would benefit from accepting its offer…
That was the lie. A lie dressed up in honey and silk and promises of paradise.
‘All you need do.’ The creature murmured, its voice dropping to something intimate, almost tender. ‘Is show your trust. Kneel. Only for a moment. Only to demonstrate your willingness to accept my guidance. Kneel, and I will open the gate to paradise. I will show you wonders beyond your comprehension. I will give you everything you have ever desired.’
A pause, heavy with expectation.
‘Kneel.’
I tried to scream a warning. Tried to tell everyone around me not to listen, not to believe, that this thing was lying, that everything about it was fundamentally wrong—
But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Could only stand there, frozen, helpless, while that honeyed poison poured into every mind in the chamber.
No, I thought desperately. No, please, don’t—
The creature waited, patient as stone, wreathed in its impossible flames.
Movement.
Not much— just the subtle shift of fabric, the soft scrape of a knee against stone. But in the absolute stillness of the paralyzed chamber, it might as well have been thunder.
Someone had knelt.
Then another. And another.
I couldn’t turn my head to see who. My eyes were locked forward, my body a prison of frozen muscle and bone. But I could hear them— the rustle of robes, the quiet gasps, the whispered prayers in languages I didn’t recognize. People were kneeling. Accepting the creature’s offer.
No. No, no, no—
The paralysis held me fast. I screamed inside my own skull, hurling every ounce of will against the invisible bonds, but I might as well have been trying to move a mountain with my breath. Whatever this thing had done to us, it was absolute.
More movement. More kneeling. The sounds spread through the chamber like a slow wave.
‘Yes.’ The creature purred, and I could hear the satisfaction in its voice. ‘Yes, you understand. You see the wisdom in acceptance. The peace that comes with surrender.’
I focused everything I had on trying to sense who had knelt, who had resisted. My awareness of soul threads, limited as it was in my paralyzed state, gave me fragments. Harry was still standing— I could feel his ancient magic nearby, wild and furious, straining against the same bonds that held me. Sirius too. Remus. Tonks.
Thank God. Thank God they hadn’t—
But others had. I recognized some of the magical signatures. Aurors I’d fought beside. Students from Mahoutokoro. Many of Grindelwald’s and even Voldemort’s people, despite everything they’d witnessed, despite knowing what their masters were trying to accomplish.
The creature’s promise had been too beautiful. Too tempting. After hours of brutal combat, after watching friends die, after pushing their bodies and magic past every reasonable limit, the offer of peace must have seemed like salvation.
They didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. The creature’s words were shaped perfectly to bypass reason, to speak directly to exhaustion and trauma and desperate hope.
‘More.’ The creature encouraged, its voice gentle as a lullaby. ‘Do not fear. Your companions show you the way. There is no shame in seeking rest. No weakness in acceptance. Only the beginning of something greater than you can imagine.’
The wave of kneeling slowed but didn’t stop. I counted the sounds— twenty, thirty, maybe more. I couldn’t be sure. Time felt strange, stretched thin like taffy pulled between two hands.
How long had we been frozen? Seconds? Minutes? It was impossible to tell.
The creature drifted through the chamber, moving among those who’d knelt with something that might have been approval. Its shadowed form passed through my limited field of vision, close enough that I could feel the heat of its impossible flames, smell something that was neither smoke nor sulfur but somehow suggested both.
It paused.
The air changed, pressure building like the moment before lightning strikes. I felt it in my teeth, in my bones, in the base of my skull where instinct lived.
Something was about to happen.
‘You have made your choice.’ The creature said, and there was something new in its voice now. Not satisfaction but something colder, more final. ‘And I honor it. Let me show you the paradise that awaits.’
The air around those who knelt began to shimmer.
At first, I thought it was heat distortion, like looking at pavement on a summer day. But the shimmer intensified, became more visible, took on colors that shouldn’t exist— hues that made my eyes water just trying to perceive them.
Then the screaming started.
It wasn’t immediate. The first few seconds, the kneeling wizards and witches just looked confused, their faces showing more surprise than pain. One of them— an Auror I didn’t know well, a woman with gray-streaked hair— lifted her hand as if to examine it.
Her fingers were coming apart.
Not bleeding. Not breaking. Unraveling. Like she was made of thread and someone had found the loose end, pulling it free, watching as the weave came undone.
The screaming started then.
The woman’s hand dissolved into impossible fragments— not pieces, not flesh and bone, but something else entirely. Threads of color and shape and being that peeled away from her form like paint flaking off a canvas. Her arm followed, then her shoulder, her face contorting in absolute horror as she watched herself disintegrate.
She tried to stand, to run, but her legs were already unraveling. Her mouth opened in a soundless shriek as her throat came apart, her scream cutting off halfway through as the mechanism for making sound simply ceased to exist.
And it wasn’t just her.
All of them. Every single person who’d knelt was coming apart.
Bodies twitched as though gripped by invisible hooks, jerking and spasming as their outlines began to blur. A young wizard— he couldn’t have been more than twenty— clawed at his own chest as if trying to hold himself together, but his hands passed through his torso like smoke. His features blurred, stretching, thinning, peeling away into fragments that made my mind hurt to look at.
The colors were wrong. The shapes were wrong. They weren’t dying— death I understood. This was something else entirely. They were being unmade, torn out of existence one piece at a time, their component parts scattered across dimensions I couldn’t perceive.
One of Grindelwald’s people— a man whose name I’d never learned— managed to scream long enough for me to hear actual words. “No! No, please, I didn’t— it hurts, it hurts, make it stop, MAKE IT—“
His jaw unraveled mid-word. His eyes went next, dissolving into streams of light and shadow that flowed upward toward the creature like tributaries feeding a river.
They were all flowing into it. Every piece, every fragment, every thread of their unraveling existence was being drawn toward the creature at the center of the chamber. It stood there, patient and terrible, arms spread wide as if embracing the streams of dissolving humanity that spiraled into its form.
‘Do not fear.’ The creature said, its voice still impossibly tender, still dripping with that false compassion. ‘This is only the first step. The dissolution of what you were, so you may become what you are meant to be. The shedding of limitation. The release of— ‘
A woman’s shriek cut through its words, raw and animalistic. She was the last one still mostly intact, her body half-unraveled, one arm already gone, her face a mask of absolute terror as she watched the final moments of her existence tick away.
“Please.” She sobbed, her voice breaking. “Please, I don’t want— I don’t—“
She came apart all at once, her entire being fragmenting into a cascade of impossible threads that streamed toward the creature.
Then silence.
The echoes of their agony faded. The last fragments disappeared into the creature’s form. And they were just… gone. Not dead— death left bodies, left some evidence of existence. These people had simply ceased to be, erased so thoroughly that even the memory of their screams felt like it might evaporate.
The creature stood quietly, as if digesting. Its flames burned brighter for a moment, shadows deepening, and I could have sworn I saw faces in the darkness— twisted, screaming, aware.
Still aware.
Oh god. Oh god, they’re still—
‘Beautiful.’ The creature sighed, the word resonating through the chamber. ‘The taste of mortal essence. I had forgotten. It has been so long since I walked among the living, since I sampled the exquisite flavor of those who still cling to flesh and breath.’
It turned, those infinite white eyes sweeping across the rest of us. The paralyzed. Those who hadn’t knelt.
‘Do you see?’ It asked, and there was no pretense of gentleness now. The honey was gone from its voice, leaving only the rusted metal underneath. ‘Do you understand? Resistance is futile. Struggle is meaningless. I am the end of all things. I am the void between breaths, the darkness after the final heartbeat. I am inevitable.’
The pressure increased. I felt it trying to force my knees to bend, my body to bow, my will to break.
‘Kneel.’ The creature commanded. ‘Kneel and join your companions in paradise. Or stand, and I will take you anyway. The choice changes nothing. The outcome remains the same.’
The pressure built and built, a weight like mountains pressing down on my shoulders. My knees trembled. My legs shook. But I didn’t kneel.
None of us did. Not Harry. Not Sirius. Not Dumbledore or Grindelwald or any of the others still standing. We’d seen what paradise meant. We’d heard the screams.
We would rather die on our feet.
‘Stubborn.’ The creature mused. ‘But stubbornness changes nothing. I am willing to wait eons for— ‘
Something inside me moved.
Not physically— this was deeper than flesh, deeper than bone. The Void, that terrible emptiness I’d touched before, that power I barely understood and didn’t trust, stirred in response to the creature’s presence.
Like recognizing like.
And in that moment of recognition, I understood what I had to do.
I delved inward, past my normal magic, past the whispers that had guided and deceived me, past everything I thought I knew. I reached for the Void itself, that fundamental emptiness that existed between existence and non-existence.
It was dangerous. It was unpredictable. I had no confidence in my ability to control it.
But right now, it was the only weapon I had.
The Void answered my call like a drowning man answers a thrown rope— desperately, completely, without question.
The paralysis shattered.
It didn’t fade or weaken— it broke, like glass struck by a hammer, and suddenly I could move again. My knees buckled from the sudden release, nearly dropping me to the floor, but I caught myself on shaking legs.
Around me, everyone else stumbled as the same freedom hit them. Harry gasped, Sirius swore, and throughout the chamber I heard the sounds of hundreds of people suddenly released from invisible chains.
But more importantly— I couldn’t hear the creature anymore.
Its presence, that vast alien consciousness that had been pressing against my mind like a physical weight, was gone. Not diminished. Not blocked. Just… absent, as if a door had slammed shut between us.
The Void swirled inside me, cold and empty and vast. It felt nothing like my normal magic— that was warmth, life, energy flowing through channels carved by will and intention. This was the opposite. An absence. A negation. The space between atoms, the silence between heartbeats, the nothing that existed before the first breath and after the last.
And somehow, it had severed the creature’s hold on all of us.
The creature tilted its head, those infinite white eyes fixing on me with what might have been curiosity. Its flames guttered for a moment, shadows deepening.
Then everything happened at once.
Dumbledore moved first, his wand already rising, his voice thundering through the chamber with a spell I didn’t recognize. Blue-white light erupted from his wand, a lance of pure magical force that screamed through the air.
Grindelwald was a heartbeat behind him, his own magic manifesting as a wave of crackling energy that looked like lightning given solid form.
Voldemort’s Killing Curse joined them, green and terrible.
Lockhart’s spell came from my left, something that shimmered with colors I couldn’t count.
And then everyone else joined in.
Aurors. Death Eaters. Grindelwald’s zealots. Mahoutokoro wizards. Students from Hogwarts and Ilvermorny. Every single person in that chamber, regardless of allegiance, regardless of the battles we’d been fighting moments before, turned their wands on the creature and attacked.
The sound was deafening. Hundreds of spells, all cast simultaneously, all aimed at the same target. The air itself seemed to tear from the sheer volume of magical force being unleashed.
I added my own magic to the storm, my chains erupting forward with enough force to crack stone. The Void no longer churned inside me, my mind unable to call on it again so soon.
The creature weathered it all.
The spells struck its form like waves against a cliff. Some passed through the shadows as if nothing were there. Others hit the flames and simply vanished, consumed without leaving a trace. The most powerful attacks— Dumbledore’s lances of light, Grindelwald’s crackling waves, Voldemort’s blasts of darkness— actually seemed to touch it, pushing it back slightly, but causing no visible damage.
It was like trying to hurt smoke. Or shadow. Or the concept of death itself.
The barrage continued for ten, maybe fifteen seconds. An eternity in combat. The chamber lit up like the heart of a star, every color of spell-light bleeding together into something that hurt to look at.
Then the creature moved.
It didn’t gesture. Didn’t cast. Didn’t seem to do anything at all. But suddenly its fire whip— I hadn’t even seen it form— lashed out faster than thought.
A Death Eater to my right, a man whose name I didn’t know, never got a chance to scream. The whip caught him across the chest and he simply… ignited. Not with normal fire. With that same dark flame that wreathed the creature, burning without heat, without light, consuming him from the inside out.
He was ash before he hit the ground.
“Scatter!” Dumbledore’s voice cut through the chaos, amplified by magic. “Do not cluster! Spread out and maintain pressure!”
People moved, some faster than others. Those with combat experience— Aurors, Grindelwald’s veterans, the more skilled students— dispersed immediately, creating space between themselves and their neighbors. Others, slower or less experienced, hesitated a moment too long.
The creature’s whip struck again. And again. Each lash found a target, and each target died screaming.
An Auror I recognized— a middle-aged man who’d helped coordinate our entry into the tunnels— tried to shield the wizard next to her. The whip passed through her shield like it wasn’t there and took them both.
A young Mahoutokoro student, no older than seventeen, managed to dodge the first strike but not the second. His scream cut off mid-breath.
A grizzled veteran from Grindelwald’s forces— a man who’d probably survived a hundred battles— raised his wand for another spell and never got to cast it.
“Together!” That was Grindelwald’s voice now, cold and commanding. “Aim for the core!”
“Eastern flank, suppressing fire!” Voldemort’s voice joined his, just as commanding, just as cold. “Western flank, prepare to move on my signal!”
It was surreal, hearing them coordinate. Grindelwald and Voldemort, dark lords who should have been enemies, organizing our defense like generals on a battlefield. But there was no time to process the strangeness of it.
The creature was learning.
I saw it adapt in real-time. The first few spells to actually push it back— powerful Bludgeoning Hexes, a few exotic curses I didn’t recognize, one absolutely brutal Blasting Curse from an Auror who clearly had more power than sense— had all struck from roughly the same angle. The creature shifted its position, angling its body so those same spells slid off its shadowed form like water off oil.
Someone tried a Freezing Charm. The ice formed for maybe half a second before the creature’s flames vaporized it.
It was toying with us. I could feel it in the way it moved— leisurely, almost casual, like a cat batting at mice.
Then someone cast a Killing Curse.
I didn’t see who. In the chaos of battle, with spells flying from every direction, it was impossible to track individual casters. But I saw the spell— that distinctive green bolt of pure death— strike the creature square in the chest.
For the first time, the creature reacted.
Not with pain, exactly. But it made a sound— a low, rumbling growl that seemed to come from everywhere at once, resonating in my bones. The flames around it flickered, and for just an instant, I could have sworn I saw something underneath. Not flesh, but… structure. Form. Something that could actually be hurt.
The whip lashed out again, faster than before, finding the caster— a Death Eater whose face was set in grim determination— and ending him in an instant. But the damage was done.
We’d learned something crucial: it could be hurt. Not easily. Maybe not enough to actually stop it. But it could feel pain.
“KILLING CURSES!” Someone shouted. “IT REACTS TO KILLING CURSES!“
“No!” That was Dumbledore, his voice sharp with warning. “Too dangerous! The cost—”
But it was too late. Green bolts started flying from multiple directions, Death Eaters and darker-minded Aurors all casting the Unforgivable simultaneously.
Most missed. The creature was moving now, really moving, its floating form darting between attacks with impossible grace. But a few connected.
Each one made it growl. Each one made the flames flicker. And each one was immediately followed by the caster’s death as the creature retaliated with brutality.
We were hurting it, but we were dying faster.
“Adam!”
Lockhart appeared at my side, his shield already raised as a Cutting Curse meant for me deflected off into the ceiling. Debris rained down, and he pulled me back toward where Harry stood with Sirius and Remus.
“Stay close!” He had to shout to be heard over the chaos. “We need to—”
The creature’s whip caught an Auror twenty feet away, and the man’s death scream drowned out whatever Lockhart had been about to say.
I looked around the chamber, trying to assess the situation through the chaos and spell-light and smoke.
We were losing.
People were dying— not by the dozens yet, thank god, but steadily. One every few seconds. The creature wasn’t even hurrying. It moved through the battlefield like a dancer, each motion precise and deadly, each strike of its whip claiming another life.
And we still hadn’t actually hurt it. Not really. The Killing Curses caused it discomfort at best. Everything else might as well have been thrown at a ghost.
My chains lashed out again, more from instinct than strategy. They passed through the creature’s shadowed form and struck nothing but air.
Useless. I thought bitterly. My chains are completely useless against this thing. Unless…
Unless I fully used the Void. Gave myself up to it, like that sacrifice had.
The thought made my stomach clench. I barely understood the Void, had even less control over it than I did my normal magic. Using it to break the paralysis had been instinct, desperation, a drowning man grabbing for anything that might float.
Using it as a weapon? That was something else entirely.
But what choice did we have?
“Lockhart!” I grabbed his arm, pulling him close enough to be heard without shouting. “I think I can hurt it! But I need time!”
His eyes met mine, and I saw understanding flash across his face. He didn’t ask how. Didn’t question. Just nodded once, sharp and decisive.
“How much time?”
“I don’t know! Minutes, maybe? I need to—”
A spell exploded against Lockhart’s shield, powerful enough to drive him back a step. He reinforced it with a gesture, layers of protection weaving together in patterns I couldn’t follow.
“Then you’ll have it!” He turned toward where Dumbledore and Grindelwald were coordinating the battle. “Albus! Gellert! We need a defensive line!”
Both turned. Dumbledore’s eyes found mine, and I saw him understand immediately. Whatever he saw in my face, whatever he read in that moment, made him nod.
“Eastern quadrant!” Dumbledore’s voice boomed. “Rally to Lockhart! Defensive formation!”
“All forces!” Voldemort added, his voice cutting through the chaos. “Protect the boy!”
The boy. If this were any other setting, I would have laughed. As it was, I settled for a frown of concentration.
People moved, flowing toward our position. Not everyone— the battle was too chaotic, too spread out. But enough. Aurors. Grindelwald’s people. Even a few Death Eaters, following Voldemort’s command.
They formed a loose perimeter around me, wands raised, shields up. And the creature, sensing the shift in tactics, turned its full attention on us.
Those infinite white eyes fixed on me, and I felt the weight of its regard like a physical thing.
This was going to hurt.
The creature advanced.
Not quickly. It didn’t need to rush. It floated toward our defensive line with the inevitability of a glacier, its flames casting dancing shadows across the blood-stained floor. Every few seconds, its whip would lash out at someone on the periphery of the battle— keeping the pressure on, preventing anyone from organizing a coordinated counter-attack.
More people died.
The defensive line around me held firm. Barely.
“Shields up!” Lockhart commanded, and layers of magical protection sprang into being. Translucent barriers of different colors and textures, some shimmering like heat haze, others solid as crystal. They overlapped and interwove in patterns that suggested decades of combat experience.
The creature’s whip tested them immediately.
The first three layers shattered like glass. The fourth held for maybe two seconds before it too broke. The fifth— a deep blue barrier that looked like frozen water— actually caught the whip for a moment, trapping it.
Then the whip simply dissolved and reformed on the other side, killing the wizard who’d been maintaining that particular shield. A Grindelwald lieutenant whose name I’d never learned. He didn’t even have time to look surprised.
“Rotate!” Lockhart shouted. “Second line, advance! First line, fall back and regroup!”
The formation shifted. Those whose shields had been broken or who were running low on magic pulled back. Fresh defenders moved forward. It was textbook battlefield tactics, the kind of thing you’d see from a well-trained military unit.
And we were still losing ground.
I knelt in the center of the formation, not in submission but in desperate focus. My hands pressed against the cold stone floor, and I reached inward, diving past my normal magic reserves into that dark, empty space where the Void dwelled.
It was like plunging into ice water. The cold hit me first, not physical but metaphysical— the sensation of absolute absence, of nothingness given form. My normal magic felt like warmth, like life, like something that flowed and moved. The Void was the opposite. It didn’t flow. It consumed. It was the space where things stopped existing, the gap between atoms, the silence at the end of all songs.
How do I use this? I thought desperately. How do I turn nothing into a weapon?
The creature’s voice suddenly filled my mind again, bypassing whatever protection the Void had given me earlier.
‘You have the spark of something greater, Drifter.’ Its tone was almost conversational, as if we were discussing the weather over tea rather than fighting for survival. ‘I felt it when you broke my hold. That selfsame touch of the infinite. That brush with the eternal void. You carry a fragment of what should not exist in mortal flesh.’
I tried to block it out, to focus on channeling the Void, but its words kept coming.
‘But the flame is too weak. Too small. You do not understand what you hold, child. You cannot hope to wield it against me. I am the void made manifest. I am the ending of all things. What you carry is but a candle against the dying of the light.’
“Ignore it!” Harry’s voice, strained with effort. He was right behind me, his ancient magic flaring as he helped maintain the defensive perimeter. “It’s trying to distract you!”
He was right. The creature was stalling, using words to delay whatever I was attempting. Which meant that it was worried.
Good.
I pushed deeper into the Void, letting it flow through me like ice water through veins. My chains manifested unbidden, but they looked different now. The silvery-gray metal had taken on a darker quality, like tarnished steel, and the edges seemed to blur and sharpen simultaneously. Where they moved, the air itself looked… wounded. Reality flexing around them like skin around a blade.
“INCOMING!” Sirius’s warning came just before the creature’s next attack.
This time it wasn’t the whip. The creature raised one shadowed hand, and fire erupted from its palm— not a stream or a bolt, but a wave. Dark flames rolled toward our position like a tsunami of pure destruction.
“BRACE!” Lockhart threw up a shield, and a dozen other defenders added their own protections.
The fire struck.
The sound was like the world ending. The first five layers of shields simply evaporated. The next three held for maybe a second each before failing. The defensive formation buckled, people crying out as the edges of the flame-wave caught them.
A Mahoutokoro wizard to my left took the fire full-on when her shield shattered. She screamed, but only briefly. The dark flames consumed her in seconds.
“HOLD!” Dumbledore was suddenly there, his magic blazing like the sun. His shield was different from the others— not a barrier but a negation, a space where the creature’s fire simply couldn’t exist. It pushed back against the wave, carving out a pocket of safety.
Grindelwald appeared on the other side, his own power manifesting as a wall of crackling energy that absorbed the flames and redirected them upward. The ceiling cracked, chunks of stone raining down.
Between them, they held the line. Barely.
The flame-wave subsided, and in the brief moment of respite, I saw the cost. Seven more dead. Maybe eight— I couldn’t tell if the figure lying motionless near the edge of our formation was unconscious or gone.
We couldn’t sustain this.
“Adam!” Remus’s voice, urgent. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!”
But I wasn’t ready. The Void was responding to me, yes, but I didn’t know how to direct it. It was like trying to hold water in my bare hands— the moment I grasped for it, it slipped through my fingers.
Think. I commanded myself. The Void isn’t like normal magic. You can’t just cast it like a spell. It’s absence. Negation. Negation… What the hell does that mean!?
The creature attacked again. This time the whip split into three separate strands, each one striking at a different angle. The defensive line scrambled to respond.
A strand caught an Auror in the throat. He dropped.
Another strand was blocked by a conjured shield of solid stone— which immediately aged centuries in seconds, crumbling to dust before the whip passed through and found its target behind it.
The third strand was intercepted by Voldemort himself, who’d moved with inhuman speed to position himself between the attack and me. His own dark magic met the whip in midair, and for a moment they struggled— two forces of destruction locked in contest.
Voldemort lost.
The whip broke through his defense and struck him across the shoulder. He snarled in pain but didn’t fall— whatever body he’d built for himself was more resilient than normal flesh. But I saw blood, dark and red, soaking through his robes.
“The Dark Lord is hit!” A Death Eater’s panicked shout.
“I AM FINE!” Voldemort’s voice cracked like a whip. “HOLD YOUR POSITIONS!”
But the formation was fraying. People were dying too quickly. The creature’s attacks were relentless, and every death weakened our defensive capabilities.
I had to do something. Now.
Absence, I thought again. Negation. The Void doesn’t create— it removes. It doesn’t add— it subtracts. So what if…
What if I didn’t try to attack the creature? What if I tried to remove it?
The thought crystalized into understanding. The Void wasn’t a weapon in the traditional sense. It was an eraser. A space where things stopped existing. If I could channel it properly, if I could direct that fundamental absence toward the creature…
I might be able to hit it. Not kill it— you couldn’t kill something that might not technically be alive. But I could potentially push it back into whatever space between spaces it had emerged from. Back into that portal.
Maybe.
‘Clever.’ The creature’s voice murmured in my mind. ‘But still insufficient. You would need power beyond anything you possess to erase me from existence. I am eternal. I am— ‘
I saw Grindelwald pull back from the main fighting, positioning himself near one of the massive pillars that somehow still stood despite the devastation. His wand moved through patterns I’d never seen before—complex, mathematical, precise in a way that made my enhanced sight ache just trying to follow them.
The magic gathering around him felt charged with an insane amount of power.
“What’s he doing?” Sirius gasped.
Dumbledore glanced over, his eyes wide with recognition. “Here!?”
A sphere of light formed between Grindelwald’s hands. Small, no larger than an apple, but the density of it made my soul-sight scream. I could see the magic compressed down to impossible levels, see forces being bound together that nature kept carefully separated. And underneath the magical structure, I could perceive something else—matter itself being forced into configurations that were most certainly explosives.
Fission! I realized. The same he used to break people out of the prisons! No… This one is different by several levels of magnitude… If he completes that, the explosion will vaporize everything for miles!
My blood turned to ice. “He’s making a bomb? A nuclear—”
“Gellert, what are you doing?” Dumbledore’s voice cut across the chamber, sharp with alarm.
Grindelwald didn’t answer. His face was set in lines of grim determination, sweat beading on his forehead as he held the spell together. The sphere between his hands was starting to vibrate, reality buckling around it like fabric pulled too tight.
He was really going to do it. He was going to kill everyone in this chamber—friend and foe alike—just to take the creature with us.
The creature’s attention shifted.
Those infinite white eyes fixed on Grindelwald, and I felt the change in the air. The creature had been dividing its attention between multiple threats, its whip striking at anyone who got too close. But now it was focused entirely on the dark lord attempting to unmake matter itself.
‘Clever little mortal.’ The creature’s voice echoed through the chamber, and I heard amusement in it. Genuine amusement. ‘You would create a sun here, in this chamber. Transform mass into pure energy. Kill yourself, kill your enemies, kill everything, and hope that I burn with you.’
The sphere was nearly complete. I could see the atomic structure inside it straining, the bindings holding it together beginning to fracture. Maybe five seconds until—
The creature raised one shadowed hand.
The sphere froze.
Not shattered. Not dispersed. Just… stopped. All that compressed energy, all that carefully bound force, locked in place as if time itself had halted around it. Grindelwald’s eyes went wide, his wand still moving through the final gestures, but nothing was happening. The spell wouldn’t respond.
I watched through my soul-sight as the creature’s power wrapped around Grindelwald’s magic like fingers closing around a throat. And then, impossibly, it began to disassemble the spell.
Not violently. Not with brute force, but with an atomic level manipulation of power. Each layer of compressed magical force was peeled away, separated, rendered inert. Each atomic binding was carefully loosened. The forces that should have torn atoms apart and released enough energy to level a country were diffused, redirected, harmlessly dispersed into the air.
The sphere vanished. Just gone, as if it had never existed.
All that remained was a faint warmth, like standing near a radiator.
‘Your atomic manipulations are but candles compared to the fires I have known.’ The creature said, its tone almost conversational. ‘I have seen stars die, little wizards. I have watched galaxies collapse. I have witnessed the heat death of entire universes. Did you truly believe such crude transmutation would harm me?’
I felt something cold settle in my stomach, understanding in my eyes. Gellert’s distraction had helped me understand, and in the following moment, I acted.
I stopped trying to control the Void. Instead, I just… opened myself to it.
It rushed in like water through a broken dam.
Cold. So cold. The absence flooded through me, filling every corner of my being with its terrible emptiness. I felt my normal magic recoiling from it, felt my own soul thread shuddering under the strain of containing something that was fundamentally antithetical to existence.
But I held on. Odgovor!
My chains erupted from the ground around me, no longer silvery-gray but black as the space between stars. They moved with purpose now, guided by the Void flowing through them, reaching toward the creature with the slow inevitability of entropy itself.
The creature noticed.
For the first time since its emergence, I saw something like concern cross those infinite white eyes.
“NOW!” Lockhart’s command. “EVERYONE, FULL ASSAULT! KEEP IT OCCUPIED!”
The defensive formation broke as everyone still able to fight threw themselves at the creature. It was chaotic, desperate and uncoordinated, but it served its purpose— the creature had to divide its attention between dozens of attackers instead of focusing solely on me.
After a moment, Dumbledore and a recovered Grindelwald cast simultaneously, their spells interweaving in patterns that suggested decades of familiarity. Blue-white light and crackling energy struck the creature from opposite sides.
Voldemort’s Killing Curse followed, making the creature growl.
A dozen other spells— Bludgeoning Hexes, Cutting Curses, Blasting Curses— hammered into it from every direction.
And through it all, my Void-enhanced chains crept closer.
The creature’s whip lashed out, faster than before, trying to cut through the chains before they could reach it. But the Void-infused metal didn’t break or deflect— the whip simply passed through them, as if trying to strike at smoke.
Because that’s what they were, in a sense. Not solid matter but the absence of it, given shape by my will and the strange power flowing through me.
The first chain touched the creature’s shadowed form.
Reality shuddered.
I don’t know how else to describe it. The effect wasn’t visible audible— it was felt, bone-deep, soul-deep, a fundamental wrongness as two forces that should never meet came into contact. Existence and non-existence, matter and void, life and the space beyond death.
Where the chain touched, the creature’s form began to fray. Not unraveling like its victims had— dissolving. The shadow thinned. The flame guttered. For just a moment, I saw through it to the chamber beyond.
The creature roared.
Not with its voice— with its entire being. The sound was rage and pain and something else, something that might have been fear.
It pulled back, its whip multiplying into a dozen strands that lashed out in every direction. Three people died in as many seconds. A fourth took a glancing blow and went down screaming, their arm withering to nothing.
But the chains followed.
I pushed more of the Void through them, more of that terrible absence. The cold was overwhelming now. I could feel frost forming on my skin, see my breath misting in the air despite the fires raging around us. My magic reserves, already depleted from hours of combat, were draining at an alarming rate— not feeding the Void exactly, but paying the cost of channeling it.
A second chain made contact. Then a third.
The creature’s form destabilized further. I could see its outline wavering now, flickering between solid and insubstantial. The flames surrounding it guttered and died in patches, revealing… nothing underneath. Just emptiness.
“It’s working!” Harry’s voice, filled with desperate hope. “Keep going, Adam!”
But I was running out of power. The Void was infinite, yes, but my ability to channel it was not. I could feel myself fraying at the edges, my soul threads straining under the pressure of containing forces I was never meant to wield.
Just a little more. Just a little—
The creature’s hand shot out, faster than thought, and grabbed one of my chains.
Everything stopped.
For a moment— less than a heartbeat, but stretched into eternity— I was connected directly to the creature’s consciousness. Not through words or thoughts, but through something more fundamental. I felt its nature, its purpose, its origin.
It was old. Older than human civilization, older than the boundaries between life and death that had been erected in ages past. It was the ending made manifest, the silence at the heat death of the universe given form and will. It had existed before and would exist after, eternal and inevitable and utterly, completely without mercy.
And it was tired.
That was the strangest thing. Beneath the rage and power and alien consciousness, there was exhaustion. The weariness of something that had existed too long, seen too much, been forced to BE for eons beyond counting.
It didn’t want to destroy us because it hated us.
It wanted to destroy us because destruction was all it knew.
Then the moment passed, and the creature yanked on the chain.
I felt the pull like a hook in my sternum, threatening to tear me apart. The Void surged backward through the connection, drawn by the creature’s vastly superior power, and I realized with sudden horrifying clarity that it was trying to drain me the way it had drained the kneeling victims.
“Adam!” Multiple voices, but I couldn’t tell who.
I tried to let go of the chain, to sever the connection, but the Void had merged too thoroughly with my magic. Letting go would mean… what? Losing part of myself? All of myself?
Harry’s hands hit my shoulders from behind.
His ancient magic poured into me like liquid fire— raw and wild and free, the exact opposite of the Void’s cold emptiness. It hurt. God, it hurt. Two fundamentally opposed forces existing in the same vessel, tearing at each other, tearing at ME.
But it worked.
The ancient magic didn’t push back the Void— it gave me the strength to hold it, to contain it, to channel it without being consumed by it. Harry’s power flowed through me, and I felt my soul threads reinforcing, stabilizing, holding together under impossible strain.
“I’ve got you!” Harry gasped, and I could hear the effort in his voice. “Don’t let go! Whatever you do, don’t—“
The creature pulled harder.
I pulled back.
And somewhere in the middle, in the space between forces too vast for mortal flesh to safely contain, I found leverage.
My chains wrapped around the creature’s arm, multiplying, spreading. Void-enhanced metal— or perhaps the absence of metal, shaped by will— coiling around shadow and flame like a python around its prey.
The creature tried to pull free, but for the first time, it couldn’t. The chains held. The Void clung to it, erasing and consuming, slowly but inexorably eating away at its manifested form.
‘You cannot destroy me.’ The creature’s voice was tight with strain now. ‘I am eternal. I am— ‘
“You are leaving.” I gritted out through clenched teeth. “That’s what you are!”
And I pushed with everything I had.
The Void surged through the chains, through the connection, into the creature itself. It howled— a sound like reality breaking— and its form began to compress, to fold in on itself, drawn inexorably toward the torn Veil at the center of the chamber.
“HE’S DOING IT!” Someone shouted. “HE’S ACTUALLY— “
The creature’s whip lashed out in every direction at once, a final desperate attempt to break free or take as many of us with it as possible. More people died— I couldn’t see how many, couldn’t spare the attention.
All I could do was push. Push with the Void, push with Harry’s ancient magic, push with every scrap of will and power and desperate determination I possessed.
The creature’s form compressed further, its flames dimming, its shadows thinning. It was being drawn back toward the Veil, back toward the boundary it had crossed, back toward the space between spaces where it belonged.
Almost. Almost.
Just a little more.
The creature’s resistance intensified. I felt it gathering itself, drawing on reserves of power that made my attempt to push it back feel like a child trying to move a mountain with their hands.
‘Insufficient.’ it said, and there was certainty in its voice now. Not mockery— just cold, absolute fact. ‘You are strong for a mortal. Remarkable, even. But I am the end of all things. I cannot be—’
“Lockhart!” I didn’t know why I was shouting his name, only that I needed help, needed something, needed—
He was already moving. Already understanding.
“Everyone!” His voice cut through the chaos with startling clarity. “Albus! Gellert! Voldemort! To me!”
The three powerful wizards converged on Lockhart’s position. Around them, the remaining fighters formed up: Sirius and Remus moving together with the fluid coordination of old friends, Akio on his kirin, Tonks with her squad of surviving Aurors, Grindelwald’s lieutenants, Voldemort’s Death Eaters.
Enemies standing together. Fighting together.
Lockhart raised his wand, and his voice rang out with absolute authority. “We push it back to the gate! All of us, together! Coordinated assault on my mark!”
“Impossible.” Grindelwald said, but he was already positioning himself. “The thing is too strong. It will—”
“Then we make it possible.” Dumbledore interrupted, his tone brooking no argument. “Because if we fail, everyone in this chamber dies. Everyone in the world dies. So we do the impossible.”
Voldemort said nothing, but his wand came up, dark magic already gathering around him like a storm.
“The boy has weakened it.” Lockhart continued, gesturing toward me. “He’s holding it with that… whatever that is. But he can’t push it back alone. We need to corral it. Force it toward the Veil. Make it retreat.”
“It will kill dozens more in the attempt.” one of Grindelwald’s people said quietly.
“Then dozens more die.” Lockhart’s voice was cold. “Better than billions. Form up. Eastern flank pushes first, then western, then center. We rotate the pressure, keep it off-balance, drive it back meter by meter.”
The creature’s whip lashed out again, and two more people fell. But the formation was already shifting, spreading out around the perimeter of the chamber, creating a loose semicircle with the Veil at the open end.
I could barely hear the commands being shouted. The Void was screaming through me now, and Harry’s ancient magic was a fire in my veins, and the two forces were tearing me apart even as they kept me anchored. My chains still held the creature, but I could feel my grip weakening.
Just hold on. I thought desperately. Just hold on a little longer.
“Eastern flank!” Lockhart’s command came. “Now!”
Twenty, maybe thirty wizards unleashed their magic simultaneously. The coordinated barrage struck the creature from one side, and though most spells washed over it harmlessly, the sheer volume of magical force pushed it back. Maybe a meter. Maybe two.
People died. The creature’s retaliation was immediate and brutal. But the eastern flank had expected casualties— they scattered the moment their volley was complete, breaking line-of-sight, making themselves harder targets.
“Western flank!”
Another volley, another push. The creature slid back another meter, closer to the Veil. Its flames were dimmer now, its form less solid. My chains still wrapped around it, the Void still eating away at its manifested presence.
More deaths. An officer I’d spoken to once during the tournament. A Death Eater whose face I recognized but whose name I’d never learned. Each death felt like a weight settling on my chest. But we couldn’t stop.
“Center force!”
This time Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Voldemort led the assault. Their combined magic was like watching titans unleash their power— blue-white light and crackling energy and deadly green curses all converging on the creature simultaneously.
It howled in pain and rage, its whip multiplying into a dozen strands that struck out blindly. Three people died in an instant. But it had been pushed back another three meters.
We were maybe fifteen meters from the Veil now. Close. So close.
But the cost. God, the cost.
Bodies littered the chamber floor. I tried not to look at them, tried not to count how many we’d lost. Tried not to think about the fact that every meter of progress was being paid for in blood.
“Eastern flank, again!”
The pattern repeated. Strike, scatter, die. Strike, scatter, die. Each cycle pushed the creature back a little further. Each cycle cost more lives.
My vision was starting to blur. The strain of channeling the Void while also containing Harry’s ancient magic was too much. I could feel something inside me beginning to crack, my soul threads stretching beyond their limits.
“Adam!” Harry’s voice in my ear, tight with strain. He was feeling it too, the massive drain of pouring his power into me. “Adam, I don’t know how much longer I can— “
“Just hold on.” I gasped. “We’re almost there. Just— “
The creature seemed to realize how close it was to the Veil. Its resistance doubled, then tripled. The next volley from the western flank barely moved it at all, and the retaliation killed eight people.
The creature’s form suddenly expanded, shadow and flame billowing outward like a tsunami. It washed over the nearest fighters before they could even attempt to shield.
Screams. So many screams.
When the darkness receded, twelve more were dead. Just… gone. Not bodies— they’d been unmade like the ones who’d knelt, erased from existence.
“Fall back!” Dumbledore’s command came. “Second ring, maintain distance!”
The formation retreated, creating more space. But now we were further from the creature, and our attacks had less impact. The carefully orchestrated push was falling apart.
We were losing momentum. And if we lost momentum, we lost everything.
“We need more power!” That was Grindelwald, his voice showing frustration for the first time. “CONCENTRATE FIRE! ALL KILLING CURSES, SIMULTANEOUS CAST ON MY— “
“No!” Dumbledore overrode him. “Too many will die in the counterattack— “
“We need to end this!” Voldemort snarled. “Before it kills us all!”
They were fracturing. The unified command structure was breaking down as the three disagreed on tactics. And while they argued, more people were dying.
I had to do something. But what? I was already channeling everything I had. My chains were wrapped around the creature as tightly as I could manage. The Void was flowing through me in quantities that should have killed me ten times over.
What more could I possibly—
The artifacts.
The thought struck me like lightning. The ritual artifacts that Grindelwald had arranged around the Veil— they were still there. Still active, their power still feeding into whatever remained of the ritual structure. The Mirror of Erised. A few remaining Time-Turners. All of them anchoring the boundary between life and death, keeping the portal stable.
If we destroyed them, the portal would destabilize. And if the portal destabilized while the creature was near it…
“THE ARTIFACTS!” I shouted, my voice raw. “DESTROY THE ARTIFACTS!“
Lockhart’s head snapped toward me, understanding flashing across his face. “The ritual anchors, he’s right—“
“No!” Grindelwald’s face went pale. “If you destabilize the portal while it’s still open, it could—”
“Could what?” Voldemort demanded. “Be worse than THIS?“
“It could tear a permanent hole between worlds!” Grindelwald shouted back. “It could— “
“Or it could suck that thing back where it came from.“ Remus interrupted, already moving toward the nearest artifact— a crystalline sphere that pulsed with sickly light. “And that’s worth the risk!”
“Protect the artifact breakers!” Lockhart’s command cut through the argument. “Everyone else, keep pressure on the creature!”
The formation split. Half continued the assault on the creature, maintaining the push toward the Veil. The other half broke away, rushing toward the ritual artifacts scattered around the chamber.
The creature saw what we were attempting. Its response was immediate and devastating.
The whip multiplied again, but this time it didn’t just strike at random targets. It went for specific people— the ones heading for the artifacts. Three Death Eaters fell before they’d crossed ten meters. An Auror made it to one of the time turners before the whip caught her, and she died with her hand reaching for the artifact.
“Shields!” Sirius commanded a small group, throwing up layers of protection around the artifact-breakers. “COVER THEM!”
Spells rained down on the creature from every direction now, a desperate attempt to keep it distracted. But it was too smart, too aware. It knew what we were trying to do, and it was prioritizing targets.
Akio reached the Mirror of Erised on his kirin, the beast’s speed allowing him to dodge two whip strikes. His wand came up, a curse forming on his lips—
The whip caught the kirin.
The creature died instantly, dissolving into ash. Akio was thrown, hitting the ground hard, his wand skittering away. He rolled, reaching for it, but the whip was already coming back around—
Tonks hit him with a Banishing Charm, shoving him out of the path of the strike. It saved his life but left the Mirror unguarded.
“I’ve got it!” One of Grindelwald’s people— a young woman with determined eyes— sprinted for the Mirror. She raised her wand, a Blasting Curse gathering at the tip—
She never got to cast it. The whip took her from behind.
This was madness. People were dying faster than we could replace them, and we’d only destroyed one artifact. At this rate—
“I’ll do it myself!” Lockhart appeared beside the Mirror in a burst of displaced air— forcing his way through the room’s anti-Apparition wards at great cost to himself. His wand moved in a complex pattern, and the Mirror shattered.
The effect was immediate. The air pressure changed, a ripple passing through the chamber like a stone dropped in still water. The portal flickered, its boundaries wavering.
The creature snarled, its attention fully on Lockhart now.
“Gilderoy!” I shouted a warning, but he was already moving.
The whip struck where he’d been standing a fraction of a second before. He Apparated with a thunderclap again, appearing next to a cluster of Time-Turners. His wand lashed out, and two of them exploded in showers of golden fragments.
Another ripple. Stronger this time. The portal’s flickering intensified, and I felt my chains— still wrapped around the creature— suddenly pull taut. The destabilization was affecting it, dragging it toward the Veil.
“Keep destroying them!” Harry shouted, his hands still on my shoulders, still feeding me his ancient magic. “It’s working!”
But Lockhart was tiring. I could see it in the way he moved, each Apparition a fraction slower than the last. And the creature had figured out his pattern.
The whip struck him as he materialized beside one of the time turners.
He managed to shield himself with a block of stone in time— barely. The impact drove him to one knee, his face going gray with pain and exhaustion. But he raised his wand anyway, forcing out the words of a Reductor Curse that struck the Time Turner dead center.
It exploded.
The portal convulsed. The archway shook, and I saw cracks forming in the stone— or in the thousands of soul threads that made up the stone. The boundary between life and death was coming apart.
My chains went rigid as the pull intensified. The creature fought, its flames blazing brighter, its form solidifying as it tried to anchor itself to our reality. But the destabilizing portal was working like a vacuum, drawing it back toward the threshold it had crossed.
“Get the last ones!” I said, gritting my teeth as I continued to struggle against this creature.
But Lockhart was down, clutching his side where the whip had grazed him. Remus was pinned behind cover, unable to reach the remaining artifact without exposing himself to the creature’s wrath. Sirius was maintaining shields around a group of injured fighters, and couldn’t leave his post.
We were so close. The creature was maybe five meters from the Veil now, being pulled inexorably backward. But without destroying the remaining artifacts, the pull wasn’t strong enough. It would break free. It would kill us all.
I felt Harry’s grip on my shoulders tighten.
“Adam.” He said quietly. “I’m going.”
“No.” The word came out flat, final. “Harry, no. You can’t— “
“Someone has to.” His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that came before doing something monumentally stupid. “And I’m the fastest one here besides Lockhart, and he’s down. My ancient magic can protect me better than normal shields. I can make it.”
“Harry— “
“Keep holding it.” He interrupted. “Don’t let go. No matter what happens to me, don’t let go.”
His hands left my shoulders.
The sudden absence of his ancient magic was like having a support beam removed. I nearly collapsed from the strain, the Void and my own remaining power barely enough to maintain the chains.
“Harry!” Sirius shouted, his voice raw with panic.
But Harry was already running.
His ancient magic blazed around him like a cloak of liquid silver, deflecting the first whip strike. The second. He dodged the third with inhuman agility, his body moving in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
Still, the whip came for him, three strands converging from different angles. His shield caught two, but the third—
It grazed his shoulder.
I saw the fabric of his robes age and disintegrate. Saw the skin beneath wither. Saw Harry’s face contort in agony. But he didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. His wand came up, and the artifact, another Time Turner, exploded into a million pieces.
The portal was tearing itself apart now. The archway shook violently, chunks of stone— of soul threads— breaking away and dissolving into nothing. The pull was massive, undeniable, dragging everything near it toward the threshold.
Including the creature.
It howled again, this time with something that might have been genuine fear. Its form was being stretched, pulled like taffy toward the Veil. My chains held it fast, preventing any escape, the Void continuing to eat away at its manifested presence.
Two meters from the portal. One meter.
“It’s going back!” Tonks shouted. “We’re actually—”
The creature’s hand shot out— impossibly fast, impossibly far— and caught the edge of the archway.
Its whip, still manifested, wrapped around the stone.
It was holding on.
The portal was pulling it, my chains were holding it, the Void was consuming it, but it was holding on with desperate strength, refusing to be dragged back across the threshold.
“No!” I poured everything I had left into the chains, trying to break its grip. But I was exhausted, depleted, running on fumes and desperation. “No, you’re going back! You don’t belong here!”
‘Perhaps.’ The creature’s voice was strained now, tight with effort. ‘Perhaps not. But if I fall, boy… if I return to the void…’
Its whip shifted, moving away from random targets, focusing on a single goal.
Harry. No!
“Harry!” Multiple voices screaming his name.
But he was too far away, too exposed, still reaching for the last cluster of artifacts. The whip came for him like a striking snake, and there was nowhere to dodge, nowhere to hide.
The whip struck.
No— it was intercepted.
Remus had jumped between Harry and the strike, his shield blazing. The whip shattered his defenses and caught him full in the chest.
He made a sound— not quite a scream, more like all the air being forced from his lungs at once. His body convulsed, aging decades in seconds, his face going gray, his hair turning white as he collapsed to his knees, seemingly dead.
But he’d bought Harry the seconds he needed.
“Remus!” Sirius cried out, agony in his voice as Harry’s curse struck the final artifact, and it exploded in a shower of magical fragments.
The portal didn’t just convulse this time.
It collapsed.
The archway shattered completely, soul threads snapping like overtaxed ropes, and the boundary between life and death tore open. The pull became irresistible, a force of nature, a black hole of metaphysical gravity that nothing could withstand.
The creature lost its grip.
It was yanked backward, dragged toward the portal, and I poured the last of my strength into the chains, helping the pull, pushing it toward the threshold with everything I had left.
Almost. Almost all the way through. Just another few seconds—
“This time.” A cold voice said from behind me. “It is the end for you.”
Voldemort.
I turned my head just enough to see him standing there, his wand clutched in his hand. His red eyes were fixed on me with something approaching disappointment.
“A shame, boy.” He said quietly. “You should have taken my offer. With power such as yours…”
“Tom, don’t—” Dumbledore’s voice came, but it was too far away.
Everyone was frozen again— Voldemort’s doing, no question.
I felt the spell hit me before I saw Voldemort cast it. A Floating Charm, which picked me up in the air.
I had a few seconds to understand what was happening.
Then I turned to Sirius, the closest person to me. Our eyes met across the chaos, across the blood and death and magic-scarred stone. I saw his face contort with horror, and saw him struggle against his magical bonds. I imagined if he were free, he’d have been reaching out as if he could somehow catch me from that distance.
“Stay alive, you and Harry.“ I said. The words came out strangely calm, like I was giving him a list of chores that I’d done instead of last words.
Voldemort flung me backward with irresistible power toward the portal, the spell holding everyone in place shattering. People surged forward. Harry and Sirius screamed—”ADAM!“— their voices breaking on my name.
But it was too late.
I hit the event horizon of the collapsing portal, and reality came apart.
The last thing I thought was her name.
Helena.
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