Wave after wave of agonized screams echoed through the valley deep in the Appalachian Mountains, making this ominous night even more sinister.
Inside the former MACUSA site, vampire after vampire struck with fatal blows burst into flames and turned to ash, swept up by turbulent air currents like columns of smoke.
"You need to strike hard, Amelia! Harder than that!"
Suddenly firing a sharp silver light from his wand, Sirius's spell struck a vampire's chest. The creature stumbled backward with a howl of pain before bursting into flames. He turned his head to rapidly assess the tactical situation around them.
Seeing Amelia beside him still using the Disarming Charm against enemies, still clinging to non-lethal spells even in this desperate combat, he shouted loudly over the noise of battle:
"These vampires don't intend to let us leave alive! We must completely incapacitate them! The Disarming Charm alone won't work against creatures this determined to kill us!"
An incoming wave of curse lights emitted blinding brilliance, as if a high-powered searchlight had suddenly appeared nearby. The intensity of the combined attack made Amelia instinctively squint, her eyes watering from the painful glare.
When these deadly curses struck the enormous magical barrier protecting their group, the impact was tremendous. It was like violent rain washing over a lake's surface during a thunderstorm, like hail pounding against glass.
The smooth, transparent shield immediately showed numerous depressions. Cracks spider-webbed out from the multiple impact points, the protective spell was visibly weakening under the constant assault.
"I understand, I just—"
The dense, sharp screeching of spells colliding mid-air, of vampires shrieking as they died in flames, of metal supports groaning and tearing under magical stress, all of it not only assaulted Amelia's eardrums with physical pain but also hammered persistently against her stretched nerves.
In the hall in front of her eyes, in this abandoned building transformed into an arena of slaughter, vampires died wailing every single second. Some disintegrated mid-scream, their bodies turning to ash. Others collapsed clutching mortal wounds, blood pooling beneath them. A few simply vanished in bursts of magical fire, leaving nothing behind.
Life had become the cheapest commodity in war, worth nothing at all, spent as carelessly as loose change. War's brutal cruelty was displayed plainly before Amelia's shocked eyes in all its horror, stripped of any glory or nobility the history books might say.
This was deeply different from being with Bryan in that Muggle coffee shop, where his overwhelming presence had made violence seem almost distant, controlled, almost gentle.
The constant fear and urgent panic of potentially losing one's life every second, of seeing death approach from multiple angles simultaneously, of hearing companions cry out—it made one instinctively go mad, lose reason and restraint.
The civilized mind, trained in laws and ethics, broke down under such unrelenting pressure. The only thought remaining in the conscious mind became primitive: to make anyone who dared wave a wand at you fall, by any means necessary, with any spell available.
And this was war, stripped of all pretense and nobility and romantic notions.
But her pupils, contracted to their absolute limit in shock and horror, still revealed grief and pain—a reluctance to take living beings' lives, even though these vampires were indeed guilty of heinous crimes.
BOOM!
After the deafening roar came the teeth-grating, nails-on-chalkboard sound of twisting steel and cracking stone.
Under many horrified gazes from both sides of the conflict, the battered, dilapidated hall finally couldn't hold itself any longer. The building had been abandoned for years, weakened by time and weather. Now, scarred with fresh curse damage and walls blackened by magical fire, it reached its breaking point.
After support pillars collapsed one by one like dominoes, the massive circular dome far above them began to twist. The metal framework distorted with sounds like screaming animals, concrete fractured with sound like gunshots, and entire sections of ceiling material broke free from their moorings.
With heart-palpitating whistling sounds that promised crushing death to anyone beneath them, thick steel beams crashed down toward the battlefield below.
Many vampires, crowded densely together in their attack formation as they pressed their attack on the Auror barriers, couldn't avoid the falling debris in time despite their supernatural speed and reflexes. They looked up too late, tried desperately to scatter but found themselves trapped by their own numbers.
Several were crushed into pulp by the heavy beams falling with unstoppable force, their bodies flattened with sickening crunches that made even hardened Aurors flinch. Their blood pooled in spreading trickles on the ground, running between broken stones toward the ritual pool!
By the pool's edge, maintaining his position despite the chaos erupting around him and the building literally falling apart, the fang containing most of the legendary vampire ancestor's power continued to pulse above the churning liquid. Under Graves's focused magical interference, it rapidly merged its essence into the pool.
Above the pool, blazing blood-red lightning nearly formed a plasma sea, its erupting red light echoing the crimson moon on the horizon, dyeing the entire mountain range red.
The pool's water level was visibly descending. As the surface lowered, a nauseating, supremely evil magical power gradually boiled beneath the liquid. This force hadn't yet emerged into the world but was already affecting both sides in the hall's battle.
Whether these vampires or the Aurors within magical barriers, all forgot their nearly depleted magic and attacked enemies recklessly. Even Sirius's gray eyes began flashing with violent red light.
"Kill these vile vampires! Kill them all!"
"They've brought shame to the Department! Death to traitors and their allies!"
Some Aurors with weaker mental resistance, including Amelia were affected most severely by the corrupting influence radiating from the pool. They shouted angrily with voices that didn't quite sound like their own.
Several actually wanted to rush out of the protective magical barriers to engage in even more brutal close combat with the vampires, to tear at them with bare hands if necessary, to feel their enemies' blood on their skin.
Fortunately—
Ethereal, otherworldly music suddenly drifted down from somewhere above the hall. The phoenix song was achingly beautiful.
The magic contained in Fawkes's melody dispersed the Aurors' magically-induced murderous desires like morning sun burning away fog, clearing their minds and restoring their sense of self.
Sirius, shaking his head as clarity returned and the red tint faded from his vision, grabbed Amelia roughly by the arm just as she was about to leave the barrier's protection.
She fought against his grip for a moment, snarling like an animal, before her eyes cleared and recognition returned. He pulled her back forcefully to safety behind the shimmering shield, then shouted gratefully to Fawkes perched on a twisted steel beam:
"Thank you, Fawkes! Your timing was perfect!"
Selena and Uriel, located in the other two barrier formations with their respective groups of Aurors spread across the battlefield, also showed expressions of relief after disaster narrowly averted.
Several Aurors in their groups had been on the verge of suicidal charges. They looked respectfully at Fawkes. Then they directed their worried gazes toward the blood pool radiating increasingly potent and disturbing magic.
After fierce fighting, the vampires had suffered catastrophic losses beyond what anyone had anticipated. Bodies and ash littered the floor in shocking quantities, piled in corners, scattered across every surface. But a rough glance showed about half of their original forces still remained.
While the Aurors had sustained no actual casualties yet, their magic was severely depleted. Most could barely maintain a shield charm, let alone mount an offensive that would break through.
At this rate, with their magical reserves nearly exhausted and the vampires still numerous, they probably couldn't break through the remaining creatures' desperate blockade to stop Graves.
Wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, Sirius looked at Amelia's pale, exhausted face. Then he glanced at the many Department Aurors behind him panting heavily, leaning on each other for support to remain standing, some sitting on the ground with their backs against the barrier.
He immediately made an accurate tactical judgment:
"Fawkes!"
Sirius shouted again to the phoenix circling over their head. "We probably need reinforcements immediately! If you could bring Bryan here—"
CRACK!
At that precise moment, deafening thunder suddenly sounded from nowhere. Not from storm clouds but from the void itself.
The blood pool instantly burst with blood-red light so intense it obscured everything in everyone's vision, turning the world into a crimson blur. The brightness was painful, forcing eyes closed, leaving afterimages even through closed lids.
Pressure like being in an abyss tens of thousands of feet deep, like the weight of an entire ocean pressing down on a single point, crashed over everyone in the hall. The force was tremendous, irresistible, crushing.
Many exhausted Aurors directly collapsed to their knees with cries of pain, unable to stand against the supernatural weight pressing on their shoulders, their chests, their very souls!
In a trance, his vision swimming and distorting from the overwhelming pressure, Sirius seemed to see a hideous, terrifying sea of blood appear before him.
Countless corpses floated in it, bloated and pale, bobbing on crimson waves that had no shore. The vision was horrifyingly similar to the Inferi lake Voldemort had created in that cave years ago, the nightmare place Bryan had destroyed!
"It's done."
Morgans could withstand this pressure, but when he saw the young, handsome face emerging from the nearly dried blood pool, he voluntarily prostrated himself, trembling all over with excitement like a pilgrim reaching a holy shrine after years of desperate pilgrimage.
Finally complete. The resurrection had succeeded.
Graves's wand drooped. He looked down at the vampire in the pool's bottom, suspended slightly above the remaining puddles of blood in expensive medieval noble garments.
He could feel the evil magic hidden in this beautiful shell, could sense power like raging seas and wild waves barely contained beneath that perfect exterior. The force made his heart throb uncontrollably, even generating an almost irresistible impulse to flee, to run as far and as fast as possible from this creature.
The blood pool finally showed its bottom after all the liquid had been absorbed into the ritual, into the body, into whatever was being born. Bathed in the blood-red moonlight streaming through the ruined roof, the bewitching vampire's tightly closed eyes began to tremble slightly.
The powerful magic he radiated was so intense it even made the space around him slightly distort and blur.
One by one, like a wave of submission spreading through their ranks, the vampires stopped attacking the Aurors completely.
Like Morgans, they prostrated themselves with varying degrees of grace and reverence. Some fell to their knees elegantly, others flat on their faces in complete submission. They piously welcomed the 'true lord' who could lead them to an unrestricted free life, back to the mortal world!
The Aurors seemed doomed to defeat. The vampires were finally about to achieve their ambition.
The invisible yet tangible pressure silenced everyone in the hall. Both sides waited with bated breath, some in hope and others in dread for another demon to return to the world.
But then, in the quiet hall, an icy shout suddenly rang out:
"Avada Kedavra!"
It was Graves!
His wand, which had been hanging limply at his side, suddenly rose with violent speed. Then it struck down sharply in the classic motion of the Killing Curse. The green light blooming from the tip obscured Morgans's vision as he looked up in shock from his prostrated position on the ground.
Then the light in his crimson eyes rapidly faded like candles being extinguished one by one. His bewildered and desperately unwilling face turned toward the cold-expressioned Graves standing above him, lips squirming a few times as if trying to form words.
THUD—
The falling body hit the ground with a heavy sound, splashing up several crystalline blood droplets that caught the red moonlight. They reflected Graves's indifferent, cold gaze like tiny mirrors, and also reflected the dumbfounded faces visible throughout the now silent, pin-drop-quiet hall.
Graves had killed Morgans—killed the true leader of these vampires, his own ally?!
What was happening? What could this possibly mean? Had Graves suddenly repented at the final moment, had some attack of conscience struck him when faced with the reality of what he'd done?
Half a minute passed in stunned silence before Sirius was the first to recover his wits, shaking off the shock that had frozen him. His gray eyes were filled with confusion and disbelief, his mind racing to understand the play.
In his distraction, he didn't notice that the fang from Morgans, the one that Bryan had given him as a tracking device had quietly left his pocket without any conscious summons.
It rose slowly amid the rustling ash and debris floating through the air, levitating through the chaos. It floated steadily to Fawkes perched on a collapsed steel beam.
Fawkes, whose eyes had turned azure glanced at the purple-glowing fang approaching him. There was no surprise in his expression. Only solemnity flashed through those eyes.
Ancient and evil incantations began flowing through the quiet hall. Graves was enveloped in dark radiance that clung to him like oil.
As he continuously waved his wand in increasingly complex patterns, he seemed to be enduring tremendous physical pain. His face was twisted and fierce, drenched in cold sweat that ran down his temples and neck.
Yet despite his suffering, his spellcasting movements remained perfectly fluid and precise, as if he'd practiced them thousands upon thousands of times, until they'd become muscle memory that could be executed even through unbearable pain.
As Graves made his final wand movement, intense pain made him uncontrollably roar. That shriek was filled with such raw agony as if he'd been struck by a powerful Cruciatus Curse and held under its effects for far too long. The sound made even hardened Aurors flinch, and made Amelia physically tremble with horror.
The dark radiance surrounding Graves became even deeper, more substantial and oppressive. It transformed into dense black fog flashing with internal lightning.
Then something extraordinary happened: a pearlescent glow leaped from his body like a living thing. It followed his wand's final direction, obeying his command, floating through the air to fall into the vampire ancestor's shell floating in the blood pool.
Fawkes's azure pupils blazed with bright light as if witnessing some extraordinarily wondrous phenomenon.
And miles away, in the World Trade Center hotel, in a room that had been still and quiet for hours, Bryan sat motionless in deep meditation. His fingers had been interlaced into a fist supporting his chin for so long they'd gone numb, circulation cut off.
Now they slowly opened as he processed information.
His closed eyes opened, revealing an unimaginably deep purple gaze that flashed with heart-palpitating ghostly light.
"A Horcrux..."
With a low murmur, Bryan slowly stood up.
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