The circle drank.
Taliban pests' screams of anguish tore at the air inside the boundary, high and raw until they broke into animal noise. Corvus kept his feet planted in the conductor's ring and held the flow steady. The array answered him with greedy precision. Runes on the ground brightened, then dulled, then brightened again, as if the earth itself kept trying to blink them out.
A tremor rolled through the stone under his boots. Not the sharp jolt of an explosion or the clean shudder of shifting rock, but a warning that moved like a hand under a table, pushing up and pushing again. The air went thin for a heartbeat. When he inhaled, it tasted wrong. Not smoke or dust, something older and wrong, definitely wrong.
The planet hated this.
He did not need a lecture from a Druid to understand the language. The ley current under the ritual bucked against his grip. Ambient mana around the perimeter pulled away as if it had been burned. A line of pebbles at the edge of the circle rattled in place, then hopped twice, as though the ground tried to shake the geometry loose. Even the wind refused to behave. It pressed from the south for a moment, died, then returned from the west, swirling around the boundary without crossing it.
Corvus tightened his focus. He did not let the backlash climb his wrists.
Inside the sacrifice ring, men clawed at the invisible wall until their fingers shredded. Some fired their rifles into nothing, the bullets slapping the barrier and dropping to the ground like pebbles. One tried a radio, screaming into the handset until the cord snapped from the strain. It did not matter. The circle did not care about their tools. It did not care about their prayers.
The third circle, where the outcome should form, began to answer.
A thread of crimson light appeared above its centre, thin as hair. It thickened with every death. Everybody who failed inside the boundary collapsed inward, skin and muscle losing shape as if the world had withdrawn its permission for them to exist. Ash swirled low, caught by the runes, then swept into the third ring in a steady spiral.
Corvus fed the array until the screaming thinned and eventually died.
He did not stop at the men who shot aimlessly. He did not stop at the men who tried to run, and failed miserably. The circle did not distinguish between a commander and a cook. It took even the goats, because they were alive and inside the boundary, and the boundary was law with a simple logic. All life within is labelled as sacrifice. Regardless of the relation between the pest and the innocent goats.
When the last pulse of life vanished, the stronghold did not become quiet.
It became empty, like a void.
The air inside the circle felt scraped clean. The ground looked bleached, not by sunlight, but by absence. Where there should have been insects, there was nothing. Where there should have been weeds fighting for space, there was bare dirt, grey and tired.
Corvus released his grip on the flow and began to dismantle the array.
He did not tear it away. He took it apart the way a careful man dismantled a weapon he respected. One rune at a time, one binding line after another, he unhooked the logic of the circle from the earth. The tremors eased as the last anchor loosened, but the wrongness did not leave. It sat in his chest like a stone.
He looked at the ruin, at the clean death he had made, and listened.
The discontent remained.
It was not guilt. He had no use for it. He had done what he came to do. The question was mechanical, not moral.
Was it the act of taking a life, or something else entirely? It could not be murder, as these pests were all murderers.
Corvus crouched and pressed two fingers to the dead soil. A faint, stubborn vibration met his touch, as if the land had a pulse but did not want him to feel it. He pulled his hand back.
The planet wanted something returned. Something in exchange for the life force he plucked.
He had read enough of the oldest beliefs to recognise the shape of it. The shamanic line, the Druid line, the same idea in different languages. Life went into the earth. Earth gave back life. Magic was not separate from that wheel. It was the axle.
He rose and drew a new array at the same spot.
No grand geometry this time. No hunger runes. No death anchors. A purification circle, simple and sharp. He etched the lines with controlled elemental magic, careful not to cut deep into the ley current. The runes settled into place without the violent resistance of the sacrifice array. That alone told him he had chosen the right tool.
He uncorked three vials of Phoenix Tears.
The liquid caught the light even under a bruised sky. He poured it along the main lines of the array, not in one careless splash, but in measured arcs, letting each rune drink what it needed. The tears soaked into the grooves and shone, then dimmed, then shone again as the circle took shape.
Corvus fed mana into the pattern.
He kept it clean. No black edge. No death hook or death magic. Only life and plant magic went to the array with a tight tether to his reserves, so it would not spill out and become waste.
The first change came in his mouth. The wrong taste loosened, as if someone had opened a window.
The second change came in the air. The pressure around the boundary eased. The wind stopped circling like a trapped animal and moved normally again, brushing across the ruin instead of skating around it.
The third change came from the ground.
A thin crack opened in the dead soil at the centre of the purification circle. Not a fissure or any kind of damage, a seam. The land exhaled through it, a faint warmth rising, steady and dull like the heat of a hearth that had been covered and left to breathe. Corvus held the flow, watched the runes brighten, and continued the chant.
He did not make it poetic. It was exact and practical. The intention was clear, he wanted to pay the nature her due.
As the ritual reached its midpoint, the tremor under his boots stopped. Not softened, stopped. The hair on his arms settled. The wrongness in his chest retreated by degrees, a pressure releasing one notch at a time.
By the end of the ritual, the first blades of grass pushed through the grey dirt inside the circle.
They were small, pathetic little lines of green, but they were life.
Corvus stared at them for a long moment, then nodded once.
He moved to a second patch, a few metres away, where the sacrifice array had left the soil dead. He repeated the purification circle without haste. The third patch was the same. Each time, the feeling of resentment he got eased faster, as if the land learned that he was giving something back and stopped bracing for another wound.
When he finished the third circle, the wrongness was gone.
He stood in the ruin and let the conclusion settle.
Souls were not only fuel for rituals. They were part of the cycle. When he ripped them out in bulk and sealed the life force into a stone, he broke the local balance. The planet did not punish him out of morality. It pushed back because the exchange was one-sided.
What he discovered was that mana, or the magical power, could close the loop. Nature accepted the exchange. The rate was not an issue for him with his deep reserves.
It did not need to be human life returning to soil. It needed the right kind of energy, offered in the right shape, to replace what had been taken. That was why old rites mattered. Not because a bonfire pleased some imaginary spirit, but because living Magicals gathered and fed the land in a controlled way. Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane. Names that changed by tongue and century, but the act stayed the same. A circle, a chant, a measured offering of magic as a clean offering to be given back to nature.
Truly, Gaia, as a symbol, was the best gardener. At least on the business side, yet she was not the best accountant. Muggles had devastated the balance of nature. As said, best gardener and worst accountant.
Corvus filed the insight away.
Later, he would decide whether this meant he needed to purify every site after every harvest, or whether there was a more efficient approach. A network of small circles, perhaps. A schedule. A rotational offering.
He turned to the place where the third ring was.
The crystal hovered above it now, fully formed. Palm-sized, dense, and unwilling in a strange way. It did not radiate heat. It radiated pressure, like a sealed container that did not want to be opened. Unlike Flamel's red stone, his had deeper crimson hues, and it looked as if smoke was dancing inside the crystal, trapped and moving with slow intent.
Corvus lifted it with a careful grip.
It sat in his palm with a weight that did not match its size. He rolled it between thumb and forefinger and watched the inner smoke twist, as if it noticed the motion.
Well, the ingredient he used was not the top notch, but he was not a racist to discriminate against life force. No, to him, all human beings were equal. Equally sacrificial. Pest and Scum were more so.
He slipped the stone into a warded pouch at his belt. A quick twist of his fingers set a seal over it, not to protect the stone, but to protect everything else from it.
Corvus rose into the air. Flight was one of the best things he replicated. Extreme speed and Agility accompanied flight.
He did not look back at the ruin. The purification circles had left thin lines of green as proof, and he had work waiting.
He turned toward the next stronghold.
The world had given him a new rule, and he had accepted it. If the planet demanded balance, he would give balance and keep taking what he needed.
He moved east, fast and silent, a dark shape against a sky that had already learned to fear him.