Day seven did not feel like a war anymore. It felt like a clean-up.
The first shift came from across the Atlantic.
In the high chamber of MACUSA, the air stayed still. Wards hummed under the floor, not loud, just constant. The members did not whisper. They watched.
Akingbade's delegate stood at the centre line of polished stone, chin lifted, packet sealed, arrogance intact. The sort of confidence you wore when you still believed the world had rules you could hide behind.
The President did not rise. A quill moved once over parchment on the desk in front of her. The sound carried.
"You have one week," she stated, calm enough to make it worse. "You and everyone under your banner should leave Magical America's territory. You are not welcome. You are not legal. You are not our problem; we have already paid a heavy price to keep the old rules intact. There is no board to play on anymore."
The delegate opened his mouth.
A wand turned in the hand of a senior Auror behind the President. The air tightened. The delegate's tongue stopped working.
The chamber did not react. No gasps, no fuss. Pure and simple procedure for someone who overstayed their welcome.
The President's gaze stayed on the delegate's eyes. "Do not mistake restraint for fear. You are being allowed to leave because it is less tedious than caging you."
The delegate's face reddened. His jaw worked, useless.
A clerk stepped forward, handed him a copy of the order, then stepped back as if the paper could stain her.
In Ottawa, Magical Canada followed within hours. The statement was polite. The Auror escort to the border was not.
In Mexico City, the Conclave chose the same line. A week to leave and neutrality declared without taking any sides.
South America watched all of that and refused to play.
Ministers and Conclave leaders signed parchments, shook hands, then locked doors. A new bloc announced neutrality to all sides. No speeches about morality. Only survival wrapped in flags.
-
The second shift came from Mundane Asia.
Iran and Afghanistan fell on day six.
Not after a long campaign, not after heroic stands. They collapsed the moment their own people understood there was an open door and a hand ready to help on the other side.
In Tehran, the old regime tried to keep its voice on the air and its legal violence high. Their Air Defenses were gone without warning on the first night. What was left were sitting ducks in the form of Revolutionary Guard posts and targets painted with army colours.
The leaders who had declared war were taken by their own people. They were arrested in hours. Executed publicly hanged from the cranes they loved so much in hours after that.
The scenes were distributed to the global media. The main streets of Tehran were filled with hanged bodies from bridges and cranes. Guards, soldiers, clergyman and political figures. The leader who was living in an underground shelter was dragged from his hair and beard and hanged from a crane in front of the Majles-e Shora-ye Eslami at Baharestan Square. Dozens of cranes were there, and they were all 'occupied'.
People were throwing stones at the corpses. Arcturus watched the scene for a while.
"You can take a monkey out of the jungle." He murmured to himself.
-
The screen blinked.
The familiar face of a newsreader had a smile this time. The broadcast was announcing a bright future with the records of the streets and leaders of the former regime, or what was left of them. At some point, throwing stones did not satisfy people, and they started to shoot.
The newsreader invited people back to a free country. Before ending the news, he added one simple line.
"Do not shelter forces of the former regime."
The streets responded. A witch hunt began to find these people.
-
When the smoke cleared, the Magical Conclave of the region stepped into daylight.
In 1979, when they tried to contact the regime, they were captured, tortured and executed. Since then, the conclave was silent.
A young witch stood in the Baharestan Square with a paper and a wand visible in her free hand.
"Persia," she shouted.
The name moved through the crowd like a release.
"No official religion. No clerical rule."
A man shouted something about faith.
She turned her head slightly, eyes sharp. "If you want gods, choose them in your home. Not in the streets of Persia."
Behind her, another mage traced a simple symbol in the air. A sun formed above the crowd, steady and bright.
"Mithra," he stated.
A second symbol followed, flowing like water.
"Anahita."
No demand to bow. No promise of heaven. Just a return to older names and a refusal to be owned.
Afghanistan did not get a square. They got camps.
Refugees were split between Persia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, with the condition of education that did not exist.
A Turkmen officer spoke to a group of families while a woman in plain robes watched the crowd with a patient stare.
"You will learn," the officer told them. "You will not bring the poison with you."
A man tried to argue, words tumbling.
A woman in a burqa punched his throat. His voice died after the kind notice.
"We are not negotiating misconceptions," She started, taking her burqa off; some other woman followed her example.
The map changed anyway.
Afghan land was divided. Borders redrawn. The new administration stamped out old names. Some called it justice. Others called it a conquest.
The Alliance called it containment.
-
Africa shifted next.
North Africa was already broken by the seventh day.
Instead of opening numerous fronts from Mauritania to Eritrea, the Alliance chose simplicity.
They broadcast the warning.
Move north. You have forty-eight hours. Aid corridors open. Anyone remaining chooses it.
The message looped on every frequency they could reach, repeated in French, Arabic, Local languages and English.
Then the forty eight hours ended.
Father Manard stood over a workbench that should not have existed in an active warzone. Rune plates lay in rows. Missile casings rested in cradles of charmed steel. The enchantments crawled when you stared too long.
A technician nearby swallowed, then tried to speak like a man clinging to his profession.
"That guidance system has to be connected, sir," he began.
Manard's eyes lifted. His smile stayed friendly. His gaze did not.
The technician's throat closed. He looked away.
Manard ran a finger along a line of runes, satisfied.
The launch board lit.
The first salvo rose.
And the belt from Mauritania to Eritrea did not simply burn.
It vanished. It was hard to describe the result. Not rubble, not even ruins. Fields full of craters.
Nothing was left from the targeted areas.
Structures, roads, depots, cities, towns. Cleared down to nothing that could be looted, reused, or hidden in.
The Alliance did not pretend it was mercy. They also did not pretend it was pointless.
You did not rebuild on rot. The field must be clear and clean.
-
ICW ran out of places to stand.
They went to Cape Town with the conclaves still under their control and the bitter pride of a body that still believed its badge mattered.
Akingbade watched the horizon from a high room.
"They are not even trying to hide who they are anymore. This world has become too small," he murmured.
It was on purpose; Corvus was letting some of the Magicals be seen or recorded. People had already started to ask questions about these figures on debate shows, news channels and talk shows. Alliance 'leaked' about some new type of energy that can be used by specially trained personnel, and that did the trick for people to fill in the blanks.
Back to the remains of ICW, a staffer asked the obvious question. "They will not reach us this far south, right, sir?"
Akingbade's eyes shifted, hard.
"I will not let them."
He turned, gathered his inner circle, and pointed north.
"Gather our forces, Aurors, Hit Wizards, and available personnel who can fight. We will strike first. We will make them bleed. Make them doubt."
-
The first ICW assault hit the Alliance perimeter with Bombarda Maximas and arrogance.
They chose a staging yard of prefabricated hangars, rune pylons, supply lines laid out like veins.
The first explosions deformed steel. Wards flared, held, then failed under the stuttering ripple of hundreds of spells.
For three breaths, the camp panicked.
Not because it was losing. Because it was surprising.
Then the air snapped.
Gellert Grindelwald arrived without announcement.
Unlike his usual flare there was no dramatic entrance. The pressure changed. That was enough.
Vinda appeared at his shoulder, close enough to touch, far enough to fight.
Their wands rose in mirrored arcs.
Sand lifted into columns like fists. Stone softened under ICW boots, then hardened again around ankles.
A line of attackers tried to Apparate out and slammed into a ward net that had not been there a second ago.
Gellert tightened the net with a flick.
Vinda's motion stayed small; she focused on single targets.
Gellert moved again, and a dozen enemy wands snapped in half as if they were twigs.
That was when the Alliance units moved.
Sirius Black was one of the unit commanders. He moved in with practised confidence.
His unit formed without shouting. Twenty witches and wizards, ten Hit Wizards, three healers woven into the centre like nerves.
Nestborn fighters took point by habit of training, not bravado. Their shield work did not wobble. Their spacing did not break.
Sirius lifted two fingers.
A line of Hit Wizards raised enchanted carbines. No muzzle flash. No loud report. The runes on the barrels drank the sound and pushed the force forward.
Two ICW fighters dropped before they understood what hit them.
Sirius's wand followed. A silver sheet rose, caught a curse, and threw it back with contempt.
A healer stepped in, touched a Hit Wizard's sleeve, and sealed a burn before the man finished swearing.
"Stay upright," the healer ordered.
The Hit Wizard nodded once and rejoined the line.
-
Bellatrix hit the right flank with her unit like she had been waiting her whole life for that moment.
Her wand danced.
An enemy shield formed a fraction late.
Bellatrix drew an ornate revolver from a thigh holster, black iron with filigree that looked almost ceremonial. She fired once.
The shield charm shattered.
The round punched through the collarbone and spun the wizard.
Bellatrix laughed, sharp and delighted, then finished him with a curse that left nothing to bury.
A second attacker tried to take her from the side.
She stepped aside, and another Nestborn hit the attacker with a lightning curse. The unit continued while the attacker was learning how conductive a human body is.. rather was.
Bellatrix's heel came down on the downed ICW hitwizard's fingers.
"You brought a stick," she told him, voice bright with contempt. "Cute."
Then her wand moved with her whispered Crucio. "Old habits.." She murmured while watching the unlucky man struggle. Her unit advanced; they were used to her antics. Especially after Iran.
-
Abernathy, Carrow, McDuff, and Nagel fought as a team, not a crowd. They refused to command their own units, nor did they want to add anyone else to their team.
McDuff dropped to one knee, braced an enchanted rifle, and punched holes through shields that should have held.
Abernathy moved with a compact shotgun, short barrel, runes etched into the wood grip. He fired once into a curse cloud.
The cloud turned into steam and fell.
His wand snapped up. A chain of blue light wrapped an enemy's legs and dragged him backwards into a crater.
Nagel tossed a metal disk into it after a moment.
It unfolded into a rune plate.
The next Bombarda Maxima hit the field and died as if it had struck water.
Carrow stepped through the fading blast, raised her wand, and turned a broken hangar beam into a spear.
It punched straight through a conjurer's chest.
No pause, no applause, they shifted, covered each other, completed each other's attacks and advanced.
-
In the centre, Arcturus Black moved like a judge with a pen.
Sigibert stayed half a step to his right, eyes cold, magic quieter than the rest.
Grigori stayed half a step to his left, grin sharp, pistol heavy in his hand.
Arcturus drew a line in the air.
The ground opened in a neat slit. A dozen ICW fighters fell into it.
Sand closed over them.
Grigori fired his Pernach twice, then laughed.
"Remember Prague," he called.
Arcturus did not look away from the field. "I remember you drinking my fire whiskey and blaming goblins."
Grigori's grin widened. "It was not worth it. You should've got Vodka"
Sigibert exhaled through his nose, almost amused.
He raised his wand.
An ICW fighter turned to cast.
His eyes went blank.
His wand lowered.
He walked away into the magical fire, calm as a sleepwalker.
No one chased or warned him. He would not return.
-
The ICW line broke into knots. They tried to regroup. They tried to retreat south. They found the edge of the erased belt.
There was nowhere to go.
Artillery and Rocket fire behind, units of Alliance wizards in front of them.
They stopped as if the world had ended in front of them. They kneeled and raised their hands in the universal language of surrender. They were optimistic. Thinking they will be returned, exchanged or anything else. They could not know they would end in the third team of the Nest.
The Alliance commanders converged.
Sirius tightened his unit's arc. Nestborn fighters formed shield nets that snapped into place like engineered structures.
Bellatrix paced at the flank, eyes bright, still laughing under her breath.
McDuff reloaded without looking.
Abernathy's shotgun hung at his hip. His wand stayed ready.
Arcturus stood in the centre, still and absolute.
Arcturus nodded, and the new test subjects were stunned, ready to be sent back.
-
Gellert lifted both hands.
His wand hovered between his fingers as if it were optional.
Blue fire poured from the tip, shaped itself, then formed dragons made of shrieking flames.
They were not illusions. They were intent given form.
The dragons surged south, diving and rising again as if the empty land itself was fuel.
They roared as they flew, and the sound carried like a warning.
Gellert watched them go with satisfied stillness.
"Let ICW deal with it this time."