Corvus inhaled deeply and rose from the bed in Grimmauld Place.
Two out of four, Shadow Tendrils and Soul Drain, were absorbed. In another two weeks, he would be ready to devour the soul shard of an elder. That thought sat in his mind like a blade laid on a table.
For now, though, he would test what he had earned.
His presence vanished from the bedroom without noise or flare. Grimmauld Place returned to stillness as if he had never been there.
-
The Middle East still held small pockets of resistance.
They were not armies, more of clusters of men led by clergy, local organisers, preachers with too much certainty and too little sense. Twenty men here. Fifty there. A room full of grievance and inherited slogans, trying to pretend they were the resistance against evil.
Shadows watched all of them. Closely enough to map every contact, every meeting, every cousin who carried notes, and every donor who believed cash made them the puppet masters. Such controlled groups were useful for times when scapegoats were needed. Hence, Corvus was keeping them under surveillance.
Tonight, some of those groups would stop existing.
He appeared in Syria, in the courtyard of a large villa on the outskirts of the small city of Douma.
The sun was low. Heat still clung to the stone. The evening air carried dust, sweat, and meat smoke from a kitchen that had expected the men to survive long enough to eat.
Over forty-five men stood or sat in the courtyard, clustered around their leader. Plastic chairs, local rugs and low tables were the decoration. And of course old AKs were stacked near the walls like props waiting for courage. Without that rifle, a person would not understand which hemisphere he was on.
They had been talking about the city, about the region, about the world. Complaining that too much had changed too quickly. Complaining that evil magicians were fooling the ignorant believers with their healers. Complaining that settlements had been secured and that the old world was crumbling under their watch.
Their leader had organised attacks and fed rebellion with the authority of a commander who believed his voice was proof of truth.
Now Corvus stood in the centre of the courtyard and let them see him.
The leader turned first. The rest followed and took their positions to the left and right of their leader.
His frame carried the softness of a man who had not missed many meals; he had a trimmed beard, wearing a white kandura, and the posture of someone used to speaking while others nodded. He stood with confidence as no other magician appeared. Their numbers were enough to slaughter this kafir.
"Come, infidel. Come, sinner." He gestured in a good mood.
His voice carried across the courtyard with certainty.
"It is a sign," he announced to the men. "The cursed come to us on their own."
Three men standing behind him shifted silently.
The disguise peeled off them like wet paper. Their height increased like the cursed ones from Europe. Their shoulders broadened, faces lost the familiarity of local men, and their faces stood hidden behind the masks of Shadow agents.
They faced Corvus and bowed. Corvus nodded to his Shadows, and they vanished as plumes of black smoke, pulled upward and gone in a blink.
The leader's confidence faltered. He checked the other men to make sure there were no more traitors. The moment passed, and his arrogance returned with a sigh of relief.
He straightened his posture, looked at Corvus, standing alone in the middle of the yard, and smirked. All they needed to do was take the wooden stick from him, and he would become no different than a defenceless little girl.
Over forty against one. Corvus tilted his head slightly and let his tendrils loose.
They unfolded from his back in absolute silence.
Darkness spilt into the world and shaped itself into vast, angelic wings made from living shadow. Thick tendrils rose and curved behind him in two great arcs, each strand moving with eerie control. Their upper lengths drifted like smoke. While their lower tips touched the courtyard stone and pooled there like black liquid.
Violet and crimson pulses moved inside them in slow flashes, enough to make every man in the yard question what they thought a wing should look like.
Corvus started to rise from the ground.
The pooled tips of the tendrils spread wider over the stone.
The leader stared, and so did the rest.
-
The leader frowned; the cursed kafir before him stopped being a man and became an answer he had never prepared for. He was floating in the air like an angel. But it was wrong.
The wings were wrong and magnificent at the same time. Not anything a sane man should have been able to name. Thick tendrils curved left and right behind the black-robed shape, each strand alive, each one flashing from time to time with purple and crimson like distant lightning trapped inside storm clouds.
His first thought was a question. Was it time for judgment? Did heaven send an angel to help their righteous cause?
No, that could not be. Otherwise, the traitors would not show respect. Also, the colour of the wings was ruining the world.
They were black, his throat dried.
Around him, his men forgot to breathe, forgot the rifles by the wall, forgot the rehearsed speeches about resistance and righteousness. One of them whispered a prayer. Another took one step back. A third dropped his cup and did not seem to notice when tea spread over the tiles.
The figure in the air did not speak.
Then, out of nowhere, the tendrils struck.
There was no warning scream, no wooden stick and strange words of the magicians, no visible curse crossing distance. The pooled ends on the ground shot forward and hardened in the same instant.
Their speed was obscene. Black points became spears. Men died to them before they understood they had been attacked.
One was lifted by the chest and slammed into the villa wall so hard the stone cracked behind him. Two more were skewered through the stomach and shoulder in the same breath. A fourth turned to run, and a tendril entered through his back, drove through him, then pinned him high against a column.
The courtyard erupted in fear and confusion. Into half-formed shouts and bodies trying to choose between ducking, drawing, or fleeing.
Their choice did not matter. More tendrils flashed forward. They pierced again and again, each strike exact, each one fast enough to make the eye fail. Men hit walls and doors. Men were lifted from the ground and held there, spread and pinned like insects in a collector's display.
Still, no blood flooded the courtyard. That was another wrong about this horror.
The leader watched frozen and not understanding why or what. The black tendrils stayed embedded in the bodies of his men.
Then their bodies started to change. Their skin tightened, their cheeks hollowed. Arms shrank against bone. The men did not bleed out. They dried, their faces pulled inward, eyes sinking, lips cracking back from teeth as life was drawn through the shadow spears holding them in place.
The process was too fast. The leader's stomach turned. The women in the house were standing at the edge of the yard, frozen in fear. The floating figure turned to them. After a while, they joined his men.
One of the women tried to scream with the tendril still through her. The sound came out thin and empty and then stopped entirely as her whole body caved inward into a husk.
Another man's fingers clawed at the shaft, pinning him to the wall. By the time he touched it, his hand had already dried to skin over bone.
The courtyard was filled with silence. A low, papery crackle as forty men and over a dozen women lost everything that made them alive.
The leader remained standing.
Only him.
His mind had stopped producing thoughts in sequence.
All he knew was what he saw.
Everyone hung against the walls around him. Every one of them had become a dried corpse. They all turned to husks.
The sharp, ugly smell in the courtyard came from him.
Fear had gone through him so completely that his body had surrendered without asking permission. He was not aware of it.
-
Corvus turned his head toward the leader and grimaced with disgust. He shook his head once. The tendrils released the corpses, all at once.
Dried bodies dropped from the walls.
Some hit the ground whole. Others shattered at the shoulder or rib where the brittleness could not survive impact. Limbs broke with dry, crisp snaps. One skull split against a stone step and collapsed inward like fired clay.
The sound chased the leader straight through whatever was left of his composure.
Corvus felt every soul the tendrils had drained.
One by one. over fifty separate pulls of essence travelling through the tendrils and settling into him. His mana pool deepened, his life force strengthened, and most importantly, his soul has become...more. It was denser now. His Necromancy allowed him to compare the broken leader's soul to his. It was like comparing a bowtrackle to a dragon.
The increase from one body was too small to be considered. The increase from over fifty was not. He wondered what the elders' soul was like after draining thousands over centuries.
The strangest part, though, was the euphoria that hit him cleanly after every drain. It was an addictive feeling.
He understood at once why the elders hunted.
Why world after world becomes prey, either to be turned to stones or drained just like he had. If one allows this feeling to become their purpose instead of a consequence.
This was the dividing line. Abraham the Mage had stepped back from it. Black Annis had run toward it with both arms open wide.
Corvus stood in the middle and measured the effect with the discipline of a man who knew addiction and its consequences.
The second thing he noticed was the reaction of the will of the world.
He felt it recoil from the villa in the same cold, instinctive way it had recoiled in Afghanistan.
Soul Drain offended the planet. So long as the soul or the energy bound to it did not return, the world resisted the theft, withdrawing its presence from the spot to leave it dead.
Corvus accepted the message without caring much. He would conduct cleansing rituals later to satisfy the consciousness of the planet. He would feed it with pure mana.
There was no point in poisoning the land. His eyes returned to the leader.
The man still stood.
He wanted the fear to settle into his bones and marrow before the test ended.
Three tendrils moved; they crossed the distance in a clean flash.
Two pierced the man through the shoulders and lifted him off his feet. The third entered through the stomach and held there, not deep enough to kill quickly, deep enough to make the pain constant.
It took the man a moment to register the pain; the scream came then.
Raw with fear and madness.
The tendrils held him in the air while his feet kicked at nothing. Corvus floated a few feet above the courtyard stones, black wings of shadow spread wide behind him, the pooled tips drawing back from the ground and curling upward like living smoke obeying only him.
The leader hung there. Below, fifty husks lay scattered across the courtyard of the villa he had believed was safe.
Corvus looked at him with calm, measuring eyes.
There would be more of these tests before the sun sets and rises again.
This was only the first demonstration.