Elizaveta woke to the same dim light that had been there when she fell asleep.
That was the first thing she noticed, and the longer she lay still in the great dark bed, the less she liked it. They had arrived here in the afternoon. Corvus had called it a realm. His realm, to be precise. Now she opened her eyes and found the same afternoon waiting behind the windows as though the hours had forgotten their duty.
She pushed the covers back and sat up.
Silence held the room, a place that belonged to one will and had no interest in pretending otherwise.
Corvus was nowhere to be seen. She went to the bathroom for her morning routine.
She reached into one of the pouches afterwards, pulled out a comfortable robe, and dressed without haste. The fabric settled properly. Her wands went into her sleeves. She asked Corvus for the operation that would free her from wand use. After kissing her from her nose to her belly, he declared it a blasphemy to mar her skin. She sighed with a satisfied smile.
Two rings went back onto her fingers. A knife disappeared into a hidden seam because a woman raised correctly did not wander into unknown realms unarmed, even if her husband claimed dominion over them.
Then she left the chamber and started to walk.
The castle felt abandoned.
Stone remained the ruling material everywhere, dark in colour and more interested in endurance than comfort. She moved through halls broad enough for giants, descended two staircases, crossed a central court, and finally stepped out into the open.
The sky remained exactly as it had been before.
That part continued to disturb her understanding of time.
She walked farther.
She chose to walk on purpose. Apparition had its place, but the three D rule remained the same whether one stood in Britain, Russia, or the private realm of an increasingly ambitious husband who can make Death flee with its tail between its legs. Destination, determination, and deliberation. Leave out one and one risked splinching. She had no intention of leaving a hand, a lung, or any other useful part of herself distributed across this place because of impatience.
The land beyond the castle stretched in broad dark lines under that same stubborn light. She saw movement after a time and found ghosts roaming at a distance, pale figures drifting around aimlessly. She tried to speak with one old woman in a strange tribal outfit whose face suggested she had spent life disapproving of taxes, sons, and weather in equal measure.
She looked through her.
She tried another, this one a woman with an empty throat and hands folded as though death had interrupted her at prayer.
Nothing, no answer, recognition or any sense that the effort had even reached them.
Elizaveta gave up after the fourth attempt and started back toward the castle.
She stood still, fixed the image of the castle in her mind, ran through the three D rule and apparated.
She landed at the entrance exactly where she intended to. She was not alone anymore.
A portal stood open in front of the broad steps, its dark violet core turning inward on itself while people came through in disciplined succession. Nestborn researchers first. Bastion Guards next. House elves after them. More researchers. More guards. More elves, all moving with the speed of people who had already been given their orders before crossing and had no intention of wasting time asking for repetition.
Elizaveta stopped and watched.
The last person through was Corvus.
He came out at his current greater height, and the opening closed at once after he crossed. The violet mass narrowed into a thin line, folded into itself, and vanished.
Before she could greet him, the ground to the left of the castle began to rise.
Stone pushed upward in long, measured planes. Foundations settled. Walls climbed. Angles sharpened. One far too tall building took shape first, then another joined it, then a third. All of them rose in the same family of design as the castle and Black Manor, severe Gothic lines built upward in tiers, narrow windows, hard corners, and a refusal to apologise for height. Each structure climbed more than fifty floors, with each level given roughly sixteen feet of height so the Nestborn magicals would not spend eternity ducking like badly housed livestock.
Elizaveta watched seven such buildings take shape within minutes.
Even knowing Corvus, even knowing what he could do and what he had already done, the scale of it struck her cleanly.
The Nestborn researchers and Bastion Guards dropped to one knee as the last tower finished settling into the ground.
They looked less like staff in that moment and more like worshippers before something they had already decided was divine enough to obey.
Elizaveta paused for a moment.
She looked at the realm, at the castle, at the new towers, and then at her husband with open calculation and a degree of awe she refused to hide from herself.
Wizarding magic was powerful. It was adaptable. It could wound, heal, erase, protect, bind, and distort. This, however, was beyond what she had ever expected to see built in minutes by one man acting as if he were merely catching up with his own timetable.
Researchers started moving toward the first tower the moment the kneeling ended. Guards took the last building. A second ring spread toward the perimeter. House elves vanished and reappeared, moving chests, rolled parchments, crates, glass equipment, and one very offended suit of armour that probably belonged in the dark Black corridor and had clearly not been consulted about relocation.
Elizaveta turned back to Corvus.
He landed beside her lightly for a man of his size.
"The realm needs a name, my dear." One corner of his mouth lifted. "Think of something and be the naming mother of this place."
The emphasis on the mother earned him exactly what he deserved.
A look first.
Then a pause.
"I would need to bring many things to the castle."
A portal opened behind her before he could pretend the tease had been innocent.
She caught him by the collar and dragged him down into a searing kiss.
There was nothing shy about it, nothing uncertain. The claim was deliberate, and he accepted it exactly as he should have, with one hand settling at her waist and the other doing nothing whatsoever to interfere with her better judgment.
This man was hers.
Whatever he had become, whatever he was still becoming, that remained true.
She knew the distance between him and Fleur. She also knew enough about herself not to lie. If the French flower managed to climb to his heart, Elizaveta would not resist her out of pettiness. She would embrace the result as it would have arrived honestly. If Fleur could not climb that far, Elizaveta would not help her do it. That part had to happen as naturally as her own bond with Corvus had done.
She released him and stepped backwards into the portal.
The other side opened directly into their bedchamber aboard the frigate.
Elizaveta did not waste even a heartbeat.
"Tibby."
The elf appeared with a pop, still wearing some variation of his dreadful feathered headpiece, though this one seemed to have acquired blue paint and one bell for reasons no sane system could explain.
"Mistress Wolfy calls Supreme Tibby."
"Yes." Elizaveta swept one hand through the room. "Pack nearly everything."
Tibby blinked.
Then his eyes widened with the sort of spiritual fervour only house elves and fanatics ever achieved cleanly.
"We move, we move."
"We move what is mine and what is his." Her gaze sharpened. "Carefully."
"Supreme Tibby understands. Car fully."
He vanished before she could explain what that meant in practical terms.
Elizaveta called for the other house elves next and began issuing orders while already sorting the room with her eyes. Clothing, books, personal correspondence and jewellery chests. Potions she brewed, blades she trusted more. She was not going to spend most of her time flying in a steel cage while her husband would do Merlin knows what in that realm.
If Corvus intended to remain there for long stretches, then so would she.
--
Back in the realm, Corvus watched her disappear through the portal with a smile he did not bother hiding.
He had enjoyed the kiss.
Searing, possessive and entirely hers.
His gaze shifted to the first tower on the left.
If this place had possessed a conventional sky, the structure would have qualified as a skyscraper. Since it did not, the word remained technically inaccurate and aesthetically irrelevant.
He started toward it.
This would be the primary research building.
The first real one.
It would carry the programmes for producing and cloning children shaped by elder blood, then refining those lines into something cleaner and more profitable. From there, he would move through selection and controlled breeding until the blood bank lines reached the purity and stability he wanted.
The first floors were already being occupied as he entered. Researchers moved through the corridors with clipboards, ward keys, rune sets, and enough nervous purpose to keep the place from feeling ornamental. Corvus did not slow them with speeches. He walked past them, chose the central hall on the third floor, and began etching the first major runic structures into the stone himself.
Time arrays came first, wards followed. Then isolation fields for destructive traits. Then, the deeper lines are for layered growth management.
He already knew the timing ratios he wanted.
The realm itself had been set so that one Earth day equalled one week here. That was his limit. The pressure was too much to extend it further. The internal time arrays would sit at one to thirty, meaning one day in this realm would become thirty days within the test environments.
The arithmetic pleased him.
One Earth Day would become seven Earth Days.
Those seven days, under a one-to-thirty array, became two hundred and ten internal days.
A single week on Earth would therefore give him one thousand four hundred and seventy internal days, just over four years.
A single Earth month would give him approximately six thousand three hundred internal days, more than seventeen years.
That made the rest easy to model.
A normal human gestation, if sustained entirely inside the arrays, would take roughly two hundred and eighty internal days.
That meant a child could be conceived, carried to term, and born in approximately thirty-two hours by Earth measure.
Sixteen years of growth could be forced through in just under four Earth weeks.
He stopped carving long enough to picture the rate clearly.
If the first batch began on a Monday by Earth clocks, some of the earliest infants could be born by Wednesday and standing at a useful age before the month ended.
He revised the breeding schedule at once.
The first five generations would be produced through artificial insemination only. That kept the variables tight through controlled donors, controlled pairings, and controlled blood feeds, with no sentiment, accidents, and no romance pretending to be genetic merit.
Thirty-six births gave him enough range for failure without reducing the field to guesswork. He divided the first set in his head.
Twelve anchored to his own line and Juracán for storm tolerance and aggressive magical capacity.
Eight were anchored to Hekate, attuned to movement between realms, possibly realities. Magical might and High Magic casting. Another eight to Hades, mastering shadow manipulation and underworld phasing. Eight more to Thanatos for siphon, resistance and the measured expression of decay.
All of them stabilised through Nestborn maternal stock chosen for magical depth, core durability, and obedience to the programme.
If the births began together, the first thirty-six would be born within two Earth days, tested within the first internal month, and reach approximately sixteen years of age by the end of the fourth Earth week.
After that came culling. The weak and the unstable would be discarded from the core programme. The most promising mixed bloodlines would be matched into second-generation pairings at once. The selection of the best and most prominent Architect traits will be paired again and again.
That was where the real work began.
The second generation would no longer carry only one elder branch grafted onto strong Nestborn stock. It would begin combining the successful lines against one another under tighter supervision.
He estimated another four Earth weeks for conception, birth, growth, and first trait sorting.
By the end of the second month, he could have viable second-generation adolescents ready for pairing and blood extraction trials.
The third generation would tighten the line again; he expected to reach the purity of elder blood with the sixth or at most the seventh generation.
At that point, the most promising specimens of mixed elder blood would be old, strong, and stable enough to begin functioning as actual blood banks rather than merely research stock.
That meant roughly six or seven Earth months from the start of the programme to have the first genuinely promising artificial Architect lines ready for farming.
Another three to six months if the cull rates proved worse than expected.
By the time twelve Earth months passed, he could have multiple stable branches, cloned stock from the best lines, and a repeating farm cycle producing blood faster than even Purgatory's harvest could have done under the old system.
Corvus stepped back from the wall and looked over the growing structure with a cruel satisfaction he did not dilute. The next phase of the plan would start to produce his very own Architect units. Ready and devoted to him alone.
He already held Thanatos, Hades, Juracán, Hekate, and his own line.
That was enough to begin.
Soon, Purgatory itself would fall into his hands.
He resumed etching the runes with that thought settled firmly in place.