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Flames roared like a furious ocean, gorging on the sky itself. The heavens fractured as thunder and fire twisted into a grotesque, destructive opera; the ancient Titans, along with their colossal stone prisons, turned to ash under a heat so searing it felt like the sun itself had crashed.
Perhaps those black-robed wizards of old had done nothing more than cage the Titans, never truly defeating them. They had certainly claimed it, saying things like they were the eternal, foundational beings of this world.
Civilizations rise and fall. New ones bloom only to wither. But the Titans were different. The stolen immortality that defined them meant they were meant to endure, to suffer, and to live until the world itself breathed its last.
Except…
Ian didn't bring power from this world or this era. He brought the power of Paradoxical Divinity. And in the agonizing, split second it took to sever their link to the world's eternal life, the backlash wasn't the only thing that hit them. They simply couldn't withstand the full, unrestrained fury of Ian's own, raging Fiendfyre.
Magic had defeated the Titans once, thanks to the ancients. And once Ian stripped them bare of their immortal bodies, magic's effectiveness didn't just rise… it hit an absolute, agonizing peak.
The Titan King, who was once a creature of defiant pride, his monarch's heart filled with a burning, slow-cooked vengeance, could only let out a soundless roar of furious, unwilling defeat before he was extinguished by Ian's 'punishment.'
What the hell else could he have done?
No matter how monstrously tall or how colossal the Titan's body had been, it couldn't reach Ian. Ian stood in the sky like a dark, feathered omen, watching in his Raven-form as the Titan King shrieked and dissolved into smoke.
The King was fighting for his own bloody survival; how could he possibly save the rest of his family? The final reflection in his dying eyes was the intertwining of his siblings' blood and fire.
The once-glorious Titan Dynasty choked on its own ashes, ending in a genuine, world-shaking apocalypse.
All things… must eventually return to the dark.
The Fiendfyre was relentless, purging the Titans' very memory from the fabric of reality.
The storm clouds bled away, and sunlight knifed through the torn sky, not with a divine blessing, but with a cold, harsh scrutiny. The air stank of burnt metal and charred meat, and fragments of the city structures wailed a final note in the wind.
"Those clouds couldn't have picked a more dramatically suspicious time to clear out…"
Ian felt the prickle of wrongness, but couldn't pinpoint the source. Pale, watery beams of light slid through the broken dome of the sky, doing nothing to illuminate the ruins of the wounded city.
Then, from the very core of the metropolis, came a thunderous crack, a towering white spire tipped over, slowly, majestically, before collapsing with a sickening screech of tormented metal.
It was the death rattle of an ancient, impossible miracle.
On the real, distant horizon, the genuine dawn broke, painting the true sky. But here, in this shattered place, the sun would never rise again. The crystalline palaces of the steel city, once a shining beacon, now looked like shattered glass in a giant's careless hand, with tens of thousands of glowing fragments drifting down with the hot ash.
They drew a dark-red signature across the void below.
"A beautiful, goddamn curtain call," Ian muttered.
The raven-shaped black robe shimmered, dissolving back into his human form. Ian hovered high above, the wind whipping his hair, gazing down at the ancient wonder as it self-destructed… colossal, floating chunks of metal tearing away from the city's underbelly, yanked down by gravity toward the distant earth, leaving streaks of black smoke in their wake.
It was never truly immune to magic. Its prior, arrogant defiance of all spells had come entirely from siphoning the Titans' eternal, endless power. With the Titans gone, that energy source vanished, and the hyper-dense metals that formed the sky-city began to fracture like a line of dominoes.
"I never planned on being the Titans' executioner," Ian murmured to himself, his voice nearly stolen by the howling gale.
He remembered the fate of the Titans in the stories he grew up with: chained in Tartarus by Zeus, betrayed by their own children, sealed away, and eventually forgotten.
That's the myth most people know. Now, as the end of those mythical giants played out in front of him, Ian couldn't shake the feeling that this whole scene was an absurd parody… something far more awful than any myth.
Because, after all…
Those legends weren't distant tales anymore. They were real, lived, bloody experience. And unlike the tidy stories, the death-screams of the Giants, stripped of their immortality by the Paradox, still seemed to echo in his ears. A bitter, confused mix of emotions churned in his gut, and a faint, helpless smirk pulled at his lips.
"So… is this the real history? Or am I just a guest in a bad rewrite?"
The mythical tales swore that the Titans' end wasn't supposed to be this. Ian couldn't figure out if he had uncovered a missing, true piece of history, if he'd simply stumbled in to play the final, grim hand… or if he had somehow stepped sideways into a world that would never, truly, affect the proper flow of time.
Honestly?
Ian's knowledge of magic wasn't exactly shallow. But everything that had happened today… Paradoxical Divinity, the death of a foundational race, the collapse of a sky-city… it all far exceeded the boundaries of anything he'd ever understood.
"What a goddamn pity… it was such a magnificent city."
Ian pulled back his magic. The ghostly blue flames retreated like an ebbing tide, revealing the ruins that his Fiendfyre had already ravaged. But without the Titans, the city's literal power core… it was a giant drained of blood, unable to maintain its miraculous, impossible elevation.
The Sky City, long stripped of the Titans' juice, had been on life support.
Ian dismissing his Fiendfyre wouldn't have saved it, not on your life.
The entire island began to visibly tilt, buildings along its broken edges plunging one after another into the sea of clouds below. No matter how brilliant a creation, without its bedrock, it's just a damn castle in the air.
And the bedrock of this city? That ancient, doomed race of Titans.
"Don't look at me. They swung first."
Ian shrugged, his gaze following the disintegrating city. The collapse wasn't stopping, if anything, it was hitting the accelerator.
Without the Titans as the core engine, the ancient levitation spells failed. The entire city was sinking like a massive ship that had lost its mast, slowly, relentlessly pulled downward by the earth's gravity. Even the few structures that survived the hellfire were now toppling one after another, perfect dominoes.
First, the outer rings peeled away and spun into the cloud-ocean. Then…
With a deafening, sky-shaking explosion, the main structure of the city finally gave out. The massive, floating metal foundation split into two, separating in agonizing slow motion. Ian could watch the magical runes etched within the fractured surfaces dimming, one by one, until they winked out completely.
The whole city began to plummet faster, carving a violent tear through the clouds.
"Just don't let it land on me."
Ian ascended higher, kicking his own magic into overdrive.
He watched the broken remnants of the city shrink into a dark speck, before vanishing into the dense, distant forest. A monstrous impact resounded from the ground, followed by a rolling wave of dust and the snapping of a billion trees, an apocalyptic soundscape of pure destruction. A lot of woodland creatures just had a very bad day.
"Bloody hell… is this what the muggles meant by a meteor hitting the Earth?"
Ian swallowed hard. He was officially no longer sure if he could trust history or physics.
"Good news: there's nobody left in the Sky City for me to have killed. No messy karmic debt to settle."
Ian dusted a speck of grey ash from his shoulder, his eyes tracking the final, dying fragments of the great city as they plummeted toward the ground.
"Bad news: I still have to dig three miles underground to find the target."
Closing his eyes, Ian let his magical power unspool into invisible, silk-fine threads. They didn't search aimlessly; they followed the unique, painful bond between him and the Goddess of the Savage Lands, tracing the location of her child-form. That faint, yet deeply familiar resonance was the only way he was going to find his way back home.
There was no escaping it.
The goddess was marked, like a quarry branded by a powerful hunting sigil. Once tagged, she could never truly hide. Wherever she fled, Ian would find her, and through her, he'd find the rest of her kind.
It wasn't that Ian wanted to be the bad guy.
He simply had no other choice.
"Contract… Manifest!"
The tip of Ian's wand flared with a sharp, silver light, weaving a single, taut thread in the air, a connection only he could perceive. He needed that baby with the pocket watch… not just for the terrifying truth it held, but because it was his ticket back. The silver thread danced wildly in the wind for a moment, then snapped, pointing aggressively toward the southeast.
Ian plunged in that direction at full speed.
Nothing was visible ahead, but he knew that alien, unmistakable pulse belonging to the Goddess was tucked away somewhere within a tight, distorted fissure in space-time.
"The Raven's coming straight for us!"
"Blast it all! How did he zero in on our location?!"
"That blasted bird's nose is too damn sharp!"
"What do we do? What in the name of Merlin do we do?!"
The clutch of ancient wizards hiding within the spatial distortion instantly erupted into panicked chaos.
Ian was searching for his way home.
…
Meanwhile…
Deep within the unsettling gloom of the Forbidden Forest, the ancient trees were choked by thick, coiling mist. A heavy, dead silence reigned over the small clearing outside a massive, oxidised bronze gate.
Albus Dumbledore stood before that gate, the bright blue eyes behind his half-moon glasses thoughtful, almost troubled.
His original intention had been to risk everything, to step through that gate himself and pull Ian back. After all, Ian's place in his heart was beyond extraordinary. It ranked far above even Dumbledore's own life.
However…
Despite that fierce resolve, Dumbledore had run into an immovable obstacle. This place had once been an active portal to another world, but now, it was sealed by an intangible, powerful force, as if something vital on the other side must never be disturbed.
The gate would not budge. No one could enter it.
Dumbledore couldn't tell if the problem lay in the bronze gate's own defenses or perhaps if it was some kind of cruel, cosmic joke left behind by his alternate self. To uncover the truth, the old Headmaster had settled right there, immediately beginning his study of the site.
"This is no ordinary enchantment," He murmured.
He was surrounded by towering piles of heavy, leather-bound tomes. The air was thick with the scent of ancient parchment as pages were flipped rapidly. Dozens of books lay open around him, some brittle and yellowed, others emanating a faint, sickly black aura. His silver beard swayed as he focused intently on a crackling parchment scroll in his hands.
His brow was deeply furrowed.
He had been studying the site for what felt like an eternity, and he still hadn't found a single useful clue. In the perpetual twilight of the forest, only the warm, steady glow of Lumos-lit lanterns offered any real illumination.
"What is that?"
Hermione Granger crouched nearby, her eyes glued to an open book. On its pages, black, flame-shaped script danced and flickered, causing her breath to hitch in her throat.
The perpetually curious girl rose onto her toes, desperate to catch a clearer look at the text. She could only make out fragments, scattered, incomplete words that spoke of terrifying things.
"What exactly are you doing, Miss Granger?"
A low, smooth voice slid out of the shadows. Severus Snape appeared behind Hermione as silently and unnervingly as a giant, disgruntled bat, his sudden presence making her jump straight up.
"The Headmaster… he hasn't moved. Not once…" Hermione stammered, quickly changing the subject as her fingers worried the edge of her robe.
Her eyes darted between the motionless Dumbledore and the ancient volumes scattered around him. The thick tomes were fanned out on a folding table draped in dusty purple velvet; some looked older than her grandfather, their brittle parchment edges inscribed with densely packed symbols she had never seen.
"Professor…" Hermione finally whispered, unable to hold it in, "What is Professor Dumbledore studying? Those books…"
She pointed toward one whose cover pulsed with an eerie green light, its title belonging to some forbidden magical registry.
"I think… I just saw something about Dark Magic." Hermione's voice was cautious, thick with trepidation.
Snape's eyes immediately narrowed, his black pupils contracting into sharp needlepoints in the dim, shifting light.
"You are mistaken, Miss Granger." His tone was sharp, cold, and final. "Do not allow your curiosity to become a crippling weakness. Such knowledge is not something a young witch like yourself should ever be tempted to touch."
At his words, a familiar surge of Gryffindor indignation swelled inside her. She straightened her back and dared to speak.
"But Professor, knowledge itself isn't evil, it's the choice of how one uses it that matters. Didn't you say something similar in Potions class?" She tried, perhaps foolishly, to turn his own logic against him.
Snape's lips twisted into a humorless, skeletal smirk.
"How utterly surprising, Miss Granger, you actually managed to retain something from my lessons. But allow me to correct you."
He suddenly leaned closer, his sallow face harshly illuminated by the faint magical light, making him appear almost ghostly.
"Some knowledge is a pure, concentrated poison. Simply knowing it is enough to corrode a wizard's soul until there is nothing left but dust."
Hermione instinctively took a half-step back, but her fierce thirst for understanding quickly smothered her fear. Her gaze drifted back to the ancient tomes, especially the thick one with the flickering green light.
On one of its open pages, she was certain she caught a glimpse of a symbol, one almost identical to the sinister runes that pulsed and shifted across the bronze door.
"That door," She blurted out, her voice regaining its urgency, "is it connected to Dark Magic? Ian's been inside for so long, surely we should be trying to warn…"
She didn't get to finish her thought.
"Silence!"
Snape's harsh voice cracked through the silence like a leather whip. He shot a quick, wary glance at Dumbledore, who remained motionless, lost in his reading.
"Do you honestly believe the Headmaster is out here passing the time?"
That single, cutting question immediately silenced Hermione.
Her respect for Dumbledore was still deep, unshakeable, even.
"I could at least help you sort through the texts," she offered after a moment, her tone softening, her need to contribute overriding her fear. "I might not understand the theory, but I'm good at recognizing symbols and diagrams."
It was so typical of her… that eager, frantic desire to be useful, a trait shared by the whole, exhausting trio.
However, Snape's lips curled again with a cold, mocking gesture.
"Do you think every danger wears a black cloak so you can easily spot it?" He asked coolly. "Some things are far more terrifying than the foulest Dark Magic. Because they follow no rules. Just one glance and they will brand themselves into your mind and they will slowely eat away at your soul."
And he wasn't exaggerating in the slightest.
Such knowledge did, chillingly, exist and Dumbledore's private collection certainly held no shortage of it.
"Oh."
Hermione opened her mouth, but the sharp conviction in his voice left her without a retort. She honestly thought Snape was just trying to frighten her into obedience.
And just then…
"Hermione."
Dumbledore finally spoke. He lifted his head, his tone gentle, yet carrying an undeniable, heavy weight.
"Your Professor is quite correct. Some doors, once opened… can never truly be closed again. You came to Hogwarts to learn when to open such doors and, more importantly, when to leave them bolted shut."
As always, the old Headmaster's words carried the quiet, final gravity of true wisdom.
"Alright…"
Hermione lowered her head, answering softly. She didn't push, didn't try to offer another 'brave' suggestion; that kind of reckless behavior was always more Ron's department.
If he were here, he'd already be loudly grumbling about the whole setup—and probably dragging them all into whatever dangerous mess lay inside.
(End Of This Chapter)
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