Hrívemir's hatred for Saruman burned as fiercely as his hatred for Sauron.
He lunged with a thunderous roar, torrents of glacial wind bursting from his jaws. Frost spread like lightning, blanketing the earth in crystalline white. The dragon sought to freeze Saruman solid, to watch him suffer and shatter under his vengeance.
Saruman, deprived of his mount, stumbled across the torn earth, robes snapping in the wind. Planting his staff, he conjured a dome of light, shouting above the storm, "Hrívemir, wait! We can talk!"
The freezing air hammered the barrier, its pressure cracking stone and glass alike. Frost crept across Saruman's beard and eyebrows, freezing them white, yet still he struggled to hold his ground.
But the Frost Dragon had no desire to speak.
He struck again, jaws wide.
Desperation twisted Saruman's face. He hurled his staff forward, conjuring a searing sphere of fire that shot straight into Hrívemir's open maw. The detonation was deafening. Flame and frost collided, exploding into clouds of steam that blanketed the field. Hrívemir reeled, coughing, smoke and vapor pouring from his mouth.
The dragon's pain only deepened his fury. His eyes burned like frozen suns as he charged again. Saruman countered, unleashing shockwaves that split the ground and calling down jagged bolts of lightning to hold the beast at bay.
Man and dragon clashed, neither yielding. Their battle shook the land; hills cracked, forests withered, and the River Isen froze solid beneath the Frost Dragon's breath. Summer had become midwinter, snow swirling, the air alive with thunder and death.
Around them, both armies, Wild Men, Rohirrim, even Smaug and Thorondor, fell silent, watching in awe and terror as wizard and wyrm tore the world apart.
Meanwhile, above the shattered field, the drifting black mist began to gather. It spiraled inward, compressing, and from it, Sylas's human form slowly re-emerged.
"Lord Sylas!" Brog cried, his voice a mix of joy and worry. "Are you hurt?"
Sylas smiled faintly and shook his head. "No… quite the opposite. I gained something unexpected."
He raised a hand, and his fingers dissolved into shadow, becoming tendrils of black mist. Gasps rippled through those who saw. Thengel, Brog, and every warrior stared wide-eyed as the darkness flowed like liquid magic before solidifying once more into flesh.
Sylas flexed his hand, his expression half-wonder, half-knowing. "So it's true," he murmured. "That power I gained in Hildórien, the Obscurial gift, wasn't dormant after all."
He glanced at the black aura faintly rising from his arm. "In the brink of death, it awakened."
The warriors exchanged uneasy looks; even Smaug shifted his wings, eyeing his master with wary curiosity.
According to the Wizarding World's explanation, an Obscurus is born when a young wizard suppresses their magic so deeply it twists into darkness, a formless, destructive power. The host becomes an Obscurial. Most burn out before they ever come of age.
The Wizarding World had always viewed Obscurials with fear and suspicion. To them, the Obscurus was a cursed phenomenon, a symptom of magical corruption and emotional collapse.
But Sylas saw something different.
To him, the Obscurus was not a sickness, but an evolution.
A path for wizards to ascend, to shed their flesh and become something closer to pure elemental existence.
When he took on that form, he could feel it clearly: his body dissolved into raw magical essence, without weight or flesh or pain. Physical strikes passed through him harmlessly; ordinary spells glanced off like wind. Even fatal damage, magic that should have torn him apart, was meaningless.
He had become magic itself.
It reminded him of Credence Barebone, the Obscurial who had once ravaged New York. Even when the American Aurors annihilated his body, Credence survived, revived from a mere wisp of residual shadow. No wonder the first Dark Lord, Gellert Grindelwald, had coveted such a power.
But Sylas also understood the curse that came with it.
For most, the Obscurus was chaos incarnate: unstable, violent, devouring everything in its path. The moment an Obscurial's emotions surged, their control collapsed. Rage and pain ignited catastrophe, consuming friend and foe alike.
And even when calm, the Obscurus gnawed away at its host's body, draining their life force until death was inevitable. That was why few Obscurials ever lived beyond childhood.
Yet Sylas found himself… different.
When he had transformed amid the storm, he had not lost control. His mind had not fractured, nor had madness overtaken him. His power surged, yes, but it flowed where his will directed it.
That difference, he realized, lay in the heart.
Most Obscurials of the Wizarding World were born among Muggles, isolated, unloved, or abused. They learned to fear their own magic, to choke it down until it twisted into something monstrous. Their despair and loneliness gave birth to darkness.
But Sylas was not a creature of suppression. He had embraced magic from the moment it awakened within him. His Obscurus had not been forged from fear, it had grown from purpose, from the will to survive.
He began to see the truth: the Obscurus had no inherent nature, neither evil nor good. It merely mirrored the soul of its bearer.
As for why most hosts perished before adulthood, Sylas reasoned it was not from curse or sin, but limitation. A human body could not endure such volatile, boundless energy. Their vessels broke before their spirits did.
But he was no ordinary vessel.
His flesh had been nourished by the draughts of the Ents, strengthening him beyond mortal men, his essence laced with elven vitality. Later, the forging of the Philosopher's Stone had further refined his body, aligning it closer to alchemy's perfect form.
Within him, the Obscurus raged, but it did not consume.
It lived in balance.
And as long as he did not overindulge in that power, did not linger too long in that shadowed form, he could endure it. The Golden Chalice, the artifact in his possession, constantly replenished his life force, nurturing his body as his magic grew.
He was walking a narrow path between mortality and ascension.
For now, his body could sustain the Obscurus's might. But he knew that each transformation left a mark. Overuse would one day push even his reforged flesh beyond its limit.
Still, there was no denying the truth.
The awakening of the Obscurus had changed everything.
His strength had leapt to another realm entirely.
Sylas watched the duel between Hrívemir and Saruman with a cold sort of pleasure, Schadenfreude bright as a blade in his chest. The dragon's ferocity lived up to every whispered legend of the War of Wrath; even Sylas's Obscurus form had only managed to maim him, not kill. One wing was broken, but the beast still towered, a thousand-meter colossus battering Saruman with raw, crushing force.
Hrívemir's breath was terror made tangible, the dragon exhaled winds so cold they could still a spell mid-flight, snuffing even Protego as if it were a candle. Saruman's fireballs and lightning were not weak; they shattered and scorched, but the dragon's frost met them and froze their teeth.
Yet Saruman was not truly helpless. He fought cautiously because he distrusted the watcher at the edge of the field. Half his power was tied up against Sylas; he guarded against the unseen threat of a backstab, and thus could not commit everything to killing the dragon. The mission had already turned sour: his dragons were dying, Hrívemir had broken his chains, and several Nazgûl had fled back to Mordor. Saruman's situation smelled of failure.
When opportunity came, he took it. As Hrívemir battered him and his light shield flickered, Sylas Apparated behind Saruman and lashed out with a single, deadly word. "Avada Kedavra!"
Saruman, expecting treachery, did not fall. With a flick he reinforced the ice that had condensed behind him into a bitter shield, and the curse struck only air. Grim, Saruman spun a counter that was part cunning, part theatre: he summoned a howling wind that grew into a violent tornado, sucking ice, splinters and rock into its maw.
Sylas braced, assuming the funnel was aimed to strike him. But in a move both swift and maddeningly bold, Saruman stepped into the heart of the whirlwind himself. The tornado seized him and tore him bodily from the ground, carrying him east in a spiraling flight. Before Sylas could intercept, the White Wizard vanished into the storm's teeth, escaped.
Only Hrívemir and Sylas remained beneath the churning sky. The dragon, robbed of a mount and sight of his prey, flared with rage. He tried to unfurl his wings to pursue, but one wing hung mangled and useless. His great eyes fixed on Sylas, hatred crashing from them like avalanches.
"Though you freed me from Sauron's chain," Hrívemir bellowed, voice like glaciers grinding, "you crippled my flight. You must die for that!"
With that, he unleashed a fresh torrent of deathly cold, a gale aimed straight at Sylas.