Lumos Noctis. The spell. His spell.
The one from the memory, the one that dragged itself out of his head. The dark, the void, the creatures that fed on light like it was prey.
He stared at the darkness in the centre of the ruins, that thick black patch where even shadow didn't dare cross.
His stomach turned.
He looked at Nicolas. "W-when did this happen?"
Nicolas frowned, looking at the ruins. "Not long. A month ago? Maybe a bit less."
Cassian swore under his breath.
A month. The first time he'd used Lumos Noctis, Chamber of Secrets.
Did he bring them here? Did speaking it aloud break something open? Like before?
His gaze locked on the black patch where light refused to live.
And the thought clawed its way up through his ribs.
If that's true...
All these dead people.
His fault?
His breathing went rough. His vision blurred, but the ground didn't stop lurching. Sky spun sideways. The whole world twisted out from under him, he reached out, trying to grab hold of something, anything, but he dropped. Straight to the ground, legs buckling without warning.
"Cass." Bathsheda was already at his side, kneeling, her hand on his arm.
The rest of them weren't far behind.
"What's happening?" Perenelle was already casting, diagnostic charms flowing like water over him.
Cassian pressed the heel of his hand to his chest. Something clenched behind his ribs, hot and cold at once, like a hand twisting around his heart. He couldn't get a full breath. His eyes kept dragging back to the black patch in the centre of the ruins.
What if it was him?
What if all those people died because of him?
From the first moment that spell had pushed itself out of the dark corners of his mind, something in him had recoiled. A warning, quiet but constant. Don't use it. Don't wake it. And he had anyway. He'd spoken it into the air, carved it out of memory and voice. Now here it was, full-grown, gnawing at a place on the far side of the world.
What about the others? The fragments of old magic he'd pulled back into daylight. What had he dragged out with them? How many nameless, faceless people had been caught in the teeth of it? Because of him?
He curled forward, elbows braced against his knees, the sour wind from the centre creeping up his throat. Bathsheda's hand tightened on his shoulder.
"Cassian, look at me," she said.
He didn't.
How could he?
How could he stand here and look any of them in the eye?
Cassian hunched forward, breath coming sharp through his nose.
He loved history. Loved digging up the old things, naming them, teaching them. And now here he was, staring at a ruin that might be his own making.
Bathsheda's fingers tightened, grounding him.
"Cassian," she said quietly.
He blinked at the ground.
Her hand slid up to his arm. "Look at me."
Perenelle let out a breath. "He's alright. Just overwhelmed."
Ayda and Edevane shared a glance.
"We need to move," Ayda said. "There are others to check."
Cassian didn't look up, but he caught the word.
"Others?" His voice scraped its way out. "They're... older?"
Edevane's brow lifted. Nicolas answered instead.
"Yes. Oldest site we've found is four years older than this one. It started in one region. But it's shifting. North-west."
Cassian's stomach twisted. Four years.
The endless terror gripping him eased a little. Four years. If it was really four years, then he hadn't released them. Four years ago he'd awakened Lumos Noctis, but he'd never used it before then. It couldn't be. He'd already figured out he was the gate, not the reason. It couldn't be him.
He gritted his teeth, squeezed Bathsheda's hand back. "Let's go."
She didn't let go until he stood. The others hung back, watching, but no one spoke. Nicolas folded the map under his arm, Perenelle's gaze flicked between the black hollow and Cassian like she was weighing something she didn't want to ask.
Cassian took a breath that barely reached his lungs.
"I want to try something," he said, quietly.
He raised his wand.
And the darkness shifted.
Pulled back like fabric yanked from a nail.
Cassian flinched. Swore under his breath.
It was truly Lumos Noctis.
Others stepped closer. Nicolas stopped first, staring at the space Cassian had peeled back. His mouth pressed into a line.
Ayda gave a low whistle. "Didn't shift for even you," muttering.
"No," Nicolas said, tone tight. "It didn't."
They all turned to the now visible path of the town, what was left of it, everyone stilled.
A wave of claws and teeth and fury had torn the place from the inside out. The stones that remained were gouged deep. The clay walls carried bite marks, long arcs of claw, and smears of what had dried into something too dark to be dust.
And the smell... punched them right in the ribs.
"How did you—?" Ayda asked.
"An old spell," Cassian said through clenched teeth. "I read it a while ago."
With the darkness peeled back, for the first time, they could actually see the wreckage properly.
Marks ran deep through the stone like veins. Whatever had come through hadn't just levelled the place, it had gutted it. Not a wild explosion or magical backlash. No scattered spells. No signs of a fight. Just hollowed-out wards and structures picked apart like someone had taken a scalpel to a skeleton.
Perenelle muttered something under her breath and knelt beside a half-collapsed archway. The symbols carved there were mostly gone, but the way she was tracing the stone, it was clear enough, whatever magic this place once had, it had been snuffed dry.
***
They spent the next few hours combing through the site. Nicolas and Ayda focused on the remains of the central hall, if that's what it was. Edevane did a slow lap around the edges, fingers twitching above the ruined ward lines. Cassian didn't speak. Not until he'd walked the whole perimeter and the nausea finally let go of his stomach.
He straightened, breath still a bit thin, and spoke without looking at any of them.
"I chanced upon a scroll years ago. Only had a minute with it before it vanished." His gaze flicked up. "Creatures. Night Crawlers. They hunt in total darkness. Feed off it. Drain light."
Ayda's brow furrowed.
Edevane's fingers stilled.
Nicolas turned sharply. "That's impossible."
All eyes turned.
Perenelle looked between them, then to Nicolas. "What are they?"
Nicolas let out a breath. "Night Crawlers were... dangerous magical entities. Creation of the most foul. I've only ever seen them mentioned once. A stone tablet, buried in a collapsed vault. Half of it had been reduced to rubble."
He shook his head. "They were banished from our world eons ago. They can't exist."
Cassian clenched his fist, "I am sure of it."
"No, impossible," Nicolas said, voice tight. "Their world and ours, separated by force."
"Except now there's a hole in your 'no gaps.'"
Perenelle's brows furrowed. "Cassian might be right. The boundary might be breaking."
Ayda gave a snort. "Wouldn't be the first time old magic turned brittle."
Perenelle reached out, fingers catching Nicolas's sleeve. "Since Cassian's magic reversed the darkness, they must be connected. It has to be them."
Nicolas's jaw went tight. Brow furrowed so deep it looked carved. "Then it's worse than we thought."
Cassian didn't blink. "They were banished once. We can do it again."
Nicolas huffed a bitter laugh. "That's almost adorable. Do you have any idea what it took the first time?"
Cassian kicked at a cracked plank by his boot, sent it spinning across the dust. "Do I look like I've got a clue? I'm saying try, not win with a bloody song and a smile."
Nicolas dragged a hand down his face. "First time, humanity pulled everything. Every scrap of knowledge, every ounce of power, every half-mad genius with a rune-stained robe. They built a world-spanning array, biggest ever done."
Cassian clenched his fist.
"It had to be global," Nicolas added. "You can't trap these things piecemeal. Partial arrays fail. They can merge with the dark, vanish into shadow, go invisible at night. Tracking them with spells is useless."
Perenelle nodded. "It seems they don't leave magical traces. They consume them. I saw tracking sigils on the ground but they were hollowed."
Nicolas kept going. "The array was the only thing that worked. Covered every continent, linked by ritual and blood and wards older than most recorded languages. The only reason they found where the Crawlers were hiding was because wherever the crawler lurked, magic disappeared so ward didn't report back."
"They narrowed it down from the silence. And closed the net."
Cassian sat, fingers digging into his scalp. His voice rasped out. "They haven't left the continent, have they? We don't need a global net. Just one big enough to wrap this whole bleeding island."
Nicolas nodded. "That's our only hope. And hope their number is not in three digits. Then maybe we have a shot."
Ayda scratched at his beard, eyes on the map. "Could work. Bit mad. But so's the magic."
Bathsheda crouched beside him. "Could we anchor something to the ley lines?"
"Maybe," Perenelle said, gaze distant. "They run thick out here. Stronger than most of Europe. But the array would still need shaping. But if the sigils I'm reading are correct, they need people to hold it."
"Or blood," Ayda said grimly.
Everyone went quiet.
Cassian straightened up, shoulders stiff. "Let's save the self-sacrifice talk for the second date, yeah?"
They agreed to contain it for now.
Just keep the dark from spreading while they figured out what came next.
The next site was two valleys over, tucked into a ridge that looked more like a dragon's molar than a hill. Same story there, clawed perimeter, drained wards, no survivors. Cassian pulled the darkness back again. The spell peeled away like wet paint, left a raw patch in the air where the void had clung too tightly.
Similarly, it was just ruins that looked like they'd been hollowed out from the inside.
By the end of the week, they'd covered seven sites. All remote. All old.
Each site took longer. Not because of distance, Flamel had set up a rough Portkey chain, but because the damage was getting stranger.
Cassian spent most of his time removing the shadows. One after another.
They started building a map, stacking their notes on a folding board back at the outpost. Edevane and Perenelle marked patterns in the site distribution, drawing long arcing lines with enchanted chalk, whispering as they worked. It was tracking something. Cassian could see that. Every location fell on a curve.
"Not random," Perenelle muttered one evening, adjusting a chalk rune. "This is moving to somewhere."
Ayda added a pebble to the growing arc. "South-east to north-west as we previously predicted. Same interval each time."
"Like they're following something," Bathsheda said.
They looked at the map again.
The arc leapt the Coral Sea and bit into Australia's interior. They reached the first site near dusk. Earliest one, if Nicolas had the dates right. This one had been part of an Aboriginal magical outpost, still half-inscribed with sacred sigils that hadn't been touched in eons. Even the Crawlers had seemed hesitant with this one.
They weren't expecting much but once Cassian peeled the darkness back, the shape in the centre was quite different.
A monolith. Rough stone, dark as the void around it, rising out of the ground.
Same marks clawed around it. Same gouges in the earth. But this one wasn't broken. It stood solid, untouched in the middle of all that ruin.
Nicolas stared. "I didn't even know people lived out here."
That was saying something.
Edevane crouched, tracing a finger along the cracked earth. "Guardians?"
Nicolas nodded slowly. "Must've been. This- this has to be one of the banishing stones."
The surface shimmered under the light, faint runes worked deep into the rock, most too worn to read. But the feel of it, it pulled, like standing too close to an old spell still humming.
Bathsheda circled it, wand up. "Still active?"
"Faintly," Nicolas said. "But yes."
Perenelle moved in beside him. "That's why it didn't collapse."
"Everything else fell," Cassian said, eyes narrowing. "They tore through wards, entire sites, but this, this held."
"Barely," Edevane said.
"But it did," Cassian muttered. "Something about it held."
He stepped closer. The runes along the base were older than anything they'd seen so far, nothing like what was in the recent sites. Late Ice Age, maybe older. The kind of script that wasn't copied anymore, just guessed at by the unlucky few stuck deciphering archive shards.
"Recognise it?" Bathsheda asked quietly.
Cassian crouched, brushing dust away with his sleeve. He laid one hand flat against the surface.
Cold.
"Cass," Bathsheda warned.
He didn't answer. He staggered, just slightly, eyes rolling back, breath pulling sharp, and the world around him peeled sideways.
Figures moved in a circle around the stone, robes dusted with ochre and ash. Some wore nothing but paint. No wands. No focus but the rhythm of their steps, the beat of their palms against the earth, the hum of voices layered over each other until it sounded like the ground itself was chanting.
Cassian's breath caught.
Aboriginal elders. Their magic wasn't showy but it moved. Heavy and steady, rippling through the air like heat off stone. Beside them, another cluster, Magicks in dress from a dozen places, a dozen cultures. West African sigils painted down forearms, Nordic iron runes slung from belts, scroll tattoos inked into the necks of monks standing like statues.
No one was leading. They were all holding it. Like the whole world had stopped just long enough for them to press something shut and say, stay down.
The stone shimmered.
Cassian's eyes locked on the lines. The array twisted through the land, folded with the ridges and hills, shaped by the world rather than drawn atop it. He caught pieces, sigils sunk into roots, carved into the bones of the place.
"Hold steady. Ngaralu's path is clear."
Ngaralu.
The vision cracked.
Cassian reeled back, breath dragging loud through his teeth, fingers still pressed to the stone.
"Cass?" Bathsheda.
Cassian looked around, his skull was still ringing from whatever vision had just chewed through it. "Ngaralu!"
The others turned. Edevane blinked. Ayda raised a brow. Nicolas just frowned.
"Ngaralu!" Cassian repeated, louder this time.
He was the gate. He named it. The thought looped, loud in his skull. Wake up. Wake up. He clenched his jaw. "Say it!"
He turned toward the others. "Say the name!"
His fingers curled tighter at his sides.
Wake up.
Bathsheda was the first to break it.
"Ngaralu," she said.
The others echoed it. "Ngaralu," Ayda repeated. "Ngaralu," Perenelle followed.
Then all of a sudden, the dead monolith lit up.
A dull glow, like someone had shoved a sunrise into a box and forgotten to close the lid. It started at the base, trickling up the grooves Cassian had just cleaned, catching on the runes like spilled ink made of fire.
Cassian sighed, stepping forward, hand brushing over the stone's edge. The heat had gone. Now it pulsed faintly beneath his fingers.
"Come touch it," he said.
Bathsheda didn't ask questions. Just moved up beside him, palm pressing flat to the monolith. Perenelle and Nicolas followed, then Ayda. Edevane, after a long second, laid her hand against it, fingertips barely brushing the surface.
The light jumped.
Like someone had lit a fuse.
Standing in the middle of the circle was a woman. Tall, angular, skin like burnt stone, hair drawn back with a ring of bone at the crown.
The woman raised her chin.
"I'm remembered," she said.
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