Year Two — Chapter 5: The Circle of Death
The ritual chamber had grown familiar, but familiarity did not mean safety. Ivar knew that better than anyone. The stones still remembered the wolf of ash and bone he had bound in his first year, and they still whispered the faint hiss of serpents after his duel with Dragovic. Tonight, however, he sought something darker.
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The Ritual
The page he studied came not from Durmstrang's library but from the Black family archives — smuggled by owl, sealed in his mother's hand. A rite of the Peverells, one that promised to strip away fear of death by standing at its threshold.
He drew the circle in iron filings and salt, his quill dipped in a mixture of ash and his own blood. The runes layered threefold: Latin for structure, Old Norse for weight, Parseltongue for resonance.
His wand lay at the center, elderwood blackened, thrumming with its triple core.
When he spoke, the air thickened. Shadows pooled at the edges of the chamber. Cold pressed down, so sharp it cut. The runes flared, and suddenly there was another place.
A hall of black stone.
A sky the color of ash.
Pale figures watching in silence.
Peverell, they whispered without mouths. Heir. Threshold-walker.
His heart faltered, his lungs froze. The line between life and death narrowed to a thread. For a moment, he thought he would not return.
But then — hellfire. The ember of Helheim flared in his veins, green-black flame searing the cold. The shadow recoiled, not in fear but in acknowledgment. Death stepped back, allowing him to breathe again.
When the circle collapsed, Ivar was on his knees, sweat frozen on his brow. His eyes burned, green brighter than before, threaded with silver light. His aura was heavier now — so heavy even the walls seemed to lean away.
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Whispers in the Halls
The change did not go unnoticed.
In class, when he passed, students fell silent. Some lowered their gazes. Others followed him with a mix of awe and dread. Even the professors paused longer when they looked at him, as though seeing not just a boy but something standing just behind him.
Contracts had already made him a figure of weight. Now he was something more — a shadow wrapped in inevitability.
"Look at them," Jannik muttered one evening, watching a group of second-years scatter out of Ivar's way. "You don't even have to duel them anymore. You just breathe."
"They're afraid," Klara said flatly. "Afraid you'll break them with a glance."
"Fear is useful," Ivar said. His smile was faint, almost kind. "But it must be shaped. Left untended, it rots."
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A Test of Will
The professors noticed too. One evening, Volkov called him aside. "You carry death's shadow now. You've touched it more deeply than any student in this school. The question is — are you its servant, or its master?"
Ivar met his gaze calmly. "Neither. I am its heir. And heirs inherit."
Volkov said nothing. But his eyes gleamed with something between pride and unease.
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Alone
That night, back in the ritual chamber, Ivar sat cross-legged, wand across his knees. His body still ached, his veins still hummed with cold fire.
"Good evening," he whispered in Parseltongue.
The shadows leaned closer. The voice of the stone whispered back: Heir of Death. Inheritor. We see you.
He closed his eyes. Not afraid. Not servant. Heir.
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⚡ End of Chapter 5
Would you like Chapter 6 to center on the winter training challenge where Ivar, Klara, and Jannik fight side by side against older students, showing his charisma as a leader — or shift toward the political fallout in Britain, where some families now whisper that Ivar might rival Harry Potter himself?