The clearing felt wrong after the presence withdrew.
The wind still blew, the trees still creaked, the river still murmured somewhere beyond the ridge—but all of it sounded wrong to Elias. Too sharp. Too loud. As if the world had been forced to notice him in the same way the box had.
He stared down at the wooden lid until the faint glow of the runes finally faded. Not gone. Just… dimmer. Waiting.
"Elias?" Lily whispered.
He didn't look at her right away. His heart still hammered from the moment the presence had obeyed him—because that was the worst of it, isn't it? It had obeyed. Something old and unseen had tested him, and when he'd said leave, it had listened.
That meant it had recognized not just the box, not just the runes, but him.
"Elias," Lily said again, closer now. Her fingers brushed his sleeve. "Please look at me."
He dragged his eyes away from the box.
Lily and Severus were both pale, dirt smudged on their faces from when the shockwave knocked them down. Severus's hair was a wild, tangled curtain across his eyes. Lily's breath came in shallow bursts, as if she were trying not to hyperventilate.
"You felt that," Elias said. It wasn't a question.
Lily nodded slowly. "The air… it pushed us. Like it didn't want us near you."
Severus swallowed. "That wasn't just magic. I've read about magical surges, but that—" He broke off, shivering. "It was like the whole clearing held its breath."
Elias considered lying. It would be easier to pretend he didn't know what had happened, that it had all been a strange accident.
But too much had already happened for lies.
"I told it to leave," he said.
Severus stared. "You told what to—"
"The thing that's been watching us," Elias said. "The presence. The shadow. Whatever it is." His voice stayed steady. "I told it to leave. And it did."
Lily hugged herself. "Then you're stronger than it."
"Not necessarily." Elias glanced at the trees. "It might just be patient."
"That's worse," Severus muttered.
Lily hesitated, then stepped closer until she was standing beside him at the edge of the box. "What did the runes mean?" she asked quietly. "All of them?"
Elias looked down again.
Child of fractured magic. Stands between worlds. Open when mind and magic align. Beware the one who follows the waking.
"It spoke to me," he said. "Not with words. With understanding. Like it knew how I think."
"Because it's like you," Severus whispered.
Elias didn't answer.
"You won't open it, right?" Lily's voice was faint.
He exhaled. "Not now."
"Not ever," she corrected.
"I can't promise that."
She flinched like he'd struck her.
"Elias—"
"If I don't open it," he cut in, "someone else will. Or whatever follows us will find a way around it. If the box is tied to this… thing, then either I control whatever's inside, or something else does."
Silence descended like a weight.
Severus's voice shook. "What if you can't control it?"
"Then it was going to destroy us anyway," Elias said calmly.
Lily stared at him, wide-eyed. "You talk like it's already decided."
"Some things are," he said.
He didn't say like us, but he thought it.
A gust of wind rattled the leaves. The light was changing—dragging toward evening faster than it should have. Elias's sense of time had always been precise; when minutes started feeling shorter, he noticed.
"Come on," he said. "It's getting late."
Lily opened her mouth to argue, then seemed to think better of it.
Severus backed away from the box as if it might suddenly leap at him. "We should cover it again," he muttered. "Hide it."
Elias agreed with that much.
They pushed leaves and loose dirt over the wood until the lid was obscured, the runes hidden beneath a layer of damp earth and yellow-brown foliage. The hum of magic softened, but never vanished completely. Elias could still feel it like a faint pressure at the back of his skull, like eyes between the trees.
"Don't come out here alone," he said, voice low.
Lily swallowed. "I won't."
Severus nodded. "We won't."
Elias didn't correct him, didn't say he'd come back whether they did or not. He knew himself too well—knew his kind of curiosity wasn't about thrill, but necessity. If something old and dangerous had reached for him, he needed to understand why.
And how to break its hand if he ever needed to.
They left the clearing, none of them daring to look back.
The air grew lighter as they neared the river. The presence that had pressed at the edge of Elias's senses retreated deeper into the woods, as if content to watch for now.
"Promise me something," Lily said quietly once the trees thinned.
Elias glanced at her. "What?"
"That you won't face it alone." She met his eyes, green gaze sharp and shining. "Not the box. Not the… thing. Not any of it."
Severus's shoulders tensed. "Yes. Make her the same promise you made me," he murmured.
When had that happened? Elias couldn't remember the first time he'd silently vowed to stand between Severus and the world, but with Lily he remembered every moment—every time he'd decided to care just a little less, to look a little less closely, only to find himself stepping forward anyway.
He clenched his jaw. "I can't promise not to face it. But I can promise I won't… forget you're there."
Lily frowned. "That's not the same thing."
"It's the truth," Elias said.
She huffed a breath, half annoyed, half fond. "You're insufferable."
"And you're reckless."
Severus sighed. "This is how I know you two are friends. You insult each other and then keep walking together."
Lily stuck her tongue out at him. "Says the boy who thinks rotten rafters make good adventures."
"That was one time."
"And nearly one fatal time," Elias added.
Severus muttered something about dramatic brothers and stalked ahead of them, but his shoulders were less tense now. The argument, ridiculous as it was, had eased the worst of the fear.
By the time they reached the fork where the paths to their respective homes split, the sky had dipped into a muted copper.
Lily stopped and turned to Elias again. "If the box calls you…"
"It already does," he said.
She swallowed. "Then let us be there when you answer."
He stared at her—this little Muggle-born girl who hadn't even set foot in Hogwarts yet, who resisted his aura without effort, who spoke to him as if his choices were not inevitabilities but decisions.
"We'll see," he said.
It wasn't 'no.' It wasn't 'yes.'
But Lily, strangely, seemed to accept it.
"Tomorrow?" she asked.
"In daylight," Elias replied.
She exhaled. "Deal."
She gave a small, almost hesitant smile and jogged toward her house. Petunia's face appeared briefly at the window, pinched with suspicion. Lily waved; Petunia did not wave back.
Severus watched the scene with a complicated expression Elias didn't try to decode. He only said, "Come on," and turned toward home.
Spinner's End was quieter than usual.
Too quiet.
Tobias wasn't in his usual chair, but his boots were by the door and his coat hung on the peg. A half-smoked cigarette smoldered in the ashtray. The radio sat silent on the shelf.
Eileen stood in the kitchen, arms folded tightly, as if holding herself together.
"Where were you?" she asked.
"Out," Elias said. "With Lily."
Her eyes darted to Severus, then back to Elias. "Did anything… strange happen?"
Severus flinched.
Elias lied smoothly. "No more than usual."
She studied him for a long moment. Her gaze lingered on his face, searching for cracks. Then she sighed and shook her head.
"You're both filthy," she muttered. "Wash up. Dinner will be ready soon."
Severus slipped past her, grateful for the reprieve.
Elias lingered.
"Tobias?" he asked.
"In bed," Eileen said. "He woke up complaining of a headache. I gave him a potion. He doesn't remember anything from last night. Or the night before."
Elias's stomach twisted.
"Is that better?" he asked.
"I don't know." Her voice broke. "I don't know which version of him is worse."
Elias didn't know either.
Part of him wanted to apologize. For overreaching. For scraping Tobias's mind raw when a lighter touch might have sufficed. For letting anger mingle with magic.
He didn't say the words.
Because another part of him—cold, practical, ruthless—didn't feel sorry at all.
"I need a book," he said instead.
Eileen blinked. "A book?"
"On ancient magic," Elias said. "Old wards. Runes, if you have any."
Eileen stared at him. "What happened today?"
"Nothing that broke the Statute of Secrecy," he said lightly.
"That isn't an answer."
"I know," he said. "But it's the only one I can give you. Not yet."
She closed her eyes briefly, then turned away. "There's a box in my wardrobe. Old texts from my mother's family. I meant to give them to you when you were older. Take one. Only one. And keep it hidden."
"Thank you," Elias said.
He meant it.
Upstairs, the wardrobe creaked when he opened it. The box inside was heavy, leather cracked with age. He pried the lid off carefully and found three books stacked within—no titles on the spines, just worn covers and fading script.
He ran fingers over them, feeling. One book tugged at his senses more than the others—a subtle hum beneath his skin, familiar in a way that made him wary.
He chose that one.
He hid the book beneath a floorboard under his bed before Severus came in, just in case.
Later, in the dark, when Severus's breathing had evened out into sleep, Elias retrieved it by candlelight.
The cover bore no title in English.
But the moment he opened it, the symbols inside rearranged themselves in his mind—not on the page, but in his understanding, as if some part of him had always known how to read this language and had just been waiting for the letters to appear.
The first line sent a chill down his spine:
On the Crafting of Minds and the Doors Between Worlds.
He should have put it away then.
He didn't.
He read.
He learned of old practitioners who walked the border between consciousness and the world beyond, using thought as spell and emotion as fuel. Of mindscapes shaped into fortresses. Of doors that opened not with keys but with will—doors that led to realms of magic untethered from physical form.
He read about dangers too:
When awareness stretches too far, something may follow it back.
He closed the book on that sentence and sat in the dark, heart hammering.
"That's what it is," he whispered.
The presence. The watcher in the woods. The thing that had tested him in the clearing and obeyed when ordered to leave.
It was not a ghost. Not a creature. Not a spirit they could banish with salt and Latin.
It was something like… a remnant.
A fragment.
Of someone who'd walked too far and never fully closed the door behind them.
Elias stared at the candle flame.
"If you followed someone back," he murmured to the darkness, "who did you follow? And why are you interested in me?"
The darkness did not answer.
But something pressed faintly against the edge of his thoughts, like a fingertip against glass.
He flared his will instinctively—
No.
The pressure withdrew.
And in that brief contact, he understood two things clearly:
The presence was not at full strength.
And it was still learning him.
That meant he had time.
Not much.
But some.
He blew out the candle and lay down, his mind whirring.
When sleep finally took him, it did not bring rest.
He dreamed of standing in front of the box, older, taller, with a wand in his hand and a war behind his eyes. Severus stood at his left. Lily at his right. The lid of the box glowed, the runes scorching bright white.
He opened it.
Light poured out.
And something stepped through.
Not from inside the box.
From somewhere beyond it.
Something that looked at him with eyes that weren't eyes and said, without speaking:
Ah. There you are.
Elias woke with a start, breath ragged, hand reaching for a wand he didn't have yet.
Severus mumbled in his sleep and rolled over, oblivious.
Elias stared at the ceiling.
"I won't open it," he whispered to the dark. "Not yet. Not for you."
The air remained still.
Morning seeped in by degrees.
Lily was waiting at the lane when they emerged, as always.
But for the first time, she didn't wave or shout.
She just stood there, eyes locked on Elias, as if she'd decided something during the night and was determined not to back down from it.
"Good morning," Severus tried.
"Is it?" Lily asked.
He winced. "Probably not."
She huffed. "At least he's honest."
Her gaze flicked back to Elias.
"You're hiding something," she said quietly.
"Yes," he replied.
She blinked, taken aback. "I thought you'd deny it."
"What's the point?" he asked.
Her mouth twitched. "Fair."
Severus shifted his weight anxiously. "Elias found a book," he blurted.
Lily whipped her head toward him. "A book?"
Elias shot his brother a flat look. "Subtle."
"What kind of book?" she demanded.
"An old one," Elias said. "On mind magic. On… doors between worlds."
Lily's throat worked. "Like the door that thing came through?"
"Yes."
Severus swallowed. "Did you find out what it is?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what?"
Elias considered them both.
They were already tangled in this, whether he wanted them to be or not. The moment the presence had swept them off their feet, the moment the runes had pulsed in time with his heart, any pretense of keeping them safe by keeping them ignorant had dissolved.
"The book said," Elias murmured, "that when people stretch their minds too far—too deep into magic—sometimes they leave pieces of themselves behind. Not ghosts. Not full souls. Just… shards. Constructs."
"Left where?" Lily asked.
"In places between here and what's beyond," Elias said. "And sometimes, if those shards are strong enough, they can move. They can think in limited ways. They can follow attention."
He met Lily's gaze. Then Severus's.
"It followed mine."
They both shivered.
"Why you?" Lily asked.
"That," Elias said, "is what I don't know. Yet."
He didn't tell them the rest. Not yet.
He didn't tell them that the book spoke of heirs to such magic. Children born with minds already half open, already wired to walk those borderlands without training.
Children like him.
He also didn't tell them about the final warning, scrawled at the bottom of a yellowed page in a different hand than the printed text:
If a shard takes interest in a mind like that, it will not stop. It will wait. It will adapt. It will learn. Until one of them devours the other.
Elias didn't know yet if he meant to devour it—
Or if it meant to devour him.
Lily stepped closer and reached for his sleeve.
"Then you're not allowed to face it alone," she said. "Not ever."
Severus nodded fiercely. "We're already in it. You can't push us out."
Elias looked at them both.
At the boy he'd promised, long ago, to shield from every storm.
At the girl who had stepped into the storm without hesitation.
He could feel the presence again at the edge of his mind—curious, patient, listening.
"Fine," he said softly. "Then we face it together."
He didn't know then that one day, those words would taste different.
Would taste like grief.
Would taste like war.
For now, they were just a promise made on a grey street near a dirty river, by three children who didn't yet understand the scale of the storm they were walking into.
But the magic listening in the distance understood.
And it waited.