"Empires rise and fall on the whims of Muggles. The Magocracies do not fall; they simply retreat into the shadows and wait for the dust to settle."— Prince Yusupov, High Sorcerer of the Golden Horde.
January 12, 1968, The Amber Room, The Winter Palace, St. Petersburg (Hidden Wing)
The Portkey did not tug behind the navel. It felt like being unspooled.
Vega Black, ten years old and yet to hold a wand, felt his physical form dissolve into a stream of light and reassemble in a vacuum of biting cold. He landed on a floor of polished malachite, his knees buckling slightly before his Metamorphmagus physiology adjusted his equilibrium.
"Breathe," Arcturus commanded from beside him. His breath plumed in the freezing air, turning to ice crystals before it hit the ground. "The air here is thin. We are inside a pocket dimension anchored to the Ural Mountains."
Vega inhaled. The air tasted of pine needles, high-grade vodka, and a heavy, industrial magic that hummed like a high-tension wire.
He looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.
They were standing in a hall that made the Ministry of Magic's Atrium look like a broom cupboard. The walls were lined entirely with panels of glowing amber—tons of it—each slab pulsing with a soft, honey-coloured light that seemed to trap time itself like a fly in resin. Outside the high arched windows, a blizzard raged, but the flakes were not snow. They were frozen sparks of raw mana, violet and blue, battering against the glass.
"Where are we?" Vega whispered, the sound swallowed by the vastness of the room.
"The Court of the Unbroken," Arcturus replied, adjusting the heavy sable fur of his cloak. "Did you think the House of Black is the only family that remembers the Old Ways? We are merely the wardens of the West, Vega."
Arcturus placed a hand on Vega's shoulder. The grip was firm, grounding.
"Tonight, you do not speak unless spoken to. You watch. You listen. You learn why the Muggles think Atlantis is a myth, and why the history books Dumbledore allows at Hogwarts are mostly polite fiction."
The double doors at the end of the hall—solid gold, etched with runes that made Vega's eyes water—swung open without a sound.
The Summit
The room beyond was a circular amphitheatre carved from black ice that never melted. Seated around a massive, floating table of obsidian were twelve figures.
They did not look like the Wizengamot. They did not look like politicians. They looked like gods who had grown bored of the sky.
Arcturus walked Vega to their designated seat—a high-backed chair of black iron, engraved with the geometric constellation of Canis Major.
"Sit," Arcturus murmured.
Vega sat. He felt the gaze of the room land on him. It wasn't just attention; it was physical pressure, a dozen heavy gravities crushing down on his small frame.
"So," a voice boomed, shaking the icicles on the ceiling. "This is the Star that Shifts."
Vega looked across the obsidian expanse. The speaker was a man the size of a bear, draped in robes of red silk embroidered with living golden dragons that crawled across the fabric. His beard was braided with silver bells that made no sound.
"Lord Black," the giant rumbled. "You bring a child to the Summit."
"I bring an Heir, High Khan Batu," Arcturus replied smoothly, his voice cutting through the boom like a razor. "Considering your own lineage traces back to the Golden Horde that rode with Genghis, I assumed you would appreciate the necessity of succession."
The Khan threw back his head and laughed—a sound like a glacier cracking. "Fair enough, Briton. Let us see if he has the stomach for it."
The meeting commenced, and Vega realized quickly that the politics of the Ministry were merely a shadow play.
A woman with skin like polished ebony and eyes that shone like white stars—Matriarch Nala of Uagadou—spoke of the Dream-Walkers in the Congo shifting rainfall patterns to starve out a Muggle mining operation that had encroached on a sacred grove.
"The earth complained," she said simply, her voice melodic and terrifying. "So we made the sky weep until they left."
A man wrapped in saffron robes, floating three inches above his chair—Guru Vashishtha of the Indus Concord—spoke of temporal rifts in the Himalayas.
"The Veil is thinning," Vashishtha said, his voice sounding as if it came from every corner of the room simultaneously. "The Muggles split the atom twenty years ago. The resonance is still shaking the foundations of the Ether. We are spending too much energy patching the holes."
"Let them break it," sneered a pale, elegant man with eyes of cut red crystal—Count Orlok of the Romanian Covens. "If the cattle destroy their pasture, we shall reclaim the ash."
"And rule over a graveyard?" Arcturus countered sharply. "We are shepherds, Orlok, not vultures. We keep the balance so that we may keep our power."
"The balance is shifting, Arcturus," interrupted a woman with intricate jade tattoos moving across her face like drifting clouds. Lady Xia of the Jade Lotus. Her family had ruled the magical underground of China since the Shang Dynasty.
"The West grows weak," Lady Xia continued, her gaze sharp. "Your 'Ministry' bows to the Statute of Secrecy like a religion. They hide in toilets and phone booths. They forget that we were once worshipped as gods in Sumeria. In Egypt."
She turned her eyes to Vega. They were ancient eyes, filled with a terrifying calculation.
"The House of Black remembers Egypt, does it not? Your blood carries the curse of the Pharaohs."
Vega stiffened. He looked at his grandfather. Egypt?
"The boy does not know," Lady Xia observed, a cruel amusement curling her lips. "You have not told him of the sarcophagus in your deepest vault?"
"He is ten," Arcturus said, his face a mask of stone.
"He is a Metamorphmagus," the Khan interrupted, slamming a fist onto the table. "He is a creature of flux. He deserves to know the source of the river."
The Khan stood up. He waved a massive hand, and the center of the obsidian table liquefied. The black stone rippled and rose, forming a three-dimensional topographic map of the ancient world.
"Look, boy," the Khan commanded.
Vega looked. He didn't see nations. He saw power lines.
He saw a glowing artery connecting the Pyramids of Giza to Stonehenge. He saw a web of light stretching from the Ziggurats of Ur to the temples of the Maya.
"Magic was not discovered," the Khan lectured, pointing to the map. "It was inherited. The First Men—the Ancients—built a civilization that spanned the globe. They didn't need wands. They used geometry. They used the stars."
He pointed to a darkened spot in what was now Iraq.
"Sumeria," the Khan rumbled. "The cradle. The first Necromancers."
He pointed to the Nile.
"Egypt," Lady Xia added softly. "The Alchemists. Your ancestors, boy. The Blacks did not sprout from the mud of England. You came from the sand. You were the High Priests of Set. You mixed your blood with the Shadow to gain power over death."
Vega felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. The Shadow. The madness in the family. The affinity for the Dark Arts.
"We fell," Arcturus said quietly, taking control of the narrative. "Rome fell. The Library of Alexandria burned. The knowledge was lost or driven underground. The Xias went East. The Orloks went deep into the mountains. And we... we went to the islands of the North."
"But we remain," the Khan growled. "The Unbroken. The hidden empires."
He looked at Vega with a fierce intensity.
"The British Ministry thinks they are the government. They are children playing in a sandbox. We are the architects of the playground."
The Khan reached into his robes and produced a dagger. It was not metal. It was carved from blue volcanic glass, humming with a violent, alien energy.
He slid it across the table. It stopped exactly in front of Vega.
"A gift," the Khan rumbled. "From the steppes. It cuts spirit, not flesh. If you are to be the Apex, little star, you will need more than a wooden stick."
Vega looked at the dagger. He looked at the faces around the table—the Vampire Lord, the Dream-Walker, the Immortal Taoist, the Khan.
He realized then that Hogwarts was going to be disappointingly small.
He stood up. He didn't ask Arcturus for permission. He picked up the dagger. It was cold, buzzing against his palm like a trapped hornet.
"Thank you, Lord Khan," Vega said, his voice steady despite his racing heart. He turned to Lady Xia. "And thank you, Lady Xia, for the history lesson. I always wondered why I preferred cats to dogs."
A ripple of laughter went around the table. Even the pale lips of Count Orlok cracked into a smile.
"He has the tongue of a Black," Lady Xia noted approvingly.
"And the eyes of a Pharaoh," Matriarch Nala whispered, her white eyes piercing him. "Be careful, child. The Old Blood is strong, but it is heavy. Do not let it drown you."
Arcturus stood, his hand resting on Vega's shoulder.
"We will take our leave," Arcturus announced. "The boy has seen enough for one night."
"Bring him back when he bleeds," the Khan called out as they walked to the golden doors. "When he has killed his first man. Then we will drink kumis and talk of war."
Grimmauld Place, Midnight
They landed in the drawing room of Number 12 with a crack. The silence of the London townhouse felt deafening, and the air felt stale and dead after the ozone-rich atmosphere of the Amber Room.
Vega sat in his usual armchair, turning the blue glass dagger over in his hands. The firelight caught the edges, making it look like a slice of frozen sky.
"Egypt?" Vega asked softly.
Arcturus poured himself a stiff Firewhisky, his hand trembling slightly—the only sign of the strain of the meeting. "Ancient history, Vega. Literally. But yes. The Black family library contains scrolls written on papyrus that predate the English language. We are older than the stones of Hogwarts."
"Why hide it?" Vega asked, looking up. "If we are this... powerful. If we have allies who rule entire sub-continents. Why do we bow to the Ministry?"
"Because power invites challenge," Arcturus said, sinking into his wingback chair. "The Ministry fears what it cannot control. If they knew about the Summit—about the Khanate, about the Jade Lotus—they would start a war out of panic. And they would lose. But the collateral damage would be... absolute."
Arcturus looked at his grandson, seeing the new weight in the boy's eyes.
"You saw the map, Vega. You saw the web. You are not just a wizard of Britain. You are a citizen of the Deep World."
Vega looked at the dagger. He thought of the Khan's words. We are the architects.
He thought of Sirius and Regulus sleeping upstairs, dreaming of broomsticks and chocolate frogs, unaware of the titans sitting around tables of ice and obsidian.
"The Khan said the dagger cuts spirit," Vega said.
"It does," Arcturus warned, his voice grave. "Do not use it on your brother. It leaves no physical mark, but the wound never heals. It severs the magic from the soul."
Vega sheathed the blade in his belt.
"I won't use it on family," Vega promised. "But... there are monsters outside the garden, Grandfather."
Arcturus smiled, a grim, shadowy expression that matched the gloom of the house.
"Yes, Vega. There are. And tonight, you learned the most important secret of our House."
"What is that?"
"That we are the biggest monsters in the dark."
Vega closed his eyes. He reached out with his senses, feeling the hum of the house, the ancient Egyptian wards buried under the floorboards, the connection to the cold, distant stars.
He wasn't just a boy in a house anymore. He was an heir to the sand and the shadow. And the world was getting larger every day.