The first door opened into a room filled to the brim with thousand-year-old enchanting equipment, along with unfinished projects that had been left sitting on the workbench. "Mother's enchanting room," Helena said, making Julian jump slightly since he had not heard her drift up behind him while in ghost form. "She used to get so annoyed whenever I came in here without permission as a child," she added with a fond smile. "She must never have come back here before the illness took her, because otherwise she never would have left these things behind." As she spoke, she floated over to the unfinished pieces still resting on the bench.
"What exactly was this illness? Because I find it hard to believe that none of the founders could save her from it," Julian asked curiously. "According to Aunt Helga, it was something called mana deprivation. She developed it after reaching a new level of magic through one of her experiments," Helena said calmly, and Julian went completely still as soon as he heard the term. He had seen that exact condition recently attached to something else that was immensely powerful. The golden apple tree had been suffering from it too, and Julian could not stop his mind from starting to connect the two.
Somehow, Rowena Ravenclaw must have discovered how to step beyond the level of power the founders themselves had stood at, and after ascending that far, her body had no longer been able to draw enough magical energy, or mana, from the world around her, which had eventually led to her death. That would also explain why nothing beyond a certain level of power still seemed to exist in the present, including the gods. There simply was not enough mana left in the world to sustain beings at that level anymore. That thought dragged Julian's mind back to the opening words in the book Chronos had written. The part about the world recovering. 'He must have meant the world's mana concentration, but I have no idea whether he meant actually soon or something like two hundred years from now, especially if he knew about my immortality,' Julian thought in frustration.
Pushing that train of thought aside for the moment, Julian brought his focus back to the matter in front of him, exploring the manor. Leaving the enchanting room behind, he continued farther down the hall and opened the second door. Inside was a bedroom with elegant decorations, a large bed, and everything else one would expect to find in such a room. "This was Mother's room, though she hardly ever used it except when she needed to change clothes."
"Most of the time she would simply remove the need for sleep with a spell or a potion. Feel free to claim it for yourself, since the master control for the wards is set into the wall over there," Helena said, pointing toward a section of the wall. "I'll have everything moved into a different room. I have no interest in sleeping in someone else's old bedroom," Julian replied, and Helena nodded in agreement. The last room in that hallway was the one that genuinely excited him the moment he saw it, the library. Shelves upon shelves of old books, all neatly arranged by subject and difficulty so they could be browsed with ease.
"Of course your face lights up at the sight of the family library. If you aren't in class, you're either reading, socializing, or forging. You're almost as much of a workaholic as my mother was," Helena teased. Julian looked away awkwardly because he knew she was right. Closing the door again, he crossed to the other side of the upper floor and was surprised to discover that one of the rooms contained a massive indoor bath. The stones it was made from had enchantments woven into them that kept the whole thing constantly clean and hot, leaving the room thick with steam.
The next room was essentially a version of Hogwarts' Room of Requirement, except this one was permanently accessible and did not require any of that odd pacing in front of it to summon what one wanted. The final room, however, was an unsettling thing to discover. It was a torture chamber, complete with all the instruments one would expect to find in such a place, though there was no blood anywhere in the room. "I found this room revolting as well and usually stayed far away from it," Helena said when she saw the expression on Julian's face after finding it. With the inside of the house now fully explored, Julian headed back down to the entrance hall and then through the door at the back of the manor.
"Ah yes, the gardens. This is where we kept all our living plants and magical creatures back when the estate was still in use," Helena said as Julian stepped into a vast glass enclosure that was obviously much larger on the inside than it should have been, thanks to space expansion enchantments. Most of the place was barren and dead now, however, because any magical plant or creature capable of escaping had long since done so and spread across the island, while the rest had probably starved inside this place. He knew that much from the crumbling bones scattered here and there across the enormous chamber as he walked through it.