The black-robed man was ascending the stairs, his wand, stained by more killings than anyone could count, already in hand.
Meanwhile, at the junction between the prison's seventh underground level and the passage leading to the surface, a group of prisoners had gathered before a massive bronze door, their anxiety mounting by the second.
This area already reeked of blood. Earlier, the black-robed man's silent and ruthlessly efficient purge had left behind the thick scent of slaughter, mixed with the scorched residue of lingering magic.
Now, this buffer zone looked as though it had been ravaged by a storm.
This was the final checkpoint. A colossal metal gate, engraved with powerful ancient magical runes, blocked the only path to freedom. Streams of enchanted light flowed across its surface; it was obviously protected by extraordinarily powerful defensive magic.
Seven or eight figures clustered before the gate. Their clothes were tattered, most were wounded, and their faces were twisted by a mixture of overwhelming terror, desperate hope for escape, and frustration at being stopped just short of freedom.
These were the survivors who had slipped through the cracks. Some specialized in concealment magic, while others had happened to hide in corners shielded by powerful anti-detection enchantments while the black-robed man carried out his massacre.
Relying on either keen survival instincts or hidden trump cards, they had managed to remain concealed.
They had held their breath until they sensed that terrifying presence leaving the prison level and descended even deeper underground. Only then had they dared emerge. Seizing that fleeting opportunity, they had sprinted all the way here, believing freedom was finally within reach.
Instead, this door had become an impassable chasm.
"Hurry! Figure out how to open this damned door!"
A vicious-looking wizard with a scar across his face growled as he repeatedly fired 'Finite Incantatem', unlocking charms and other spells from his wand. Each spell struck the metal gate, creating nothing more than ripples of light before disappearing. The door did not move an inch.
"It's useless! This is a Repulsion Gate reinforced with ancient goblin craftsmanship! Without the proper key, or magical authority powerful enough to override it, it simply won't open!" An elderly prisoner with graying hair, who appeared to be the most knowledgeable among them, shouted in despair.
He tried several even more complicated ancient spells, but they accomplished nothing.
"Then smash it! Everyone together!" A hulking prisoner, apparently carrying giant blood, roared as he swung a massive wooden club studded with jagged stones. He crashed it against the gate.
'Bang!'
The impact echoed thunderously. The club rebounded violently, numbing his arms, while the gate bore only a faint white mark.
"Idiot! What good is brute force?" the scar-faced wizard snapped.
"Then what do you suggest?! We just wait for that monster to catch us?" the giant-blooded prisoner shot back.
Fear and despair quickly erupted into infighting, and the prisoners began shouting accusations at one another as chaos spread through the group. They tried everything they could think of.
They combined their 'Explosion Charms', searched for magical nodes within the gate's enchantments to disrupt, and one desperate fool even attempted to use Transfiguration to squeeze through the narrow crack beneath the door.
Every effort was futile. The gate resembled the 'stone door' from Saruman's memories: cold, absolute, and mercilessly blocking their only path to survival. After all, even as a replica, it retained a measure of the original's extraordinary power.
The prisoners watched helplessly. None of them were ordinary Dark Wizards; each was classified as a 'Special Containment Subject', individuals who had touched forbidden fields of magic or maintained ties to sinister cults.
One of them was named 'Grayson', a former Auror who had betrayed his own ranks and excelled in Apparition and anti-detection magic. Another was 'Mora', a master of mental manipulation and dream infiltration.
The remaining three specialized respectively in elemental destruction, blood magic transmutation, and spatial folding. Every one of them was an expert.
After the black-robed man had departed, they had broken free almost immediately. Using Mora's mental interference, they disrupted the surveillance crystals, while Grayson employed spatial folding to bypass the patrolling constructs.
They had infiltrated the prison all the way to this final barrier separating them from the surface.
Yet no matter what they attempted, bombarding it with 'Explosion Charms', breaking its enchantments with 'Finite Incantatem', or even activating ancient inscriptions through blood sacrifice, the result remained exactly the same.
The gate did not move.
"Damn it!" Grayson slammed his fist against the gate hard enough to split his knuckles, and blood trickled down his hand. "This thing isn't even a physical structure! It's alive!"
"No kidding!" Mora barked back. "We all know it's part of the 'Gatekeeper's Key'! But do 'you' know how to open it?"
"What if we tear open space itself?" suggested a short, stout man. He was the blood mage 'Croft'.
"Rip open space 'here?'" Mora sneered. "Are you trying to collapse the entire prison... or release whatever's sealed behind that door? Have you lost your mind?"
"It's better than sitting here waiting to die!" Croft roared. "The black-robed man could be back at any moment!"
"He won't be coming back," another prisoner spoke in a sinister tone. "He thinks we're all dead."
The moment those words left his mouth, the air froze. An icy killing intent spread from behind them, coiling around their necks like a venomous serpent. All five prisoners spun around at once.
At the far end of the passage stood the black-robed man. Beneath his hood, his eyes were as dark as the Abyss, and his wand had already been raised. There was no warning, no speech, only a flash of emerald light.
"'Avada Kedavra.'"
Croft never even had time to react. The green curse pierced straight through his chest, his eyes flew wide open, and his body collapsed limply to the ground, his soul extinguished in an instant.
"Move!" Grayson roared.
At the same moment, his body blurred as he Apparated. Mora formed rapid hand seals, releasing a cloud of violet mist that sought to invade the black-robed man's mind. The remaining two prisoners attacked from opposite sides, one summoning a gigantic serpent of flame, the other conjuring a spear of crystalline ice.
The underground passage became a battlefield. Fire and frost collided, and spell after spell exploded against the stone walls, showering the corridor with falling debris.
Yet the black-robed man moved through the chaos like a ghost, every swing of his wand claiming another life. With a single 'Confringo', he blasted the ice spear into dust. Before the fragments had even fallen, he flicked his wand again.
"'Sectumsempra.'"
The flame-controller's arm was severed cleanly at the shoulder, and he screamed as he collapsed. Meanwhile, Mora's psychic assault struck a shimmering silver barrier.
It was an ancient defensive spell, a 'Mental Bastion' so absolute that even Dementors could not penetrate it.
"You can't escape, Grayson." The black-robed man's cold voice cut through the magical storm.
Grayson materialized ten meters away, his face deathly pale. "You... you knew we'd hide?"
"I knew you wouldn't give up." The black-robed man advanced slowly. "But you should never have dreamed of opening that door."
"Why?!" Mora screamed. "What's behind it?!"
The black-robed man did not answer. With a casual motion of his wand, black chains materialized from thin air, wrapping tightly around Mora. She struggled desperately, but the restraints, woven entirely from pure magical power, refused to yield.
Seeing this, Grayson gritted his teeth and attempted one final Apparition, aiming for a ventilation shaft at the end of the corridor. But the instant he vanished, a cold smile appeared beneath the black-robed man's hood. He murmured softly,
"'Apparition Lock.'"
Space itself froze, and Grayson's body was forcibly expelled from transit. He reappeared in midair before crashing violently onto the stone floor, the sound of his ribs breaking echoing through the passage.
"It's over." The black-robed man stopped before him, looking down from above.
Grayson coughed up blood, his eyes filled with despair. "We... just wanted to live..."
"There are secrets the living were never meant to know." The black-robed man raised his wand. A flash of green, and the last prisoner fell.
Silence returned to the corridor. Only dying embers flickered weakly across the floor. Yet even after killing every prisoner, the black-robed man did not lower his wand. After all, this had only been one group; there was another team of escapees he still had to deal with.
---
"This isn't the way out!"
"Damn it! I knew we should've followed Grayson!"
"Shut up! Give me time to think!"
The second group of prisoners had evidently split from Grayson's party after arguing over which route to take.
Now they were quarreling before what appeared to be another exit. The layout here was almost identical to the place Grayson and the others had reached, and naturally, their predicament was exactly the same.
Just as they were debating whether to turn back and search for the others,
"Enough." A frigid voice rang out behind them without warning. It sounded as though it had risen from the deepest depths of hell itself.
Every argument stopped instantly, and the prisoners froze where they stood. Slowly, stiffly, they turned around.
At the entrance to the staircase leading back down into the prison, the black-robed man was already standing there.
No one knew when he had arrived. His entire body was concealed beneath flowing black robes, the shadow of his hood hiding his face completely. Only those inhuman pupils glimmered in the darkness, reflecting nothing but absolute, merciless coldness.
"That's enough." In his hand was a wand that appeared plain at first glance, yet radiated an ominous aura. Around him spread an invisible field infused with both the breath of the 'Abyss' and pure killing intent.
There was no warning, no unnecessary words. The instant the prisoners turned around, their pupils widening in horror, the black-robed man had already raised his wand. A blinding flash of emerald light tore through the dim corridor, carrying an irresistible will of death as it struck the scar-faced wizard standing closest to him.
"'Avada Kedavra!'"
The ferocious expression on the man's face froze instantly. The light in his eyes went out like a candle snuffed by the wind, and he didn't even have time to scream. His body simply collapsed to the floor, all signs of life vanishing in an instant. The black-robed man's killing was efficient, precise, and utterly merciless.
"He killed Scarface! Fight him!" The remaining prisoners exploded into desperate madness born of absolute terror. Their instinct to survive overwhelmed all reason. They knew there was no escape; only a fight to the death remained.
In an instant, brilliant spells of every color and form erupted throughout the narrow passage.
"'Severing Charm!'"
"'Incendio!'"
"'Death Coil!'"
"'Sleeping Curse!'"
Countless spells poured toward the black-robed man like a torrential storm. Explosions blossomed around him, razor-sharp magical blades sliced through the air, and stunning bolts wove together into a deadly web.
The floor shattered into craters, and the walls became scarred with burns and cracks. Under the relentless magical bombardment, the entire hall at the junction trembled violently as stones and dust rained from above.
Yet against a combined assault powerful enough to annihilate an entire Auror squad, the black-robed man moved like a phantom, slipping effortlessly through the magical storm. His movements defied all common sense.
At times, he seemed to melt into the surrounding shadows; at others, he performed short-range teleports so fast that the naked eye could barely follow them.
This was clearly one of the abilities granted by corruption, one of 'Cthulhu's' temptations to human wizards.
Whatever its ultimate cost, at this stage, it undeniably bestowed tremendous power. The black-robed man, being stronger than the vast majority of Headmaster-level wizards, was proof enough.
Of course, his own talent had to be exceptional as well; otherwise, Saruman would never have accepted him as a disciple. Even so, for a wizard of his age to reach this level was extraordinarily rare, and to claim that Cthulhu's corruption had contributed nothing would simply be impossible.
"I'm sorry..." The black-robed man let out a quiet sigh. "You all have to remain here forever."
His wand became a blur of black afterimages, effortlessly blocking, deflecting, or outright erasing every spell that came his way.
A massive shimmering barrier sprang into existence before him, absorbing several 'Reductor Curses' without wavering. Almost before the shield had finished forming, he cast again.
An off-white beam shot forward, and one prisoner preparing another Dark Curse was instantly transformed into a rigid stone statue.
Then black flames, alive, as though they possessed a will of their own, erupted from the tip of his wand, twisting into the shape of a giant serpent that wrapped around another prisoner. Within moments, nothing remained except a brief scream and the stench of burning flesh.
"AAAAAAAH!"
the prisoners screamed.
The black-robed man continued casting, launching swift, ruthless counterattacks rather than merely defending himself. His magic was both powerful and deeply unsettling, blending orthodox wizarding techniques with profane powers born of the Abyss itself.
One prisoner attempted to ambush him from the side, but without even looking, the black-robed man flicked his hand. An invisible force slammed the attacker through the air, and he crashed into the wall with a sickening crack as his bones shattered.
It was obvious that his physical mutation had granted him strength comparable to the legendary warriors long extinct in this era. A master of both magic and martial power, such combinations had always been monstrously powerful.
"AAAAAH!! My arm!"
"My head!"
The prisoners stood no chance. The battle looked dazzling from afar, but in truth, it was brutally one-sided.
The flashes of colliding spells made the underground hall flicker between light and darkness as one prisoner after another fell. Some died instantly beneath the 'Killing Curse', others were twisted into barely recognizable forms by Dark Curses, and still others were crushed into dust beneath overwhelming magical power.
Their numbers dwindled rapidly.
Finally, the last prisoner still capable of standing, the elderly convict with graying hair, collapsed after being struck by the 'Cruciatus Curse'. Writhing on the ground, he released screams that no longer sounded human.
The remaining prisoners, though still alive, were already broken in body and spirit. They watched helplessly as a final flash of green ended the old man's suffering.
"No..." The surviving prisoners had become almost numb. The rage and frenzy that had filled their faces only moments before had vanished, leaving nothing but a despair that reached into the marrow of their bones.
When it was over, only the black-robed man remained standing. The magical field surrounding him gradually settled, and not a speck of dust clung to his black robes, as though the fierce battle had never involved him at all.
"You have no idea how serious this is."
His cold gaze swept across the wreckage and the corpses scattered throughout the hall, his vertical pupils showing not the slightest ripple of emotion.
"If even one of you escaped... it would bring an irreparable catastrophe upon the entire world."
(End Of This Chapter)
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