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The first rays of sunlight poured into Hogwarts, painting the ancient towers in soft, ethereal shades of gold and amber, gliding across leaded glass windows and warming the cold stone. The castle's inherent magic seemed to hum gently in the air, a low, resonant frequency felt more than heard—a symphony of waking life. Students in distant dormitories were beginning to stir, the sounds of their movement a muffled murmur through thick walls. Owls swooped in silent, graceful arcs through the Great Hall, delivering the morning post with soft hoots and the rustle of parchment. From the depths of the castle came the distant, cheerful clatter of the kitchens, where hundreds of elves prepared a vast breakfast. It was a picture of a normal, peaceful morning. Too normal.
But Adam didn't feel any of it. He was an island of stillness and shadow amidst the waking world, still anchored in the stark, white silence of the hospital wing, seated rigidly in the wooden chair beside Cho's bed. The nurse had finally succumbed to exhaustion, dozing off in her own chair by the door, her spectacles sliding precariously down her nose, her breathing a soft, rhythmic counterpoint to the quiet of the ward. Adam sat stiff, his back not touching the chair's back, his hands resting on his knees, fingers splayed. His dark eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the girl who lay beneath the crisp white sheets, as if by sheer will he could guard her from any lingering trace of the nightmare.
Her eyelashes flickered, a tiny movement that screamed of returning consciousness. She shifted slightly, the sheets whispering against her skin, her breathing changing from the deep, even rhythm of enchanted sleep to something shallower, more aware. Then, her eyes finally opened, slow and heavy-lidded. The first thing she saw was Adam's face—the sharp, defined lines of his features shadowed by a night without rest, the faint purple smudges beneath his dark eyes, which were fixed on her with an unnerving, unwavering intensity.
For a long moment, she simply looked dazed, her gaze unfocused, almost unsure if she was still dreaming or if this intense, watchful boy was part of some strange new reality. Adam leaned forward, the movement minimal but breaking his statue-like stillness. His tone, when he spoke, was softer than its usual edged cadence, a deliberate gentleness that felt both foreign and practiced:
"Hey girl, are you feeling good?"
Cho blinked, her brow furrowing slightly as she processed the question, clearly overwhelmed by the disorientation of waking in the hospital wing with no memory of how she got there. She gave a small, hesitant nod, her eyes still wide with confusion. Shy, uncertain.
"Good," Adam muttered, the single word laced with a quiet finality. He leaned back a little, the wooden chair creaking softly under his weight. "That means no need for me to stay here. The nurse already let me the whole night, so now I can go."
He stood up, the motion fluid and controlled, adjusting his cloak with a tug, the fabric settling around his shoulders as if he were preparing to vanish into the shadows from which he seemed to emerge. But her voice, faint and laced with confusion, halted him just as he turned:
"Excuse me? … Do you know why I am here?"
Adam paused, then glanced over his shoulder. His expression was a carefully constructed mask of neutrality, unreadable, his words casual—almost careless, as if the answer were of little consequence:
"Oh, for that I don't know. I just found you and brought you here."
Her eyes, still clouded with the remnants of sleep and obliviation, searched his face, trying to find a crack in the facade, a hint of something more to the story. For a second, it seemed she might press further, a question forming on her lips. But then, perhaps too weary or too trusting, she offered a fragile, grateful smile and let it go, the unasked question dissipating like mist. Adam gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod and left, his footsteps silent on the stone floor as he passed the sleeping nurse and pushed the heavy door open.
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The stone corridors of Hogwarts stretched before him, now filled with the warm, growing light of morning filtering through high windows and enhanced by the steady glow of enchanted torches. Adam's pace was steady, purposeful, but his eyes weren't on the bustling portraits or the sunlit archways of the castle. They were locked inward, on the faint, persistent shimmer of the system's translucent screen hovering at the edge of his vision, a private countdown to damnation.
[Punishment: Time Remaining – 03:49:12]
The numbers glowed with a cold, blue insistence. Adam's lips twisted into a bitter, private smirk.
"Fucking perfect."
He moved with practiced stealth, slipping away from the main thoroughfares unnoticed by the trickle of early-rising students, heading not toward the Great Hall or the grounds, but deeper and deeper into the castle's ancient heart, descending through staircases that grew older and more worn with every level. The air grew colder, damper with every step downward into the dungeons, the cheerful morning light replaced by a pervasive, gloomy chill. Few students ever came here. The walls, slick with condensed moisture, sweated a cold dampness that dripped in slow, echoing plinks into shallow puddles on the floor. Shadows stretched long and crooked, flickering and dancing in the erratic light of the occasional, guttering torch, making the very stone seem alive and malevolent.
Finally, he arrived at a place that felt less like part of the school and more like a wound in its foundation.
A massive, ancient door stood before him, seemingly grown from the dungeon wall itself. It was constructed of half-rotted, petrified wood, bound in thick, blackened iron bands studded with rivets the size of his thumb. Its surface was covered in strange, worn rune-like carvings that seemed to shift under direct sight, their meanings forgotten and ominous. It looked less like a school dungeon door and more like a relic from a darker, far more brutal age.
A notification appeared, overlaying the grim sight, its text stark and formal.
[Punishment Zone Detected]
[Hogwarts Subterranean Prison – Hidden Chamber] [Entrance spell required: Aperi Portam]
Adam exhaled, a cloud of mist forming in the frigid air. There was no turning back. The path was set. He raised his wand, his voice low but steady, the words feeling like a key turning in a long-unused lock:
"Aperi Portam."
The runes carved into the door flared faintly with a cold, blue fire that gave no heat. With a deep, shuddering groan like stone grinding against stone for the first time in centuries, the door reluctantly creaked inward, opening a sliver of impenetrable blackness.
The air that washed out was heavy. Rotten. Ancient. It carried the smell of dry dust, old rust, and something else, something metallic and faintly coppery. Adam stepped forward over the threshold, his boots scuffing on grit-covered stone. The moment he cleared the entrance, the door slammed shut behind him with a deafening, final crash that made the hairs on his neck rise, sealing him in absolute darkness, the sound echoing into a silence that was somehow louder than the noise itself.
"Lumos," he muttered, the word a defiant spark in the overwhelming dark.
The tip of his wand flared to life, casting a pale, fragile circle of light into the oppressive black. It was not enough to illuminate the entire space, but enough to reveal that the dungeon was no longer just a chamber of stone and shadows—it was shifting, warping, transforming around him, the geometry of the place becoming unstable and wrong. Dank, dripping cells materialized on either side of him, their bars not of iron but something twisted and blackened, as though forged from solidified nightmares. Heavy chains, some broken and hanging limp, others still whole, dangled from the unseen ceiling high above, clinking softly as if touched by invisible, passing hands.
The system's voice echoed directly in his head, cold and instructional.
[Punishment Judgment: ACTIVE]
[Objective: Eliminate all enemies within the zone.] [Condition: User cannot exit until completion.]
Adam's jaw tightened, a muscle flickering in his cheek. His grip on his wand was vice-like.
"Well, fuck me sideways…"
The ground beneath his feet trembled, a deep, subterranean shudder. From a far corner of the shifting prison, where the darkness was thickest, a coil of pure blackness began to writhe. It was the shadow he had faced near the Black Lake, but it was no longer formless. It was twisted, larger, more grotesque, given shape and substance by the dungeon's magic. It pulled itself from the stones, its form becoming substantial—first smoke, then a flesh-like darkness. Its face was no longer a blur but a monstrous, shifting mask of pure hate, and where eyes should be, two burning red embers glowed with intelligent malice.
A notification blinked into his vision, identifying the threat.
[Enemy Identified: Guardian of the Dungeons – ACHILLIS] Rank:A- Type:Shadow Entity Specialty:Fear Manipulation, Soul Binding Note:This guardian protects dungeons worldwide. Escaping it is impossible.]
Adam hissed a breath through his teeth, his mind racing, calculating the sheer scale of the threat.
"Of course. Because life wasn't shitty enough already."
But then… his wand light flickered, catching on another figure, one that had been sitting so still and calm in the deepest shadows that he had missed it entirely.
Sitting on a crumbled block of stone, as calm and patient as a knight awaiting orders, was a humanoid being clad in armor that seemed forged from charred, blackened metal and cooled rage. His entire body radiated a faint, shimmering haze of crimson fire that licked silently at the air around him. His eyes glowed like miniature furnaces through the narrow slit of his formidable helmet, a steady, watchful burn. In his massive, gauntleted hands rested the pommel of a blackened greatsword, its point driven into the stone floor between his feet. He did not move, did not acknowledge Adam's presence, but the very air around him pulsed with a raw, intimidating pressure that was a physical force.
The system's whisper was softer this time, a note of unexpected possibility in the dire circumstance:
[Companion Summon – IGRIS] Status:Dormant]
Adam's wand, held in a suddenly sweat-slick grip, trembled slightly. His eyes flicked rapidly between the two figures—the advancing, monstrous embodiment of hatred, Achillis, and the silent, dormant knight radiating power, Igris. A wild, incredulous thought crashed through his mind.
"…Holy. Fucking. Shit."
And with that, the real hunt began. The true judgment of Adam was no longer a theoretical sentence—it was a brutal, immediate reality.
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[END OF CHAPTER. ]
IF YOU WANT TO READ MORE ABOUT MY WORKS OR JUST TO SUPPORT ME THEN HERE IS MY PATREON:
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