The ruins of Hogwarts did not sleep. Even when silence draped the shattered halls, a hum lingered in the stones—a faint resonance of spells unleashed and broken. Walls still wept with light where curses had scarred them. The Black Lake rippled against the cliffside as though unsettled by some unseen pulse. To any passerby, the castle looked wounded but alive, clinging to dignity. But to those who felt magic deeply, it was something else entirely. Hogwarts was afraid.
Eric Dillan stood beneath its bones, in the chamber of green crystal where Salazar's memory still whispered when called. His body ached from the wounds of rebellion, but the ache was distant, irrelevant. What pulsed louder than pain was connection. The Throne had not only accepted him—it had begun to learn him. And in the quiet of this underground cathedral, he sat with Nemesis strapped to his arm, blood humming with unstable equations. His eyes, darker now than ever, reflected more than hunger. They reflected inevitability.
The archives glowed faintly along the walls, thought-crystals drifting like fireflies in glass. He reached toward them, fingers brushing ancient fragments of runes, and began to assemble a new design. The Orb above the Astronomy Tower had mapped ley currents. But maps were only beginnings. If maps could show rivers of magic, then rivers could be redirected. Harnessed. Weaponized. What he envisioned was no longer a satellite. It was something more primal, something vast enough to grip the whole world's veins.
"Project: Leviathan," he murmured, etching the word into a hovering panel of runic light.
The Throne pulsed, as if approving.
---
McGonagall's voice trembled more from fatigue than fear, though fear was not far. In the wreckage of the staff room, she and the few surviving professors gathered by a fire that sputtered against the damp chill. Slughorn wrung his hands, muttering about disaster. Flitwick's eyes were sharp, calculating—yet even he had no solutions.
"He cannot be allowed to continue unchecked," McGonagall said at last. Her voice had iron in it, but the weight of loss clung to her shoulders. "Eric Dillan is not… a boy anymore. He is something else."
"Something that should not be," Slughorn croaked.
Yet even in their anger, hesitation divided them. To bring this to the ICW—the International Confederation—would mean exposing their failure, admitting that Hogwarts had birthed a second Grindelwald. Worse, it would spread panic. No government wanted to hear of a seventeen-year-old bending ley currents. Some whispered that the world was not ready for another shadow prophet. Some whispered that the world was already too late.
---
Far from Britain, the ripples spread like cracks through glass.
In Kyoto, the Guild of Onmyoji halted a midnight ceremony when their ink charms convulsed, drawing jagged lines unbidden. The grandmaster leaned over the trembling parchment, lips tightening. "A shadow serpent coils beneath foreign waters," he whispered. "An omen of imbalance."
In Egypt, Tomb Wardens patrolling beneath Giza felt the sand itself shift as if stirred from below. Wards etched by pharaohs cracked hairline fractures. One priest declared it a curse reawakened. Another simply muttered, "Not curse. Architect."
Across the ocean, in Washington D.C., the American Department of Magical Security lit its highest alert sigil. "Classification: Omega-level threat," the director said, stamping the parchment. "Comparable only to Grindelwald. Containment priority: impossible. Surveillance only."
Prophets stirred from Morocco to Moscow, each one scribbling or screaming half-legible fragments of the same riddle. The child who builds shall drown the age in his design. The Leviathan has no master.
---
Meanwhile, the Inner Circle's sanctuary grew restless.
Regulus Black sat in the shadows, quill unmoving. He watched Lisette pace, her hands flickering with involuntary sparks of transmutation—an apple she'd conjured turned to a shard of glass before hitting the floor. Ailis sat apart, gaze hardened, whispering under her breath as if arguing with unseen currents. Cyrus drew on the walls again, his ink writhing into spirals of serpents swallowing cities whole.
Lisette broke first. "We're building something wrong. You feel it too. The way the air bends when he speaks. He isn't leading us—he's consuming us."
"Silence," Regulus snapped, though his voice lacked conviction. His loyalty was sharp, but loyalty did not silence the dread in his chest.
Cyrus turned his parchment. A city drawn upside down, foundations crumbling into black water. Beneath it, he'd written: Leviathan rises, Leviathan swallows.
Ailis shook her head. "We're not beta architects anymore. We're fuel."
Eric's arrival silenced them all. He entered without sound, only Nemesis pulsing faintly on his arm. His eyes swept the room, unreadable, but the air itself seemed to kneel.
"I hear your doubts," he said softly. "Good. Doubt sharpens you. Doubt means you see the scale of what we're building. But understand this—Leviathan is not destruction. Leviathan is structure. It will bend this world so the weak cannot break it. We are not playing revolution. We are playing god."
None answered. The silence was not agreement, but surrender. And surrender was enough.
---
Beneath the Black Lake, Eric began his test.
The waters were still at first, moonlight casting silver across their surface. Then runes carved into the bedrock pulsed, feeding into the Throne's resonance lines. Nemesis flared. Energy spilled downward, deep into caverns no spell had touched for centuries.
The lake shuddered.
Fish scattered. Ancient grindylows writhed. The water itself grew heavy, its weight pressing against the surface like a held breath. Above, the castle trembled. Students who still lingered in their dorms sat up in fear as the walls groaned. Professors rushed to steady wards that screamed under unseen pressure.
And in the storm gathering above, thunder cracked with unnatural rhythm. Lightning forked in patterns too precise for chance—runic shapes sketched across the clouds themselves.
Eric stood on the stone platform, arms lifted, Nemesis glowing like a living flame. His voice merged with the storm.
"Reject me," he whispered, "and I will rewrite you."
The lake erupted.
From the depths rose a shadow, immense and coiling. Not beast, but construct—scales of black crystal, joints forged from obsidian, veins of pulsing green light. It stretched higher and higher, water cascading down its serpentine coils. Its eyes were twin furnaces of rune-fire, unblinking, ancient yet newborn.
The first prototype of the Leviathan Engine had awakened.
All across the world, seers collapsed. In temples, in towers, in caves, their bodies convulsed, mouths frothing as the same phrase tore itself free from their throats:
"The Leviathan has risen."
---