Corvus did not return to Earth.
The portal ripped him from Purgatory directly to Mictlan, secured the stones, and left him with a clearer measure of Thanatos' power as it closed behind him.
He arrived inside his own realm with the last strain of Purgatory still clinging to his body and felt the difference at once. The pressure that Thanatos had forced on him through that false underworld vanished the moment Mictlan accepted him. His shoulders loosened. The tightness in his chest eased. Even the siphoning trait, which had stayed active since the fight, settled with a sigh of relief.
The transfer to Mictlan had made him understand something he should have focused on earlier.
Mictlan was not a place he travelled toward; it was linked to him.
More than linked.
It answered him the way his magic answered intent. His will did not merely influence the realm. It materialised into the realm. That truth reached him now with embarrassing clarity. He stood in the central court and realised that if Thanatos ever tried to force his way in here, he would receive the same hospitality he had offered to Corvus.
Had he comprehended the full relation between himself and Mictlan before the raid, he would have emptied the other half of that vault as well. The missing stones settled on him with irritating weight. Regret never improved a situation, and he had no taste for indulging it, yet the arithmetic refused to vanish. He had left centuries of harvest behind.
There was no medicine for that beyond learning from it.
The sky above Mictlan remained what it always was, not truly night or day, but a dim suspended vastness that accepted whatever authority he exerted on it. The land around his castle stretched in dark plains and broken stone under a light that had no visible source.
He started to walk.
The ground changed under his feet before he asked for it aloud. Paths straightened. Outcroppings lowered. A broad section of open land beyond the main castle shifted in slow lines as his intent reached outward and the realm obeyed. He was already shaping the next stage, and his realm was shaping around his thoughts.
He wanted a Nest here.
Not the sprawling structure on Earth with its laboratories, arrays, holdings, staff movement, and the endless practical noise of an empire under construction. That had its use. This place would be different.
He would keep it as private as the realm itself. He will reserve a seat next to his for Elizaveta. Perhaps Fleur later, depending on whether she continued proving herself worth the trouble.
He did not reject the old guard's suggestions about his brides. In Elizaveta's case, rejection had never even been an honest opinion. At the time, he had not been strong enough to force another course even if he had wanted one, and the truth beneath that remained simpler. He would not have rejected her regardless.
Fleur was another matter.
Useful for the alliance he built, beautiful, and politically profitable. Still young and unproven in the places that mattered most to him. He had not developed any significant plan around that relationship. Whether that became unfair to her was not his concern at present. She had been given a place at the edge of his life. She will decide to move further inward; it would depend on her, not on his sentiment.
The first structures rose while he thought.
He did not bother with spectacles. Stone formed, aligned, and settled into long, severe shapes joined by covered walks and inner courts. The architecture matched the castle. Walls went up thick. Windows remained narrow. The whole place was getting designed to breed his own lesser Architects.
When the first section stood in its completed form, Corvus turned and willed himself into the castle proper.
The transition carried him through levels of black stone, old halls, and the enormous bleak heart of the place until he stood inside the main chamber. From there, he went lower.
Deeper than the obvious stairs.
Deeper than the prison cells, he had already shaped.
He moved through the castle by will alone and carved out a room beneath its foundation where no corridor led, and no door existed. The chamber formed around him in silence. Stone pressed outward, and the ceiling rose high. The walls remained blank. There would be no entry and no exit in the ordinary sense. One either knew the room existed and had the means to teleport directly into it, or not enter at all.
Even that was not enough for his taste.
He set secondary conditions into the stone itself. Recognition keyed only to him. Spatial locks anchored through the corners. Soul-keyed obstructions lay beneath them. By the time he finished, the chamber did not merely lack a door. It rejected the very idea that one ought to be there without his leave.
Only then did he empty the stolen harvest.
Philosopher's stones spilt out in waves, not dropped carelessly but deposited in ordered banks along the floor and then stacked upward in a gleaming red mass under his direction. Thousands of them filled the chamber with a dim pulse that looked almost like the beating heart of the realm.
These numbers were barely enough for the work he had in mind.
Corvus closed the storage folds and returned to the upper levels.
He had taken much from the encounter with Thanatos, but not enough to justify delay. The stolen fragments needed sorting before they turned into wasted advantage.
He crossed into his personal chambers, lay back on the bed, and closed his eyes.
--
Back on Earth, three hours passed badly.
Arcturus Black stood in front of the Veil.
He had not moved more than a few steps from the central dais since Corvus crossed through. Bastion Guards formed a crescent around the arch with shields set and lines fixed. The Death Room had been sealed. Outer corridors were blocked, and Ministry access had narrowed.
Elizaveta stood at the front beside Arcturus.
She had not sat, eaten, or accepted the tea someone brought once. Her hands remained empty because if she held anything, she would likely break it. Her face stayed calm in the precise way women say there are no problems.
Vinda and Grindelwald stood behind them.
That pairing alone convinced several Unspeakables that silence was the healthiest course available. Vinda's posture remained perfect. They kept returning to the Veil and then away from it.
At some point, Amelia informed Sirius what had happened.
That brought Sirius to the Death Room with Narcissa and Bellatrix soon after. Sirius entered fast, lost his usual recklessness halfway to the inner tier when he saw Arcturus's face, and said nothing for nearly a full minute. Narcissa went still at once, every movement halted as though composure alone might justify itself to the room. Bellatrix looked at the Veil with open appreciation and the sort of focus she usually reserved for duels and husbands who tested her patience.
House Black, bar the younger members still at Hogwarts, stood in the Death Room waiting for its heir to return from beyond.
Even the whispers from the arch seemed lower now, as if the Veil itself had recognised that too many people with too much intent had gathered around it and had decided mockery would be safer at a softer volume.
Arcturus finally broke first.
He did not turn from the arch. "How long?"
An Unspeakable checked his timepiece and answered. "Three hours and fourteen minutes."
Three hours and fourteen minutes since he had watched his heir lean back into the Veil and promise he would return.
Bellatrix folded her arms and stared at the hanging fabric. "I should go and check." Narcissa's stunner hit her where she stood, and the blonde held her sister with a silent levicorpus.
Sirius ran a hand through his hair, stopped halfway, and let it fall. He watched Cissa stunning and holding Bella. "That is not helpful."
A spare wand appeared on Narccisa's left hand. A threat and an invitation. Amelia had the good sense to pretend she did not see anything while also thanking Narcissa for the wonderful lesson on how to deal with Black Madness.
Elizaveta finally spoke without taking her eyes off the arch. "He said he would return."
There was no softness in her voice, only conviction held so tightly it had started to sound like discipline.
Vinda looked at her. Pride and pain crossed her face in the same instant. Grindelwald said nothing. He was old enough to know that crossing the Veil was not something one returned from.
Then the room changed with a wave of cold. Everyone felt it before they understood it. The Veil, which usually moved with that slow, useless little stirring of its own, churned as though boiling under invisible hands. The whispers spiked.
Then the fabric started to move.
-
Back in Mictlan, Corvus opened his eyes.
The fragments ripped from Thanatos had settled enough to be useful. The Architects had not created Purgatory for prestige. The realm had been necessary because the will of the planet had begun rejecting them too strongly to allow them ordinary function. Outside those controlled structures, the world itself pressed against them the way Purgatory had pressed against him during the fight, only on a wider scale and with less room for denial.
That changed the calculation.
If Thanatos crossed into Earth and tried to continue where they had left off, the planet would suppress him. How much, Corvus could not say. Enough to matter for sure, perhaps not enough to win the fight for him.
He rose and stepped out onto the high balcony of his personal chambers.
Below him stretched the realm he had claimed and was already revising in his mind. The castle remained bleak and severe. The plains beyond it waited in obedient dark lines. This place was his, and when he returned properly with a team of Nestborn researchers, he intended to rename it and rebuild parts of it.
For now, however, there were more immediate tasks.
He had left Arcturus worrying.
He had not realised how many others would be standing in that room doing the same thing.
Corvus raised one hand and tore open a portal.
The opening formed in front of the balcony as a rip in the fabric of the realm, dark at the edges and steady at the centre, tied directly to the Death Room by his own decision. He stepped through without hesitation.
On the other side, the Veil tore wider.
Every wand in the room came up at once except Bellatrix's, who was still stunned.