The Death Room had never been welcoming. At this moment, it had gone worse. The cold moving through the chamber did not stop at the skin. It reached bone, marrow, and something deeper, until even the Bastion Guards stood a little harder than before.
The Veil churned.
Its usual motion was quiet waves within the arch, the sort of stirring that was unsettling and serene. That was gone now. The thin fabric that separated realms rolled and buckled as though something on the other side had pressed a hand against it, tearing it apart.
Every wand and weapon came up, shields angled. Forming a defensive line around the members of House Black and especially Elizaveta.
Unspeakables drew back by instinct. Bastion Guards lowered their centre of gravity and locked their lines.
Yet, the first tear did not come from the Veil at all.
A narrow slice of darkness opened in front of the arch, turned once through itself, and widened into a portal with dark violet mist rolling through its centre.
Corvus came out of it already in the air.
He floated clear of the portal and stopped a couple of steps away from the arch. He felt the change in the Veil before anyone could speak to him. The pressure rising from the arch was furious and hungry.
He did not waste a word.
Psychic force burst out from him in a controlled wave and took hold of everyone nearest the dais. Bastion Guards, Unspeakables, Arcturus, Elizaveta, Vinda, Grindelwald, Sirius, Narcissa, Bellatrix, Amelia, all of them were moved at once and shoved back toward the walls with delicate control not to harm them.
Elizaveta's boots touched the stone as the force released her kindly; she caught herself against the shield of a Bastion Guard. Arcturus leaned against the stone wall behind him. Bellatrix tried to fight the push out of sheer reflex and then stopped the moment she understood who was behind it.
Corvus rose higher.
His tendrils spread behind him and hardened at the tips into black javelin points, each one held ready in a fan of restrained violence. In his right hand, turquoise light condensed into a dense sphere of Veritas Essentia. On his left, lightning began to gather in snapping coils that wrapped his forearm and climbed to his shoulder. He fed the arcs more power until the air around his hand smelled of ozone.
He was not going to let Thanatos dictate this exchange.
The Veil tore.
At the exact moment the fabric split wider, Corvus activated his speed and agility.
Thanatos appeared with his hood back in place and his body only half committed to the threshold. He was not crossing the arch. He was leaning out of it just enough to strike without meeting the full judgment of this world. Even in anger, the Architect was not a fool.
A growl left him and rolled through the room like something dragged over stone.
"You will pay, young one."
Black fog churned out around him at once, seeping through the arch and spreading into the Death Room with all the certainty of rot finding an open wound.
Corvus hit him before the fog could feed.
Dozens of tendrils drove into Thanatos's chest and neck in the same heartbeat. The strikes landed with wet sounds, punched through cloth and flesh, and anchored him to the threshold before the black fog could finish unfolding. At the same instant, the turquoise sphere splashed across his face, Veritas Essentia bursting over him in a clear circular aura, while purple lightning slammed into his body from Corvus's left hand.
The Architect's black fog tried to rise and protect its master.
Corvus answered with a telekinetic force brutal enough to make the arch itself groan. He seized Thanatos bodily and started pulling him away from the Veil.
That was the real goal.
He wanted Thanatos held in place long enough to examine his pattern in full.
Thanatos pushed back with Purgatory's power feeding him.
The force came through the connection between realms like a second body leaning into the fight. Corvus felt it immediately, a hostile pressure trying to pry his grip apart, lock the Architect to the threshold, and crush the room around the point of contact.
He did not yield.
His tendrils drank with greed sharpened by vengeance. Vital force streamed through them into him in dark, cold pulses. Lightning never stopped. It struck Thanatos's ribs, collar, throat, arms, and face in rapid succession, each impact forcing another twitch through his frame.
Corvus memorised while he dragged.
The soul pattern spun around Thanatos under Veritas Essentia in layered circles, too complex to take in all at once and too valuable to miss. Corvus memorised every detail and pattern while the Architect fought. The patterns of Sacred Blood, Immortality, Necromancy, and Spell Craft were open for his eyes and mind to memorise. There were shared structures between them already, but the differences mattered more. The pattern of Thanatos's immortality carried small differences compared to his. It might be because of his racial origin. Thanatos was not of this world. He was not like the Nereids, who were transformed from regular humans.
"Come, Death." Corvus's voice cut through the chamber. He did not use the Architect's name. It was better to keep the audience in the dark. "Allow me to introduce you to your end."
-
At the edge of the room, Unspeakables were drooling. Grindelwald wasn't sure what to feel or even think. He chased the hollows, even found and used one of them. He would not have even touched it if he knew the myth was to become a master of that thing. It was a trap.
Arcturus had recovered his footing and was already trying to step forward again. The pressure holding him back was not gentle enough to permit heroics. Elizaveta had one hand braced against the shield behind her and her eyes fixed on Corvus so steadily that the rest of the room might as well not have existed. Vinda's face had gone white.
Spells started to fly towards Death from the Bastion Guards' weapons first. Death, Piercing and Binding spells hit the legendary figure with no effect at all. Grindelwald, Vinda and Arcturus started the next wave. Again, the unforgivables splashed against Death and did exactly nothing.
Elizaveta shouted to stop the attacks from their side. It was a wasted effort and could easily hit Corvus.
-
Thanatos figured out what Corvus was planning.
The elder had known the moment the tendrils struck that Corvus was not trying to win cleanly. He was stalling and leeching. He was using the fight to weaken him enough for the will of the planet to finish what they started. That insult landed harder than the lightning.
Thanatos fought through it.
His black fog thickened and pushed back against the grey field Corvus was using to siphon more of his life. His fog was becoming weaker the moment it crossed the Veil. The young one's tendrils were forcing themselves deeper into Thanatos's chest While the Purgatory on the other side was supporting him through. The arch became the linchpin where their wills, magics, and extensions were taking chunks out of each other. And Thanatos was losing in the long turn.
The fog struck at Corvus's shadow limbs again, covering them and sucking the energy out to kill them. It was a tangled fight of leeching extensions.
At the same time, Thanatos shoved with his full will through the threshold, trying to break the telekinetic hold, keep one foot in the arch, and avoid stepping fully into a world that wanted him gone.
Corvus felt all of it.
He also felt the drag on his own mind. Veritas Essentia had almost completed one full turn around the Architect's exposed pattern. A few more seconds. That was all he wanted.
So he made the seconds hurt.
Psychic Mastery pulled harder. He was aware it was futile. The invisible pull landed and made Thanatos spend more of his power and attention fighting against it.
The Architect was already shifted half a foot farther from the Veil. That was enough to make the world notice its old enemy.
The moment more of Thanatos crossed the Arch, the will of the planet locked onto him.
The black fog lost density. The Purgatory started to channel more power to him to fight the pressure. His body lost one fraction of the arrogant certainty it had carried through the threshold.
Thanatos felt the pressure and the danger that came with it.
His snarl deepened.
Corvus did not let the moment pass. Necromantic Mastery rose under the lightning and telekinesis like a dagger sliding between ribs.
He hit the Architect with Soul Rend, one after another. He was rewarded with the painful scream that came from beneath the hood.
He drove more tendrils and siphoned greedily.
The Architect jerked in the air as if his entire frame had been yanked against a hook. A harsh sound tore out of him, part pain and part fury, and black blood spilt from under the hood.
Not enough to break him, but enough to make Corvus smell blood and act on like the shark he was.
The Veritas sphere completed its last turn and collapsed. Corvus had what he needed.
Now he was free to focus all his attention on his guest. The pressure from the Planet made everything easier. He promised himself to return the favour with a dozen rituals to feed his mana to the earth.
Two black estocs formed in his hands, long and narrow and built for thrusting. He launched himself forward under Extreme Speed while the lightning continued to strike.
The first blade went for Thanatos's throat.
The second aimed for the heart.
Thanatos blocked the throat strike with one hand. Corvus had expected that. The second blade punched into his chest cleanly.
The Architect froze for a moment.
Corvus leaned in with a wild smile he did not bother hiding. He twisted the estoc and transfigured it while it remained inside Thanatos' chest.
The embedded metal widened, narrowed, and reformed into a syringe structure built to drag rather than cut. It seized Thanatos's Sacred Blood and flushed it out through the back of the blade in a fast, dark stream.
Corvus caught every drop with Psychic Mastery.
Blood rose into the air beside him in a floating crimson mass, held with delicate control while the extraction continued. A quart was already suspended between them before Thanatos truly understood the shape of the violation.
Then the room shook.
The roar that came out of the Architect did not stop with the Death Room. It ran down the Department, through the Ministry, and into the city like a strike against the foundations of the world. Everyone in the chamber felt it. The stones underfoot trembled. Dust fell from the upper tiers. Farther above them, London itself shivered.
Thanatos's black eyes fixed on Corvus with naked hatred.
"You desecrated the sacred." The words came through clenched teeth and mounting pain. "You unholy blight."
Corvus did not bother to answer; he extracted more blood.
Somewhere back in Purgatory, philosopher's stones started turning to dust in dozens. Corvus felt the transfer as a sudden deepening in the Architect's resistance. The power moved through the threshold and into Thanatos with enough violence to make the air between them scream.
The Architect pushed.
The force that hit Corvus was devastating, but the moment it left the Arch, the will of the world tore half its edge off. Even reduced, it was enough.
The telekinetic hold snapped.
The tendrils were torn loose.
The blade ripped free of Thanatos's chest.
Corvus flew backwards across the room hard enough that the Bastion line behind the outer threshold actually shifted, though none broke formation. The blood, however, remained in his telekinetic grip. He kept it suspended with a vicious care. Each vial held less than half a cup. What he had just taken was more than a hundred times that amount.
Thanatos leaned back and let his spine touch the Veil again.
Relief crossed him in an instant.
He lifted one hand and pointed at Corvus from the threshold he had almost been dragged across.
"This sacrilege will be your end, young one."
Then he sank back into the Veil.
The arch sealed around him.
The torn Veil returned to its old hollow beauty, only now the whispers were weaker, as if the crossing and the damage done to their maker had thinned the room's appetite for mockery.
For a few seconds, no one moved.
Corvus hovered in the centre of the room with tendrils still spread, lightning fading off his left arm, and a captured mass of Architect blood turning slowly in the air beside him. He started to lower himself to the ground while conjuring crystal vials, filling and storing the sacred blood.
Then the Bastion Guards moved first.
Two stepped forward to secure the central dais. Unspeakables ran for containment wards. Grindelwald was already shouting for layered seals, counter pressure on the Arch, and every diagnostic array in the Department to be dragged into the chamber, whether they fit or not.
Arcturus did not shout.
He crossed the stone floor in three fast steps and stopped in front of Corvus with the solemnity of an old man who had nearly lost the centre of his world.
"You are alive."
Corvus glanced at him once, then at the blood getting stored.
"Yes."
Elizaveta reached him a heartbeat later and put one hand against his chest as if confirming the obvious herself would somehow make it more real.
Her eyes went to the blood, then lifted back to his face.
"What…" She was still in disbelief. "What was that thing?"
Corvus regarded the captured crimson mass with a satisfaction too cold to conceal.
"Such poor etiquette from one so ancient. My dear wife, that was Death itself."