The Hazy Dreamscape.
The sky was an unsettling misty white. Night had passed, but day had not yet arrived.
Dumbledore treasured this opportunity. He knew that child was still fighting somewhere far away.
He carefully surveyed the field.
The mist that had chased them had only just come to a stop. Before him was a small, round patch of green grass.
Around the grass stood countless crooked Gothic arches. They had no roots, no source, as if they had grown from the mist itself and stretched into an invisible void.
In the endless gray-white emptiness, this patch of green seemed abrupt and precious.
At the center of the grass, inside a few wooden walls, stood a girl.
Albus's breath stopped. His heart felt as if it had been seized by an icy hand and could no longer beat.
His legs felt filled with lead; even the strength to retreat and flee disappeared in an instant.
She still looked as frail and pale as he remembered. She wore a clean blue cotton dress, and her golden hair fell to her waist, hanging quietly in the windless grass.
She had her head lowered, focused on arranging a tall daisy with her fingers. That daisy was the only prayer in her tiny world, and her only hope.
She seemed to sense something and slowly lifted her head.
Her gaze passed through the mist and landed on him without obstruction.
In that moment, Albus instinctively wanted to hide.
His body reacted faster than his mind. He took half a step back, turned his face aside, and hid that wrinkled, tear-streaked face in the shadows.
He was afraid.
He was afraid that his sin-stained appearance would defile that peaceful patch of grass. More than that, he was afraid—afraid that in her pure eyes, he would see even the slightest trace of blame, or even fear.
Mist appeared from somewhere, silently growing wildly around his ankles, twining around him, as if trying to pin him in place forever and prevent him from disturbing her peace after death.
Yet the moment Ariana saw him, there was no panic or resentment on her face.
It was as if she had always been here, searching for him, waiting for him.
She released the daisy in her hand, and a vast, gentle light instantly brightened in her eyes.
Her mouth opened slightly as she looked at him. Then, uncertain and timid, she broke the silence.
"Ah… ah… Albus… brother…"
That restrained call held within it nearly a hundred years of loneliness and fear from a fourteen-year-old girl.
Albus's body trembled violently.
The mist shattered at the sound, turning to ash.
He could no longer move, could no longer speak. Only tears blurred his blue eyes, silently sliding down behind those thick lenses.
None of the scenes from his nightmares came.
All that came was a call, pure as it had been at the beginning.
He did not dare look directly at her, as if facing the sun.
Yet like facing the sun, even if he did not look at her, he could still see her.
Ariana saw his reaction clearly.
She saw his tears, and she saw his hesitation, his fear of stepping forward.
She did not understand those complicated emotions, but she recognized sadness and fear, two things that had accompanied her for a hundred years.
And so, clumsily, she spread her arms, making the gesture of someone who wanted to embrace him. Yet she did not dare approach first, and only held her arms out like that.
It was an incomparably familiar gesture.
On that summer night in Godric's Hollow, she had once reached out like that too, wanting to comfort Albus after his quarrel with their brother, only to be shielded behind their mother.
After that, what separated them was a hundred years of boundless mist.
Moisture rose in her eyes—not for herself. After staying in the Borderland so long, she had long since stopped crying for herself.
It was for him.
"Brother Albus… don't be sad…"
Her voice came in broken fragments, yet she desperately wanted to make herself clear.
She released her grip on her skirt, brushed aside her hair, and showed him her thin neck.
"I… it didn't hurt. Not at all… It was just like falling asleep."
Then she gently placed her hand over her own chest, lifted her head, and looked with those innocent eyes into Albus's eyes, eyes filled with pain and self-loathing.
She made up her mind to tell him the most important thing in the most earnest, certain tone she could manage.
"And… it was me. I walked over there myself… I wanted to help… I was too stupid…"
The moment her words fell, Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the century, weakened at the knees and collapsed at the edge of that little patch of grass.
He could no longer bear this innocent absolution from the depths of the soul.
He removed his twisted half-moon spectacles and, like a helpless child, buried his face in his trembling hands. The sobs he had suppressed for a hundred years finally sounded, heavy and raw, in that eternal gray-white mist.
The mist surging behind him broke inch by inch, collapsed, and turned into soft white fluff.
Ariana panicked.
She hurried over with light, quick steps and knelt before her brother.
She lowered her head and stubbornly, patiently pried apart the fingers covering his face, one by one, as if this was the only important thing in the world.
She succeeded.
Because someone had no strength to resist her.
With her small hands, Ariana cupped that aged face full of tears, leaving him nowhere to hide.
Then, as if completing a sacred ritual, she gently pressed her forehead against Albus's.
In that instant, the entire hazy dreamscape fell silent.
All the savage mist disappeared.
A fragrance of grass, trees, and sunlight filled the air.
Within that fragrance, a new kind of mist rose—one that had never belonged to the Borderland before.
It did not drift across the ground, nor across the sky. It simply floated around the wizards, soft and slow.
"Ah… they have been born—the Mists of Mercy and Forgiveness…"
In the distance, Gryffindor roughly wiped his face.
"Did you guess this would happen?"
Ravenclaw did not respond. Her gaze was fixed on a distant place, where the black cat's battle with the mist had reached its fiercest point.
The mist was growing thicker and thicker. The Borderland was boiling, perhaps in anger.
Overwhelming mist churned, black and heavy, endlessly pouring in from even farther away.
It had already filled the black cat's entire field of vision, nearly three times as much as before.
The third stone giant crashed to the ground, leaving the earth covered in broken walls and shattered ruins.
Facing the ink-black mist, the black cat's green vertical pupils shone all the brighter.
The mist was like an evil dragon, guarding the treasure behind the Veil of Death.
It raged, roared, and drowned heaven and earth.
The black cat was alone now.
Its sword had been given to him. Its guardians had fallen into the mist. Its Void Talisman was split by a deep crack.
Its will was already far too exhausted. Its tail no longer swayed, and its body felt as heavy as if filled with lead.
Even the black cat's ears drooped.
But it still raised its paw, trembling, trying to summon a fourth Vine-Stone Warden.
It did not retreat.
Because it was her god.