Chapter 133: Recycling
With Tom's furious roar, the very fabric of the surrounding space began to shudder violently.
The static, black-and-white scenery of the memory world twisted, warping into a chaotic vortex. Countless streams of pitch-black ink bled from the walls on all sides. They pooled and writhed, transforming into thousands of ferocious, venomous serpents. Jaws unhinged, they lunged toward Tamara, carrying a foul wind that reeked of old blood and rotting parchment.
Tamara stood perfectly still. A dangerous sharpness crept into her dark eyes.
She knew exactly what she was looking at. These were no ordinary conjurations. In this consciousness space built entirely from memories, they could not inflict physical wounds. Instead, these serpents were the pure materialization of Tom Riddle's aggressive, parasitic soul.
Every single drop of that writhing ink carried his deranged desire to usurp his host.
If those fangs pierced her, or if that ink swallowed her whole... her self-awareness would be instantly polluted. She would be assimilated, her mind overwritten like a single drop of ink dissolving into a basin of clear water.
If she lost this mental war... the girl who woke up in the real world would no longer be Tamara Riddle. It would be a sixteen-year-old boy wearing her skin.
'Trying to seize my body?'Facing the overwhelming tide of fangs and venom, not a single muscle twitched in Tamara's delicate face. She merely watched the furious, screaming youth with eyes as cold as a frozen lake.'Playing these pathetic little tricks... on my home turf...'
Tamara prepared to draw upon the absolute authority of the main soul, ready to shatter these illusions with a single thought.
Then, her expression shifted.
"Hiss—!"
The ink serpents did not disintegrate as easily as she had calculated. On the contrary, they acted like corporeal chains of iron. They snapped around her wrists and ankles, binding her limbs before a thick coil whipped around her throat, tightening viciously.
A highly corrosive will surged through the serpents, drilling violently into her mind.
It was a torrential flood of memories belonging to the sixteen-year-old Tom.
Endless days and nights of suffocating loneliness in the orphanage. The festering, venomous hatred for his Muggle father. The burning, arrogant ambition to conquer the magical world. These memories acted as jagged blades, attempting to hack open Tamara's consciousness and carve out her original mind.
"You underestimate these fifty years far too much!"
Tom stood atop the crest of a massive ink wave, looking down at her, his laughter echoing with manic glee.
His form was no longer entirely human. He had merged with the surrounding darkness, swelling into a monstrous, towering shadow.
"You said it yourself! I am a memory trapped here!" he bellowed. "That means in this diary, I am the absolute master! I don't care if you are the main body! Your soul might be strong on the outside, but in here, you are nothing but an invader!"
Driven by his roar, the entire consciousness space began to cave in.
The floor dissolved into a bottomless abyss. The ceiling plummeted downward, threatening to crush them.
Tamara felt a sickening tearing sensation deep within her spirit. The agony far surpassed any physical torture, as if a thousand invisible hooks had embedded themselves in her soul and were violently ripping it from her flesh.
Her form flickered, turning translucent and dangerously unstable.
She was, after all, currently occupying an underage body. The compatibility between her ancient soul and this young flesh was inherently flawed. Tom had locked onto this single, glaring weakness, pouring everything into usurping the host.
"Become my nourishment! I will use your body to finish our great work!"
The colossal head of an ink serpent unhinged its jaws, plunging down to swallow Tamara whole.
At that critical, breathless juncture... the tightly bound girl simply stopped struggling.
She tilted her head upward.
Her eyes, previously dimmed by the overwhelming suppression, suddenly ignited. A blinding, unmatched crimson light flared within her pupils. It was the gaze of a true demon lord—one who, even while chained at the bottom of a hopeless abyss, still looked upon the entire world with absolute contempt.
"Master?"
Tamara's voice was soft, yet it sliced through the deafening roar of the ink like a physical blade.
"You have been swaggering around in this moldy little diary for a couple of days, and you actually deluded yourself into thinking you are the master?"
A dark, mocking smile curved her lips.
"The power you are so incredibly proud of is merely a scrap. A tiny fragment I casually sliced off and threw away all those years ago."
The very next second... a power erupted from the deepest recesses of Tamara's soul. It was darker, infinitely more deep, and saturated with the suffocating stench of death and decay.
If Tom's power was a violent, raging flood... the aura Tamara unleashed was a bottomless, devouring black hole.
"Boom—!"
The heavy ink chains wrapped around her throat and limbs evaporated into nothingness the instant they made contact with her aura.
"This... what is this?!"
Tom's manic laughter died in his throat. Raw horror bled into his features as he realized he was completely losing connection with the ink he commanded.
Worse, he could feel his own power being violently siphoned away, dragged into the void of her presence.
"There are some things... that you will never comprehend."
Tamara slowly levitated into the air, gravity losing its hold on her. Her long, dark hair whipped wildly behind her, defying the lack of wind. The strands elongated, transforming into a massive swarm of black, venomous serpents that shot forward, wrapping tightly around Tom's monstrous, swollen form.
"You possess nothing but the petty ambition of a sixteen-year-old boy."
Her crimson eyes pinned him in place.
"But what I possess... is true darkness. I have transcended death. I have walked through hell. And I have crawled my way back out of the abyss."
Tamara extended her pale hand and slowly clenched her fingers into a fist.
The enormous monster let out an agonizing, ear-piercing shriek. Its shadowy form rapidly compressed, shrinking violently until it was forced back into the shape of the sixteen-year-old youth.
Only this time, the arrogance was entirely gone. Trembling violently from head to toe, Tom fell to his knees, half of his body already swallowed by Tamara's expanding shadow.
"Now. Kneel."
The massive ink serpents hovering in the air instantly detonated, reverting to harmless, dirty water that splashed against the invisible floor.
The youth who had been screaming about conquering the world just moments ago now looked as though his spine had been surgically removed. His legs gave out completely, and he collapsed heavily against the ground.
"This... this is impossible..."
Tom stammered, his head snapping up. He could feel the violent tremors echoing from the very core of his soul.
"Nothing is impossible."
Tamara glided forward, her bare feet making no sound. Stopping right in front of him, she looked down from her superior height, slowly reaching out to rest her hand gently atop the trembling boy's head.
"You are merely a piece of me."
Her voice was a soft, deadly whisper.
"And since you have proven yourself to be useless trash, you should be fully prepared to be recycled."
"NO—!!!"
Tom's desperate, tearing scream was cut short as Tamara's fingers dug into his scalp and clenched tight.
The entire black-and-white world shattered like fragile glass.
Countless streams of thick, black light surged up along her arm, pouring madly into her body.
It was raw knowledge.
It was pure magical power.
It was every ounce of talent, cunning, and ambition that the genius youth had possessed fifty years ago.
Slytherin dormitory.
Tamara's eyes snapped open. She drew in a sharp, deep breath of the freezing dungeon air.
It was over.
The leather-bound diary resting on her lap had lost all its unnatural luster. She flipped the cover open. The pages were blindingly white, completely devoid of even a single speck of ink.
It had been reduced to a mundane, useless stack of scrap paper.
Without a second glance, Tamara casually tossed it toward the foot of her four-poster bed. She slowly raised her hands, turning them over in the dim light.
Even without drawing her wand, she could feel the heavy, intoxicating boil of magical power surging through her veins.
That frustrating sense of blockage—the invisible ceiling that had constantly restricted her magic in this new body—had largely vanished.
On the bedside table, a heavy glass water cup silently lifted into the air.
Tamara did not utter a single incantation. She did not even twitch a finger.
She merely stared coldly at the floating object, channeling the immense, newly acquired magical power into an invisible, crushing force. She squeezed her mind.
"Crack."
There was no dramatic flash of light. No loud explosion.
The solid glass simply reacted as if caught in the grip of an invisible giant, instantly detonating into a cloud of sparkling, fine powder that drifted through the air.
A second later, Tamara gave her index finger a microscopic twitch.
"Reparo."
The glittering dust suspended in the air suddenly froze. As if time itself had been thrown into reverse, the powder rapidly converged, snapping back together piece by piece.
In the blink of an eye, a perfectly intact, flawless water cup settled quietly back onto the bedside table.
Destruction and restoration.
Dictated by a single thought.
An operation that would be hailed as a miraculous feat of control for any second-year student now felt as effortless and natural as drawing breath.
"That is much better..."
Tamara murmured, turning her gaze toward the mirror across the room.
In the heavy shadows of the dormitory, a brilliant flash of crimson bled through her pitch-black eyes. The color was brighter, more stable, and saturated with a far heavier killing intent than ever before.
She paused, her muscles tensing slightly as she waited.
She waited for that obnoxious, perky system to pop up. She waited for the inevitable, disgusting electric shock punishment, or at least a loud, ringing warning about illegally enhancing her magical core.
However.
One second passed. Two seconds. A full minute ticked by.
Absolute, dead silence in her mind.
No glowing pop-up window.
No patronizing voice.
That damned system, which usually threw a screaming fit if she so much as glared at Harry Potter for too long, had seemingly crashed. It maintained a complete, utter silence regarding her little act of soul-cannibalism.
Tamara narrowed her eyes, a dangerous glint flickering within them.
'So that is how it is...'
She had just brushed against the edge of a hidden rule.
Feeling that long-lost, intoxicating sense of fullness anchoring her soul, a sudden, mysterious intuition bloomed in her chest. She finally grasped the underlying logic of this wretched system.
With the return of that specific soul fragment, she could clearly feel the invisible shackles wrapped tightly around her spirit loosening by a fraction.
The shift was microscopic, but it was undeniably there.
'So that is how it is...'
Staring at her crimson-flecked reflection, the corner of Tamara's mouth curled into a slow, chilling smile.
The more complete her soul became, the closer she returned to her former, absolute peak... the weaker the system's binding authority over her grew.
The day she hunted down and reclaimed every single Horcrux, completely reforging her shattered soul... that would be the day she tore this broken system apart from the inside out and reclaimed her throne.
This was truly excellent news.
In a remarkably pleasant mood, Tamara lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes.
Just as she prepared to drift into a rare, genuinely peaceful sleep... the mattress beside her dipped slightly.
A warm, furry black ball silently crept up the blankets.
It was the black cat, Nagini.
Under normal circumstances, this was just a deeply stupid animal with highly questionable intelligence—a creature that did nothing but eat, sleep, and occasionally throw manic fits.
But tonight, it seemed to sense the dark, pure aura radiating from the depths of Tamara's newly replenished soul.
The cat acted as if it had just inhaled a mountain of premium catnip. A heavy, vibrating purr rumbled from its throat, sounding almost sycophantic, carrying a distinct tremor of fanatical worship.
It crawled forward cautiously, desperately rubbing its furry head against the back of Tamara's pale hand. It even tried to press its entire body weight against her side, acting as if merely basking in this dark aura was the pinnacle of feline ecstasy.
However.
Before the creature could complete its second rub... a cold hand clamped down hard on the scruff of its neck, seizing its fate.
Tamara opened her eyes, glaring down at the suddenly affectionate furball with absolute disdain.
"Get down."
There was zero warmth in her voice. Only the freezing command of a tyrant.
Without missing a beat, the Dark Lord flicked her wrist, mercilessly hurling her loyal, worshiping servant off the edge of the bed like a bag of garbage.
The black cat hit the carpet, rolled once, and let out a pitiful, confused "meow."
"Do not get your filthy fur everywhere, you idiot," Tamara muttered coldly.
She rolled over, completely ignoring the pair of glowing eyes staring up from the floor, swimming with a pathetic mix of resentment and adoration.
Now that the diary was dealt with and her power was successfully reclaimed, she could finally enjoy a quiet, peaceful stretch of school life.
However.
Immersed in the rare joy of victory, the Dark Lord failed to realize she had made a rather arrogant miscalculation.
The soul fragment within the diary had indeed been completely consumed.
But what about the container it had left behind?
At that exact moment.
Gryffindor Tower, girls' dormitory.
Ginny Weasley, who should have been deeply asleep, suddenly sat bolt upright in her bed.
Her movements were unnaturally stiff, jerking upward like a wooden marionette pulled by invisible strings. The pale moonlight filtered through the window, washing over her face and giving her skin a sickly, eerie pallor.
Slowly, her eyelids peeled open.
Those eyes, normally a bright, warm brown, were now completely consumed by a dead, silent black.
There were no irises. No pupils. Just two bottomless, empty voids.
"...give mine... back..."
The young girl's lips twitched. The voice that slipped past her teeth did not belong to Ginny. It was a grotesque, unnatural sound, layered with countless hoarse, overlapping whispers.
The main consciousness of the diary had been eradicated.
But the toxic residue left behind by months of soul erosion—the discarded, festering resentments—had completely lost the controlling anchor of the main body. It had gone entirely rogue.
This residue no longer possessed the cunning intellect or cold reasoning of the sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle. It could no longer formulate careful, grand plans.
It was now nothing more than a decapitated beast, its headless corpse still violently twitching.
No logic.
No coherent thought.
All that remained was the most primitive, purest instinct of raw Dark Magic—the absolute drive to execute the death command permanently etched into its very essence.
To survive, the parasite needed to find fresh nourishment.
And the weak, fractured soul of the girl it currently occupied was the perfect offering.
Ginny threw off her heavy blankets, her bare feet hitting the cold floorboards.
She did not reach for her wand on the nightstand.
Because right now, she herself was a walking, breathing vessel of pure Dark Magic.
"Kill... all... mudbloods..."
The small shadow slipped silently out of the dormitory door, disappearing into the dark, winding stairwells that led deeper into the sleeping castle.
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