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Day 1
The workshop was silent when Eric returned alone.
Not the kind of silence that comes from peace — the kind that comes after a threat, like the pause before a gunshot.
The mirrors were gone, but he could still feel where they had stood, the air faintly colder in their absence.
He opened Salazar's original codex, the one bound in snake-hide, its pages brittle with age. He wasn't looking for spells. He was looking for architecture — the scaffolding that held those spells together.
The Architect copies hadn't lied: the throne's design predated Slytherin. Eric could see it now in the patterns, like discovering a signature in a painting you thought was anonymous. Every curve of glyphwork carried a mathematical rhythm, not a magical one.
It was code.
Living, adaptive code.
And if code could be read, it could be rewritten.
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Day 2
Cyrus returned from an excursion into Muggle tech districts with an entire satchel of hard drives and processors.
> "You said they're code," he reminded Eric, dropping them on the table. "Code doesn't just live in one place anymore. Let's see if your magic and their algorithms can survive a crash together."
They began building a hybrid array: leyline-fed, processor-guided, designed to run simulations at speeds no human brain could follow. If the Architects had ten days, Eric wanted to know exactly how they would spend them.
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Day 3
Lisette intercepted a magical broadcast from the Moroccan anomaly. It wasn't a message — it was a pulse test, the equivalent of tapping a wall to see if it was hollow.
> "They're mapping our responses," she told him. "Pushing in from multiple angles to see where we react first."
Eric ordered her to give them nothing. No resistance, no signature. Let them think the anomalies had been abandoned.
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Day 4
The first political ripple hit.
A member of the International Magical Council summoned Eric privately.
> "Our seers have reported unusual leyline interference," the man said, sipping something expensive. "It matches… old Architect patterns."
Eric feigned ignorance.
The man leaned forward. "If they've returned, there will be factions that… cooperate. Better to choose your alliances early."
When Eric left the meeting, Regulus was waiting.
> "So they're already recruiting," Regulus said. "Not just to fight you — to replace you."
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Day 5
Ailis woke screaming. She'd been connected to the leyline map when a surge hit — one she hadn't initiated.
> "They're inside the grid now," she whispered once she caught her breath. "Not just watching. Touching. Changing."
The mapping orb showed subtle shifts: leylines bending into new curves, like threads being rewoven into a different tapestry.
Eric ordered a lockdown. The workshop's outer wards doubled. Anyone entering now would feel like they'd walked into a crushing deep-sea trench.
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Day 6
Cyrus's hybrid array began spitting out simulations.
Most of them ended with Eric dead in less than thirty seconds after contact.
But one…
One showed a possibility.
If they could corrupt the Architects' sync frequency — the rhythm that kept all their copies unified — they might break them apart long enough to destroy individual nodes.
The problem?
The sync frequency wasn't fixed. It evolved in real time.
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Day 7
Lisette caught something strange.
In the Japanese anomaly, one of the Architects' pulses carried an embedded… image. Not a glyph, not a spell diagram.
A face.
Eric's face.
He stared at it for a long time.
> "They're not just coming for the throne," he said finally. "They want me."
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Day 8
The Inner Circle started sleeping in shifts. No one left the workshop unaccompanied.
Regulus brought word that three more wizarding houses had declared neutrality.
> "They're waiting to see who wins," he said bitterly. "Cowards."
Eric didn't argue. He was already thinking about the opposite problem — the ones who wouldn't stay neutral, who might act early in hopes of taking him out before the Architects arrived.
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Day 9
The grid began humming at a pitch too high for human ears — but Eric could feel it, deep in his bones.
Ailis collapsed again during mapping.
Cyrus's simulations began producing visual static.
Lisette swore she saw movement in the mirrors even though they'd been shattered.
The Architects weren't just approaching. They were pressing in, folding reality like paper, making the walls thinner.
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Day 10 — Zero Hour
It began at dusk.
The leyline grid pulsed once, hard enough to make the floor ripple under their feet.
Every remaining mirror in the workshop lit up at once, this time without distortion.
There were more of them now.
Dozens.
Each copy moved in perfect synchronicity, their grey eyes glowing faint silver.
The central one — the same voice from before — spoke:
> "The equation changes tonight."
Eric stepped forward, the Nemesis gauntlet already alive with light.
> "Good," he said. "I hate math problems."
The walls of the workshop shifted, the glyphs rearranging themselves faster than any hand could carve them. The Architects weren't coming through a door — they were writing themselves into the room.
The Inner Circle moved as one.
Ailis poured raw leyline force into the floor. Regulus was already mid-strike before the first Architect fully materialized. Lisette's voice rang out in sharp, cutting syllables, rewriting the air around them.
The fight wasn't just physical.
The grid itself screamed — a soundless tearing as two architectures fought for dominance over the same magical skeleton.
Eric locked eyes with the central Architect.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this wasn't the real fight. This was just the first layer.
But he didn't care.
Because tonight, the countdown ended.
And he intended to rewrite the equation before they could solve it.
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