"Wait!"
Professor Carbok suddenly kicked aside the rubble blocking his path and stumbled forward.
His robes were covered in dust, and his face was filled with a mixture of shock and anger.
"Samdron! Since you possess such powerful magic, why didn't you act sooner? If you had used that spell earlier, Gravitz wouldn't have..."
He stopped abruptly.
Sagres's wand was already pointed at him.
The other professors immediately turned towards Sagres, their expressions complicated, a mixture of relief at having survived and an indescribable fear.
Sagres looked at Carbok, his voice steady.
"I am a professor. In situations like these.. My duty is to protect the students, not to babysit my colleagues."
"Shut up!" Carbok shouted, waving his arms agitatedly. "You clearly could have..."
Bang!
A flash of red light struck him before he could finish speaking.
Carbok was hit by Expulso and sent flying backwards, collapsing unconscious into a pile of rubble.
The remaining professors stared at the scene in horror. Their wands rose almost in unison, only to hesitate in mid-air.
Sagres remained completely unperturbed.
"What? Do you have a problem with me as well?"
"You... how could you attack a professor?" Ninas asked, her voice trembling.
"You should ask him why he thought he could speak to me in that tone."
Sagres swept his gaze over the professors present, and everyone involuntarily took half a step back.
"Professor Gravitz's death is tragic, but the most important thing now is to make sure no one else dies," Sagres said calmly. "Now, lower your wands."
...
Sagres transformed into the shadow of a dark raven and soared deep into the Forbidden Forest, following the giants' tracks.
Moonlight filtered through the dense canopy, casting mottled shadows across the ground covered in decaying leaves.
He flew over a phosphorescent stream and soon began noticing crude totem poles scattered through the forest, each carved with runes similar to those on the giants' weapons.
The deeper he went, the stronger the pungent smell of sulphur and molten metal became.
Eventually, Sagres reached a clearing that had been forcibly opened within the forest.
There, he found the giants' gathering place.
It was less a camp than a primitive forge.
Enormous furnaces continued to belch black smoke, while metal fragments and slag lay scattered across the ground.
But what caught his attention most were the forging tools.
They were clearly not made for the giants' enormous hands.
Several specialised workbenches had been neatly arranged in the centre of the camp, each covered with precise forging instruments.
Beside them lay several glowing fragments of metal, identical to the material used in the giants' weapons.
Giants had never been known for their skill in forging, so this finely crafted equipment had clearly come from somewhere else.
Sagres was about to investigate further when heavy footsteps suddenly sounded in the distance.
Several tall giants trudged back towards the camp dejectedly.
They angrily kicked over several still-smoking furnaces and roared at the deserted camp.
Sagres's gaze settled on a young giant stumbling along at the back of the group.
With a gloomy expression, the young giant ducked into a cave at the edge of the camp, its entrance covered with animal hides. As he entered, he casually tore a fresh bone free and shoved it into his mouth to chew.
Sagres silently cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself and followed him inside like a shadow.
The cave was filled with a pungent, musky smell.
The young giant was now curled up on the straw-covered ground, snoring heavily.
Sagres gently waved his wand and cast Legilimency on the sleeping young giant.
The giant's mind was almost completely defenceless, like an open door.
Sagres's consciousness plunged straight in and was instantly overwhelmed by a torrent of primal instincts: hunger, the urge to mate, the instinct to defend territory.
In that simple, crude mental world, humans were merely "walking meat", while Hogwarts was "a stone nest full of little meat skewers".
Amid that chaotic sea of instinct, Sagres sharply caught something discordant.
He saw a creature with long, slender fingers and pointed ears whispering in a hoarse voice around a bonfire, "Wizards stole your prey... they keep enough fresh meat in the castle to last all winter..."
The scene shifted.
Another group of similar creatures was working busily beside the forge, their nimble hands forming a sharp contrast with the giants.
These craftsmen forged armour and weapons from shimmering metal and presented them to the giants as "gifts".
And the price the giants paid was a sacred object they called the Starfall Iron Jaw.
Sagres pushed deeper into the memory and saw the meteorite's true form: a huge, dark, heavy lump of metal, its surface covered in strange holes and ripples, like a solidified starry sky.
In the giants' limited history, it had fallen from the sky like a meteor and become the tribe's most precious sacred relic.
Every newborn giant child would be brought to touch it, in the belief that it would grant them "the power of the sky".
"Goblins, as expected..." Sagres withdrew his magic, a cold glint flashing in his eyes.
Those cunning creatures had stirred up the giants' hatred of Hogwarts and tricked them into giving up their most precious sacred relic.
The giants' simple minds could not comprehend the conspiracy behind the exchange. They only knew how to use the weapons the goblins had given them to attack the "stone nest full of fresh meat".
In the distance, the giants were still angrily wrecking the camp. They felt a deep unease over the loss of the sacred relic and the hunting party that had never returned, yet they had no way of understanding where that unease came from.
Sagres quietly stepped out of the cave and looked up at the night sky, broken into fragments by the canopy overhead.
Putting aside the goblins' conspiracy for the moment, these manipulated giants had already become a threat to Hogwarts and could no longer be allowed to remain.
He slowly raised his wand.
In the night sky, a point of red light suddenly flared into existence. At first it was as faint as a spark, but it rapidly expanded, trailing a blazing tail as it tore through the darkness and plunged downward with a roar.
The giants in the camp sensed the arrival of utter destruction.
They stopped rampaging and looked up at the sky in terror, letting out desperate, chaotic roars.
Some tried to find shelter, while others instinctively raised their arms, as though trying in vain to block the judgement descending from the angry sky.
The meteor struck the centre of the camp with perfect accuracy.
There was no deafening explosion, only a colossal roar, as if the earth's very organs had been crushed.
The point of impact turned into a bright white core that devoured everything, and then a terrifying shockwave spread outward in a ring, mercilessly crushing everything in its path: giants, furnaces, totems, workbenches... leaving not even ash behind.
The intense light lit up the entire Forbidden Forest as though it were broad daylight, and the blast hurled up the earth, rolling outward like waves.
When the blinding light finally faded, the thunderous echo gradually died away among the mountains.
The original camp no longer existed. All that remained was a charred deep crater with vitrified edges, proof that this place had been punished by the stars.
"Next come the goblins!"
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