The message had come quietly that morning: Headmaster Dumbledore requested Caelum's presence after dinner, alone.
Now, hours later, they stood in front of an unmarked wall deep within the dungeons—beyond even the Slytherin common room, down spiraling staircases few knew existed. With a murmured incantation and a touch of his wand, Dumbledore revealed a narrow passageway, damp with age and humming faintly with magic.
They walked in silence until the passage ended in a sealed, rune-bound door.
"This chamber has existed since long before my time," Dumbledore said quietly. "Created specifically to house the artifact entrusted to Hogwarts at the final hour of your House's fall. After it was sealed, it could only be opened again for the first time through the Headmaster's magic—and a single drop of blood. Your blood."
The runes pulsed at Caelum's approach. Without fanfare, the door opened.
Inside was a single object: a monolith of deep crimson stone—dark as wine, yet faintly translucent. Suspended within it, coiled and unmoving, was a serpent wreathed in pale blue flame. Above it floated shimmering silver words:
Sanguis meminit. Flamma purgat.
The blood remembers. The flame purifies.
Caelum approached, breath held. The monolith thrummed in response to his presence.
He reached out, brushing the stone like he had with the Bloodstone a year ago. Nothing happened.
Then he noticed the base of the monolith—directly beneath the coiled serpent—was a narrow hole, just large enough to fit a hand. He crouched beside it. Inside, at the upper end of the hole, he could just make out two jagged, stone-like points.
He understood immediately.
With a breath, Caelum turned his wrist upward and slid his hand in.
The moment the skin of his wrist met the stone prongs, they struck—piercing into his veins with precise cruelty. He flinched but didn't pull back.
The monolith pulsed.
Blue fire began to swirl around the serpent. Then, from the point of the wound, pale flame spread across his arm, up his shoulder, wrapping him in bright white blue flame. His vision blurred as the fire consumed him—and then he was gone.
…
He landed on sand.
The sky above was pitch-black—an endless sheet of darkness without stars or moon. Yet the world around him was lit as if it were midday, every grain of sand visible, every shadow sharp. The contradiction struck him immediately, a wrongness that prickled down his spine.
A flat desert stretched infinitely in all directions. No wind. No sun. No sound—only a silence so complete as though the world itself were holding its breath.
And then... memory that was not his own whispered to his mind.
A trial. A crucible of blood and flame. An echo of the battlefield that forged House Varnak. Only one rule: endure. Fight until nothing remains.
From the horizon, the first shadows emerged.
They crept forward like smoke at first—thin, wavering shapes dragging across the sand. Then the smoke thickened. Grew limbs. Dozens… hundreds.
Twisted silhouettes rose from the ground, eyeless, voiceless—shadows wearing the hint of human form.
But even without faces, Caelum felt it clearly.
The emotion pouring off them in waves, raw and unmistakable.
Hunger.
One of the figures staggered forward—its movements twitchy, disjointed.
Then, as if pulled by an unseen thread, it quickened.
From a limp step to a brisk stride.
And then—it ran.
No scream. No sound. Just a single blur of darkness charging toward Caelum across the lifeless sand, its shape twisting with every step.
The trial had begun.
Caelum stood still. "Very well then," he muttered.
The first swung—a crude, brutal strike. He ducked under it and blasted it point-blank with a Confringo. The figure was thrown backward—its chest blown open.
And then it reformed.
The hole in its chest sealed. It rose again.
Caelum's jaw tightened. He hurled more spells—Depulso, Reducto, Diffindo—but each wound regenerated.
"They're not just shadows," he muttered. "Spells barely hurt them… and they regenerate too fast."
The shadow figure was closing in. He leapt back, arms raised. "Let's try this."
A flicker of heat stirred behind him.
From thin air, Luxardent appeared—a bat-shaped flame, small enough to perch in his palm.
"Let's go, Lux," Caelum said.
The creature squeaked once, then surged toward him, shifting mid-flight. It spiraled around his left arm, transforming into a gauntlet of living fire that glowed down to his elbow.
He pointed toward the closest figure.
Ignis obscura.
The blast that erupted from his arm was pure white-blue. It struck the charging figure dead-on, blasting it backward. Smoke rose from the gaping wound in its chest—then, for the first time, it didn't get back up. The figure twitched once, then began to melt, its charred form breaking apart and seeping into the sand like water, staining it black.
Caelum exhaled. "Only Varnak flame works."
Then he turned. Three more figures broke from the crowd.
He moved to meet them.