The corridor stank of damp stone, old blood, and the sharp bite of burnt magic. The magical orbs did not flicker here. The light came from in cold green and steady, like the place was proud of itself.
Albus had stopped trying to stand straight an hour ago. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall, wrists chained above his head, shoulders trembling each time his breath tried to turn into a cough. His jaw hung wrong. One eye had swollen shut. The other kept tracking the floor as if the flagstones held the mercy his old friend lost to time.
Gellert took his time.
He paced in front of the cell with slow steps, head tilted, wand held loose between two fingers. His coat had been ruined during the first half hour. Someone had transfigured him a new one. He looked too clean for the work being done.
Carrow stepped closer and sent another curse that made skin ripple like it was being peeled. Albus screamed through broken teeth. The sound hit the corridor and came back thinner.
Gellert watched the way he had watched courtrooms once, with calm interest. His voice stayed low.
"Was it worth it, Albus?"
Abernathy cracked his knuckles. He had stopped smiling after the first dozen minutes. The grin had turned into something quieter, tighter. He stepped in and drove a fist into Albus's cheek. The head snapped sideways. The chains rattled.
Gellert spoke again, tone still gentle, the words landing like a blade pressed to skin.
"Was it worth betraying and leaving me to rot for fifty years?"
Albus tried to swallow. His throat worked. No sound came out that meant anything.
McDuff leaned on the wall beside the door, wand out, eyes half lidded. He kept a measured distance like a man used to spell splash. Nagel stood closer, shoulders square, gaze steady, the kind of calm a soldier keeps when he knows the target is ready for the next shot.
Carrow's next curse hit, and Albus arched hard enough that his chains bit into his wrists. The ward plates flashed once, punishing the attempt for the hundredth time. Dust shook from the ceiling.
Gellert stopped pacing. He crouched, brought himself down to Albus's level without stepping into the cell. He looked at him with the same calm gaze.
"Tell me," he said. "Was it guilt?"
His mismatched eyes narrowed.
"Poor Ariana," Gellert continued. "It was not me, Albus. I did not cast anything that day that could maim, let alone kill."
He waited, like he was offering Albus a way out.
"So the murderer is either you or your brother. We can add Kinslayer to the titles you loved so much."
Albus's good eye rolled up, wild for a moment. His tongue moved against broken teeth. The only thing that came out was a wet rasp that turned into a cough.
Carrow's laugh had no humour in it.
"Still the martyr," she muttered, and lifted her wand again.
Albus's hatred had been a clean thing once. It had sharp edges. Now it was a dull, desperate pulse that he could not control. In his head, he cursed the same name again and again until it felt like a prayer. Corvus Black.
He cursed the moment the boy was born. He cursed the day he had underestimated Arcturus. He cursed every second he had spent thinking himself untouchable.
The curses did not stop. They changed shape. When one grew boring, another replaced it. He fantasised about casting curses that made nerves sing. Hexes that stole breath. Simple blows when the wand work felt too elegant.
When Albus finally slumped, mind gone soft, Gellert's expression did not change. He waited until the silence in the cell felt real.
Then he straightened and turned away.
"That felt satisfying." He murmured, which echoed among the four acolytes who followed him.
--
Corvus led the rest to his study at the Nest.
An elf set down a tray with thin biscuits and buttered shortbread, the kind that cracked under teeth and left crumbs on the tongue. Another tray followed with small sandwiches and a plate of jam tarts. Arcturus accepted his cup with a nod and a thanks to the elf.
Corvus sat across from him, posture straight, hands loose, gaze moving from Vinda to Grigori and then to Elizaveta.
Elizaveta had chosen the chair beside him again. She kept her shoulders close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body when she shifted.
Grigori's voice filled the room first.
"I can arrange wet nurses and healers from Russia."
He spoke like it was nothing, like he was ordering bread.
Vinda's cup clinked softly against its saucer.
"I will contact Krafft and Voss," she said. "If your Muggle scholars can do this, we can send volunteers as well."
Corvus nodded once. He accepted the help because refusing it would be stupid, and he had too much work to waste pride on.
Arcturus stayed quiet longer than the others. He cut a piece of biscuit with a small knife, ate it, then looked at Corvus.
"What did you mean when you said you would clone the strongest of them?"
Corvus tilted his head. The movement was slight, almost lazy. His eyes stayed sharp.
"Tell me, grandfather," he said. "Do all children of a couple carry the same core strength?"
Arcturus shook his head. Vinda and Grigori followed, almost in sync.
"Mother Magic blesses some more than the others," Vinda said.
Corvus accepted the phrasing even though knowing Magicals had nothing to do with a conceptual figure known as Mother Magic.
"Once they grow enough that we can measure their cores," he replied, "the strongest will become our templates. I will clone those specific children and pair them when they mature. We repeat the cycle. The time arrays run at the ratio of one to twenty. Two years become forty. The numbers stop being theory at that point."
Arcturus set down his knife.
"And bloodlines?"
"They will flourish," Corvus answered.
Arcturus watched him for another beat.
"You asked for the females of the house," he said. "Why?"
Corvus did not look at Elizaveta when he spoke, but he felt the way her spine stiffened.
"Because the bottleneck is not the male," he said. "It is the female."
He leaned forward just enough to claim the room.
"A human female is born with roughly one to two million eggs," Corvus continued. "By puberty, they are already down to a few hundred thousand. Early twenties, perhaps two hundred thousand. Thirties, half that. Forties, it collapses. After fifty, you are counting scraps."
He watched the faces of the old guard while he spoke; he could hear the sound of calculation going through their minds.
"And a male?" Vinda asked, voice steady.
"Different from the females, males are born with zero sperm. However, they start to produce them at puberty. Millions a day," Corvus replied. "From puberty until the body starts to fail. Peak quality in the twenties. It holds into the forties."
Elizaveta's cheeks had turned a shade darker. She did not look away. She looked at the tea like she had decided it was safer than meeting anyone's eyes.
Corvus took a sip, set his cup down, and continued.
"The Muggles already have ways to extract eggs and sperm without making it crude," he said. "Assisted reproduction and Fertilisation without the pair even meeting. We do not need to force families into messy politics or rushed marriages when the goal is simple."
Grigori's brow rose.
"And the goal is?"
Corvus met his gaze. "What is the average birth rate of a magical couple when you exempt houses like Weasleys?"
Arcturus answered after thinking for a while. "One in most cases, two if they are lucky."
This answer alone was enough to describe the problem of the Wizarding World.
"To rebuild what is being wasted," he said. "To restore our numbers that bled dry in wars and idiotic decisions."
Arcturus leaned back.
"So you are telling me a year from now, and we can have two dozen Blacks at your age born from Narcissa and Bellatrix's eggs," he asked.
Corvus nodded.
"If you want them pureblood," he added, "we need suitable donors."
The room went still.
Vinda's eyes moved first, Arcturus followed, Grigori's grin returned, slow and cruel, like he had found a joke that belonged only to him.
Elizaveta looked at Corvus with a new expression. It was not confusion, it was anger.
Corvus understood the shape of it at once.
He cleared his throat. The sound was too loud in the quiet.
"I think it is too early for me to have children," he said, keeping his voice level while his mind ran faster than it should. "Aunt Vinda, grandfather, uncle Grigori... Say something."
Elizaveta scoffed and turned her head away. Her braids swung with the motion.
--
The villa had the kind of silence that tried to pretend it was peace.
It was not.
Prenelle kept the shutters open anyway. The beach outside was dark, and the moonlight turned the gravel path into a pale scar. She sat at the desk by the tall window and wrote.
A copper kettle simmered on the hob behind her. The steam smelled faintly of thyme. The rest of the room smelled of parchment and old binding glue. On the far wall, a cabinet of black wood held the things that were never left lying about. Nicholas liked locks. Prenelle liked locks she did not trust.
Her quill scratched, paused, scratched again.
She had tried to sleep. She had even attempted to pretend she was tired, because that was what sensible people did at night. Her body had complied. Her mind had refused.
It kept circling back to the boy.
Not his face or even his manners. Those were pleasing to the eye. She had met thousands of clever young men who believed the world owed them obedience, and most of them had been wrong and corrected by the results of their doings. Albus was no different. She chuckled to herself at the memory of that young man. Too many names for an inflated ego. It was hard to match the size of that man's narcissism even among the Immortals.
Her mind went back to the boy.
She had seen his aura. It had layers that did not belong in a human at seventeen. A clean band of temporal work, crisp, practised and layered over time. Life Magic residue that sat too close to the real craft, not like a healer's touch, but like a craftsman's grip. Transmutation residue that made most masters look like apprentices playing with lead.
And under all of that, something cold.
Not fear, not anger. The boy was hollow. His soul did not fit his body. As if stitched by a careless hand, it lacked the bond that a normal person has between his soul and body. She was one of the few masters of Necromancy on this world, and there were no spells in her repertoire that could replicate what she saw with the boy.
She dipped the quill again and kept her hand steady.
On the fresh page, she wrote a title in a careful, old script.
Observations on Blood Price and Cognitive Deformation.
She stared at the words for a moment, then made herself continue.
The door of the room opened slowly.
Prenelle did not turn. She slid the parchment she had been writing into a neat stack and placed a blank page on top.
Nicholas stepped in, robe loose, hair unbound, a book tucked under his arm. He had been in the cellar again. The faint smell of metal and heated glass clung to him.
He crossed the room and set the book down on the edge of her desk. The cover was plain, but she recognised the binding. One of the older volumes. One of the books he claimed he did not need.
She flicked her eyes to it.
Nicholas rested his fingertips on the leather, then lifted them away.
"You are not sleeping," he noted.
Prenelle kept writing.
"Neither are you."
Nicholas pulled out the chair opposite and sat. He did not reach for tea. He did not ask for food. The small omissions were a confession.
Prenelle added a line under her title.
When blood is offered, the core reacts. The mind follows.
Nicholas watched her hand move.
"Do not turn this into one of your crusades," he warned.
Prenelle's quill paused. She lifted it, let a single drop of ink fall into the inkwell, then resumed.
"If it were a crusade, I would have woken the house," she returned. "I would have started with Soulfyre."
Nicholas's mouth twitched, almost a smile, then flattened again.
She wrote a second line.
Repeated offering correlates with reduced empathy, increased detachment, and a widening gap between intent and consequence.
Nicholas leaned forward.
"You think that is what he is."
Prenelle let the quill rest. She finally looked up.
"I think he has touched something that was meant for the Elders."
Nicholas's gaze stayed on her, steady and annoyed in that quiet way of his.
"He is gifted."
"He is hungry, and he does not trust us," she said.
Nicholas's shoulders shifted, as if he were accepting a weight he already knew was there.
"He is right not to."
Prenelle's eyes narrowed.
That was not Nicholas. Not the Nicholas she had lived with for centuries. He trusted, sometimes too much. He trusted until it burned him, then trusted again with new cautions.
"You felt it too," she said.
Nicholas did not deny it. He only adjusted the angle of the book he had brought, as if that movement could put order back into the room.
Prenelle's jaw tightened.
"I felt the cold stare of death from that boy."
Nicholas's gaze sharpened.
"When?"
"In the lab," Prenelle answered. "When he leaned on the counter and listened to you explain dissolution rates, his body stayed relaxed like a bored student. The cold flickered beneath his skin. The feeling took but a heartbeat. A breath, then gone."
Nicholas's fingers tapped once against the desk. A single, controlled motion. The closest he came to impatience when he was thinking.
Silence filled the room again. The kettle hissed. Somewhere above them, a floorboard creaked with the slow settling of old stone.
Prenelle wrote.
Hypothesis: exposure to soul scar magic produces a stable void signature similar to lesser wraith traces.