Cassian came back to himself to find Nicolas with one hand on his arm and Perenelle had both of hers on his shoulders and they were both looking at him.
"Sit down," Perenelle said.
"I'm fine."
"You were touching the Veil for four minutes and then you went completely still," Nicolas said. "Sit down."
Cassian sat down on the nearest stone step.
Nicolas crouched in front of him. "What happened?"
Cassian rubbed a hand over his face. The vision was still vivid, the green, the white bark, the woman's hands on the trunk, the darkness spreading branch by branch. He could still hear the creature's scream when it hit the Veil.
"I saw a forest," he said. "Vast. Alive, the way places aren't anymore. Phoenixes, creatures I don't know, the whole thing humming." He paused. "And a tree at the centre of it. White bark, enormous roots spreading across the whole clearing. The branches covering the sky."
Nicolas went very still.
"A woman was there. Barefoot. She was tending to the tree, touching the branches, like she knew it. Like she'd always known it." He frowned. "Then part of the tree went black. A single branch first, then more, spreading downward. The darkness corrupted everything it reached... phoenixes, other creatures, the ground. The woman tried to hold it back. She drew sigils into the air, layered, and the tree pushed light back against it. They held it for a while."
He looked at his hands.
"Then something formed from the darkness. At the treeline. A creature... The creature. Half the forest was already gone by the time it moved into the clearing."
Perenelle's hands went to her mouth.
"The tree built the Veil," Cassian said. "The woman breathed into it, and the Veil formed in the frame. She used it to draw the creature through."
He looked up at Nicolas.
"That place was the Valley."
Nicolas and Perenelle looked at each other, and it was the kind of look that carried a whole conversation in it.
Cassian caught it. "You know it, don't you?"
Nicolas straightened. "We know of it," he said carefully. "The Valley appears in very old accounts. Most scholars treat it as mythological, the kind of origin story every tradition eventually builds for itself."
"But?" Cassian said.
"But the accounts agree on certain details, across cultures that had no contact with each other." Nicolas turned and walked a few paces, then stopped. "A place of extraordinary life. Magic in its purest form. And at the centre of it, a tree."
"White bark," Perenelle said quietly.
"Called different things in different traditions," Nicolas continued. "The Tree of Life is the most common translation, though that loses something. Some texts call it the first source. Some just call it the origin." He shook his head with a sigh. "It was believed to be the point from which magic itself grew. That all living things, all magical creatures, perhaps all life, came from it in some form."
"Believed," Cassian said.
"It was never proven," Perenelle said. "The only clue to the Valley's existence is hearsays. What remains is fragment and lineage."
Cassian sat with that for a moment. "What do you know about the creature?"
Another look between them.
"The accounts mention a corruption," Nicolas said. "Something that appeared in the Valley and changed it. The details vary. Some say it came from outside. Some say it grew from within." His voice was hesitant. "Most accounts end at the point the Valley was gone. What caused it or what was within... that's where the records stop."
"Or were stopped," Perenelle said, half to herself.
Cassian leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Marauder had been chasing the Valley for centuries. I think the creature is a means to an end." Cassian rubbed the back of his neck. "Ji said he believed the goal was the Valley. That Marauder had spent too long circling it, too carefully, for someone who just wanted to burn things down."
Nicolas's brows furrowed.
"Marauder isn't a nihilist," Cassian continued. "He's unhinged, yes, and he's done really terrible things, but every terrible thing he's done has pointed somewhere. The Elder Wand. Bathael." He paused. "They're connected to the same origin."
"The Valley," Nicolas said.
"The Valley." Cassian sighed. "Ji's theory is that Marauder doesn't want to destroy the world. He wants to reach the Valley. And if the Valley truly is the source, it won't stay dormant while the world above it collapses. It'll respond."
"You're saying he's trying to force it to surface," Perenelle said.
"It's hypothetical," Cassian said. "Ji was clear about that. But he knows Marauder better than any of us. Better than he'd probably like to. And his read is that whatever Marauder actually wants, it lives at the bottom of all of this, and the Valley is the only thing with the authority to give it to him."
Nicolas folded his arms. "That's an enormous risk to run on a theory."
"It is," Cassian agreed. "But look at the pattern." He held up a hand and started counting. "The Elder Wand. Marauder recognised it the moment he saw it on Grindelwald. Said it resonated with his phoenix magic, that it matched something in him. Grindelwald told us that. And the Elder Wand was crafted in the Valley, according to what Grindelwald knew."
Nicolas gave a nod.
"Bathael." Cassian moved to the next finger. "Marauder kept Bathael close. Tried to use him, yes, but there was something else there too. Something that looked almost like interest. Bathael's origins trace back to the Valley. Marauder would have known that. He'd have felt it the same way he felt the wand.
"The vision showed me the original separation." He glanced toward the arch at the bottom of the chamber. "This Veil. The one sitting down there. If that's what it is, if it's the same structure the tree made, then breaking it doesn't just release the creature. It undoes the separation entirely."
"And the Valley would have to answer that," Nicolas said quietly.
"That's what we are thinking."
Nicolas turned away and stood with his back to them, looking at nothing in particular.
Perenelle spoke first. "What does Marauder want from it? If it surfaces, if it responds, what does he actually gain?"
Cassian clenched his fist against his knee.
"Marauder merged with a phoenix," he said. "Gained immortality, immense power, the whole package. But I doubt that's all there is to it. When I was in the vision, those creatures flying around the tree looked like phoenixes. Bigger. Purer, somehow. The light they gave off was different. The way they moved around the tree, the way they responded to it." He stopped. "It reminded me of something I've been looking at for years without connecting it."
Nicolas squinted. "What?"
Cassian took a slow breath.
He raised his wand.
The tree came out, white light threading upward from the floor, the trunk thickening, branches spreading outward and upward until the canopy brushed the high ceiling of the chamber.
"Fawkes," Cassian said. "Every time I cast this around him, Fawkes would circle it. Like something recognising something else."
He watched the tree shine in the dim of the chamber.
"I thought it was just Fawkes being Fawkes. But the phoenixes in that vision moved around the tree the same way." He looked at Nicolas. "Fawkes isn't circling my Patronus because it's bright or warm. He's circling it because something in him recognises what it's connected to."
Nicolas's expression had shifted into something Cassian couldn't quite read, not surprise exactly, more like a man watching a piece of evidence confirm a suspicion he'd held for a long time and wasn't sure how he felt about being right.
"The phoenixes in the Valley weren't just creatures living there," Cassian continued. "They were part of it, connected to the tree more directly than anything else.
"Marauder didn't just gain immortality," Cassian said. "He gained a connection to whatever those phoenixes were connected to. Whatever lived in them that came from the tree." He looked at Nicolas. "If that's true... then he's been carrying something from the Valley inside him. For centuries, and I don't think he fully understands what it is. Or maybe he does, and that's the whole point."
Nicolas opened his mouth.
Then the Veil moved. The fabric of it, hanging inside the ancient arch at the bottom of the chamber, had been drifting faintly since Cassian had arrived, the way it always did, that sourceless, restless movement with no wind behind it. But now it shifted differently, toward the Patronus, the whole curtain drawing forward in the arch as if something on the other side had leaned toward a window.
Cassian's hand tightened on his wand.
The tree's light brightened.
Cassian hadn't done anything. He was holding the spell, nothing more, but the Patronus was responding to something he wasn't controlling, the branches lifting slightly, the leaves catching a light that wasn't coming from him. The roots spread a little further across the stone floor, reaching toward the arch.
"Cassian," Perenelle said carefully.
"I see it."
The tree leaned toward it. That was the only way to describe it. The branches on the side facing the arch curved downward and forward.
Nicolas stepped back without meaning to. Perenelle stayed where she was, her eyes moving between the Veil and the Patronus with an expression Cassian had never seen on her face before.
"They know each other," she said.
The Veil's fabric went still for one complete second, which was more unsettling than all the movement had been. Then the Veil drifted back behind its arch.
Cassian let out a breath he'd been holding for what felt like a long time. He lowered his wand. The tree dissolved slowly.
The chamber went quiet.
Nicolas stood with his hand clenched to his sides, staring at the arch.
Perenelle turned to Cassian. Her composure was back, mostly, but her eyes were bright and she was breathing slightly fast, which for Perenelle Flamel counted as barely contained astonishment.
"This Veil was built from the tree," she said.
"Yes," Cassian said.
"And your Patronus-"
"Carries something of the same origin." He turned the wand over in his hand. "I don't fully understand how. I don't know what that means about where the magic comes from, or why it took this form for me specifically." He looked at the arch. "But that-" he nodded toward the Veil, "just confirmed that the connection is real. Whatever the Valley was, whatever the tree was, the Veil was made from it and still responds to it."
Cassian's eyes sharpened as he looked between them.
"But you already knew, didn't you?"
Nicolas and Perenelle looked at each other then sighed.
Cassian shook his head with a snort. "I've never heard the name Bathael before. Not until you two brought it up. And for some reason, you wanted me to pose as him." He looked at them both. "Bathael is connected to the Valley. And it seems, so am I. Right?"
Neither of them denied it.
Perenelle sat down on the stone step beside him. Nicolas stayed standing, his shoulders dropping a bit.
"We told you about the Ashfal before," Nicolas said. "Three days of ash falling. The Dark King was expelled from this plane entirely. Whatever tether kept him here was severed."
Cassian looked at the Veil.
"The Veil," he said.
"We believe so," Perenelle said quietly.
Cassian sat with that for a moment, the vision still running behind his eyes. The woman. The tree. The creature screaming as it was drawn through the frame. The Veil blazing and then going still.
"What happened to the Valley after?" he asked.
"Gone," Nicolas spread his hands slightly. "What remained was the Veil. And a world that slowly forgot what had generated it."
Cassian rubbed his temple. "And Bathael?"
"We don't know what became of the Sovereign after the Ashfal," Perenelle said carefully. "The accounts stop there. Whether he survived, whether the Valley's closing took him with it, whether he simply chose to disappear..." She shook her head. "Nothing reliable."
Cassian turned the wand over in his hand, thinking. "So when you told me to pose as him, to use that name, you were working on the assumption that Bathael's connection to the Valley was something Marauder would recognise and respond to."
"Yes," Nicolas said.
"Because Marauder would feel it," Cassian said. "The same way he felt the Elder Wand. The same way Fawkes circles my Patronus." He looked up. "You thought whatever connection I have to the Valley would be enough to make the performance credible."
"It wasn't a performance we were asking you to give," Perenelle said. "We believed the connection was real."
Cassian stared at her.
"We still do," she added.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. A dozen questions arrived at once and he had to sort through them to find the one that mattered most.
"How do you know Alforc Morn?" he asked. "Was he always your spy within the Covenant?"
Nicolas and Perenelle both went still. Cassian watched their faces.
Perenelle spoke first. "Cassian... Alforc Morn is older than Nicolas and I."
"Centuries older," Nicolas confirmed. "He was already ancient when we created the Philosopher's Stone. We'd barely understood what we'd made when he found us." He sat down slowly on the step above Cassian's. "He came without warning. He knew things about the Stone that we hadn't told anyone. Things we'd barely told to each other. And he sat down across from us and told us about Bathael."
"Everything we know about the Ashfal came from him," Perenelle said. "The Valley, the Sovereign, the Dark King. He was the source of most of it. He was there, Cassian. Not in the way historians reconstruct events. He was physically present for it."
"He was there for the Ashfal," Cassian repeated, shocked.
Two of them nodded.
"He told us," Perenelle said slowly, "that he'd been looking for us for a long time. That he'd known we would eventually exist, and that when we did, he'd been instructed to find us."
Something cold moved through Cassian's chest.
"Instructed," he said. "By whom?"
Nicolas's voice came out quiet. "By Bathael."
Cassian stopped breathing for a moment.
"Bathael told Alforc," he said, "to find you. Before you were born. Before the Philosopher's Stone existed. Before any of this."
"Before any record of us existed, yes," Nicolas said.
Cassian stood up. He needed to move, needed to do something with the feeling working its way up through him, because sitting still with it was impossible.
"Alforc told you," he said, pacing two steps and stopping. "That the Sovereign of the Ashfal knew, at some point before the Valley closed, that two alchemists would eventually create the Philosopher's Stone. And that when they did, Alforc was to find them. And tell them what he knew."
"Yes," Perenelle said.
"And then," Cassian continued, "those two alchemists would eventually find someone else. Someone connected to the Valley in a way they'd recognise. And they'd need to know who that person was, what that person carried, before things moved too far forward."
Neither of them confirmed it. But it was already quite obvious from their expressions.
Cassian pressed both hands against the side of his head, not from pain, just from the pressure of trying to hold the shape of what he was looking at without it sliding away.
Bathael had planned for this. Planned across an incomprehensible span of time, before Flamels existed, before the Stone existed, before any of the pieces of this were in place. He'd looked forward from the moment of the Ashfal, from the moment the Valley closed and he'd left instructions for a man he trusted to carry them across centuries until the right moment arrived.
"He knew," Cassian said.
"It seems so," Nicolas said.
"He knew the creature would eventually get out," Cassian said. "Or try to. He knew someone would try to break the Veil. He knew it would matter, eventually, that someone carrying the same connection he did would be standing here." He looked at the arch. "He built contingencies. Across centuries. Into the lives of people who didn't exist yet."
Perenelle stood up beside him. "He didn't leave instructions about what to do," she said. "He only left instructions about who to find. Alforc's mandate was to reach us, tell us what he knew, and make sure we understood that when the connection showed itself again, we recognised it."
Cassian stood in the dim chamber of the Department of Mysteries with the Veil drifting faintly behind its arch, and felt the full weight of what he was standing inside. A structure built before his existence, designed around a connection he'd arrived with and hadn't chosen, pointing at a problem older than anything in his two lives combined.
"What did Alforc say," Cassian asked, "when you told him you'd found me?"
Perenelle's expression softened. "He cried," she said simply. "He'd been waiting a very long time."
Cassian let out a long, uneven breath.
"Right," he said. "So Bathael knew I was coming. And he made sure the people who needed to recognise me would be in place when I got here."
He turned back to Nicolas and Perenelle.
"The question is whether he knew what I'm supposed to do when I get there."
Nicolas held his gaze. "We think that part," he said, "he left to you. All you have to do, Cassian... is to remember."
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