Cassian hauled Ayda up by the arm, dragging him away from the centre of the hell-hole as he called for the others. "Move."
Edevane was already pushing herself upright, one hand braced against the rubble. Leontis staggered after them, still clutching his side, boots slipping on broken stone as the ground jolted again.
The hill shuddered. The Crawlers held the line, black forms braced in a wide ring, but the pressure still bled through. Each one hit like a weight dropped from above.
"Keep going," Cassian snapped, steering them away from the crater. "Don't stop to admire the apocalypse."
Ayda stumbled, caught himself, then kept moving. "You're very calm for someone standing on top of the end of the world."
"I'm not calm," Cassian said. "I just don't fancy dying next to a hole that screams."
The ground dipped under their feet like something beneath it had shifted its weight. Cracks spidered outward from the centre, splitting through old stone, tearing through what remained of the temple's foundations.
Behind them, the Crawlers roared. The air bent around them, their forms flickering as they leaned harder into the breach. The scream rising from below hit them and... vanished. Swallowed whole.
For a moment, the pressure eased. Then it surged back twice as hard.
Edevane sucked in a breath. "It's pushing through them."
"Yeah," Cassian said. "I noticed."
He didn't look back again.
Didn't want to really.
He adjusted his grip on Ayda and forced him over a fallen column.
"Faster," he said.
Leontis barked a rough laugh behind them. "We're trying!"
Another jolt shook their bones. The sound that followed was deeper. Like stone grinding against something that shouldn't exist.
Cassian's teeth clenched.
"Right," he muttered. "That's new. Don't like that."
Edevane glanced at him. "Can it reach us out here?"
"Not yet," Cassian said, looking at Crawlers. "But I wouldn't hang about to test the range."
They cleared the worst of the rubble and hit uneven ground, dirt and broken roots instead of shattered stone. The air felt thinner here. Still heavy, but no longer crushing.
Behind them, the hill groaned. A section of the temple's remains folded inward, collapsing into the breach like it had been pulled down.
Ayda glanced back despite himself.
"Don't," Cassian said. Ayda froze for half a second, eyes widening at something in the pit.
Cassian didn't turn. He grabbed the back of Ayda's collar and yanked him forward hard enough to nearly drop him.
"I said don't."
Ayda stumbled, breath hitching. "...something moved. That arm..."
"I know."
"You didn't even look."
"I don't need to."
Cassian stopped so abruptly Ayda nearly ran into him. His wand was already up.
"Obliviate."
The spell struck clean. Ayda's eyes went glassy, the tension in his face dropping for a fraction of a second before it settled again. He blinked a few times, like he'd lost a thought mid-step and couldn't quite find it again.
Edevane froze. "Cassian-"
Leontis stared. "What did you just-"
Cassian lowered his wand, jaw tight. "He saw it."
Ayda frowned faintly, rubbing his temple. "Saw... what?"
"Exactly," Cassian said.
Edevane stepped closer, anger flashing through the exhaustion. "You wiped his memory in the middle of-"
"Yes." Cassian cut across her. "Because the thing down there isn't something you get to look at and walk away."
Leontis swallowed. "We've all been looking."
"No," Cassian said. "You've been looking at the hole. The damage. The aftermath." He pointed back toward the crater without turning. "He saw its arm."
Edevane's grip tightened on her wand. "And that's enough to-"
"Yes."
He met her eyes.
"You can't recognise it. You can't feel anything for it. Not fear, not awe, not curiosity. The moment your mind tries to latch onto what it is..." He shook his head. "That's how it gets stronger."
Ayda shifted, unsettled but unaware of why. "You're all acting strange."
Cassian stepped in, firm. "Good. Stay that way. Don't think about it, don't look back, and don't try to be clever."
He glanced between them all.
"From this point on, no one turns around. I mean it."
Another tremor rolled through the ground.
Cassian didn't wait.
"Run."
They ran.
Cassian could feel it even without looking. The pressure would spike, then dip, then spike again, like something massive was testing the boundary, pressing harder each time.
Edevane stumbled. Cassian caught her by the elbow and helped her forward. They walked over the final rise and a town came into view.
Leontis slowed. "Wait..."
Others stopped, checking around to see if there was any danger.
Leontis' eyes were locked to the town's empty streets. The place should've been alive. Even with the tremors, people would've been outside. Gathering, shouting, trying to understand what was happening.
Instead...
Nothing.
Shops stood open. A chair lay knocked over outside a cafe. A car sat half-parked at an angle, door ajar.
But there wasn't a single person in sight.
Not one.
Leontis whispered. "Where is everyone?"
"They're asleep." Cassian said.
Edevane and Ayda looked at each other.
"The Good Night Spell," she said.
Cassian gave a nod. "Yeah."
"What is that?" Leontis asked. Others were also confused, looking at each other.
Ayda sighed, then explained what the spell was, and what probably happened.
Leontis' eyes opened wide. "They just... put everyone under?"
"Better than panicking people," Cassian said.
They stood there for a moment too long. Then Cassian felt the sear of the rune on his finger.
His hand clenched.
Edevane noticed immediately. "What is it?"
He sighed and turned back.
"I need to leave."
Leontis blinked. "What?"
"You lot hold the perimeter. Keep people away from the site."
Another distant roar carried through the earth.
Cassian squinted at the far-away temple. "That thing doesn't care about us being brave. It doesn't care about wards or clever plans. We go near it, we die. Or worse."
Leontis swallowed. "Then what do we do?"
"Nothing heroic," Cassian said. "You keep people out. You don't look at it. You don't study it. You don't try to fix it."
Ayda let out a frustrated breath. "Brilliant plan."
"It's the only one we've got."
Edevane held his gaze. "Where are you going?"
Cassian looked north.
"To Norway."
***
Cassian landed a few paces from the cave. The air bit sharper here than it had any right to, wind cutting down from the cliffs and carrying that same damp, mineral scent he remembered.
Bathsheda stood ahead of him, back turned, gaze fixed on the dark mouth of the cave.
Cassian let out a quiet breath of relief at the sight of her standing there. Bruised, patched up in places, but alive. He didn't rush to her side or smother her with questions. She looked too deep in thought.
He glanced up at the jagged opening in the rock after a while. "Looks smaller," he said.
"It isn't," Bathsheda replied. "You've just gotten stronger."
He snorted. "Tragic. Ruins the nostalgia."
The cave sat quiet, half-swallowed by shadow. No wards shimmered over it now or Ministry tents. No researchers pacing about with clipboards and bad tempers. Just rock, wind, and that same dangerous feeling curling faintly in the air.
Eight years.
Cassian shoved his hands into his coat pockets and took a few steps forward, stopping beside her.
First summer after his first year. He'd barely known how to hold a wand without poking his own eye out, and she'd dragged him across the continent because she'd "found something interesting." At the time, "interesting" had meant a damp cave, questionable food, and a group of scholars who looked like they hadn't slept since the seventies.
And Bathsheda.
They'd still been circling each other back then, neither quite something nor quite nothing. There was a lot of talking, a little flirting, and enough awkward moments to fill an entire diary. Which, a couple of years later, they actually did. Not their brightest idea. That cursed diary nearly got him killed.
Cassian glanced at the cave, lips twitching.
It all started here. One of the researchers, Hilde, had screamed, then she dropped. Cassian and Bathsheda ran in without thinking, following the sound straight into the dark.
Then the spiralling runes pulled them in. And the deeper they went, the more the markings stopped looking like carvings and started feeling like instructions. Spirals cut into the stone, guiding their steps whether they liked it or not.
They followed. Of course they did. And then the cave folded.
Stone shifted in on itself like something alive had decided to close its mouth. One second there was a path ahead of them, the next it was gone, sealed shut as if it had never existed.
They'd made it out. Barely. The cave hadn't kept them, just... taken a look, maybe. Then let them go.
"We should've died in there," he said.
"We didn't."
"No thanks to my brilliant navigation skills."
She turned to face him properly now. "You got us out."
"Barely."
"You still did."
Cassian held her gaze for a second, then looked away. "Funny thing about that."
"What?"
He shrugged lightly. "I don't remember half of it."
Bathsheda turned to look at him. "Really?"
He tapped his temple. "I remember the runes. The spiral. The collapse." He sighed. "And then it gets... hazy."
She grinned. "Your memory is immutable, and you say you don't remember?"
Cassian chuckled, spreading his arms slightly at his sides. "What can I say? Some witch decided I was hers and kissed me. Fried part of my brain."
She pushed him lightly. "Hush."
He caught her hand before she could pull away, fingers closing around hers, locking them together.
They'd both learned later that Bathsheda had walked out with more than near death experience that day. First, she claimed him.
"You walked out of a collapsing cave and went, 'Right, that's mine now.'" He said, grinning at her.
"You were already mine," she said. "I just realised it."
Bathsheda also inherited memories of a certain Ancient Witch. It wasn't childhood or stray moments. More like knowledge. Fragments of understanding. Along with it came instinct... the kind you don't question because your body already decided before you caught up.
And an ability.
It took them years to realise what it actually was.
Hermione's Time Turner was the start. Bathsheda remembered both versions of a same moment.
That wasn't how time was meant to behave.
It didn't stop there.
Later, when a Djinn twisted time itself and dragged everything backward, most of them lost it and the world snapped back like nothing had happened.
Bathsheda didn't lose it. She remembered everything.
And beyond all that was the worst divergence of all, the timeline where Cassian wasn't in it.
He tightened his grip on her hand, thumb brushing over her knuckles. "Why are we here, Baths?"
Her eyes stayed on the dark entrance. "I felt a call," she said. "I think... we can finally learn what this place hides."
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