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[ Shadow Monarch in Hogwarts].
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Third POV:
The timer kept ticking.
62:29:58
62:29:57
The numbers burned somewhere in the back of his mind, invisible but impossible to ignore. Each second felt heavier than the last, like tiny weights stacking on top of his chest, pressing down slowly, patiently, waiting for him to break.
Akai sat there in the suffocating dark, unmoving, his body still screaming from the fall. Every breath felt like broken glass sliding through his chest. He could feel each rib shift when he inhaled too deep, could feel the raw ache spreading through his shoulders, his back, his legs. The ground beneath him was cold and hard, like stone that had never known warmth. His fingers twitched slightly against it, feeling for cracks, for texture, for anything that might tell him where he was.
There was nothing.
Just flat, endless cold pressing up against his palms.
"How the hell…" he muttered hoarsely, voice barely holding together, "…am I supposed to survive when I can't even see anything?"
His own voice sounded strange to him. Thin. Cracked at the edges. Like it was coming from someone else, someone far away, someone who had already given up but hadn't stopped talking yet.
The words dissolved into the void, swallowed instantly. No echo. No answer.
Only silence.
He let his hands drop back down to his sides. The sound of his palms hitting the ground was dull, muffled, like the darkness had absorbed it before it could travel more than a few inches. He sat there for a moment longer, letting the weight of his situation settle over him.
No light. No direction. No way out.
His leg throbbed. His head pounded. His chest burned with every shallow breath.
He clenched his jaw. Sitting here meant death. Waiting meant death. Thinking too long meant death.
His fingers curled into fists against the stone.
"…Tch."
Slowly—painfully—he forced himself up.
His legs trembled violently as he rose. Muscles strained, bones grinding under pressure that they weren't ready to handle. His knees buckled once, twice, nearly sending him back down before he locked them in place through sheer stubbornness. His arms hung heavy at his sides, useless for now, just dead weight keeping him balanced. He stood there swaying for a few seconds, letting his body adjust to the simple act of being upright.
He closed his eyes—not because he had to, but because it made no difference. Darkness remained the same either way. Behind his eyelids, there was no change. No shift. Just the same endless black pressing in from all sides.
So he listened.
His breathing. Shallow. Unsteady. Rattling slightly on the exhale.
His heartbeat. Fast. Pounding in his ears like a fist against a door.
And then…
Nothing else.
No wind.
No distant movement.
No life.
Just emptiness.
The kind of emptiness that didn't feel empty at all. The kind that felt like something was holding its breath, waiting for him to move, waiting for him to make a mistake, waiting for him to realize that he was completely, utterly alone in a place where no one would ever find him.
Akai took a step forward.
Tap…
The sound was soft, hollow, unnaturally clear. It stretched into the void like a ripple across still water. He felt it more than heard it, the way the noise seemed to travel outward and never return, swallowed by something that had no walls but somehow felt like it was closing in.
Another step.
Tap… tap…
Each footstep echoed in a strange, delayed rhythm—as if the darkness itself was repeating him, mimicking him just a fraction too late. He paused for a moment, listening to the second tap arrive after the first, counting the gap between them.
One second. Maybe two.
He frowned slightly.
"…Tsk."
He took another step, slower this time.
Tap…
A pause.
…tap.
His eyes narrowed.
The delay was consistent. Perfect. Like something was learning his pace, matching it, keeping time with him from somewhere out of sight.
"…This is only me…" he muttered under his breath. Then added, quieter, "Perhaps."
He didn't like that word. Perhaps. It opened doors he didn't want to open. It suggested possibilities he didn't want to consider. But he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else in here with him. Something that hadn't shown itself yet. Something that was content to wait.
The uncertainty lingered.
He kept walking.
Tap… tap… tap…
The sound followed him—no, answered him. The deeper he went, the more it felt like the darkness was listening back. Each step he took, it repeated. Each breath he let out, it seemed to hold for a moment before releasing its own version of silence. He couldn't tell if he was imagining it or if the place was truly responding to him, but either way, it set his teeth on edge.
"…And this fucking place…" he exhaled, irritation cutting through the pain.
Step after step, direction meaningless, time irrelevant.
His legs moved automatically now, carrying him forward through the black without any sense of where he was going. Left, right, straight—it all felt the same. There was no landmark to guide him, no change in the air, no shift in temperature. Just the same cold stone beneath his feet and the same pressing darkness on all sides.
"…Instead of finding a way to escape…"
Tap… tap… tap…
"…I'm stuck in this place."
His voice grew colder, more distant, like he was speaking to something far beyond himself.
His mind wandered as he walked. Not to anything specific. Just fragments. Faces he hadn't seen in years. Places he had left behind. Choices he had made that had led him here, to this moment, to this place, to this darkness that seemed to have no end.
"…Is this what my life has been?"
Another step.
His foot came down harder than necessary, the sound sharper this time, almost angry.
"…What an ironic fucking fate."
For a brief moment—just a flicker—something in his mind stirred. A memory. A choice.
You chose this.
The words surfaced from somewhere deep, somewhere he had buried a long time ago. They came without context, without explanation, just three words that carried more weight than they should have.
But it vanished just as quickly.
Because something else—something far greater—was moving the strings now.
He could feel it in the way his feet kept moving even when his body wanted to stop. In the way his thoughts kept drifting toward the edges of his mind, slipping away before he could grab hold of them. In the way the darkness seemed to pulse, just barely, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to him.
And Akai walked on.
---
Time passed.
Four hours.
The timer somewhere beyond his vision kept bleeding seconds into nothingness. He had stopped counting somewhere after the first hour. The numbers still ticked down in his head, a quiet, relentless rhythm that matched his footsteps, but he had stopped paying attention to what they meant.
His steps never stopped.
His body screamed less—not because it healed, but because it was too exhausted to keep protesting. The pain was still there, dull and constant, but it had become background noise now. Something his mind had learned to filter out, like the sound of his own breathing or the beat of his heart.
He didn't know how far he had walked. Miles, maybe. Or just circles. There was no way to tell. Every step felt the same as the last. Every direction felt identical to every other. He could have been moving forward. He could have been walking in place. He couldn't tell the difference anymore.
And then—
Something changed.
Akai froze mid-step.
His foot hung in the air for a moment before he slowly lowered it back down, careful not to make a sound. His eyes narrowed, straining against the darkness, trying to catch whatever had made him stop.
His heart picked up speed again. Not from fear, not exactly. More from… alertness. Something had shifted. Something in the air, in the pressure around him, in the way the silence felt different now.
"…What the hell…?"
Far ahead—barely visible—something flickered.
A light.
Small. Weak.
But real.
He blinked, certain for a moment that his eyes were playing tricks on him. That the darkness had finally started to crack his mind, showing him things that weren't there. But the light didn't disappear when he blinked again. It stayed. A tiny pinprick of something that wasn't black, hanging in the distance like a star that had somehow found its way underground.
For the first time since he fell… there was something other than darkness.
Akai's breath hitched slightly.
"…No way…"
His chest tightened. His hands, which had been hanging loose at his sides, curled into fists. His legs, which had been moving on autopilot for hours, suddenly remembered what purpose felt like.
Without thinking, he moved toward it. Faster now. Not running—but no longer dragging himself either. Something in him pulled forward, instinct overriding caution. Every step felt lighter than the last, the exhaustion in his limbs momentarily forgotten, pushed aside by something that felt dangerously close to hope.
The light didn't move. It didn't flicker like fire. It remained steady… waiting.
He kept his eyes locked on it as he walked, afraid that if he looked away even for a second, it would vanish. That it was a trick. That the darkness was playing with him, showing him something it would snatch away the moment he got close.
But it didn't vanish.
The closer he got, the clearer it became. The small pinprick grew into something larger, something with shape and definition. It wasn't just a point of light anymore. It was illuminating something.
Revealing fragments of a place that shouldn't be here.
He could see edges now. Corners. The suggestion of walls that weren't just empty darkness. The light fell on surfaces that reflected it back, soft and diffused, like old stone or aged metal. He couldn't tell what he was looking at yet, but it was something. Something solid. Something real.
Akai slowed down.
His heartbeat quickened.
"…What is this…?"
His voice came out quieter than he intended, almost a whisper. The darkness seemed to lean in around him, listening.
Step by step, he approached—until finally—
He arrived.
And then—
He saw it.
His mouth slowly fell open.
"…Oh…"
A perfect, silent "O."
His eyes moved across what stood before him, trying to make sense of it, trying to fit it into something his brain could understand. His mind reached for comparisons, for anything familiar, and came up empty.
Because what stood before him—
Was something he had never seen before.
Something impossible.
[ End of Chapter 15 ].
To Be Continued...
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( Next Chapter will be interesting. Stay tuned !!).
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If you want to read more about my works or just to support me then here is my patreon:
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4.
___
If you like this one. Cheek also my other story :
[ Shadow Monarch in Hogwarts].
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .