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[ Shadow Monarch in Hogwarts].
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Third POV:
Akai didn't move at first.
His eyes stayed locked on what stood before him, his breath slow, uneven. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm that didn't feel like his own—like his lungs had forgotten how to work properly and were relearning the motion one breath at a time. His fingers hung loose at his sides, but his palms were damp. Not from the cold. From something else. Something that felt a lot like the moment right before a storm hits, when the air gets heavy and your skin knows something is coming before your brain does.
"…How come…?"
The words slipped out of him almost unconsciously. His lips barely moved. The sound was small, fragile, like a crack in a wall that had been standing for too long.
His eyes traveled across the space in front of him, trying to measure it, trying to understand it. But his mind kept hitting walls. Nothing here fit with what he had expected. Nothing here matched the darkness he had walked through for hours.
"…I thought I was in a prison…"
A step forward.
His foot landed softly on the polished stone, but the sound seemed louder than it should have been, sharper, like the hall was amplifying every tiny noise just to remind him he was here.
"…or is this another forgotten place?"
His voice echoed slightly, bouncing off the distant walls and coming back to him a fraction of a second later. The repetition made the words feel strange, like someone else had said them and he was just hearing the ghost of his own voice.
The faint light he had followed now revealed everything—and what it revealed made no sense.
His eyes widened just a fraction as he took it all in.
This was no corridor.
No dungeon cell.
No broken level filled with chaos and blood.
It was a hall.
A vast, towering hall.
The kind of place that belonged in old stories. The kind of place that kings and queens walked through, not people like him. The ceiling stretched impossibly high above him, disappearing into darkness, supported by massive stone pillars aligned in perfect symmetry. He tilted his head back to look up, but he couldn't find the top. The darkness up there swallowed his gaze like water swallowing a stone.
Each pillar was carved with ancient engravings—symbols and patterns that seemed to shift the longer he stared at them, as if they carried meaning far older than language itself. He caught himself staring at one carving for too long, watching the lines bend and curl in ways that didn't make sense. When he blinked and looked away, the symbol looked different than it had a moment ago. Or maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. He couldn't tell anymore.
The floor beneath his feet was smooth, polished stone, reflecting the faint glow that illuminated the chamber. He could see his own reflection in it—blurry, distorted, like a painting left out in the rain. The stone was unnaturally clean. No dust, no cracks, no signs of decay. As if time itself had been denied entry here. As if this place had been frozen, preserved, kept waiting for a moment that hadn't arrived yet.
Rows of colossal armored statues stood along both sides of the hall.
Knights.
Each one towering, clad in heavy, intricate armor that covered them from head to toe. The metal was dark, almost black, but it caught the light in strange ways—gleaming in some spots, dull in others, like it was made from something that wasn't quite metal at all. Their helmets hid their faces completely, leaving only darkness behind the visor slits. Akai found himself staring into those dark gaps, trying to see if something was looking back.
He couldn't tell.
Their hands rested firmly on the hilts of enormous swords planted into the ground before them. The blades stood upright, taller than Akai himself, their edges catching the faint glow in thin lines of light. Some of the swords had markings on the blades—letters or symbols he didn't recognize. Others were smooth, blank, like they had never been used.
Silent.
Unmoving.
Watching.
The word settled into his mind and refused to leave. Watching. He could feel it in his bones, that strange prickling sensation you get when someone's eyes are on you from across a room. But there was no one here. Just stone and metal and silence.
Akai's footsteps echoed across the chamber.
Tap… tap… tap…
The sound traveled further than it should have, reaching places he couldn't see, returning to him from directions that didn't make sense. Left, then right, then from above. The acoustics of this place were wrong. Deliberately wrong, like someone had designed it to confuse anyone who walked through it.
But unlike before…
This place answered him differently.
The sound didn't feel hollow. It felt contained. Controlled. Like the hall itself was listening.
He stopped walking for a moment, just to test it. The silence that followed was thick, heavy, pressing against his ears. No echo of his last step. No lingering sound. Just the sudden, complete absence of noise, like the hall had decided it was done responding.
Then he took another step.
Tap.
And the echo returned, soft and obedient.
His jaw tightened.
"…I like riddles and surprising things…" Akai muttered, his voice low, cautious. He kept his eyes moving, scanning the statues, the pillars, the ceiling, the floor. Nothing stayed still in his gaze for more than a second. He didn't want to miss something. Didn't want to be caught off guard.
He paused for a moment, his gaze sweeping across the statues again. They hadn't moved. Of course they hadn't moved. They were made of stone. But something about the way they stood there, so perfectly aligned, so perfectly still, made his skin crawl.
"…but this…"
A slow breath escaped him.
His shoulders dropped slightly, but not from relaxation. From the weight of something he couldn't name pressing down on him.
"…this is beyond my expectations."
He kept moving forward.
The air here felt… heavy. Not suffocating like the void before—but pressured. Like an unseen force weighed down on his shoulders, testing him with every step he took. Each stride forward required more effort than it should have, like he was walking through water instead of air. His legs didn't ache, exactly, but they felt heavier. Slower. Like something was pushing back against him, measuring his determination.
The statues lined his path on both sides, row after row after row. Some of them looked older than others. The armor on the ones near the front was smoother, more detailed, with delicate carvings along the shoulders and chest plates. The ones further back were rougher, simpler, their edges less refined. Like they had been made at different times, by different hands, for different purposes.
Akai counted them without meaning to. Twelve on the left. Twelve on the right. Twenty-four in total, not counting the ones he couldn't see further ahead where the light didn't reach. Twenty-four silent guardians standing in perfect rows, their hands on their swords, their empty visors aimed straight ahead.
Straight at the throne.
And then—
He saw it.
At the very end of the hall.
A throne.
Massive.
Carved from black stone that seemed to absorb the faint light around it. The material looked solid, dense, like it had been pulled from the deepest part of the earth. Light didn't bounce off it the way it bounced off the floor or the pillars. Light fell onto the throne and simply… stopped. Disappeared. Swallowed.
Its design was both elegant and terrifying—jagged edges rising like thorns, the backrest towering high like a crown meant for something far greater than a human. The armrests curved outward at the ends, shaped like the heads of animals he didn't recognize, their mouths open in silent roars. The seat itself was wide, much wider than a normal chair, as if it had been built for someone larger than any person Akai had ever seen.
Ancient engravings coiled across its surface, glowing faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat long forgotten. The light they gave off was dim, barely visible, but it moved. A slow, rhythmic pulse that traveled across the stone in waves, from the base of the throne up to the highest point of the backrest, then back down again.
It didn't look abandoned.
It looked… waiting.
Waiting for someone.
Akai slowed his steps.
His feet dragged slightly against the polished floor, the sound softer now, less certain. His eyes were fixed on the throne, but his mind was racing through questions he couldn't answer. Who built this? How long had it been here? Why did it feel like it had been expecting him?
His eyes narrowed slightly as he approached, his instincts screaming quietly in the back of his mind. That old feeling—the one that had saved him more times than he could count—was whispering at him. Not loud enough to give clear answers. Just loud enough to make him pay attention.
"…Don't tell me…" he whispered under his breath.
His voice was barely audible, even in the silence. The words felt dangerous, like speaking them out loud might make them true.
He stopped right in front of it.
The throne loomed over him, silent, dominant—like a king observing a kneeling subject. From this close, he could see details he had missed from further away. Tiny scratches on the armrests, worn smooth by time. A faint discoloration on one of the animal heads, like something had once stained the stone and never been cleaned. Small imperfections that made the massive object feel real in a way that the rest of the hall didn't.
For a brief moment…
It felt like it recognized him.
Not in a friendly way. Not in a welcoming way. In the way a trap recognizes its prey just before it springs. In the way a locked door recognizes the key that was made for it.
The pulsing light on the engravings flickered once, twice, then returned to its steady rhythm.
Akai's hand twitched slightly as he began to move closer.
His fingers curled, then uncurled. His palm itched. His arm felt heavy, like the air around the throne was denser than the air everywhere else. Every instinct he had was telling him to stop. To turn around. To walk back the way he came and pretend he had never seen any of this.
But his feet kept moving.
One more step—
And then—
He froze.
Every muscle in his body locked.
His breath stopped.
His heart, which had been beating steadily in his chest, seemed to pause mid-beat, caught somewhere between one thump and the next. His lungs burned for air, but his body wouldn't let him breathe. His eyes stayed open, fixed on the throne, but he wasn't seeing it anymore.
Because he felt it.
Not heard.
Not seen.
Felt.
A presence.
Right behind him.
Close.
Too close.
He couldn't hear breathing. Couldn't hear footsteps. Couldn't hear fabric shifting or armor creaking or anything that would tell him what was there. But he could feel it. The weight of someone standing just behind his back, close enough to touch. The faint warmth of something alive—or something that wanted him to think it was alive—pressing against his shoulders.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up one by one, slow and deliberate, like they were trying to warn him of something his brain hadn't caught yet.
Something… or someone… was standing there.
Watching him.
Waiting.
The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
Akai didn't turn around.
He couldn't.
Not yet.
His fingers curled into fists at his sides. His jaw tightened. His breathing, when it finally returned, came in shallow, controlled bursts.
And behind him, the presence waited.
Patient.
Silent.
And very, very still.
---
[ End of Chapter 16 ].
To Be Continued...
_______________
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 stories:
[ Shadow Monarch in Hogwarts].
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .
Thank you all for reading....