Silence reclaimed the reef. The crash of waves against stone grew distinct again.
Freya and the other two masked figures stopped almost in unison, turning to look.
All they saw was a pinch of ash carried by the sea wind.
The two masked figures stood motionless.
Freya stood motionless.
Nobody spoke.
Then Regulus caught the shift in Freya's expression.
Shock.
A fair reaction, watching a twelve-year-old reduce a living person to ash with a single spell. Still, he found it entertaining.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward. The Decomposition Curse had made its debut, and he was satisfied.
Three thousand Galleons in research costs. Ten days of obsessive refinement. Countless failures. Those final days pushed to the absolute edge.
The price had been steep, but the result was worth every Knut.
This was the first enemy to die by his hand, and the death had been thorough. Clean and nothing left behind.
A thought flickered through his mind: this might be the most environmentally friendly spell ever invented.
No body to dispose of. No scene to scrub. No loose ends. The ash would scatter on the wind, merge with the sea and the stone, and no one would ever trace it.
He reined his thoughts in. The fight wasn't over.
Freya and the remaining two were trading spells again.
The two masked figures had pulled back, opening distance from Freya.
Regulus moved toward her, eyes locked on the pair across the reef.
Neither of them showed a flicker of emotion over their companion's death. From start to finish they hadn't faltered, hadn't exchanged a word. Their comrade's existence and erasure meant nothing to them.
But Regulus could feel it. They wanted to disengage.
As he drew closer, their movements shifted. No more attempts at offense. Instead they repositioned, covering each other, edging toward the cliff's edge.
Whatever they'd come here for, the situation had made it impossible. A comrade annihilated in an instant, opponents stronger than anticipated. Staying meant losing more.
Regulus didn't press the attack. He kept his wand trained on the leader, grey-green light coiled at the tip, latent, ready to fire at a thought.
As a threat, it worked beautifully.
The lead figure noticed immediately. His footwork became frantic, direction changes rapid and erratic, his body dragging afterimages through the dark.
He was dodging the aim of Regulus's wand. He already knew what happened when that grey-green light found its mark.
Freya felt the pressure drop. She raised her wand high and spoke an incantation, the syllables harsh and quick.
The moment the last word left her lips, a bolt of lightning split the night sky. Silver-white light flooded the entire reef.
It struck the spot where one of them had been standing a breath earlier. Rock exploded. Shrapnel flew.
In the gap between spells, she glanced sideways at Regulus.
Her eyes were sharp and focused, as they should be in the middle of combat, but when they landed on him, a flicker passed across her face, brief and impossible to read.
Then she rolled her eyes. Brief, there and gone.
In the middle of a life-or-death battle, this imposing, sharp-edged German witch, six foot two, rolled her eyes at him.
Regulus wasn't entirely sure he'd seen it right, but the moment had been real.
He found it amusing. Found this version of Freya almost... endearing?
No. He wouldn't use that word for her. Vivid felt more accurate.
A powerful, no-nonsense witch letting an expression like that slip. The contrast was genuinely interesting.
Then her spellwork caught his attention. It was distinctive.
More than distinctive. It carried an intense personal signature.
Freya kept her voice low when she cast, but the speed was blistering, syllables blurring together until individual sounds were impossible to distinguish. Her wand movements were minimal, nothing more than a flick of the wrist.
The lightning, though, hit like a siege engine.
Regulus had never seen anyone cast like this.
A standard lightning conjuration produced blinding white bolts that fell in straight lines, branching into jagged arcs on impact. Dramatic, powerful but difficult to aim.
Freya's lightning was different.
Hers was silver-white edged with the faintest blue halo. The bolts fell along subtle curves, guided by an invisible hand. They struck with surgical precision, and on impact the energy didn't scatter. It concentrated. Each strike left a neat, charred pit with clean edges.
Efficient and precise, shaped by a ruthless pragmatism.
The rhythm of her casting, the way her magic detonated, even the visual texture of the spell light, all of it carried a stamp that was unmistakably hers.
She cast with elegance, unhurried despite the chaos, like she was conducting an orchestra rather than fighting for her life.
A thought surfaced: where have I read about this style before?
No time to chase it. The two remaining figures began coordinating.
The leader kept dodging Regulus's aim while retreating. The other positioned himself as a screen, abandoning offense entirely, layering defensive spells to cover the withdrawal.
Then the leader began to chant.
His voice dropped low and slow. The syllables didn't sound like any human language.
Regulus felt the magical environment shifting around him.
But it wasn't only magical fluctuation. There was something else riding along, spreading like silent fog.
It had no color, shape, or temperature, yet it was there.
It brushed the rocks, and the rocks remained rocks. It touched the waves, and the waves stayed waves. It reached the edge of his perception...
A chill rose from somewhere deep inside his consciousness, spiritual rather than physical.
His eyes narrowed. So this is mental erosion. The thing Freya had warned him about.
But then he noticed: Freya's rhythm hadn't changed.
She was still casting, still pressing the other figure, as though she hadn't felt the spreading wave at all. Or had felt it and didn't care.
She wasn't even trying to stop the leader from completing his chant.
That gave him pause.
What is she doing? What is she hiding? What's her angle?
She knew Abyssal Whispers specialized in Mental Erosion. She knew it was dangerous. Yet she wasn't intervening, letting the enemy cast freely.
That defied common sense. Unless she wanted to use the enemy's hand to test something. Or unless she wanted him to experience the attack firsthand.
Regulus stopped watching Freya. He kept his eyes on the leader and made no move to interfere.
He had plenty of questions, but he wasn't going to stop this either.
He wanted to see what mental erosion actually was. And he wanted to see what Freya was after.
But none of that mattered if he lost control.
A deep breath. Magic circulated through him and his mental barriers snapped into place.
Occlumency activated. Around the perimeter of his mind he constructed an elaborate maze, layers nested within layers, true paths tangled with false ones. Any foreign consciousness trying to reach his core would have to navigate the labyrinth first, and the labyrinth was never still, its corridors shifting, its routes rearranging with every passing second.
The four and a half stars of Orion ignited.
Magic traced the paths of those stellar orbits. Each completed cycle hardened the barriers further.
He wove the starfield into his defenses.
The barrier was no longer a rigid shell. It breathed, flowed, and lived, sensing the intent of anything that tried to enter.
Regulus placed his core self at the center of this mental cosmos, surrounded by orbiting stars, by the maze that Occlumency had built, by shields layered upon shields.
He was ready.
Across the reef, the masked figure's chant reached its end.
---
Join my Patreon for early access to chapters: patreon.com/rivyura
Next Target 1200PS :)