Eyes snapped open, the darkness of the room pressing against my pupils like a physical weight. A jagged groan escaped my lips as I pushed myself upright, threadbare black blankets coiling like greasy snakes around my five-year-old frame. They snagged on my thin limbs as I kicked them away, squinting into the gloom of a space that smelled of rot and dried valerian.
The floorboards shrieked under my bare, pale feet. My vision did a slow roll, the world tilting on its axis as I stood. I slammed a hand against the dark, wooden wall to steady the vertigo, the splinters biting into my palm, and shuffled toward the door. The knob was a rusted, crooked thing that refused to budge. No matter how I twisted, it remained stubbornly silent. A cold prickle of dread climbed my spine, warring with a hot surge of frustration.
I was a stray again. Before this, I'd been a shadow in Knockturn Alley, a scavenger living on the scraps of the wizarding underworld, surviving on cunning and the occasional stolen copper. My life had been a meager thing, barely enough skin to cover the bone.
And before that... I was a ghost of a different world. A twenty-year-old Cambridge student, my head filled with microbiology and dreams of industry. I remembered the late-night walk, the scream of tires on wet pavement, and the blinding white light of a car that ended my first life in a heartbeat.
Death hadn't been a destination, but a cruel redirection. I'd woken in the arms of a rat-faced man who'd dumped me at a magical orphanage just as Voldemort's shadow began to fade. It hadn't been a sanctuary; it was a warehouse for the gifted and the forgotten, run by caretakers whose disdain was as thick as the London fog. When Minister Fudge rose to power and the funding vanished, the doors closed. I was spat back into the gutters of Knockturn, a child with a man's mind, fighting for every breath.
And now, this.
BANG.
The door slammed inward with a violence that rattled my teeth. A man stumbled in, draped in tattered black robes that smelled of sour sweat and stale potions. His jaw was a map of gray stubble, his bloodshot eyes darting through the dimness until they locked onto me.
He lunged.
I scrambled back, but his strength was unnatural. Bony fingers clamped onto my arm like iron manacles, blooming instant bruises across my skin. I yelped as he dragged me out of the cell and into a laboratory of nightmares. The house was a blackened shell, windows barred with splintered wood, the air heavy with the scent of hanging, twisted herbs. Tables were cluttered with bubbling vials and charts covered in a manic, jagged script.
He shoved me into a chair beside a hissing cauldron. Before I could breathe, he forced a murky green potion down my throat, tilting my head back until I had no choice but to swallow the fire.
It burned. A searing, corrosive heat clawed through my chest. Then the blood came. It leaked from my nose, eyes, and ears, hot and metallic, staining my tattered blue shirt a deep, wet crimson. My body convulsed, my muscles snapping like over-tightened wires as I collapsed onto the floor.
The man didn't move to help. He scribbled furiously in a notebook, his yellowed teeth bared in a grin of manic delight.
Damn bastard.
I refused to break. Through the haze of agony and the rhythmic drip of blood on the floorboards, I steeled my mind. I would not crumble for him. Slowly, the tremors subsided. My lungs screamed for air, and my head throbbed with a rhythmic violence, but I stayed conscious.
"What is your name, boy?" he demanded, looming over me like a vulture.
I lifted my chin, forcing the words through a throat that felt like it had been scrubbed with glass. "Orion," I spat.
His grin widened, a jagged, terrifying thing. "You have just become the most important thing in this house."
Thing. The word was a cold blade. To him, I wasn't a child, or even a human—just a variable in a twisted equation.
He hauled me up and threw me back into the cramped darkness of my room. The lock clicked with finality. In the silence, broken only by the sound of my own shallow breathing, I realized: this wasn't just survival anymore. This was the start of something much darker.