The night air over Hogsmeade was a storm of fire and screams. Once quaint cottages stood twisted and jagged, their walls stretched upward into jagged bulwarks and killing towers. The cobbled streets had warped into narrow funnels, forcing the enemy into killing grounds where ward-fueled runes flared and burst.
From the highest of those jagged walls, Herpo stood like a black banner. His wand was a brand in his hand, his other arm lifted high as he poured will and command into the humming wards. The fortress shuddered, walls shifting and locking tighter around the defenders.
"Ranged units to the rooftops! Seal the eastern choke—NOW!" His voice, amplified and edged with serpentine hiss, rang across the chaos.
A squad of witches scrambled, lifting their wands as conjured spears of light rained down on charging demons. Their triumph was short-lived—an angel dropped from above, blade gleaming like molten sun. Before it could cut them down, a terracotta warder lumbered forward from a shadowed alley, clay fists smashing into the angel's wings. Bone cracked; the angel screamed, and the defenders finished it with a volley of curses.
Everywhere the fortress-town ground against the invaders. Doors had become mouths spitting fire. Chimneys erupted with chains that dragged shrieking demons into their depths. A narrow lane collapsed into a pit of writhing serpents when a godling tried to force his way through.
Still, the cost was steep. A line of young aurors held a barricade at what had once been Honeydukes' doorway, their faces pale but defiant as they met each charge. One screamed in triumph as his spell split a demon in half only to be impaled a moment later by another's blade. His comrades dragged him back, still casting wildly with their free hands.
Above them, Herpo struck without pause. His spells were surgical, vicious: a single chain snapping around a monster's throat, a blast of venomous fire that left nothing but blackened ash. Yet he never lingered—always moving his gaze, always sending orders. He saw the field as if the wards themselves fed him its every breath.
"Reinforce the south gate! Pair the warders don't let them split! Healers, to the central square, now!" His voice cut sharper than steel.
In the town square—once cobblestones where students sipped butterbeer—blood now slicked the stones. Terracotta warders fought side by side with goblins and wizards, blades flashing, curses tearing through wings and sinew. A manticore roared as it leapt into a cluster of angels, its tail sweeping bodies like wheat.
But the defenders bled just as freely. Wizards staggered with smoking wounds, goblins shrieked as they were trampled beneath the weight of divine beasts. A single healer knelt in the mud, hands glowing green as she tried to stitch a boy's torn chest back together, even as spellfire screamed overhead.
Through it all, Herpo's expression was stone. His robes whipped in the wind, his hair plastered to his face with sweat and blood, yet his eyes were cold, calculating. He was not merely fighting—he was shaping the battlefield, turning every death and every triumph into part of a larger design.
And the fortress of Hogsmeade held, if only by his will.
***
Arcturus Black stood apart from the din, his body still though the world around him shook with fire and screams. His eyes were closed, lids pressed tight as if to block out the battlefield entirely. In his pale hands he cradled a jagged obsidian relic, its surface veined with dull crimson light. Threads—unseen to all but him—stretched from the artifact into his mind, into the air, into the distance. He followed them, weaving through the night like a bird soaring above the land.
He felt them before he saw them: hunger, wrath, and a pulse older than kingdoms. The vampires. Their pace was relentless, a swarm of shadows moving like one body, their fangs gnashing, their minds half-feral but tethered to him through the artifact. Arcturus's brow furrowed, his lips parting with a soft hiss as he strained to hold them. They were near. Closer with every heartbeat.
Then the vision sharpened: he saw from above, hundreds of pale bodies sweeping across moors and wood, faster than wolves, leaping over stone fences, leaving nothing but shattered frost in their wake. In moments, they would be upon Hogsmeade.
***
Herpo turned sharply on the battlements. He felt it too a shiver in the wards, a foreign but familiar scent in the current of magic. His eyes narrowed.
"Vampires," he muttered, then louder, his voice carrying across the fortress like the toll of iron bells:
"THE VAMPIRES ARE OUR ALLIES! SPREAD OUT—DO NOT STRIKE THEM!"
The words rolled across the defenders just as the shadows reached the field. A thunder of bodies crashed into the demon ranks on the left flank, pale blurs of muscle and fangs ripping through armor and flesh as if it were parchment. Screams tore the night as demons were dragged down, shredded by claw and tooth.
From the rooftops, defenders gasped as the vampires leapt impossibly high, cutting arcs through the air like predators in flight. Their hands latched onto angels mid-swoop, dragging them screaming from the sky, wings snapping under the sheer force. The angels slashed with blades of light—but the vampires did not let go, tearing them down into the mud where dozens more piled on in frenzy.
The battlefield tilted. The demons, once pressing hard against the fortress lines, faltered under the sudden assault. Their flanks buckled, shrieks of rage and pain echoing as vampires cut through them with animalistic fury.
For a heartbeat, even the defenders stood stunned at the savagery of it. Then, Herpo's command cracked the spell of shock.
"PRESS THEM! WHILE THEY'RE BROKEN!"
And Hogsmeade's fortress surged alive again, wizards and goblins pushing forward to meet the faltering foe, the night now lit by fire, fang, and steel.
***
The shrine was silent save for the hum of runes still glowing faintly on the floor. The air reeked of burned incense and blood, the residue of magic so heavy it clung to the lungs. Morpheus stood before the figure, the body he had coaxed back into being, reshaped from soul and memory and bound flesh.
The man before him inhaled sharply, his chest rising for the first time in centuries. Power rippled off him like heat haze.
Morpheus dipped his head low, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. In a voice almost reverent, he said,
"I apologize, old friend… but it seems humanity is in need of your assistance once more."
The figure stepped forward. For a heartbeat, it seemed he would strike his hand twitched toward Morpheus, his eyes flaring like stormlight. His face twisted with fury, a raw, almost painful kind of rage that made the ward-lights flicker.
"You disgust me," he spat, voice like thunder cracking through the chamber. "How many have died so far in this damnable war? How many children buried beneath fire and blood? I could have made peace!" His final word boomed against the stone walls, shaking the runes.
Morpheus only sighed, shaking his head slowly, and let out a soft tsk. His smile faded into something more brittle, colder.
"Merlin," he said evenly, "there is no such thing as peace. Not truly. Not while heaven and hell gnash their teeth over this world. You of all men should have known that."
Merlin's eyes burned, fury and grief warring in their depths. His fists clenched, and his shoulders quivered as if he might collapse under the weight of centuries of failure.
Morpheus took a step closer, lowering his voice, words sharp as a blade's edge.
"Now… will you stand here, gnashing your teeth at me? Will you waste away what little time I have torn from the void for you? Or will you use it—use these precious moments of life I've bought you to aid those who are drowning in fire outside these walls?"
The silence that followed was suffocating. Merlin's jaw worked, his chest heaving with rage and sorrow. His gaze turned away from Morpheus, toward the faint thunder of war echoing through the mountain, and the decision in his heart seemed to weigh as heavy as the world itself.