Chapter 76: Chaos Revival
The morning passed like any other.
After breakfast, George made his way to the highest tower of the castle. From here, the whole of Hogwarts Island spread out beneath him—green fields, the shimmering lake, quiet forest edges, and the long stretch of paths and towers that had become home.
It had been two years since the island's transformation began, and the changes were no longer just structural. You could feel it in the air—the sense of movement, of life settling into its rhythm.
Below, children were running drills on the main lawn. Dozens of them, all from the 100 families George had chosen to form the foundation of his world. Every morning they gathered here—first for basic physical training, then half an hour of Elemental Energy refinement. In the afternoons, different instructors rotated through, offering anything from arithmetic to language to agriculture.
None of it was mandatory. George didn't believe in forced greatness. Those who preferred books to cultivation were sent to schools George had quietly funded across New York, run by people he trusted.
In the vegetable garden behind the west wing, a few women were picking greens, chatting in low voices, laughing now and then. Their baskets were full. The castle kitchens would smell good today.
As for George's core team—his hundred most trusted—they were all deployed on missions. Scattered across the globe, they worked under their covers, carrying out slow and careful work. The kind that didn't make headlines but changed entire corners of the world.
George took in the scene a moment longer, then let the thought settle.
And with a blink—no wand, no chant—he was inside the Chaos Space.
A small sack of vegetable seeds appeared in his hand, just as he'd requested from the butler earlier.
He didn't move. He didn't need to. Within the Chaos Space, thought and action were the same. The black soil beneath him rippled as the seeds scattered themselves across the surface, each one settling perfectly spaced.
From the pond beside him, water lifted gently into the air, forming a soft mist that rained over the newly planted bed.
Clean. Silent. Efficient.
George nodded once, then stepped out of the Space, reappearing inside the Room of Requirement, which now stood shaped as a training room.
For the next half hour, he moved through every technique he knew.
Gun handling. Shadow clone movement. The Three Body Technique. Martial forms. And finally, wandless spells and chantless casting.
Nothing felt different.
He shifted the room into a meditative space. Quiet walls, dim lighting. Sitting cross-legged at the center, George slowed his breathing. Not to rest—just to listen inward.
And that's when he felt it.
Something in the Apparition spell was... smoother.
Before, no matter how strong you were, Apparition had a signature feel to it—like being squeezed through a spinning pipe. George's body, hardened from cultivation, could shrug off the disorientation. But the feeling was always there.
Except it wasn't anymore.
He stood and tested it again—one blink, and he was in his bedroom. No spinning. No squeezing.
He laughed. Not a loud, triumphant laugh—just one of realization.
That wasn't Apparition anymore.
It was instant movement.
Not only that—when he focused again, he shifted rooms without so much as a whisper of a spell. No words, no wand, no flex of dantian energy. Just intent.
He tested again and again. As far as a hundred meters, effortlessly. No chakra loss. No magical fatigue. No strain at all.
It clicked.
The Chaos Pearl's space radius had grown to around fifty acres, and its spherical field must be what was allowing this seamless teleportation—like living inside a portable domain.
And more than that, his senses were sharper within the same radius. Awareness came more easily. The air even felt different, tuned to him.
All of it pointed to a single conclusion: this was a full spatial awakening. A real evolution.
But he wanted to be sure.
So he sat again, letting his thoughts stretch back to the stories of the Hongmeng Pearl, the three treasures of Pangu, and the shattered origin that had once tried to open an entire Universe. He recalled the decline, how that once-unmatched pearl had been reduced to something lesser, a chaos fragment, a discarded husk.
Even so, George figured the pearl must've retained some traces of its original nature. Perhaps, over time, it had absorbed bits of Hongmeng energy. Maybe that's how it had survived long enough to bond with his past life.
Still, when he first awakened it in this life, all it could do was store. It wasn't until it touched the Space Stone, and more recently the magical briefcase from Scamander's world, that it began to stir again.
And now, here it was. Not yet a Universe, not even a true inner world. But real land, real water, a living, breathing Small World.
It was a start.
George rose to his feet and stepped out of the quiet room. The Space was still largely empty. There was furniture to bring in. Tools. Books. Practical things that make a world feel lived in.
He headed toward the armory, planning to grab a few item-storage kits, when he heard footsteps behind him.
Fred, the old butler, caught up quickly.
"Master Orwell, news has just arrived from Ryan's side. The project assigned to them has been completed. All oppositions have submitted."
George smiled.
"Finally. Good. Tell Ryan to follow the transition plan. We give them a few gifts up front—let them keep some face. We'll need these families when we start managing the Peninsula properly. Let's schedule the ceremony for November first."
"Understood, sir. I'll send the word."
The butler turned and disappeared down the hall.
It had been two years since the British crown handed George control of the Arabian Peninsula. Two years of slow negotiations, strategic bribes, precision strikes, and calculated diplomacy. Ryan had led the operation personally, backed by George's weapons, knowledge, and training.
Now, every tribal leader and faction head across the peninsula had signed on—some with open arms, some with grudging respect.
Whatever the path, the result was the same.
George owned the future of that land.
He walked toward the kitchen.
He'd forgotten to ask Fred to prepare lunch, but that was fine. He felt like cooking himself.
The old elf-run kitchen had been remodeled a year ago. Now it looked more like a hybrid of an industrial-grade chef's arena and a quiet villa kitchen from Tuscany. Marble counters. Enchanted copper pans. A cold pantry the size of a small classroom.
George slipped off his coat and flicked his wrist.
Ingredients levitated from the storage shelves. Vegetables danced across the chopping board. Water boiled on cue. His fingers curled around the knife from the Little Cooker World, and the rhythm began.
Slice. Steam. Season. Toss.
There were spells for cooking, but George barely used them now. His movements were fast but precise. He wasn't just prepping food. He was enjoying the feel of it—how garlic popped in the oil, how rice steamed sweetly against bone broth, how a little citrus could lift the entire plate.
One by one, the dishes came together—aromatic, balanced, and plated to perfection.
He sealed each one in a vacuum-stabilized stasis pack and labeled them. Not for show. For sharing.
Later, he'd send them as gifts to a few old friends across New York.
By late afternoon, George was back in the car, riding into Manhattan.
The skyline was familiar again. No longer foreign, no longer strange. But now, he carried with him something deeper, less about wealth or power, more about quiet, deliberate construction.
He stopped at three addresses. Old acquaintances. A journalist who'd helped him years ago. A widow whose family once saved his company's cargo from sabotage. A violinist whose music reminded him of someone long gone.
He left food at each door, with no card.
Let them wonder.
On the way back, Fred called with a brief update.
"Sir, one more thing. Mr Osborn sends his good regards, wishing you had been doing well. "
George raised an eyebrow.
"Oh? I haven't heard from him since he set up his shop."
"His company's doing well, but he refused your offer to come back, of course, says he wants to build it his way."
George smiled. "Good, as he should, every man should eventually leave their nest and fly for themselves."
He looked out the window, watching the sun dip low over the Hudson.
Osborn wasn't the kind of man to stay in someone else's shadow. George had known that all along. He'd just given him the runway—and now the man was flying.
25% stake was more than enough.
___________________________________________________________________________
A Suit, A Watch, A Lie
(Story 2 of 4 – Golden Ship Anthology)
~2,230 words
POV: Émile Corbin, watchmaker
Setting: Golden Ship + Paris port stop
Émile tightened the bridge screw with care only men like him still used.
No wasted motion. No twitch of hesitation. Just breathe, tension, release.
The pocket watch's movement clicked once — faint, almost smug — then stopped. Balanced. Still.
He smiled. It had taken him five days.
Not five days of labor — five days of waiting. For his hands to calm down. For the ship to sway just right. For the hours to become quiet enough that he could hear the gears listen back.
He closed the case gently, wiped his face with a cloth, and placed the watch beside his glass.
The pianist at Bar D'Or was playing again. Something drifting and old.
Ten Days Earlier — Paris
Émile Corbin had never boarded a ship before.
He was the third son of a watchmaker from Algiers, raised in silence and work. His brothers joined the war. He joined his father's workshop. He spoke to machines better than to people.
But machines could not fund dreams.
He had arrived in Paris with one invention and three lies.
The invention: a pocket watch that ran backward — but kept perfect time. Not a trick. Not a novelty. An actual functioning reversal of standard mechanics, using a floating differential and a hair-trigger escapement with a pivoted train. It had taken him four years to build.
The lies:
He had an appointment to pitch to Orwell's finance wing.
He had a confirmed pass aboard the Golden Ship.
He wasn't nervous.
All three, of course, were false.
The ship was docked near the Pont de Grenelle, towering like a myth.
Banners fluttered from its rails in languages he couldn't even guess at. Glass panels shimmered along the upper decks. And people — so many people — came and went as if walking through a palace no one questioned.
He stood at the edge of the queue, holding nothing but a leather case and his best suit.
"Name?" asked the woman at the desk.
He smiled politely. "Émile Corbin. I believe I'm listed under... Orwell guests."
She checked. She frowned.
Émile adjusted his collar. His shirt was too warm. His lie was unraveling fast.
Then, from somewhere inside the queue, a voice — sharp, American, loud:
"There he is! Émile! I told you to wait inside."
A man in a dark blue suit pushed forward, slapped Émile's shoulder, and grinned widely at the desk staff.
"This guy's with me. One of Orwell's watch people. Big brain. Quiet mouth. Let's go."
Before Émile could protest, the man was pulling him through the gate.
He didn't get a cabin. He got a shared hold, somewhere between engineering and the freight gallery. But he didn't complain.
Because he was on the ship.
And the ship — mon Dieu — as all the French called it was a marvel.
The corridors breathed elegance. Lining the walls were fragments of every city the vessel had ever touched: mosaics from Morocco, maple carvings from Canada, tiles from Jaipur, silk runners from Tokyo.
Even the ceiling lights felt enchanted — not bright, not fluorescent — just warm, like daylight in a memory.
And the people.
He passed a girl sketching whales from the starboard rail. A clerk speaking five languages into a single telegram. Staff who greeted him by name by the third morning.
Even that loud American — Howard, he now learned — treated him like an old friend.
"Any luck with Orwell's guys?" Howard asked over breakfast.
Émile lied again. "Soon."
He spent his days working in quiet corners of the ship. Not talking. Just building. Adjusting.
At night, he returned to Bar D'Or, where the music never stopped and the air always smelled like cloves and cherry smoke.
He ordered the cheapest drink on the menu and listened.
To businessmen, trading rumors. To dancers confessing secrets. To deckhands from Singapore telling ghost stories.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
He had the watch.
And he had time.
One Night — The Test
It was two a.m. The bar was empty.
Émile laid out the pieces on the table. Gears. Coil. Latch. He moved with the precision of ritual.
He assembled the device backward. Literally. Left became right. Spring wound from release to tension. His fingers didn't fumble. They remembered.
He placed the case on the table. Wound the crown.
And waited.
The second hand moved — counter-clockwise — ticking smoothly.
He let out a breath that had lived in his chest for months.
He laughed. Just once.
He'd done it.
The next morning, Émile went to the finance deck. He had cleaned his shoes. Polished the case. He wore his father's pin.
They didn't let him in.
No appointment. No reference. No recognition. Of course, they wouldn't let him in.
He stood in front of the velvet rope for a full hour.
When the receptionist finally said, "Sir, you'll have to leave," he nodded.
And he left.
That night, he nearly threw the watch into the sea.
He stood at the edge of the observation deck, wind biting his coat, hand gripped around the brass shell.
But he didn't. Not because he still believed it would matter.
But because it was his marvel, his -mon Deu-.
Back at Bar D'Or, the jazz was soft again.
The same pianist from the first night was playing Binks' Sake — slower this time. Not playful. Reflective. Like the sea had aged since he last heard it.
He sat at his usual seat.
A young girl — the sketch artist — nodded at him as she passed. He raised his glass in return.
The clerk from the radio room folded a letter at a corner table.
Howard Stark was nowhere to be seen. Likely off chasing investors or women that damn bastard how he does it with no effort is still another mystery to me.
Émile smiled to himself.
They were all still here.
Still trying.
Two Days Later
He received a letter.
Tucked under his door. No seal. No name.
Just a line of text:
"Your watch ticks backwards. But your time is moving forward.
– F.O."
Inside was a folded paper. An invitation to present to Orwell's technical council in Cairo.
Émile didn't dance. He didn't shout.
He went to Bar D'Or.
Ordered champagne.
When Raoul blinked at him, Émile said:
"Tonight, I am drinking in the wrong direction."
Raoul laughed. "Congratulations."
The music picked up again.
The stars shone down like tiny backward clocks.
End of Story 2
To be continued in: The Carriage of Salt
(Story 3 of 4)