Silence.
Darkness surrounds me—soft, warm, suffocating. And then, faintly, I feel it. Two presences. Two souls.
Mine… and another.
For a moment, I hesitate. The other one flickers weakly, its energy torn and unstable, but it fights. Instinctively, it lashes out, desperate to survive.
"Futile," I murmur within the void.
I grasp the weaker soul, absorbing it effortlessly. Power, memories, and fragments of identity flood into me—pain, ambition, arrogance. I see flashes of a child alone in an orphanage… a boy discovering his magic… a young man weaving darkness into power… and finally, a name whispered in terror across the world.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
The name rings through my mind like an echo of an old myth. For some reason, it feels familiar—too familiar. I sift through the chaos of his memories, piecing together the fragments of his life, and then I realize what he did.
He split his soul.
I almost laugh. "What an idiot."
To tear one's own soul apart for immortality—it's like destroying your foundation to build a taller tower. Reckless. Wasteful. At least he understood the fundamentals of magic; I'll give him that. His rituals were crude but clever. There's genius in his craft, even if it's corrupted by obsession.
The memories stabilize, merging with my consciousness. His understanding of this world's magic—the charms, curses, enchantments—everything becomes mine.
When I open my eyes, I find myself lying on a cold stone step, wrapped in a thin blanket. The night air bites at my skin. In the distance, I hear the faint cry of an owl.
I look around. A doorstep. A quiet street. A small, ordinary house.
And then I remember.
Tom Riddle.Voldemort.Harry Potter.
It all clicks. Faint echoes of my distant, mortal life—before I became the Celestial Mage—stir within me. I remember reading these books once, thousands of years ago, back when I was just an ordinary human on Earth. The details are hazy, blurred by time, but the names—Voldemort, Dumbledore, Potter—stand out like glowing runes in my memory.
"So… this is where I've ended up," I whisper. "The world of Harry Potter."
I look down at my tiny hands—small, delicate, helpless. My new body barely a year old. I can sense magic faintly flickering within me, unshaped, untrained. But my soul—my ancient, celestial soul—burns bright enough to make the stars tremble.
"I suppose this will be… entertaining."
The wind shifts. Somewhere beyond the veil of the night sky, destiny begins to stir.