The Mountain Stirs, the Sky Awakens
That night, the mountain did not feel like it was sleeping.
Rafael lay on his back on the thin futon in his room, staring at the darkened ceiling while the lantern by his desk flickered low, almost out. Avalanche was a great white-gold heap of fur and muscle just inside the open shoji door, tail twitching occasionally as he chased something in his dreams. Down the hall, he could hear the faint thud of Maki's footsteps as she paced her own room restlessly, Night Fury claws tapping every now and then on wood.
It should have felt peaceful.
The duel was done. The familiar CAD had worked better than he'd hoped. The Night Fury had adopted Maki with irrational, toothy affection. His parents were…proud.
But Luna's letter was still tucked over his heart, and every time he closed his eyes, he saw Hermione clutching the CAD device in both hands as if it were the only solid thing in the world.
He rolled onto his side, reached for his own device on the low table, and checked the time. Late. Too late to send another message without waking her.
Something flickered at the edge of his vision.
The System.
A quiet notification opened like a glowing eyelid.
> [COMBAT RANKING EXAM: CONFIRMED]
DATE: TOMORROW
FORMAT: 1v1 AND TEAM MATCHES
SPECIAL EXHIBITION: RAFAEL + MAKI VS SELECTED OPPONENTS (5)
Of course.
He skimmed it, taking in the structure, the scoring, the fact that the exam began with lower tiers and worked its way up through the seeded ranks. His and Maki's names were listed under the second day's main event: a sanctioned two-on-five match, ostensibly to test "coordination under pressure." In reality, it was the school's way of putting a controlled lid on the simmering tensions with the Yakuza heirs.
They were going to be fed their enemies on a silver platter and told to make it educational.
He snorted softly.
"Subtle as always, Headmaster."
Avalanche huffed in his sleep.
The lantern flame went out.
For a few breaths, he lay in real darkness, feeling the slow, heavy pull of his own limiter-enhanced weight against the futon and the distant murmur of waves against the cliffs far below.
Then the mountain moved.
It was small at first—a strange lurch under the tatami, like someone had dragged a hand along the bedrock. The air thickened, pressure rising in a way that had nothing to do with the atmosphere. Avalanche's eyes snapped open, pupils flaring narrow as he shot to his feet in one smooth motion.
Rafael was already sitting up.
The entire room seemed to hold its breath.
The wards around the estate flashed—once, twice—shifting colors in a sequence he had never seen before. Not an attack. Not a breach.
Something deeper.
In the distance, the great torii gate at the edge of the Spirit Garden thrummed like a struck bell. The sound wasn't loud. It was simply…final.
"Veil tremor," he said under his breath.
He'd read about them. Once every few decades, the barrier between life and death, magic and void, shuddered somewhere in the world—usually at the site of an old catastrophe or a particularly foolish experiment. When it happened, the places closest to the leyline flow felt it like the echo of a distant scream.
Hogwarts would have felt that.
Avalanche growled softly, fur bristling, looking toward the south-west as if he could see across the ocean.
Rafael swung his legs over the side of the futon.
"I know," he said quietly. "I know."
As if summoned by his thoughts, his device vibrated.
He didn't need to see the sender to guess.
He unlocked it.
Luna again.
Dear Rafael,
Did you feel that?
I don't mean in the ordinary way. Lots of people felt it in the ordinary way. Books fell in the library. Peeves laughed. The portraits complained. The ghosts went quiet, which is how you know it was serious.
This was more like…a string snapping in a room you can't see but you know is nearby. Something is wrong with the Veil. Daddy would say it was the Department of Mysteries doing something inadvisable again. I think it might be the world reminding us that walls don't last forever, no matter how stubborn wizards are.
You should know Hermione woke up before it hit. She said her CAD burned like ice and light all at once, and she could hear "something" in your direction. I didn't tell her that's probably what your heart sounds like when it's trying to protect too many people at once. She'll figure it out.
The good things:
No one at Hogwarts died. No one was badly hurt. Harry looked like he recognized the feeling in a way that scares me, so I will keep closer to him and to Hermione and the others.
You are moving faster now. I don't mean walking. Don't frown, I can feel it from here. I mean the way your thread pulls on others. Sky Flames do that. So do storms. You are both.
Rafael, I think Hermione's flame will not be lightning like yours. It feels softer and colder and older. Like moonlight through trees. Or the sea at night. It wraps, it cradles, it cuts if it has to. It will not make her less dangerous.
Please don't be surprised when she starts to glow.
Come at winter.
Your god-sister,
Luna
P.S. Harry wants to write to you. He's bad at asking for things, so I told him I would tell you for him.
He read it twice, eyes lingering on the lines about Hermione waking before the tremor and her CAD burning cold.
Moonlight through trees. The sea at night.
Not lightning, then. Something else.
Something that suited her better.
"Good," he said softly. "You should be terrifying in your own way, Hermione."
Avalanche nudged his shoulder with that inconveniently massive head. Rafael reached up and rubbed the fur between his horns.
"Sleep," he said. "We have a lot to do tomorrow."
He tried to do the same.
Sleep came in fits, shallow and restless. At some point, another System notice slid across his vision.
> [NEW SUMMON TOKEN: AWARDED]
CONDITIONS: RANKED COMBAT, VEIL-ADJACENT EVENT, TRIAD FORMATION PROGRESS
USE? Y/N
He stared at it in the dark until the letters blurred.
"Not yet," he whispered. "Not until winter. Not until I've stabilized everything else."
He thought of Luna and Hermione and Harry standing under that strange, cracked sky, and of the power humming at his fingertips even with his limiters active.
"No more changes until I'm there," he told the System. "Decline."
The notification faded.
He finally slept.
When dawn came, the mountain looked as if nothing had happened. The sky was clear, the air crisp, the distant sea deceptively gentle. The tremor was already being debated in the open courtyard—theories ranging from natural leyline shift to the Department of Mysteries making a particularly bad decision.
The new parchment on the notice board, however, washed all of that into the background. The Combat Ranking Exam brackets had been posted.
Rafael pushed through the crowd gathered around the board, Maki at his shoulder, Avalanche pacing behind them with his head lowered to avoid scraping the eaves.
The brackets were divided by year and division, with a separate column for "Special Exhibition Matches." His own name glowed in neat black script beside the fifth seed. Maki's sat at ninth.
In the exhibition section, the ink had barely dried:
Special Exam Match:
Team Wraith (Rafael Y. Raijinko-Redmane, Maki Oze)
vs.
Team Kuroda (Jin Kuroda, Ryo Matsuda, Mei Tanaka, +2)
"Subtle," Maki muttered.
Rafael's eyes traced the names, the little notes beside them. Jin's record was long. So was Ryo's. Mei was known for her barrier techniques and vicious precision with a short staff. The other two were third-years with decent reputations.
He felt nothing in particular.
"Everyone keeps underestimating the fact that we're allowed to work as a unit," Maki said, reading over his shoulder. "I'm okay with that."
"Don't get cocky," he said.
"Never," she said. "I'm just excited."
Avalanche's tail thumped once against the stone.
The whispers around the courtyard grew as people read their own matches, their own seeding. When Rafael and Maki turned away, more than a few eyes tracked them with the hungry intensity of people watching a storm roll in from the sea, knowing it would hit soon and wondering whether their house would still be standing afterward.
Classes that morning were a blur of review and controlled chaos. Everyone was either too wired or too terrified to focus. Even the usually unflappable Headmaster seemed faintly amused as he moved through the halls, eyes lingering on certain students for a fraction longer than others.
Avalanche spent most of the morning reshaping himself. Rafael could feel it as a hum under his skin whenever their bond pulsed. The Barioth's frame stretched further, gaining another foot of height at the shoulder, muscles thickening, the once-awkward cub now undeniably adolescent—no longer just a strange familiar, but a creature that drew wary looks from professors and wary awe from students.
By midday, the magical ecology master had officially submitted a classification.
"6x Threat-Class Companion," Maki read off the sheet they'd been handed. "Congratulations, you own a walking natural disaster."
Rafael glanced at Avalanche where he lay sprawled in the shade, licking ice from his claws.
"Accurate," he said. "But he's on my side."
"Let's keep it that way," she replied.
In Britain, at roughly the same time, Hermione stood in an empty classroom, breath puffing in the chill air, CAD device in her hand. Her hair was tied back for once, and her sleeves were rolled up.
It had started after the tremor.
The night the castle shook, her device had flashed with a cold, silver-blue light, a sensation like distant tides washing through her bones. She had dreamed of a forest under a full moon, of standing ankle-deep in a black lake that reflected the stars so perfectly she couldn't tell which way was up.
And when she woke, she could feel something under her skin. Not like the sharp, crackling force Rafael described when he spoke of lightning. This was different. Deep and slow. Affectionate, almost, until roused.
Now she stood in front of a line of unlit candles.
"All right," she muttered. "If you were Rafael, you'd say this is science. Data, observation, result."
She extended her hand.
Focused.
Not on words. Not on wand motions. On…patterns. On the way Rafael had once described mana flow during one of his long, tangential explanations that she had pretended to be exasperated by while secretly memorizing every word.
The CAD warmed in her palm.
A faint ring of light appeared around her wrist.
It wasn't yellow like conventional sparks, or the neon color of an electric charm. It was pale—almost white at the edge, tinged with sea-glass green and moonlit blue. It swirled once, twice, as if testing her.
One of the candles flickered.
Hermione gasped.
The flame wasn't normal. Its base glowed with that same odd, cold light for a heartbeat before settling into something that looked ordinary but felt…anchored. As if the tiniest thread connected it to her.
She'd read ahead in curse theory enough to know she should probably inform a professor.
Instead, she thought of Rafael.
Of Luna's knowing eyes.
Of all the times she'd been called mad over the last few years for believing things no one else wanted to see.
Not this time.
She straightened her shoulders.
"All right," she whispered. "If you're mine, let's learn each other properly before anyone else tries to name you for me."
Far away, a young man adjusting the straps on Avalanche's saddle paused, glanced toward the horizon without knowing why, and smiled slightly.
That afternoon, the exams began.
Mahoutokorou's combat arena had been expanded for the occasion. Elevated viewing platforms ringed the central circle, and the wards shimmered overhead, ready to absorb stray spells and suppress anything lethal. Professors sat in designated boxes, quills ready for scoring. The Headmaster stood at the highest point, hands folded, watching with that dangerous amusement.
The early matches passed in a blur. First-years nervously tripped over basic dueling footwork. Second-years produced respectable displays. Third-years showed why they were third-years.
No one forgot, however, that the true entertainment—if you could call it that—would come later, when seeds began to clash.
Rafael's first match was a one-on-one against a boy who fought with earth magic and twin tonfa. Under other circumstances, it would have been a good spar. The boy lasted longer than most expected—Rafael was careful not to humiliate him—but the outcome was never in doubt. A clean disarm, a gentle tap to the chest with a flat palm charged just enough to knock the wind out of him, and it was done.
Maki's first match was less gentle. The girl she faced specialized in wind and agility. It made no difference. Maki closed the distance, took two hits to land five, and, in the end, walked out with fire licking around her knuckles and her opponent sprawled gracelessly on the mat, staring up at the sky in mild shock.
By the time their special exhibition rolled around, the stands were full.
The Yakuza heirs and their two chosen allies waited on one side of the arena, armored and grim, weapons gleaming. Jin's face was still tight with the memory of Rafael's lightning and the cut in the stone at his feet. Mei's gaze flicked over Maki with the wary caution of someone who'd read the reports. Ryo stretched his hands, trying and failing to look relaxed.
Rafael walked to his mark in silence. Fenrir's Chains felt heavier than usual, but his stride was even. The Stygian Crystal Phantom remained in its ring, phantom weight against his finger. Avalanche sat just outside the boundary wards, too large to come closer now, eyes narrowed, tail wrapped neatly around his paws. He was not officially permitted to participate. He looked insulted by the limitation.
Maki cracked her neck as she took her place beside Rafael.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
Her teeth flashed. "Good. I've been dying to hit them legally."
The match began with the sound of a gong, deep and resonant.
The heirs attacked like they'd practiced: coordinated, layered, one weaving illusions, another erecting barriers, Jin and Ryo coming in hard with physical strikes backed by bursts of contained spellwork meant to slip through defenses at close range.
They had learned from watching the earlier fights.
They just hadn't learned enough.
Maki met the first rush head-on. Fire sucked the air out of the space in front of her as she blocked Jin's strike with one forearm and answered with a hook that rattled his teeth even through wards. Rafael flowed around her, slipping through the gaps, ignoring the illusionary doubles to focus on the pressure shifts that betrayed the real bodies.
A barrier snapped into place in front of him—Mei's work, lines of force like glass turned solid. He pivoted, letting his momentum carry him along it, boots skidding in a half-circle. The storage ring flashed.
The Phantom sang into his hand.
Crystal bit into energy, not matter, and the barrier shattered like ice under a hammer.
Gasps rippled through the audience.
Lightning flickered in the cracks of the blade as he turned it, catching Ryo's staff on the flat and twisting, sending the older boy sprawling.
Maki roared something wordless and knocked another heir out of the ring entirely with a shoulder charge that would have made a bull jealous.
It wasn't that their opponents were weak. They weren't. In any other second-year exam, they would have dominated.
They were simply outmatched, and everyone watching knew it.
When it was over—when Jin lay groaning on the mat again, when Mei's barriers lay in sparkling shards, when the last of the five conceded, breathing hard and clutching a bruised rib—there was an odd, stunned silence.
Then, belatedly, scattered applause.
Headmaster Takeda stood.
"Team Wraith: victory," he said, voice mild. "Team Kuroda: valuable lessons, I trust."
He let the murmur die down before continuing.
"These exams will continue tomorrow," he said. "For now, rest. Regain your energy. Some of you will need it more than others."
His eyes landed briefly on Rafael as he spoke the last sentence.
Later, much later, after the spectators had drifted away and the arena had been repaired by a team of overworked maintenance charms, Rafael found himself summoned to the highest terrace of the main tower.
The sun had gone down. The sky was a deep, velvety blue, the stars beginning to sharpen into view. The air was thin and cold enough that his breath clouded as he stepped out onto the stone.
Headmaster Takeda stood near the edge, hands resting lightly on the balustrade. He did not turn immediately at Rafael's approach. For a moment, he looked like nothing more than a slim, elderly man out for a late constitutional.
Every instinct Rafael possessed knew better.
"You fought well today," Takeda said without turning.
"Thank you, Headmaster."
"Your restraint was…adequate."
Rafael almost smiled. "I'll try to be less merciful next time."
"You misunderstand." Takeda turned his head. In the starlight, his eyes looked deeper than they did by day. "Mercy is a luxury. Restraint is a necessity."
Rafael inclined his head. "Yes, sir."
Silence stretched between them, not uncomfortable, but heavy.
"Walk," Takeda said at last.
Rafael did.
They moved along the terrace, stone cool under their feet, the edge falling away sharply to the dark mountain slopes below.
"When I was your age," Takeda said conversationally, "there was no such thing as a combat ranking exam. There were wars. If people wanted to know who was strongest, they simply waited to see who lived."
Rafael said nothing. He didn't need to. The old man's tone was not nostalgic.
"You remind me of someone," Takeda continued. "Not your father. Though he has his moments. Not your mother. Though she has more than moments. Someone further back."
He stopped in the exact center of the terrace.
The magic in the air changed.
It took Rafael a second to realize why. Up here, the wards were different—thinner in some places, denser in others, like a woven net shaped around something that did not want to be touched.
"Draw your blade," Takeda said.
Rafael did. The Stygian Crystal Phantom slid free with a soft whisper, catching starlight in its edges.
"Attack me," Shirogane said.
Rafael did not move.
"I don't spar with my teachers," he said quietly.
Takeda smiled, thin and sharp. It made him look suddenly, terribly young in a way that had nothing to do with his skin.
"Then don't think of me as your teacher," he said. "Think of me as the first obstacle on the road you chose when you said yes to the Sky."
The air thickened again.
Old Monster, Maki had called him once, half in jest, half in awe.
Rafael tightened his grip.
"Very well," he said.
He moved.
Lightning flared.
The blade cut through the space where Takeda's chest had been a heartbeat earlier. The old man had not Apparated—there was no pop, no displacement. He was simply not there anymore, then was, three steps to the side, hands still folded in his sleeves.
"Fast," Takeda said. "Too much wasted motion in your shoulders."
Rafael adjusted.
He attacked again. A series of strikes, low, high, feint, pivot, lightning lacing every blow. Each one should have cut. Each one should have hit. Each one passed within a hair's breadth of black fabric and found only air.
Takeda did not draw a wand.
He did not chant.
He simply moved when he had to and, occasionally, made a small, dismissive gesture that turned Rafael's power aside as if redirecting a stream with a fingertip.
Space bent around his fingers and forgot that it had been in Rafael's favor a moment before.
After the fifth exchange, sweat trickled down Rafael's back despite the cold. Fenrir's Chains tugged at his limbs with unforgiving weight, but he refused to dial them down.
"Again," Takeda said mildly.
Rafael lunged.
This time, when his blade passed within a breath of the old man's throat, Takeda lifted one hand and caught it.
Not the hilt.
The blade.
Crystal met bare skin.
There should have been blood.
Instead, there was only the faintest hiss of magic as the Phantom's edge stalled against something unyielding that wasn't flesh and wasn't stone. Takeda's fingers closed around the blade without even leaving a scratch.
Rafael met his gaze.
Up close, the lines around the Headmaster's eyes looked less like age and more like places where laughter and grief and patience had etched themselves so deeply into his being that the world had given up trying to smooth them away.
"Better," Takeda said softly. "You don't hold back out of politeness when it matters. Good."
He released the blade.
For a moment, Rafael simply stood there, breathing hard, hands steady by will alone.
"How strong are you, really?" he asked. The question came out before he could stop it.
Takeda tilted his head, considering.
"Strong enough that the Kami stopped trying to recruit me several centuries ago," he said. "Old enough that I have forgotten more styles than you currently practice. Weak enough that one day you will surpass me, if you survive that long."
Rafael swallowed.
"I won't lose," he said.
Takeda's mouth quirked.
"Everyone loses," he said. "The question is what you protect while you're still standing."
He stepped back.
"Your parents sent something," he added, almost as an afterthought. "It arrived this afternoon. I had it placed in your room. Put it on tomorrow."
Rafael blinked. "What is it?"
"A reminder," Takeda said. "And perhaps…an acceptance."
He turned away, looking back out over the mountain as the wind tugged at his sleeves.
"Go, Rafael," he said. "Eat. Sleep. Your exam has only just begun."
Rafael bowed once, sword still in hand, then sheathed it and slipped away down the stairs, mind spinning.
Back in his room, the lanterns had been turned up. Avalanche thumped his tail once in greeting as Rafael came in. On the low chest against the far wall, a long, flat bundle wrapped in dark red cloth waited.
He approached it slowly.
The parcel carried the faint scent of his father's cigarettes and his mother's favorite tea.
He unwrapped it carefully.
The armor beneath was not ornate. It was made of overlapping plates, matte black edged in deep, muted crimson, each segment engraved with the Redmane crest and a pattern of runes so old he couldn't immediately read half of them. It was an old style—meant to be worn beneath robes or under a cloak, built for movement more than display.
He ran his fingers along one shoulder piece. Power thrummed under his touch—battle wards, reinforcement, impact absorption, magic deflection. Some of the lines were new, his father's work. Others were old, older than anything he'd learned in his history texts.
There was a note tucked beneath the breastplate.
For when you decide to stop pretending you're not already on the front lines.
— Dad
Try not to bleed on it too much the first week.
— Mum
He sat on the edge of the futon with the armor in his lap for a long moment, the weight of it settling over his hands and shoulders even before he put it on.
His device buzzed.
He opened it without thinking.
A new sender this time.
Harry James Potter.
Hi.
Hermione and Luna told me I should write.
I'm not very good at this.
I just wanted to say…thank you. For helping them. Even from over there.
And for making Hermione smile like that.
She deserves it.
Also, I felt what happened last night. The tremor.
I've felt something like it before. I hope you didn't.
Harry
Rafael stared at the message longer than he meant to.
There was nothing fancy about it. No flowery language, no elaborate apology for the world. Just simple words from a boy who had seen too much already and still cared enough to type them out.
He replied.
Thanks for looking out for them when I can't be there.
You're better at this than you think.
We'll talk properly when I visit in winter.
He hesitated, then added,
And next time the world shakes, try not to stand in the way of it alone. That's an order, Potter.
He sent it before he could overthink it.
Avalanche snorted as if in approval and bumped his shoulder.
Rafael set the device down, then pulled the armor on piece by piece. It fit perfectly, settling over his frame like it had been waiting for him specifically, not just any Redmane heir.
When he stood, the extra weight combined with Fenrir's Chains should have been crushing.
Instead, it felt right.
The Sky was heavy. So was war. So were the people he'd taken into his orbit—Hermione, Luna, Harry, Maki, his parents, the dragons, the entire ridiculous, fragile world.
He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the armor's wards hum to life in response.
"Fine," he murmured. "Let's see how much of it I can carry."
Avalanche rumbled, rising to his feet beside him.
Outside, the arena waited.
So did the exam.
So did the future.
He stepped toward it without looking back.