Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: New World, Old Soul

New York never stopped moving. That was its illusion: movement as life, noise as purpose.

But if you watched long enough—not a day, not a year, but centuries—you began to see it for what it was: a body twitching long after the soul had left.

Harry Potter swept the pavement outside The Howling Stag with the slow, even strokes of a man who had nothing left to rush for. The broom in his hand was crooked, cheap, and bought at a corner hardware store three years ago. It did not even sweep well, but it moved the way Harry needed it to.

The shop stood wedged between a shuttered deli and a boutique that sold US$200 T‑shirts and incense no one lit. Its windows were dusted with time, stained by illusions too faint to register consciously. Tourists called it quirky; locals called it weird; the few who understood did not call it anything at all.

Inside, time did not pass so much as pause. Shelves adjusted themselves when unobserved. Trinkets muttered to one another in languages that had not been spoken in millennia. A deck of tarot cards shuffled itself compulsively, as though dealing would make its prophecy easier to bear. A two‑tailed kneazle—Moriarty—stretched and yawned beneath a crooked cabinet of minor cursed objects, watching the world through a single half‑lidded eye.

Harry liked the quiet before opening.

It reminded him of graveyards.

There was something sacred about stillness—a reverence in the space between waking and rush‑hour.

He moved through the aisles with the same practised hands that once lit funeral pyres. He adjusted a bottle of spiced memory oil, nudged a jar labelled “Vow‑breaker’s Honey” half an inch left, and paused by a brass compass that refused to point north, spinning endlessly with anxiety it had long since absorbed from its previous owner.

At the door he flipped the OPEN sign by hand.

The bell rang. A pair of tourists shuffled in—young, overdressed, armed with selfie sticks and bad attitudes.

“Is this place real?” one asked, phone already raised.

Harry did not bother to answer. He simply watched.

They poked around, giggled, photographed the scrying mirror. One picked up a shrunken head, which sneezed and then sighed in resignation.

They left without buying anything.

The bell above the door rang again. Harry did not look up.

“Cash only. No refunds for cursed items. That includes emotional damage,” he said without inflection.

A man in his thirties approached the shelf marked ‘Authentic Divination Tools’. Camera slung round his neck; bum‑bag strapped like armour—the type who left three‑star reviews complaining the tea was ‘not mystical enough’.

“Excuse me,” he said, lifting a pendulum delicately, as though it might bite. “Does this actually, er, divine things?”

Harry finally looked up. “Only if you squint and really believe in the power of poor life choices.”

The man chuckled, uncertain. “Right… yeah. My Airbnb host said this place was quirky.”

“She’s not wrong. I charge extra for existential discomfort, though.”

Eventually he bought a dream‑stone that hummed gently in sleep and would, if left unattended, whisper regrets from past lives into his pillow. Harry charged him US$40 and, with a vague sense of unease, the man left. He would forget the conversation by nightfall, but the dreams would linger for weeks.

Another customer arrived shortly after—a woman in business attire with a nervous expression and a question about fertility charms. Harry reached beneath the counter and produced a small, stoppered jar. “One spoon of dragon‑root, three lotus petals, and essence from a dragon egg that went extinct several centuries ago. Steep for seven nights.”

She blinked. “Does it… actually work?”

“Depends on you more than me,” Harry said.

He smiled gently. “Only US$73.99.”

She could not tell if he was joking. That was the sweet spot.

She paid and left with the bottle. He had not charged enough, considering the ingredients; desperation had already taken too much.

Harry leaned against the counter and stared into the middle distance.

He did not move when the door opened again. No chime this time.

The man who entered wore jeans and a weathered leather jacket patched over old bullet‑holes. He had a crooked smile, a buzz‑cut just beginning to grow out, and an aura that made chaos feel like a side hobby. The shop did not react to him, which was a problem.

He made a slow circuit past the shelf labelled ‘Cursed & Curious’ and plucked up a stone marked “Regret, condensed. Do not lick.”

“Regret in a pebble? That’s my autobiography in three words.” He weighed it in his palm, eyebrow twitching with delight.

“Careful,” Harry said, not looking up from the ledger. “That one screams if you’re mean to it.”

The man lifted the stone to his ear. “Screaming rock, meet screaming consciousness. You’ll get on brilliantly.”

Harry set the pen down. “Buy it if you’re keeping it. Cash only.”

“Ah, capitalism—the real curse. Got change for a fourth‑wall break?” He grinned at Harry’s flat stare. “Didn’t think so.”

He wandered deeper, finger‑tapping labels. “Cursed mirror, haunted compass, jar of existential dread—love the branding. Etsy could never.”

“Etsy objects generally don’t bite,” Harry said.

“Yet.” He pointed at a brass compass spinning frantically. “This one’s basically me choosing a takeaway.”

“Anxious and directionless?”

“Exactly! People say representation doesn’t matter.” He put the compass down, picked up the stone again, and leaned across the counter. “So, Gandalf‑but‑grungy, how much for the screaming memoir?”

“US$15 and a promise you won’t feed it tequila.”

“Sold—ish. Left my wallet in an entirely different cinematic universe.” He flashed a sheepish smile. “Rain cheque?”

“No.”

“Cold. Alright, put it on layaway—under ‘Devilishly Handsome Mystery Man’. I’ll swing back.” He tucked the pebble into a jacket pocket anyway.

Harry’s brows dipped. “You’re stealing.”

“Borrowing with intention. Totally different. See ya, Shop‑Dad.” He pivoted, nearly knocking over a shelf but catching it with surprising grace.

“Bring the stone back when it starts sobbing,” Harry called.

“Only if it cries louder than me!” he answered, waltzing to the exit.

He paused at the door, glanced over his shoulder, and gave a two‑finger salute. “Nice ambience, by the way—like a haunted bookshop had a baby with a funeral parlour.”

“Authentic mildew costs extra,” Harry deadpanned.

“Worth every spore.” With that, he strode out.

The door swung wide—through every ward Harry had laid—and clicked shut behind him. The wards shivered, unsettled.

Harry stared after him for a long time.

Then the fifth‑tone chime rang.

It was different from the tourist‑friendly bell: heavier, like a note struck on iron. A resonance born of presence, not metal.

She was eight—perhaps nine—hair pinned back with a black ribbon older than the city itself. Her coat was too large, a single silver thread dangling from the hem and vanishing before it touched the floor. A paper crane rested in her palm; tiny shears sat in her pocket, handles worn smooth. A pocket‑watch hung from her wrist by a frayed cord. It did not tick, yet the air pulsed in time with it.

Harry did not ask how she had entered. He already knew better.

The air shifted. The shop inhaled.

She paused by the shelf of divining shells. They did not move. Did not dare. A hush, sharp as shears closing, rolled through the store, and every candle guttered in warning.

Harry stood. Slowly.

“I said that I was done,” he said.

She gave no answer. She walked past relics that would have snarled at anyone else and stopped at the regret mirror, but did not look in.

Her voice was clear, steady. “Two millennia, Harold. Two—without me, without my sisters.”

Harry’s laugh was low, mirthless. “Wasn’t that the arrangement? I earned my rest.”

She did not blink. The pocket‑watch twitched once, though it never ticked. “Mercy, not rest. The hunt resumes.”

He folded his arms. “I told you. I told her. I’m finished.”

She turned at last, small and pale, eyes older than anything he had buried.

“Remember your promises,” she said, voice like shears closing, “and remember what happens when you break them.”

The shop seemed to fall away.

And Harry—Harry remembered.

A battlefield of flame. A boy screaming into a storm. A girl with red hair turning away. The snap of a wand against his palm. A graveyard. Another graveyard. A thousand graveyards.

“You have forgotten why you are still here,” she said, voice carving through the memory like a knife. “You keep trying to vanish into small things, into dust and silence. But silence is not peace.”

Harry said nothing. His throat tightened.

“You think time means you have healed. All you have done is rot more slowly.”

A beat—softer, almost tender: “Stop pretending to be a ghost.”

Then the blade: “You owe it to them. All of them.”

She stepped back. The pocket‑watch slipped from her sleeve and hit the floor—silent, even then.

When Harry looked up, she was gone. The shop let out a breath, the way a body does when the knife withdraws.

He spotted the watch, knelt, and lifted it. There were no hour or minute hands—only a single second hand, which began to tick the moment his fingers touched the cracked glass.

A dull crash sounded from outside. The watch’s beat grew louder, matching the pulse in his temple.

Harry rose. Anyone listening might have caught a few choice words, all aimed at someone called Atropos.

He flicked his hand. A towel drifted from behind the counter and settled in his palm.

If he was to be dragged back into the game, he could at least enjoy it.

Harry stepped outside.

A street vendor’s cart lay on its side, pretzels rolling across the wet pavement. In the centre of the junction a man—more bulk than sense—snorted like an over‑worked ox. Shoulders knotted, neck half‑swallowed by muscle, veins pulsing faint blue: black‑market serum, bargain‑bin quality.

He seized a passer‑by and hurled him through the glass roof of a bus shelter. Metal shrieked; shards chimed across tarmac. The bystander hit, slid, bled.

Harry’s gaze flicked to the wounded man. A muted shimmer wrapped the gash; blood slowed to a lazy ooze—life bought, not healed. Beneath his wrist, the pocket‑watch’s second hand eased.

Phones rose like periscopes. Sirens murmured somewhere beyond the buildings.

Harry wound the shop towel round his knuckles and walked forward.

The brute ripped a street sign free and swung at a screaming woman. Steel halted a whisper from her skull, checked by white cotton drawn tight as rope. She bolted without thanks; gratitude rarely outruns terror.

The brute traced cloth to owner, confusion bubbling through chemical fog.

Harry tipped his head. “If snarling actually frightened people, the greasy dungeon bat who taught my Potions class would have conquered Hogwarts.”

A growl, then a violent yank. Harry opened his fingers; momentum sent the brute staggering.

Recovered, the man roared. Harry twirled the towel. “Right, Mr. Overbuilt—show me something I can stick on the fridge.”

The charge was inevitable. Harry slid aside, towel cracking across a cheek—thin cut, thin lesson.

“Easy, Muscle Mountain. This isn’t the Pain Olympics—medals are self‑inflicted.”

Another piston‑punch. Harry leaned back; the blow tasted nothing but air. A quick flick kissed the brute’s nose, making eyes water.

“Swing wider, think smaller—that seems to be today’s theme.”

Snarling, the brute lunged to grapple. Harry flowed with him, cloth snapping at an ear, etching a shallow line—more insult than injury.

Staggering, the brute grabbed a green letter box and hurled it. Harry ducked; the box folded a parked saloon with a hollow boom.

“Invoice your chemist—side‑effects apparently include delusions of adequacy,” Harry suggested.

Again, the bull‑rush. This time Harry stepped in, looped towel round an elbow, and pivoted. Momentum flung the brute face‑first onto the asphalt.

Harry waited. “Slower?”

Breaths rasped; sweat beaded and ran in blue‑streaked rivulets. Harry spun the towel lazily. “Take your time—I charge by the century.”

The brute answered with a ragged bellow and swung again. Harry slipped inside the arc, rapped knuckles with the cloth, and let the blow sail past.

The sliced sign clanged, skidding into a hydrant. Iron sheared; a geyser punched skyward, drenching everything within three metres. Water blurred phone screens and set pretzels adrift.

Water hissed like steam from a cracked valve—pressure rising.

“Lovely fireworks—shame about the aim,” Harry observed.

The brute seized the hydrant’s twisted neck and hurled the cast‑iron stump like a spear. Harry flicked the towel around the hissing pipe, turning the water sideways; the projectile veered off, burying itself in a kebab stand. Smoke—then steam—then lamb‑fat haze.

Rage or indecision crossed the man’s face—he lunged again, boots skidding on the slick surface. He lost balance, crashing onto both knees. Harry’s cloth kissed the back of a hand—small cut, larger humiliation.

Snarling, the brute ripped the driver’s door from a mail van and brandished it as a shield. Harry’s eyebrows rose. “Inventive, I’ll give you. Unfortunately, creativity forgot to invite accuracy to the party.”

The metal slab slammed down. Harry swayed aside, towel snapping against the hinge. Steel shrieked; the door spun away, useless.

Sirens closed in. Bystanders huddled behind fresh barriers—chaos herded without knowing.

Water streamed off him. He heaved a mooring bollard overhead. He traced a sigil behind his back. The towel thrummed—quiet power. When steel descended, cloth cushioned weight that should have shattered bone. He half‑turned. The bollard sank ankle‑deep into tarmac.

The brute strained to yank it free. Harry double‑looped the towel, jerked, twisted. The joint popped. A scream—finally human.

“Let’s finish—last time City Works sent me a fruit basket with the bill,” Harry said.

He planted a foot, levered, and hip‑threw the brute, momentum ensuring a painful skid across the soaked asphalt.

The man rolled, coughed water, and staggered upright, eyes swimming.

“Good‑night, Captain Overcompensation. May your dreams be steroid‑free,” Harry murmured. Harry felt the moment click into place, gears meshing—inevitable.

One last desperate lunge. Harry held his ground until the final heartbeat, then snapped the towel up beneath the man’s chin. Teeth clacked; knees sagged. A final flick against the temple folded him unconscious onto the wet pavement.

Quiet returned. The pocket‑watch fell silent.

Harry inspected the towel—spotless—then turned.

He knelt by the injured commuter. “Stay still. You’ll live. Try not to waste it.”

No answer expected. Phone footage would show only blur and after‑image; it always did.

Towel slung over his shoulder, Harry walked back to the shop. Other annoyances awaited.

Harry eased the door shut behind him. The hinges sighed, and the wards locked over the frame with the muted click of tumblers finding their seats.

The Howling Stag felt different now: alert, shoulders squared, the way a house braces when its master comes home bleeding. Harry ran a thumb along the silvered rim of the pocket‑watch. The lone second hand that had raced moments earlier lay still beneath cracked glass.

“It never ends with you lot,” he muttered.

At the rear of the shop, the kettle set itself on the hob. Water began to murmur. Steam wrote soft question‑marks on the window‑panes. He crossed the boards—each one offering its familiar groan—and folded himself into the arm‑chair facing the cold hearth. The surrounding shadows edged closer, like curious children keeping to the skirting boards.

Above the mantel, the mirror shivered. For the briefest blink it showed a strip of grass under a pewter sky—the grave by the lake. Harry watched until silver returned and only his reflection stared back.

The first sip of tea tasted of over‑stewed memories: bitter, dark, necessary. He set the cup aside, letting warmth seep into scarred fingers.

From somewhere inside the walls came the ripple of an old cabinet unlocking. He did not rise. He knew the sound, knew the relic: a key no longer than his thumb glowing behind oak panels, patient as snowfall.

Ink and parchment waited on a side‑table. He tried again—names, warnings, anything—but the letters slid, rearranging themselves into the dead he carried: Cedric Diggory. Sirius Black. Remus Lupin. Dobby. Each name another pebble on a pyre. Before the quill could find Fred or Tonks, he laid it down.

03:17 a.m.

Right on cue the cabinet door eased open. The key’s light spilled in a thin column, dust dancing in its beam.

“Not tonight,” he said, voice soft yet iron.

Instead, he brewed a second cup, counting the turns of the spoon. Outside, a rubbish lorry snarled down the alley, chains clattering like distant armour. Dawn still an hour away, and the city already shrugging into motion.

Across the room, the security monitor looped silent footage of the fight: a smear where his face should be, limbs too quick for the lens. Anyone determined could sharpen frames, dig for clarity—and find enough.

He rubbed a thumb across the bridge of his nose. Hiding had done its job. Perhaps it had turned into indulgence.

The fresh tea steamed beside the silent watch. He watched the vapour rise until it vanished in the gloom.

Outside, unseen, the Fates waited with their threads and their ticking.

Harry lifted the watch. “Start when you must,” he told it. “I’ll be here.”

For the first time in decades, he considered meeting them halfway.

He closed the cabinet with a thought, left the key glowing in darkness, and began readying the shop for morning.

Nick Fury let the clip roll again, this time at quarter‑speed. The quiet whirr of the projector filled the briefing room; a single overhead strip‑light cast the sort of muted glow that reminded him of a hangar deck at midnight—enough illumination to read by, not enough to banish shadows. Two junior analysts, half‑hidden behind their monitors, were debating compression artefacts until the crisp cadence of Maria Hill’s boots silenced them.

Hill stopped beside him, arms loosely folded. On the wall, the frozen frame presented a lean man beneath a New York streetlamp. A tea‑towel hung from one hand as casually as a waiter’s cloth, and the blurred face carried an expression balanced somewhere between mild disappointment and weary pity.

“You’ve watched this twenty times already,” she observed.

“Thirty‑three,” Fury corrected, tapping the control. The footage crawled forward: the brute’s wild haymaker; the effortless sidestep; the impossible snap of fabric; the brutal, surgical collapse that followed. Fury froze the image again, cloth caught mid‑arc like a ribbon of white fire.

“Explain the physics,” Hill said.

“He doesn’t bother with them,” Fury answered after a moment. “Physics, witnesses, paperwork—the usual inconveniences.”

He enlarged the frame, studying the stranger’s pose—weight perfectly centred, wrists relaxed, the kind of balance instructors spent years drilling into recruits.

“This isn’t his first dance,” Hill murmured.

“Feels like his thousandth.” Fury’s good eye narrowed. “Yet he appears in official records only from 2003 onward—the year he purchased that dusty storefront from one Hadrian Peverell. After the deed transfer, Peverell disappears: no forwarding address, no tax trail, nothing. Everything else?” He exhaled. “Vapour.”

“Could be residual serum,” Hill suggested. “A cleaner variant—burns bright, exits quietly.”

“Serum leaves fingerprints,” Fury countered. “Behavioural tremors, dubious suppliers, medical fallout. We’ve found none of that.”

Hill scrubbed back to the towel strike. “That was precision. He had power to take the brute’s head clean off and chose a slap instead. Tactical mercy.”

“Which should scare us more than brute force,” Fury agreed.

The analysts exchanged uneasy looks and buried themselves in data. Hill lowered her voice. “Do we class him meta‑human?”

“If so, he’s invisible to every scanner we own.” Fury tapped the console. “No mutant allele, no alien tech residue, certainly no Stark‑grade toys.”

Hill allowed herself a thin smile. “An angry yoga instructor, then?”

A corner of Fury’s mouth lifted. “If so, I’d like to know where he trained.”

She shifted to logistics. “Recommend remote surveillance—satellite passes, municipal cameras, financial forensics. No field teams until we understand what we’re dealing with.”

“Already ran a preliminary sweep of the premises,” Fury said. “Radiation baseline normal; reality parameters solid. Yet every operative came back unsettled. Their exact words: The shop felt like it was watching us.”

“Buildings aren’t supposed to watch,” Hill replied.

“Apparently this one didn’t get the memo.”

She studied him for a beat. “You’re uneasy.”

“Ghosts leave records,” Fury said quietly. “He doesn’t. And he just folded a steroid nightmare with a tea‑towel.”

Hill released a long breath, nodding. “All right. We keep our footprint light.”

“Start with what we do have: Harold Evans—full financials, next‑of‑kin, the works. And find this Hadrian Peverell, the seller in 2003—bank accounts, border crossings, obituaries. Baptism registers, property deeds, school photos. If a priest ever wrote his grandmother’s maiden name on a form, dig it up.”

“Understood.” Hill tapped her tablet and turned for the door.

At the threshold she paused. “Sir—if he notices us before we finish the background check?”

Fury allowed himself a dry smile. “Then we remind him S.H.I.E.L.D. can be exquisitely polite when circumstances demand.”

Hill arched an eyebrow. “That’ll be a first.”

“Let’s aim for a good impression,” Fury said, and pressed play one last time as the door closed behind her.

The watch ticks. The broom splinters. The city breathes, unaware.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

The hearth simmered rather than roared, its breath the gentle glow of coals that had learned patience. Harry lounged in a cracked leather armchair, robe belted at the waist, the wool smelling faintly of last winter’s rain. Officially, the deed recorded Harold Evans purchasing the premises from one Hadrian Peverell in 2003—a tidy sale between two aliases of the same man—and the furniture already felt older than the mask he wore today.

On the mantel, a dented Auror badge—scuffed bronze, its Ministry seal half‑erased—caught the hearth‑light. He’d worn that title during Victoria’s final decade, trading heroics for paperwork until another lifetime dragged him west. Names eroded faster than brass; duty lingered like tarnish. Harry let the thought tarnish and cool, then drowned it in another sip of lavender‑bitter tea.

A porcelain cup drifted in slow circles above his palm; when he finally guided it to his lips, the steam tasted of lavender and the darker leaf he stored in that stubborn weirwood box.

New York’s pre‑dawn wheezed against the glass. Fog blurred the street‑lamps, smothering colour, and the city replied with that soft mechanical rumble that only stops when you live long enough to notice it never does.

A floorboard sighed beyond the storeroom arch. No intruder—merely the Stag rearranging its memories again. Harry let it shuffle.

A nameless grimoire floated down the aisle, pages the shade of bone‑dust. It opened at a sentence written before scripture had an alphabet. He glanced, refused to indulge it, and the book drifted on like a disappointed cat.

In the corner the kneazle tracked the front window, twin tails beating in lazy semaphore. Harry followed its stare. The man with the newspaper occupied the same slice of alley as yesterday—trench coat, immaculate parting, page nineteen held at the wrong angle for reading. Rookie surveillance, then. SHIELD liked to pretend otherwise.

Harry sipped. “If they wished to be subtle, they’d have borrowed someone who can act.”

The shelves answered with a polite realignment, jars sliding half a centimetre until the ward‑stone was satisfied. From an upper ledge a brittle scrap of parchment drifted down, charred around the edges and scented of citrus oil. Mid‑air it folded into itself, burnt through, spat out five embers that reformed into letters:

WATCHING.

Harry snorted, dusting ash from his sleeve. “Helpful. Next time include directions—melodrama folds poorly.”

Ash fluttered over the countertop and vanished between the grains. Harry tilted the cup for the final mouthful and set the porcelain on the hearthstone.

He crossed the floor, brushing past relics that whispered the old names of storms. A music box shivered open, a silver coin spun once, and an orb winked with the quick intelligence of bottled lightning; he spared none of them a glance.

At the register he pressed his palm to the ward‑stone. The runes warmed beneath the skin, loosening their grip so the building could exhale. Outside, the watcher frowned, sensing nothing he could explain.

In the display case a pocket‑watch hovered above faded velvet. No numerals, no hands—just a disc of silver that revolved on its own axis and filled the room with an irregular click. It had begun the day fresh eyes settled on the shop and had not paused since. The sound refused to be background; it nested behind his sternum like a second pulse.

“You’re impatient,” Harry told it.

The tick quickened, defiant.

He returned to the armchair. The kneazle sprang up beside him, coil‑tight, yellow eyes bright with accusation.

“Feel free to contribute,” he murmured.

It sneezed, flicked both tails, and pretended to sleep.

A book landed on the arm of the chair and revealed a single line, ink so new it bled:

Something approaches.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Prophets withhold detail for fear of accuracy.”

The volume snapped shut.

He lifted his gaze to the beams, to the writhing tapestry of wards woven through oak and brick. “Let them watch. Every answer they find will strangle three better questions.”

The kettle began to hum in the back room, synchronising to the steady heartbeat of the Howling Stag. Harry closed his eyes and listened, counting down the moments before curiosity forced the city to knock.

It never did. Beyond the ward‑glass he felt the watcher’s heartbeat—rabbit‑quick, nervous percussion echoing through runic filaments. Once upon younger centuries, his own pulse had drummed that fast; now he borrowed the rhythm only long enough to remember why mortals sweat.

At 09:01 he poured the kettle over fresh leaves; at 09:02 he shrugged into a charcoal coat whose lining still smelt of sea‑salt crossings. The kneazle trilled. "Hold the fort," he murmured, fastening the buttons. "And try not to eat the customers." and at precisely 09:03 Harold Evans unlocked the front door of the Howling Stag and stepped into the pewter morning. Fog receded as though making room. He set off eastward without a backward glance, leaving the silver watch inside to fall silent and the wards to seal themselves with a sigh.

The watcher pinched the plastic earpiece again, a nervous tic dressed up as calibration. Corporate khakis, takeaway coffee, blazer too weary to crease properly—S.H.I.E.L.D.’s idea of disappearing at nine on a Tuesday. The coffee scorched his tongue; the pavement siphoned warmth from his shoes; static wrestled classic rock in the surveillance van two blocks south.

At 09:03, Harold Evans locked the shop, turned east, and stepped into the city’s pulse as if every crack in the pavement belonged to his private cartography. Same charcoal coat. Same measured gait. Neither glance nor hesitation—only a man ticking through invisible coordinates.

The tail drifted behind pedestrian cover, textbook distance: close enough to read labels, far enough to claim coincidence. The dossier said oddity‑shop proprietor. Harmless, boring.

Evans slid onto 82nd and through gilt‑lettered glass—Langley’s Antiquarian · Books & Curios. One door in front, brick wall in back. The watcher logged 09:07, leaned against the bus shelter, and watched the store’s grainy security feed on his phone: shelves, dust, stillness.

One minute.

Two.

Static devoured the image. Five whole minutes overwritten by grey snow.

“Control, I’ve got interference,” he hissed.

Control: “Negative. Subject sighted leaving a toyshop—Seventy‑sixth and Lexington—bag, lemon drops, copy of Alice in Wonderland.”

“Impossible. He hasn’t left Langley’s.”

He raised his eyes—and met Evans’ reflection in the glass. The man stood just inside the threshold, head cocked as if tuning an instrument no one else could hear. A fractional smile—equal parts apology and warning—crossed the reflection. Then only the street looked back.

His heartbeat stumbled. He retreated a step.

Three blocks south, Harold Evans strolled beneath spring‑bare plane trees, paper bag swinging. He unwrapped a lemon drop, tucked Alice under one arm, and never looked behind him.

Day Two

The replacement tail endured four blocks.

Midtown lunch traffic absorbed Evans; an alley received him. The agent followed at a jog and collided with fog thick enough to swallow LED readouts. Forecasts listed clear skies; humidity sensors read nil. The curtain simply existed.

Thermal failed, heartbeat vanished. Visibility: four feet. He edged forward, fingers hovering near the holster.

Silence.

The fog peeled away as abruptly as it had gathered—leaving only stacked crates and the agent’s looping footprints.

On another street, in another heartbeat, Evans poured tea behind the Howling Stag’s counter, as if the alley had been a thought experiment he’d already solved.

Day Three

A tactical drone—fresh optics, triple redundancy—hovered over that same alley at dawn. In the command trailer, technicians monitored flawless telemetry.

“Thermal down,” one said. “What’s with the air data?”

“We’re thirty metres up.”

The video blinked, returned, and presented Harold Evans standing beneath the rotors. He held a slim stick of indigo incense; smoke climbed, tying Celtic knots that unravelled between frames. In the other hand, a porcelain cup steamed.

He raised the cup. “Tea?” The directional mic caught the word—dry, understated, British.

Rotor pitch faltered. Stabilisers flatlined. The unit fell like a stone; diagnostics later reported no fault detected—merely an absence of will to continue.

Evans caught the dying breeze, let the incense burn to a spark, and tasted ash at the back of his throat—each reminder that the world still bent when he whispered—then sighed. “Polite company would’ve knocked.”

He turned away, leaving the alley empty but for the smoke, which lingered long after logic dissolved.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters — Week One

The first warning arrived disguised as morning routine. Director Nick Fury, half a dozen pages deep into a budget post‑mortem, lifted a mug and tasted syrup.

Black coffee should not taste of cake icing.

He set the cup down without comment. Maria Hill’s eyes flicked up from her tablet. He shook his head once; the conversation on containment protocols droned on.

Every cup that week arrived the same—velvet‑sweet, one lump’s worth, never more. Assistants swore they added nothing. By Friday, the cafeteria had adopted the whispered rule: never hand the Director a drink without witnesses.

Week Two

Fury declared a control test. He crossed two boroughs to Queens, queued anonymously, and carried a plain Americano back to HQ in a sealed thermos. In his office he decanted it into the chipped Hydra‑scarred mug he kept for spite.

One white cube floated at dead center, rotating like a compass needle that refused to point north. Every operation had a tell. In ’95 it was coded radio static; in Baghdad it was vanished informants. This one tasted like sugar, and Fury hated sweets. Slow, deliberate dissolution traced a pale spiral on the surface.

He watched until the swirl vanished, then scrubbed the mug, and started over. Same result. Always one.

Week Three

Precision replaced paranoia. Fresh beans, double‑filtered water, no staff within twenty meters. Fury handled every stage himself beneath the hum of a sterilized lab hood.

The brew was perfect—until he turned his back to pull a personnel file. A cube hovered three centimeters above the surface, casting a neat shadow into the black.

A junior analyst lingered in the doorway. “Director?”

“Door.”

She fled. The cube settled with a faint plip, bled to nothing, left the coffee untouched yet tainted.

Week Four

Coulson entered the experiment.

“Cash purchase,” Fury instructed. “No names, no phones, no routine.”

Coulson returned with a courier lock‑box sealed like nuclear codes. Inside waited a stainless flask and a note folded with military precision:
Try chamomile. Anger’s hard on the heart.

Fury poured. One cube drifted into view as though the surface were a stage trapdoor.

He didn’t roar. He drank. Sweetness coated the back of his throat like resignation. The mug arced across the office a heartbeat later, shattering against reinforced glass. Porcelain dust glittered on the floor. The ring of shattered porcelain hung in the air—thin, high, accusing.

Rumours travelled faster than shards could settle. Comms talked of hexes; Logistics whispered poltergeist. Field teams sent to interview him fared worse: every officer reached the block, remembered an urgent errand, and later filed reports with no memory of the shop at all. Hill stepped through the debris, reading the lavender‑scented note.

“You’re certain it’s our mystery man?”

Cedar and smoke ghosted from the rising steam—identical to the alley, the drone, the impossible fog.

Fury’s reply was nearly a growl. “Trace the mechanism. Then learn his price.”

After‑Action Review 

Backup arrays salvaged one viable frame from the fallen unit.

Harold Evans—unmasked, unhurried—stared straight into the lens. Indigo incense twisted sigils above his free hand; a porcelain cup rested in the other. No sugar cube visible, but Fury swore he could taste it again as he leaned closer.

The still image corrupted at the edges, colors bleeding like wet ink, yet the eyes remained razor‑sharp—knowing.

Hill exhaled. “He’s inside our perimeter without stepping through the door.”

Fury closed the file. “So we widen the perimeter.”

He reached for the replacement mug on his desk—brand‑new, no scratches yet—and lifted the lid.

One white cube waited, patient as gravity.

The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. allowed himself a single, humourless laugh.

Week Five — Sub‑Level Four Briefing Room

The air in the bunker tasted of scorched robusta and recycled freon—an after‑hours cocktail no one dared complain about. Six inches of steel, acoustic foam, and a false maintenance corridor cut the room off from the rest of Triskelion traffic; junior analysts wandered past the smoked glass but never registered the door.

At the center: a single paused frame on the main holo. Harold Evans beneath a surveillance drone, incense smoke looping through impossible shapes—lupine, iris, ouroboros—each blossom dissolving before the algorithm could tag it. The timestamp jittered forward and back by fractions of a second. Three audit bots had flagged the file UNRELIABLE; none could say why.

Nick Fury leaned back at the head of the matte obsidian table, one boot braced on the lower rung. He had not spoken in eight minutes. The silence felt loaded—like a chamber half‑cocked.

Maria Hill stood at the console, eyes flicking between ancient deed scans and live feeds. Phil Coulson rested a hip against the corner, arms folded, thumb nudging an old‑school file tab. Natasha Romanoff occupied the shadowed far chair, ankle crossed over knee, gaze steady on the frozen image.

Hill cleared her throat.

“Property trail is airtight. Cash purchase in 2003 under Harold Evans. Seller of record: Hadrian Peverell. Earlier owners—Hardwin Black, James Slytherin, Neville Longbottom. Same cadence every thirty years back to 1871. All disappear after signing.”

A grainy municipal ledger filled the holo: Longbottom inked beside tax stamps. Hill advanced through photographs—1839 gaslight street, 1860 horse‑cars, 1943 blackout. The shopfront never aged, paint never peeled; the war rubble behind it told a different story.

“City‑hall fire wiped records prior to ’71,” she went on. “Only glass‑plate photos survive, all showing the same façade.”

Coulson blew out a slow breath. “No linked next‑of‑kin, no death certificates, no credit trail outside their own walls. Legal ghosts.”

Natasha’s tone was clinical. “Neighbors?”

“Four interviewed,” Hill said. “None recall seeing Evans outside—despite footage of him sweeping the sidewalk at dawn. When pressed, they insisted the shop closed decades ago.”

On screen the incense plume morphed into a mastiff chasing its tail before collapsing into static.

Hill brought up the alley fog clip, then the bookstore hop. “Consistent pattern: visual occlusion, subject relocates blocks away, no energy signature, no portal residue.”

Coulson replayed the rooftop fight. “Footwork’s textbook. Weight transfer looks Spetsnaz but cleaner. No file on any formal training, no biometric hit on any military database.”

Hill switched to a blood‑panel readout. “Sample from the ceramic mug. Chemistry sits dead‑center normal—every mineral at textbook average. Statistically that precise a baseline is… abnormal.”

Natasha’s eyebrow inched upward. “Homeostasis as camouflage.”

A yellow SSR scan flicked up: CARTER, M. — LOWER MANHATTAN ANOMALY, 1943. STORE LIGHTS UNAFFECTED DURING CITYWIDE BLACKOUT. RECOMMEND OBSERVATION.

Coulson followed with a 2004 precinct report: “Petty thief crosses threshold, goes catatonic, revives forty‑eight hours later claiming he ‘spoke to God.’ No repeat incidents.”

Hill added, “Crime‑heat map shows a two‑block pocket with zero violent incidents for forty years. During the ’77 blackout looters skipped the entire street.”

Silence settled. The timestamp on the drone frame jumped forward half a second—then rewound.

Fury’s voice cut through. “Interview attempts?”

Hill’s jaw tightened. “PD officers forget why they’re there. SHIELD agents develop sudden emergencies—car alarms, phone calls—from devices we later verify were powered off.”

“So entry is compromised,” Fury said. “Observation only.”

Hill nodded. “Three rings of redundancy?”

“Three,” Fury confirmed. “Eyes on him, eyes on the eyes, eyes on the minders.”

Coulson exhaled. “If he so much as sneezes—”

Fury finished it. “I want to know who holds the handkerchief.”

He rose, boot heel striking the deck once. The door slid shut behind him without a hiss, but the pressure drop felt like a storm warning left on the table.

Lower Surveillance Wing – Week Five, 09:04

Agent Grant Ward eased his headset over one ear, the console glow bleaching his knuckles. On the main wall feed, Harold Evans left The Howling Stag precisely on schedule: charcoal coat, second‑hand book under one arm, take‑out tea in the other.

“Asset Evans, street‑level, eastbound,” Ward spoke into the mic. “Passive tail in place—female, Class‑2.”

“Maintain distance,” Control replied. “No contact.”

Ward allowed himself a thin smile. “Any action on the over‑under he wipes the cameras before lunch?”

The tech beside him snorted. “Smart money stays clear.”

He switched to the drone overlay—heat signatures crisp, GPS ticking like metronome beats. 

Harry slid through mid‑morning Manhattan the way rain traces pre‑cut channels in glass. He drew exactly the attention he wished—none. The crowd shouldered past: food carts spitting steam, taxis negotiating insults, tourists pointing upward at reasons to forget the pavement.

The tea tasted ordinary, but the warmth sat in his palm like a promise. His thumb worried the cracked spine of the novel—Treasure Island, this loop—and he wondered, not for the first time, whether Jim Hawkins ever learned that growing up cost more than gold.

A tail latched on three car lengths back. Sensible shoes, cheap sunglasses, stride half a beat behind the commuter tempo. Adequate. Not inspired.

Harry neither slowed nor glanced. Unimportant remained the better cloak.

Two blocks later a gust bullied its way between buildings, tugging umbrellas and temper alike. Half a block ahead life positioned its next lesson: a girl—no more than five—slipped her mother’s grasp, chasing a bright yellow umbrella cartwheeling like a runaway sun. A helium balloon bobbed just out of reach.

The tail noticed a second too late. Traffic lights held green. An SUV rolled heavy, driver arguing with the dashboard.

09:18:02 — Harry lifted the cup, exhaled.

09:18:03 — little shoes tapped asphalt.

09:18:04 — steel and rubber converged.

09:18:05 — the world hiccuped.

Harry knelt at the curb, one arm wrapped around the child’s ribs, balloon string caught between his fingers. A soft pop inside his forearm—Elder‑wand firefly under skin—then silence. The SUV’s horn arrived late, indignant.

He set the girl upright. Her pupils widened, then latched on to the paper‑wrapped lollipop he pressed into her tiny fist.

“Roads bite,” he murmured, voice pitched for her alone. “Keep hold of Mum and they rarely get the taste.” A faint smile; it cost him a breath.

The mother crashed in, apologies and gratitude tangled. Harry stepped clear before thanks could become interrogation, folding into a knot of umbrellas. One blink and he slipped sideways out of notice.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Surveillance Van — Three Blocks Back

All twenty feeds spasmed—half a second of snow—then returned. Ward scrubbed the buffer.

Frame 247: Evans sipping tea at the curb. Frame 248: child entering traffic. Frame 249: Evans kneeling, child safe.

No intermediate blur, no displacement trail.

“Run thermal,” Ward ordered.

“Flat,” the tech said. “Zero delta.”

Ward’s jaw tightened. “Kinetic echo?”

“None. Sensors think he took a leisurely step.”

Hill’s voice cut in, colder than the server rack. “Residual?”

“Nothing,” Ward answered. “Frame to frame—he’s in two places, no transit.”

Static hung for two heartbeats.

Hill: “Packet everything. Director level. Red‑line.”

A junior analyst leaned closer, whispering. “What do we even name that?”

Ward’s eyes stayed on the frozen image where Evans half‑smiled at the girl. “Reality skip,” he said. “Third one this week.”

The tea had gone cold. Harry didn’t mind; temperature was a convenience, not a necessity.

He traced a spiral on the countertop—three rings, one break—and the shop exhaled. The wards cared little for casual browsers; only those who entered intent on interrogation found their purpose dissolving at the threshold.

The mundane bell chimed—tinny, tourist‑bait cheap. Wards quivered but allowed the visitor through, curious whether he came to look or to pry.

The man wore tourist as costume: pressed shirt, sunglasses indoors, DSLR with the battery cavity empty. Polished shoes, scuff‑marks wrong for sidewalks. An iris lapel pin—subtle agency nod, like a calling card slipped into the uniform regulations.

Harry let the corner of his mouth tilt—​not quite a smile. “Trinkets to the right, regrets to the left. What you pretend you’re after is dead center.”

The agent blinked, nothing more. Surface thoughts pegged him as a casual tourist; the deeper motive stayed leashed, and so the wards let him keep it. “TripAdvisor said four‑and‑a‑half stars. Something about excessive jasmine?”

“Only Tuesdays,” Harry said. “Depends on the ghost’s mood.”

He lifted the cup—​lukewarm now—​and watched the man circle too carefully. Incense beside the till sparked alive, tendril of smoke sniffing the intruder before drifting off, unimpressed.

The agent paused at a glass case labelled Disappointments. A cracked wand, a melted watch, a sealed envelope still weeping ink. He picked up a silver key from a tray tagged Unmarked Graves.

“That doesn’t unlock anything useful,” Harry said. “Shows you things best left unfound.”

The key shivered. The man set it down.

“Something more ordinary, then.”

“Wise.”

The agent drifted toward novelty charms—​fake love potions, perpetual‑snow globes, divination dice forever landing on seven.

Harry sipped. “Not that one. It dislikes liars.”

The man froze, hand inches from a black glass bauble.

“You blink too much,” Harry added, voice mild. “Field tells on you.”

The agent eased a coin‑sized device from his jacket and slid it beneath the counter lip. It sparked, hissed—​and collapsed into a chipped saltshaker.

“Handy for seasoning,” Harry observed. “Less so for surveillance.”

The kneazle above the door growled. Harry waved it off. “Could’ve sold him the singing compass—screams on the hour.”

“Just browsing,” the agent said, throat tight.

“Of course.”

Harry stood. Shelves sighed, lighting adjusted—​the shop breathing with him. One pane fogged for half a heartbeat, then cleared like nothing had pressed against it.

He lifted a small parcel wrapped in indigo cloth, brass thread knotted thrice. “Clarity,” he said, offering it. “On the house.”

Memory would stay intact so long as he framed the visit as surveillance. Should he later attempt a formal interview, the recollection would ooze away like ink in rain. The parcel—​an enchanted iris folded in glass—​would anchor today’s recall long enough to reach Fury. After that, the bloom would close.

The agent hesitated, then accepted.

At the threshold Harry’s voice followed: “Tell your friend with the eyepatch—​iris is still my favorite.”

Spine stiff, the man stepped outside. The bell chimed; wards settled. His purpose remained clear—surveillance, not interrogation—so the memory held fast, the indigo parcel thrumming like a reminder note tucked into a sleeve.

Two blocks away he keyed the mic. “Package received. Surveillance complete.” Pause. Memory frayed, fought, held. “Worse than we thought.”

He glanced back—​couldn’t recall why—​then pressed on as the bookmark cooled.

Inside, Harry poured fresh tea—​hot. The kneazle leapt to the counter, tail thumping once.

Harry scratched behind its ear. “Yes, I know. Petty.”

The pocket‑watch on the high shelf ticked, ticked—​and fell silent, as though amused.

Harry let it.

Observation Deck – Week Six, 02:17

Nick Fury sat alone, city glow washing the office in low-voltage bruise tones. A mug cooled between his fingers. One sugar cube drifted like a tiny buoy—half‑melted, wholly uninvited.

He sipped; the sweetness clung, a reminder and a dare. Far below, Manhattan’s sleepless pulse flickered: rotor wash over the East River, a voice ricocheting off glass. Ordinary noise that refused to settle tonight.

The door whisper‑sealed. Hill entered, tablet held parade‑rest. Shadows haloed the screen around her eyes.

“Report.”

“Surveillance integrity dropped twelve percent.” She didn’t bother with preamble. “Two feeds reversed themselves for three hours before the archive caught the loop. Three agents logged spatial drift—sidewalk longer inside than out. One described the storefront as… blinking.”

Fury’s chin lifted a fraction. “Blinking?”

“Verbatim.”

She tapped the tablet. “The parcel from our last operative unraveled in containment. Became a snow globe.”

The playback rolled: miniature Fury, eyepatch and exaggerated fade, forever turning inside swirling glitter that never settled. Condensation pearled under vacuum clamps.

“Cute,” Fury muttered.

“No mechanical parts, no transmission. Gravitics are normal; EM field’s off by half a tick.”

He drummed the mug once. “Staff fallout?”

“One senior tech resigned. Said he replayed the alley footage ten times, then forgot why it mattered. Left the words I blinked on his locker.”

Another slide: a tail agent standing motionless outside the Stag, CCTV timestamp rolling while the man froze mid‑sip of coffee.

“He lost twenty minutes,” Hill said. “Cameras prove he never moved.”

Silence settled—stiff, metallic. The cube at the bottom of the mug fractured with a soft crack.

“Perimeter anchor?” Fury asked.

“Triangulation drifts up to four meters depending on the hour. Building coordinates flex; GPS says the curb’s elastic.”

“Quantum?”

“Baseline normal. Reality’s the variable.”

Fury stood, steady as a bulkhead. “Begin long‑range observation. No direct approach, no infiltration. We keep distance and time.”

Hill frowned. “If the distortion’s widening—”

“Then we widen faster. Satellites, thermal, gravimetric arrays. Three redundancies each. Rotation teams—six‑hour max. No one stares too long.”

He paused at the window; neon heartbeat strobed across the glass. “Find out what tea he drinks. Leaves, packaging, drain traps—anything. We’re missing a thread.”

Hill nodded.

“One more thing,” Fury said, voice low. “I need a watcher on that street. No screens, no comms. In presence. They watch, they breathe, nothing else.”

“In presence,” Hill echoed. “And when the street blinks again?”

Fury’s gaze stayed on the dark pane where the city skipped—one tremor, then another.

“We’ll be the ones who don’t.”

The watch ticks. The tea steams. The world adjusts — and does not understand why.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3 

Dawn crept down Bleecker Street on reluctant feet. The city outside still muttered in its sleep—delivery vans growling, steam grates sighing—but inside The Howling Stag the world held its breath. Shelves rose like narrow cliffs, crowded with curios too stubborn to gather dust. Their glass eyes tracked every shift in the light.

Harry Potter—though the false deeds on file said Harold  Evans—stood behind the counter, teacup cooling between his fingers. He watched the second hand on the wall‑mounted ward‑stone click forward… then back. One full stutter, the faintest hiss of magic biting its own tail.

He exhaled through his nose. Again.

The ward‑stone was fashioned from cracked obsidian veined with moon‑silver; a trinket powerful enough to foil casual scrying yet delicate enough to register cosmic indigestion. At the back of the shop, a kneazle lifted both tails and hissed, ears flattening toward the pulse of wrongness.

Setting the cup aside, Harry opened the Good Intentions Ledger—a battered journal already fat with centuries of promises, debts, and private shames. In neat, almost calligraphic lines he recorded the anomaly:

“07 April 2008, 05:12:42 AM. Ward‑stone regression: −1 s. Resonance colour: sepia. Ambient hum: thin, high‑treble hum. Possible cause: Death’s compound interest.”

His pen hovered over the final column—Action Taken—but he left it blank for now. No action, not yet. Diagnose before prescribing; that had been Pomfrey’s rule, and Madam Pomfrey had saved more limbs than luck.

The second hand resumed its march. Harry listened, counting the ticks like heartbeat echoes. Each pulse insisted the universe still obeyed linear time. We both know it lies, he thought, a wry curl tugging one corner of his mouth.

A draft slipped under the door, bringing the smell of asphalt and sleepless rain. He imagined Death—hood down, laughter sharp as flint—leaning somewhere beyond the veil, tallying minutes she’d loaned him. Overtime isn’t free, love. Pay up or play again.

He sipped lukewarm tea. Warmth seeped into the fine web of scars across his palm, grounding him. Lavender and strong black leaves steadied his hands. The flavour reminded him to breathe slowly, to be mortal for a while. Immortality accrued a tax: existence blurred until all moments tasted identical. Morning rituals anchored the edges.

Floorboards protested in the back room—nothing solid pressed them, only a memory flexing. The Stag remembered too much, and he let it; some ghosts deserved the exercise.

Another tick‑back stutter. This time the ward‑stone’s veins flared dull copper, like sunset caught in old blood. A book drifted off the third shelf—leather warped by centuries—fluttering to an open page he couldn’t quite see. Words whispered at the edge of hearing.

Harry flexed his wand‑hand; bone under skin glimmered where the Elder Wand slept. The glow pulsed once, soft as candle‑light, then settled. He kept his hand still, denying the easy answer of magic. Power solved problems but it also wrote receipts. Instead, he closed the ledger, placed it beneath the counter, and spoke aloud—voice low, sardonic, reassuring the shop more than himself.

“Easy, old girl. World turns in circles; sometimes it trips.”

The kneazle released a questioning chirr. Harry offered a half‑smile. “If the sky falls, I’ll fetch a bigger broom.”

He moved to the front window, broom in hand—a mundane stick with mismatched bristles, stubbornly non‑magical. Outside, dawn finally committed: pale gold threading through the alley, glinting off rain‑slick concrete. Steam curled around his boots as he swept the threshold clear. Motion calmed him; it also convinced passing eyes that the shopkeeper was ordinary.

A bus rumbled past, kicking up a swallow of litter. In its windows he caught his reflection: unkempt hair, eyes too old for any census. Behind the glass his ward‑stone flickered again. Minus one second, plus a worry.

Harry tapped the pocket watch resting against his ribs—a relic older than the Declaration—and whispered, Behave. The watch did not obey. Timepieces rarely did in his company.

He slid the bolt on the front door, sign turned to Open, and waited. Customers would come soon enough—tourists seeking fortune‑telling trinkets, locals chasing curiosities they didn’t believe in. People chasing myths to distract from nightmares.

The real nightmares were stirring already. He felt them shifting under the floorboards of reality, tasting the edges of his wards.

Harry adjusted the broom, rolled his shoulders, and permitted himself a thin, anticipatory grin. Round one, then.

The shop’s hush held for three heartbeats—and a wary half‑one more—before the brass bell trilled like an over‑eager stage cue.

Rain‑damp air rolled across the threshold, smelling of wet concrete, gun‑oil, and something vaguely confectionary. Wade Wilson followed the draft, his red leather suit zipped halfway and a grey hoodie fighting a losing battle with the colour scheme. Mask off—for once—scarred grin on full display.

“Morning, Mister Evans!” he chirped, thunking a plastic VHS onto the counter. The sleeve featured a cartoon skull and crossbones under the title FOURTH‑WALL WARRANTY. A faint squeak came from inside, as if the tape objected to existence.

Harry placed the broom against the window. Last time he brought a cursed View‑Master that sang toothpaste jingles in Latin.

“You swore you weren’t coming back until Thursday,” he said.

“Schedules are for side‑characters,” Wade announced. “I’m a recurring nightmare with brand recognition.”

Behind Harry, the ward‑stone flickered amber—then lurched through ochre, chartreuse, and finally a sullen burnt orange. The kneazle’s twin tails puffed like pipe‑cleaners.

Harry’s fingers brushed the Good Intentions Ledger without opening it. Recording Wade‑based chaos felt redundant.

“What do you want for it?” he asked, already tired.

“Simple trade.” Wade tapped the cassette. “One private screening, and reality stops treating you like cosmic roadkill. Viewer ratings guaranteed.”

Harry arched an eyebrow. “I prefer scars. They remind me I’m still paying.”

“Suit yourself, Lord Debt Collector.” Wade leaned in, stage‑whispering, “But the audience is dying for a crossover.”

Orange on the ward‑stone deepened to blood‑rust. Shelves shivered; a paperweight skittered an inch left.

Harry folded his arms. “Quality control says no.”

Wade sighed extravagantly. “Fine. Catch you after the ad break.” He slid the tape into a backpack festooned with unicorn pins and the broken hilt of a katana.

At the doorway he paused, water pattering from his boots onto the hardwood. “Tell Moriarty I still owe him catnip,” he added, two‑finger salute given with genuine fondness.

The bell rang once more; door shut; silence re‑knit itself. The ward‑stone cooled through tawny, finally resting at sepia.

Harry rolled his shoulders. Through the window he spotted the alley CCTV SHIELD had installed last week. Wade’s retreating figure waved at it.

Let them wonder, Harry thought, allowing the camera its footage. He muttered, “Twelve lines. My quota’s safe,” and reached for fresh tea.

Silence settled in layers—rain against glass, distant traffic, a shop holding its breath. Harry lingered at the door long enough to watch Wade’s red silhouette vanish around the corner, then closed the latch and turned the sign to Back in Five.

The ward‑stone on the wall pulsed a calm sepia. He wanted to believe it; sepia meant stable. Experience whispered otherwise.

He picked up the rag and bottle of distilled moonwater he kept for fragile artefacts. A hairline fissure spider‑webbed across the cheval mirror near the tarot shelf. Tourists thought the mirror was decorative; in truth, it served as an early‑warning surface. Reflections lied sooner than glass shattered.

Harry stroked the cloth in slow circles. The crack ran cold beneath his thumb. A pulse of emerald light flickered behind the glass—brief, like lightning viewed with closed eyes. He froze, counting.

One … two …

On the third beat, the mirror bloomed: green‑tinged flames, cobblestones twisting on themselves, a lamppost bent like a corkscrew. The vision arrived mute—image without sound. The scene reminded him of Diagon Alley during the firestorm year, but angles refused to line up. Nightmare’s footprint often warped memory that way.

A hiss cut across the shop. The kneazle crouched low, fur bottle‑brushed, pupils thin as slivers.

Harry reached for the cloak‑shadow ward stitched into his coat sleeve. The spell should have folded the reflection out of phase, but power slithered through his grip—a live wire without insulation. For half a heartbeat the shop floor felt slanted, gravity misfiled.

Then the ward took hold. The image collapsed inward, sucked into a single pinprick of dark that popped like a soap bubble. Glass cleared; only the fissure remained.

The ward‑stone clicked backward one second. Sepia to umber. Umber to ash‑grey. Static crawled up his spine.

He steadied his breathing. Identify, isolate, record. Pomfrey’s triage mantra never left him.

From the counter he fetched the Good Intentions Ledger. Ink flowed smooth despite the air tasting metallic.

“07 April 2008, 05:22:19 AM. Mirror anomaly: Nightmare signature—probable dream‑realm bleed. Ward disruption duration: 0.4 s. Reflection temperature: cold.”

He paused over the Action Taken column, then wrote, “Temporary seal; monitor.”

Ledger closed, he returned to the mirror. The crack looked deeper now, as if stressed glass aged a decade in minutes. He thumbed the edge; a speck of silvered glass lodged under his nail. Pain sharp, grounding.

A soft glow traced his wand‑hand bones. He flexed fingers until the light dimmed. Easy. Solve gently or pay triple, he reminded himself.

His pocket watch ticked against his ribs—in time with the ward‑stone, out of time with the city. He removed it, flipped the lid. The second hand jerked forward, then backward, mirroring the ward‑stone.

“Behave,” he whispered again, but the word lacked heat.

A book slid off a shelf, thudding spine‑first. No title, parchment loose at the hinges. It fell open to a line he couldn’t fully read; letters crawled like ants rearranging themselves into fresh omens. He left the book where it lay. Too many variables already.

Steam from the kettle drifted through the doorway behind the counter, curling into question marks before fading. Harry’s gaze followed the vapour to the ceiling, half expecting cracks there as well.

Instead, the ceiling held steady. Wards hummed—a choir of instruments tuning between songs.

He wiped the mirror one last time. Monitor. The ledger rarely lied; his handwriting bound him to truth. Still, truth liked to arrive late.

The kneazle crept closer, sniffed the air, then offered a doubtful chirrup. Harry crouched to scratch behind a twitching ear.

“We’ll skip scrying practice today,” he murmured. “World’s offering live demonstrations.”

The kneazle purred, tails uncurling by degrees.

Harry rose, replaced moonwater and rag, and reopened the Open sign. Rain had eased to drizzle; sun pushed a thin blade of gold into the alley. A fragile optimism suggested the worst was over.

The ward‑stone clicked backward again.

Harry’s smile came weary, crooked. “Fragile, then,” he whispered to the room.

He pocketed the watch and, for peace of mind, slid the ledger into a locked drawer. Action recorded. Next move waiting.

Kamar-Taj lay between dawns. Outside its high walls Kathmandu stirred to life, but inside the scrying hall only candlelight moved and the flagstones, still holding the night’s chill, cooled the skin of her bare feet. A thread of juniper incense drifted through the rafters, sweet and resinous against the thin mountain air. The Ancient One stood barefoot upon an etched brass circle, palms lifted over a basin carved from meteoric iron. Water inside reflected nothing—depth alone.

She exhaled once to centre her breath, then spoke the quarry’s borrowed name.

“Harold Evans.”

The candles answered in vertigo greens. Runes along the walls flared, translating a life-thread into symbols the mind could grasp. A heartbeat, a childhood, a thousand deaths behind a single pair of eyes—usually such things unspooled like silk.

Today they snarled.

Static rippled across the water, turning the surface granular. A shape tried to form—a shop front wedged between delis, a man sweeping rain—before collapsing into grey grit. One candle guttered, its flame sliding sideways along its own smoke.

The Ancient One lowered her hands. “Absence,” she murmured, curiosity outweighing alarm.

She stepped back. The brass circle cooled under her feet as though winter had blinked into the room. On a nearby plinth rested a relic: a narrow mirror framed in naga bone. She angled it toward the basin seeking triangulation.

Glass should have carried the echo. Instead it surrendered to sand, grains hissing along the inside of the frame like an hourglass in denial of time. The sound was soft but steady, like shore-bound surf heard through a tunnel of stone.

A side door opened on quiet hinges. Wong entered, robe belted tight against chill.

“You felt it,” she said without turning.

He stopped beside the circle, watching the sand slide into the basin. “No lock?”

“Not even a thread.” She let the grains run through her fingers, feeling only their chill. “Nothing to track.”

Wong considered. “Paradox targets usually leave a trace. This one leaves nothing.”

She nodded once. “He's active, yet the spell shows nothing.”

A ward-bell chimed on the far wall—a low, uncertain note. The library’s silent alarm, triggered whenever reality contradicts itself.

Wong cocked his head. “Again?”

“Third time this week.” Even the library ledgers were running out of margins; anomalies stacked like overdue letters, each demanding attention she could not yet spare. She lifted the naga-bone mirror. Hairline fractures glinted like frost. Setting it back, she sighed as bone whispered relief.

“We should alert the London Sanctum.”

“In due course.” She passed her hand over the basin. Sand froze mid‑drift, each grain a suspended planet. In their midst, a single sepia mote pulsed forward, then back.

The Ancient One narrowed her eyes. “It's stuttering.”

Wong leaned closer. "Time slipped backward."

"A clock fighting itself," she said, lifting the mote. The sepia droplet hopped forward then back on her fingertip.

Wong retrieved a parchment ledger, half‑filled with anomaly dates. “Shall we send Arjun again?”

“He will go, though he dislikes New York’s humidity.” She let the droplet fall back; it vanished without ripple. “Prepare silence bells. Let the city cough before it swallows.”

Wong’s mouth twitched. “He’ll want danger pay.”

“Remind him enlightenment is its own stipend.”

With a slow sweep of her hands, the candles steadied. Sand resumed falling, filling the basin to the rim before dissolving into clear water. The mirror mended in soft clicks yet the weave still lacked a strand.

The Ancient One pressed her fingertips together. “He’s out there and active, but still off the map.” Dawn painted pastel over the Himalayas beyond the tall windows. “A question for later.”

“What of the stutter‑beat?” Wong asked.

“Monitor.” Her smile was small, patient. “The universe hates loose ends. Eventually it tugs.”

He inclined his head and departed.

Alone, she faced the basin. A final trace of sepia ticked backward, then forward, then disappeared.

She whispered a blessing too old for alphabets, extinguished the candles with a gesture, and left the circle. Stone warmed again under her feet.

In the cleansed water, something distant sparked—one ember of green flame—gone before it grew a name. For one breath she watched the basin, weighing whether the ember was warning or invitation. Either way, motion would follow.

The main operations floor of the Triskelion never really slept; it only dimmed its lights and lowered its voice. At 06:02 hours, the hum of monitors and air handlers filled the half‑dark, broken by the occasional clack of a keyboard.

Maria Hill strode between desks until she reached the central display ring. Two analysts rotated data feeds on the twelve‑foot holoscreen: satellite thermal, street‑level CCTV, and a jittering graph labelled NYC EM‑FIELD VARIANCE — 07 APR 08.

Nick Fury joined her, coffee steaming in one hand. “Show me why you pinged me before sunrise.”

Hill nodded to Analyst Becker. “Camera E‑148, Bleecker Street. Timestamp zero‑five‑seventeen.”

Becker tapped his console. The screen filled with a still frame of a narrow storefront: mismatched lettering over dusty windows—The Howling Stag Curios. A faint blur, like heat haze, clung to the doorframe.

“Run,” Hill ordered.

The video played. For three seconds the image stuttered, colours washing to sepia before snapping back to normal. Data tags in the corner rolled backward one second, then resumed forward count.

Fury raised an eyebrow. “Time stamp rolled?”

“Exactly one‑point‑zero seconds,” Becker confirmed. “No dropped frames, no jump cut. Metadata rewound and continued.”

Hill pointed to a smaller window—an alley angle. “Same moment, different camera. Shows Wade Wilson exiting the shop, waving. He notices the lens and gives a thumbs‑up. Wilson’s timestamp rolls back the same second.”

Fury sipped coffee, considering. “Wilson’s a wild card but not usually a reality glitch.”

“Cross‑checked with external sensors,” Hill said, bringing up a jagged waveform. “Local electromagnetic spike—fifteen milliTesla over baseline. Power grid logs the same dip.”

He grunted. “And this lines up with last week’s silent alarms?”

“Yes, sir. Fourth localized anomaly in that block in seven days.” She flicked to a separate feed—telemetry request logs. "Unidentified source pinged our deep‑space array for New York exotic‑field data again—same minute."

“Whoever triggered that request is worried.” Fury’s tone flattened.

Coulson approached, tablet in hand. “Morning. I’ve pulled traffic cams from a five‑block radius. Every lens aimed at The Stag shows a colour drift at zero‑five‑seventeen.” He tapped the tablet; thumbnails cycled, each flicking sepia for exactly three seconds.

Fury set his coffee on the rail. “Wilson’s presence gives us a baseline for weird, but Harold Evans remains the constant variable. What’s his last confirmed background pull?”

“Still a ghost,” Coulson admitted. “Paper trail ends at a property purchase in 2003. Attempts to trace earlier history hit loops—records referencing themselves.”

Hill folded her arms. “We can’t keep chasing camera glitches. We need physical sensors on‑site.”

Fury nodded. “Start passive. EM pads, ground inductive, no active ping. If Evans notices, we lose the angle.”

Coulson scrolled a map. “Utility crews can ‘repair’ the rain‑cracked alley conduit this afternoon—wet asphalt gives us cover. We’ll piggy‑back three sensor nodes into their cable tray—no one looks twice at orange armour weave.”

“Make it happen,” Fury said. Then, to Hill: “Prep a containment team—planning only.”

Hill’s brow rose. “Containment? We don’t know if he’s hostile.”

“Hostility is secondary,” Fury replied. “Whatever rewinds timestamps across three cameras is already bending the rules.”

Becker called out, “Director, new hotspot—six blocks north. Timestamp zero‑six‑zero‑two.” The live dashcam feed appeared: drizzle‑grey rooftops, then sepia wash, backward tick, forward resume.

Hill muttered, “It’s moving.”

“Or he is,” Coulson said.

Fury’s gaze hardened. “Breadcrumbs. Don’t lose the trail. Coulson—sensors in the ground by ten hundred hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Maria, keep ears on that channel. I want to know the instant their data turns into doctrine.”

Hill smirked. “If they start quoting omens, I’ll bring popcorn.”

Fury didn’t smile. “We’re past show‑and‑tell. Find leverage.”

On the holoscreen, the clip looped once more—sepia bloom, backward tick, forward march—an echo that refused to settle.

By late afternoon the drizzle had surrendered to a low, pewter sky. A quiet drenched the alley—cars muted by distance, shop‑front neon still hours from waking. Rain‑wet air pressed against the window‑panes, carrying the distant hiss of tyres on asphalt. Harry stood behind the counter, pen hovering over the day‑book ledger. Two entries glared back at him: mirror breach and second rewind. He added a third line beneath them.

“07 April 2008, 16:04. Ambient stillness increased. Ward‑stone stable at sepia. Instinct uneasier than data.”

Closing the book, he slid it into the locked drawer and studied the room. Trinkets sat obedient. The kneazle lounged on a high shelf, lids heavy but ears tilted toward the door.

“Early closing, friend,” he said, voice pitched for the wood and glass more than the animal. “Storm’s coming; best we prepare indoors.”

He flipped the sign to Closed and drew the bolts. A kettle already whispered on the back‑room hob. While the water warmed, he selected a tin marked Lavender / Company of Night. The lid sighed open—herb and faint cardamom—steadying scents that reminded him of Pomfrey’s infirmary.

Loose leaves filled the strainer. Steam rose, curling around the faint glow under his skin where the Elder Wand slept. He let the warmth seep into his fingers before moving to the small round table near the curtained window.

A single cup, matte black, waited. He poured. Liquid amber caught the room’s dim light; ripples settled into a mirrored surface. The grandfather clock across the shop ticked with measured confidence.

Harry sat, spine straight, palms wrapped around the cup. He breathed with the rhythm of the ticks—four counts in, four counts out—until the noise of the city faded beneath the quieter heartbeat of the shop.

Silence carries a price, he thought, watching steam ghost upward. Debts gather interest in quiet rooms.

He raised the cup. The first sip grounded him—heat, lavender, earth. Outside, an unseen truck rumbled past; the window glass quivered, then stilled. Within that hush the ward‑stone on the wall stayed sepia, pulse steady.

Minutes slipped by. Colour stayed dull, mirrored fire absent, yet tension rode the edge of every breath—as though the world balanced on one loose hinge.

The kettle clicked off behind him, metal cooling. Harry finished his tea, set the cup down, and rose. He walked to the grandfather clock, polished walnut touched by ages older than any receipt. Its hands approached a line they should never cross.

Tick—twelve. Tick—twelve again. Then a thirteenth strike rang, low and certain, vibrating through the floorboards.

Harry rested one hand against the clock’s face, feeling the wood pulse beneath his palm. A rueful smile flickered.

“Out of hours already,” he murmured.

The ward‑stone answered with a single amber blink before settling back to sepia.

Harry drew the curtains, dimmed the lights, and let the hush reclaim the shop. Tomorrow would arrive on its schedule; tonight had bruises to count.

He returned the empty cup to the sink, washed it, and left it to dry. Keys clicked the back door lock. As he climbed the narrow stairs to the flat above, the shop below exhaled—wood settling, glass sighing—content, for now, to keep its secrets.

The mirrors held their breath. The ink refused to fade. Something had been seen — and would not be unseen.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Cracks in the Illusion

Harry woke early. Pale dawn light filtered through the curtains and settled across the room he had known for years. He turned carefully so he wouldn't disturb Ginny, who slept on her side with one hand under her cheek and her hair loose on the pillow. Her slow, even breathing steadied him.

When her eyes finally opened, they found his at once, and she gave him a sleepy smile that still warmed his chest. “Morning,” she whispered, sliding closer until her head rested under his chin. “Morning,” he answered, brushing a kiss through her hair. They lay there for a while, listening to the small creaks of the house and the faint tick of the clock, neither in any hurry to move.

Hunger eventually nudged him out of bed. He padded downstairs in bare feet, filled the kettle, and set it on the hob. While the water heated, he took down the tin of the tea Ginny liked best, the one she said smelled like summer. The kitchen was tidy, the floorboards warm, and the quiet felt honest.

From above came the sound of Ginny humming as she dressed. The simple tune drifted down the stairs and mingled with the hiss of the kettle, turning the morning into something soft and easy.

Today Albus would ride the Hogwarts Express for the first time. James had promised to keep an eye on his brother, which meant Harry would spend the day worrying about both of them. He set out extra jam on the table and smiled, already hearing the argument the boys would have over whose turn it was to sit by the window.

Harry was whisking pancake batter, keeping the bowl steady so the stack of owl‑post on the table wouldn’t slide off again. Butter hissed on the pan. From the sitting room the wireless droned about the Chudley Cannons’ next season—still the same hopeful nonsense Ron clung to.

Teddy’s voice reached him before the boy did. “Uncle Harry, is that breakfast for heroes or am I supposed to waste away?”

Harry looked over his shoulder. “Depends. Planning to sort that hair out? House rule says turquoise means you’re the dog.”

Teddy shuffled in, pyjamas rumpled, hair now a bright purple. “Better?”

“Close enough.” Harry poured batter onto the pan. “Plates are warming in the oven. Set the table and you can flood yours with syrup.”

The boy saluted and started on mugs and cutlery. For a few minutes only cupboard doors and the gentle sizzle of pancakes filled the kitchen. Steam misted the window, tinting the garden in early‑autumn colours—even though the calendar still said August.

Small footsteps padded along the corridor. Lily appeared clutching her stuffed rabbit, eyes half‑open.

“Morning, Lily‑bug,” Harry said, turning the flame down. “Pancakes and hot chocolate. Grab a stool.”

She didn’t. She tugged his sleeve until he crouched. “Daddy, why’s the garden so quiet?”

He listened. No gnomes rustling the cabbages, no neighbour’s dog—just wind. Before he could answer, the kettle clicked off though no one had set it to boil.

Teddy re‑entered balancing plates. “Lily, did you hide the syrup again? Last time it took me—” The plates tipped, then hung there in mid‑air. Even the steam over the pancakes froze.

A dull crack, like distant thunder, rolled overhead. The lamp above the cooker flickered in a slow, uneven pulse. Harry eased Lily behind him. “Stay with Teddy, love.”

The radio coughed into static, then a single voice—his own—began reading names he never wanted to hear aloud. James. Albus. Lily. Teddy.

Lily’s fingers tightened on his sleeve. “Daddy, Aunt Hermione says every story ends. Is ours ending?”

“Not over breakfast.” He tried to smile, but the room felt like it was holding its breath.

Teddy set the dishes down, looking pale. “Uncle Harry… do you smell smoke?”

He did—sharp, dry, like a bonfire long burned out.

Outside, the fence vanished. So did the hedges. Mud and pale stones now stretched under a flat sky.

Lily whispered, “We said goodbye already, didn’t we?”

Harry turned. The doorway had stretched into a narrow black corridor. Teddy stood in that shadow, his hair colourless.

“Don’t you remember, Uncle Harry?” Teddy asked, voice quiet. “You buried us.”

The plates finally crashed to the floor. The sound was solid and real, and the air tasted of ash.

The kettle gave half a whistle, then cut off with a clank. A teaspoon on the table tapped against Teddy’s juice glass, the faint ring loud in the quiet room. Teddy paused mid‑joke, eyes flicking to Harry as a burst of static swallowed the wireless commentary.

A tremor rolled through the floorboards, beginning as a gentle sway before growing into a full‑body jolt that rattled cupboard doors and set the ceiling lamp swinging. Teddy bolted from the kitchen. Harry lunged after him, batter forgotten; flour dust floated in the dark, the whisk still dripping as the lights blinked out and the doorway folded into darkness.

He stumbled into a narrow alley. Teddy stood at the far end, face bruised and bloody, ringed by shadowy figures whose laughter scraped the bricks.

“Half‑breed!” one spat.

Harry ran, legs pumping, breath burning, yet the alley kept stretching, Teddy retreating with every step.

“Stop!” Harry shouted, voice raw.

The largest figure stepped forward, raising a glowing iron rod. It kissed Teddy’s forehead; the word HALF‑BREED sizzled into skin. Teddy’s scream cut short as fire swallowed him, his face lost behind the flames.

Harry was yanked away and dropped beside a quiet country lane. Across the road an older Lilly waved to him, unaware of the speeding car bearing down. Harry threw every scrap of magic forward, but the vehicle sliced straight through his hastily raised shield like rain through fog and struck her with a sickening thud.

He knelt in the gravel, hands glowing, trying to knit flesh and bone, but the spell slid off her ruined shoulder like water on glass. Master of Death, healer of none. Lily’s eyes opened, glassy and distant. “You weren’t here, Dad.”

Reality lurched again. A hospital ward hummed around him; Ginny lay still, skin paper‑thin. Harry clutched her cooling hand while healers moved past in muffled procession, their conversations sliding past his ears, sense and letters blurred. He whispered pleas until dawn painted the windows, and her fingers stiffened in his grip.

Rain hammered George’s grave, mud splashing the polished coffin, while Molly’s sobs shook the air. Harry stood numb beside her, coat soaked, grief sawing at raw edges.

Two days later Ron and Hermione were lowered together, white roses wilting against wet wood; Harry’s chest felt hollowed out, a dull weight heavy and unmoving, while their children looked to him for strength he could not supply.

Luna’s lake‑side farewell and Neville’s quiet resting place at Hogwarts passed in a haze of flower petals and murmured thanks. Each funeral pared him thinner, grief working like steady erosion.

At last it was Albus, his youngest, laid to rest on a frost‑hardened morning. Harry watched the ground close, words failing him, and tears simply refusing to come.

After burying his last child, centuries slipped by, yet Harry remained unchanged. He did not age; nothing about him ever shifted. Villages grew into cities, then crumbled into dust while he watched. Scholars tried to dissect his nature, prophets raised altars to his name, armies tested his limits. Through it all he stayed the solitary constant—intervening when he must, stepping back when he could, saving millions or, when duty demanded, ending billions. No one understood that duty, and he never offered an answer.

When humanity finally abandoned a dying Earth for the stars, he locked the door behind them and followed. New species rose, fought, flourished, and vanished. They called him the Old One—always watching, always protecting. In time even they were gone. The last spark of life guttered out on a world of bone‑dust and thin wind, and Harry found himself alone beneath a dim, brittle sky.

He waited for Death to appear. She did not.

Years blurred into aeons. The planet’s surface, once rock, eroded to shifting grey sand. At last, he tried to force the end that refused him.

Fast‑acting poisons quickened his pulse but nothing more. Rifles, blades, and particle cannons—each transfigured from sand, each repaired him faster than they harmed. Decapitation became an eye‑blink nuisance. Fiendfyre rolled over him like warm water. Sacrificial runes that should have erased continents left no mark.

Finally, he turned inward. He called the dead with the Stone embedded in his chest: friends, family, even enemies. No answer came; their souls had already fled this emptied universe. Desperate, he raised his glowing right arm—the Elder Wand sleeping beneath the skin—and poured everything into one curse.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Nothing.

He cast it again. And again. Magic drained from him in waves that rebounded uselessly across the desert of ash.

“WHY WON’T YOU LET ME DIE?” The shout cracked the still air. “IS THIS THE PRICE? I FOLLOWED YOU TO THE END OF EVERYTHING! LET ME REST!”

Exhaustion folded him to his knees. In the silence that followed, something inside him stirred—a thin, sharp awareness, half memory, half warning. It recognised the place: not his own dimension, but another, darker pocket where Death had once left him to rot after an argument. The sliver of awareness was small, buried in the back of his mind, yet its return marked a beginning.

A beginning that would cost this dimension more than it could possibly afford.

Pain rolled off him in steady waves, rattling the dimension and feeding something older than the realm itself. Every ragged breath rang loud in the hush. A figure watched from the shadows, eyes widening in recognition. This was the one who had slipped away before. The taste had changed, the power had thickened, but the core was the same—the agony that had once jump‑started his dominion. He had given up hope of tasting it again, yet here it was.

He studied Harry the way a butcher inspects cattle, hunger glinting behind the fire in his eyes. This single moment held more anguish than a century of ordinary nightmares, and he wanted it all. He twisted the land to draw it out: gravestones for every loved one, mass pits for the soldiers Harry failed to save, stone markers for the ones he never even reached. Thought no longer guided him; a primordial appetite drove every change, demanding more until nothing was left.

Only when he was sated did he alter his shape. Skin grey as ash, nose collapsed to slits, a snake‑like face sliding into place. Where the Lord of Nightmares had stood, the Dark Lord Voldemort now waited. He halted a few paces from Harry and offered a thin smile. “You’ve aged well.”

Harry didn’t answer; his breathing quickened.

“Or rather,” Voldemort amended, “age has never touched you.” His gaze swept the grave‑littered ground. “Such surroundings, Harry—graves and bodies everywhere. And I thought I was the Dark Lord. Even I never left so many corpses behind.”

Harry drew a longer breath, feeling it scrape and settle. The next came easier, the one after steadier still. When he finally spoke his voice barely carried, yet it cut through the hush. “You tried ruling once, Tom. Remind me—how did that end for you?”

His words were quiet but clear. His ragged breathing eased; battlefields were familiar ground. He rose, slow and deliberate, until he met Voldemort’s eyes.

The Dark Lord sneered, ignoring the question as though it had never been asked. “How many family members have you buried, Harry? How many of these graves exist because you were too slow to act? How many died cursing your name? How many civilizations ended because you were too afraid to use your powers?”

“I did use them,” Harry replied, calmly. “Just not to subjugate—​to guide. I’m not a tyrant, Tom. I’m not you.”

Voldemort’s eyes narrowed. “I never shied from power—or from using it to rule. I earned every scrap of my strength. But you… you are the greatest disappointment I have ever seen. Death handed you the keys to immortality. You could have been magnificent, yet you treat your gifts like shackles.”

“Because they are,” Harry said softly. “That’s the lesson you never understood, isn't it, Tom? You ran from Death as though it were the worst fate imaginable, while I was cursed to live your dream forever.”

For a moment neither spoke. The Nightmare wearing Voldemort’s face tried to parse the words of its own illusion. A flicker of uncertainty crossed the pale features, but hunger smothered caution.

Voldemort spoke again, almost kindly. “Think what you could create, Harry—worlds without war, without hunger. With your power you could save everyone.”

“I’ve tried,” Harry said, his gaze steady. “Worlds and civilizations ended anyway.”

He studied the false face, looking for seams. Something clicked behind his eyes.

“You nearly had me. I almost believed you were him. But you overlooked one thing.” Harry’s head tilted, voice dropping to a lethal murmur. “I was inside his mind for most of my teenage years. I know the monster better than anyone. Your performance might fool people who only met the legend—never me. Show yourself, or I’ll tear the mask off.”

A sadistic smile curved his lips as he stared through the illusion of Riddle.

The Dark Lord’s outline wavered. His borrowed skin split along hidden seams and peeled away in curling strips, unmasking a tall, gaunt frame—stone‑grey flesh stretched over bone, lank black hair pasted to his skull, and eyes the flat yellow of old parchment with pin‑point black pupils that swallowed the light. A moth‑eaten coat in a sickly shade of green clung to his angular shoulders, its long tails drooping like rotted vines; beneath it, a threadbare waistcoat and breeches of the same colour hung loose, as though the fabric itself recoiled from its wearer. A ragged cape, dark as mouldy velvet, drifted behind him without wind, making the figure appear less clad in cloth and more wrapped in a shroud grown from graveyard moss. His voice became something older. And much hungrier

His voice dropped an octave, rough as grave dirt. “You are not built for peace, Harry Potter. You are war given shape, and you will fight until I have wrung every scream from your throat.”

Harry’s sadistic smile widened even if it was not supposed to be possible.

“So, we meet again,” Harry said, his tone almost conversational. “Looks like it’s your turn, little lord. I’d start running. This time there are no restrictions on me.” He tilted his head, studying the figure in front of him. “I can see it in your eyes—you’re starving for power. Come and take it.”

What rolled off him this time was not pain but sheer power. It seeped into every fissure of the Fear Realm, thickening the air until tiny arcs danced over the fractured stone. Nightmare’s mouth parted, a thin line of spittle catching the glow. Within his own dominion he had never faced a challenger; with power like this to drink, he imagined himself eclipsing every other dream‑lord.

He licked his cracked lips and stepped closer, tasting the charge that hummed between them. A tremor ran through the realm—slow, expectant, almost like a held breath.   

“I will break you again and again,” it hissed. “You will feed this place for a thousand cycles.”

The sky dimmed. Gravity thickened, pressing dust into hardpan. Anyone mortal would have dropped to their knees. Harry merely rolled his shoulders.

His cloak rippled. Void‑silk flowed over boots, gloves, chest, forming his combat ensemble: a high‑collared black coat that drank the scant light, reinforced gloves of manticore hide etched with dull sigils, fitted boots stitched from dragon leather, and—last—a bone‑white mask that sealed across his face with a quiet click, blank and unblinking, a promise writ in calcium. The Elder Wand glyph in his forearm glowed once, then settled.

Nightmare’s hunger sharpened. “Delicious.” It raised a hand. The air fractured shards of mirrored terror hurled outward like knives.

Harry moved.

A short thrust of his hand stopped every mirror‑knife in mid‑air. With a twist of his fingers they shot back the way they had come, a silver storm dense enough to bring a tower down. Nightmare flickered out, re‑forming behind Harry with a dream‑forged sword already thrusting for his spine.

Harry pivoted. The back‑handed slap that met the blade shattered steel to mist, carried on to crack Nightmare across the jaw, and sent the dream‑lord skipping through headstones. Fragmented gravestones toppled in his wake; Nightmare’s body dissolved, then knitted itself whole as he righted mid‑air.

Corpses clawed free of the nearby graves—Teddy, Lily, Albus, Ginny. They lurched forward, skin grey, eyes pleading. Rage coiled under Harry’s ribs. Green fire rippled over his frame and rolled out in a curtain, turning the figures to smoke before they closed a single step.

“I thought you were meant to be unstoppable here,” Harry said, voice calm. “Why hide?”

Nightmare materialised at the graveyard’s centre; air tightened around him, spiralling into a tornado braided with distilled terror. He flung it at Harry. A silent Patronus pulse burst from Harry’s arm, split the storm, and left the air cold and empty.

Nightmare swelled to a three‑metre giant, claws like guillotine blades. He swung. Harry condensed the nearby air into a glass‑clear shield, stepped inside the swing, and drove an elbow into Nightmare’s sternum. Bone cracked like snapped ice. Follow‑through: heel kick—ankle shattered; knife‑hand strike—humerus broke.

Nightmare howled, vanished, and re‑appeared thirty metres away, rage twisting his thin face. With a snap of his fingers a swirling void opened beneath them, a black hole drinking in dirt, stone, and light.

Harry traced quick runes in the air; sigils flared silver. The singularity seized, clenched like a fist, and spat its harvest back as stardust before collapsing with a thunder‑pop.

While Harry anchored reality, Nightmare prepared. He emptied the horizon: basilisk skeletons stitched together with barbed wire, dragons ablaze in violet fear-flame, a phalanx of dementors screaming through cracked masks. Harry met them head‑on. Basilisks split under a conjured obsidian blade; dragons fell to chained lightning; dementors scattered, shredded by a sword wrought of Patronus light.

Nightmare lifted both hands. The sky peeled back, revealing a cracked moon. Gravity deepened; every loose stone leapt upward toward the descending mass. Harry reached up, caught the moon between thumb and forefinger, compressed it to a glowing marble, and flicked it. The marble punched a canyon through Nightmare’s torso before exploding into dust.

Spitting ash, Nightmare summoned hellfire in the shape of a colossal serpent. It lunged—jaws wide, flames liquefying the ground. When the fire swallowed Harry whole, Nightmare allowed himself a single relieved breath: nothing survived dream‑forged hellfire.

The serpent convulsed, split along its length, and fell away in dying embers. Harry stood at the centre, armour unscorched, elder‑light pulsing beneath his skin.

“Did you really think that would work?” he asked softly. “I’ve buried pantheons with 10 times the power you have.”

Desperate, Nightmare ripped the fear‑crown from his own brow and hurled his entire essence—raw power, stripped of shape—toward Harry. The air shuddered.

Harry opened his hands. The seething mass struck his palms and froze, caught like a moth in amber. Lines of Hallows light crawled from his forearm, wrapping the essence in lattice‑white.

“You wanted a taste,” Harry murmured. “Here it is.”

He pressed the writhing bundle against the Resurrection Stone embedded in his chest. Stone and essence fused, flared, and sank beneath skin. Nightmare’s scream cut off mid‑note.

Harry exhaled while loosening his shoulders.

The realm of dreams would continue, but its greedy master was no more.

The shock of Harry’s duel with Nightmare did not stay inside the dream. It travelled along ley‑lines, through half‑built wards, down the cracks between thought and sleep, until every place that trafficked in wonder felt the bruise.

Kamar‑Taj · Nepal

Candles guttered, then died. No breeze stirred the meditation hall, yet each flame folded in on itself as if pinched by invisible fingers. The Ancient One’s sling‑ring sketch collapsed. Sparks dripped from the portal frame before winking out. A quiet voice at her shoulder asked what it meant. She said only, “Something ancient was woken again and this was its first action.”

Novi Grad · Sokovia

Wanda Maximoff jolted upright in the narrow bedroom she shared with her twin. Neon from the street cast pale bars across cracked plaster. On her lap, a half‑doodled sketch redrew itself, the pencil jerking in her fingers until a circle crowned by a triangle filled the page. She dropped the lead as heat bled off the paper. A moment later the mark cooled, but the faint smell of smoke lingered.

Birnin Zana · Wakanda

In the Great Mound, vibranium veins pulsed once, deep blue edging toward white. A priestess paused mid‑chant. Her beads clicked like teeth. “The dead walk the borders,” she muttered, feeling the mountain answer with a low tremor.

New York Sanctum

Wong curated the relic shelves when every ward stone flashed crimson, then sable, then emptied of colour altogether. A scroll on dimensional incursions cracked its wax seal unbidden. The final warning symbol—a skull crowned by the Deathly Hallows—sat glowing at the bottom of the page.

Helicarrier · Low Earth Orbit

Phil Coulson rubbed steam from a monitor. For one frame every feed went charcoal black except a single white triangle. Technicians blamed a momentary power dip. Coulson noted the time—03:17—and moved on, but the image stayed with him.

Global • Children’s Dreams

Around the world, children woke at once, silent, hearts racing. None spoke of it in the morning, yet each drew the same crude sketch in the margins of notebooks: circle, triangle, line.

Harry drifted through the shop as though wading through cooling resin, each step slow and certain. His muscles ached with a weight poured beneath the skin. He left the mirrors closed and the wards untouched; both were already awake and watching.

The kneazle tracked him with one gold eye, its tails wrapped tight. Cursed trinkets sat motionless on their shelves, threads of power wound down as if the room simply waited.

He lifted the kettle and poured a single cup of plain black tea. Steam curled once, then faded. Instead of taking his usual seat behind the counter, he crossed to the front window.

New York glimmered beyond the glass—rain‑washed, busy, unaware a battle had passed unnoticed. On the sill rested a narrow jar of clear water. A lone white lily floated inside, petals catching the streetlight and refusing to dim.

Harry watched the flower until the cup lost its heat. Beauty wasn't what kept his gaze; the refusal to bend did.

He eased onto a small wooden stool, blanket still over his shoulders. Ceramic warmth bled into his fingers while the tea cooled, untouched.

Overhead, the shop’s wards pulsed—a gentle heartbeat, noting his return.

Silence took the room, thin yet steady, and he let it stay. just a tired man sharing space with a flower that would not flinch.

Outside, traffic moved on. Inside, he let the moment exist.

"The mirrors held their breath. The ink refused to fade. Something had been seen—and would not be unseen."

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

Manhattan · 19 January 2010 — eighteen months since the Nightmare Realm lost its lord

Harry woke up sweating for the umpteenth time that night. Ever since his battle with the Lord of Nightmares, a fragment of that creature had refused to be assimilated. It clung to him and would not let go. First came the voices of those he’d known—­a laugh here, a scream there. Then memories resurfaced, some better left alone. Since then, he hadn’t slept soundly. He knew the shard of Nightmare would eventually fade; it was what happened to the countless personifications he’d hunted. His favourite had been the god of wine he tracked down a few millennia ago—­that one left him pleasantly drunk for a while. But not everything was bad. The world itself seemed lighter. People plagued by chronic nightmares were finally sleeping through the night, and therapists across the globe noted a sharp drop in night terrors.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and listened to the quiet. At four-thirty in the morning you could almost say New York was peaceful—the key word being almost. As soon as the traffic light turned green, horns blared and the illusion shattered.

Downstairs, shelves leaned a fraction closer as he passed, like fans reaching for a movie star. The two-tailed kneazle waited beside the door marked Padfoot’s Study. Harry opened it, letting the cat slip in first. The study was a cosy room: a wall-to-wall bookcase holding perhaps a hundred volumes and a compact kitchen nook used mainly for tea. He set the kettle on, added jasmine to the water already inside, and lowered himself into the chair by the window. The rising steam helped him relax.

Bleecker Street had changed quite a bit these past months. After his clash with Nightmare—filed by SHIELD as NULLWAVE-01, the silence pulse that started inside his shop—the agency rented a flat across the street to watch The Howling Stag. If you knew when to look, you could catch the faint glint of their surveillance gear. Harry sometimes waved, just to keep them on their toes. They hadn’t pressed harder; Stark was still their golden weapons prodigy, busy wooing generals with the Jericho missile, and nailing down exclusive contracts mattered more than interrogating one quiet shopkeeper. Or maybe the wards were what discouraged door-knocking. Who knew? Anything was possible.

He sipped his tea while another burst of laughter echoed behind him. Strengthening his Occlumency, he forced the sound to fade. Just before it dwindled to a mutter, he could have sworn he heard, “Ickle Potter wants to play.”

Kamar-Taj · 20 January 2010 – 01.00 AM, personal quarters of the Ancient One

At the deep corners of the sanctum, another soul was awake at this ungodly hour. Though this was not an unnatural occurrence—for the Ancient One usually chose to forgo sleep for more important matters.

She was standing in the middle of her personal quarters. Surrounding her was a ritual circle drawn with the ashes of a dragon. Just in front of her stood an obsidian basin, once given to her predecessor by a benevolent god. The room was eerily silent.

She closed her eyes and tried to listen to the pressure that lingered between the waking and dreaming worlds. For eighteen months, she had tried to get answers from the wound between realms. Once every seven days, at each lunar swing. But the scar had been too volatile to yield anything.

Until now.

She sent a small, informative probe into the scar.
The fires of Nightmare should have greeted her.
Instead, all she could find was cold.

There were no flames from the demons. No smoke from the palace that had housed the Nightmare Lord. Only silence.

An unnatural scream echoed inside the room.
One of the candles around the ritual circle—placed to keep her anchored—snuffed itself.
She noted the growing danger. But instead of retreating, she focused more intently on the basin.

Ink thinned, then deepened—
As if the basin were weighing the cost of revelation.

In the end, names began to rise from the surface. Each one lingered for less than a second before shifting into the next.

Hunter. Potter. Peverell. Evans. Harry.
And on.

Then, a symbol began to form.
A circle.
A triangle.
A line within.

Without pause, every candle in the room went dark.
The ritual broke.
And the chamber was plunged into shadow.

She found herself ejected from the visions that had accompanied the ritual.

“He is still here,” she murmured.
It wasn’t surprise that made her speak.
It was fear.

He was supposed to be retired.
At least, that was what he had told her predecessor all those years ago.

An unnatural breeze swept the ashes of the circle.

She took a deep breath.
Whatever hope she’d held—that this was a minimal disturbance—was gone.

The promise she made to her mentor echoed in her mind.
She had hoped she would never have to act on it.
But she knew what came next.

With great trepidation, she exhaled.
She had a job to do.

The Hunter was once again in play.

Manhattan · 19 January 2010 —2.15 PM rooftop above Bleecker Street

The portal opened quietly onto the rooftop. The Ancient One stepped through with the grace that comes from centuries of practice. The city below her sounded nothing like Kathmandu: steam hissed from subway grates, horns pressed the air, and low clouds threatened more rain.

At the corner where Bleecker met Lafayette, a single doorway waited—a doorway that had outlasted street widenings, zoning fights, and three separate fires. Even the ley lines curved to avoid it.

The Howling Stag.

The shop stood wedged between a shuttered deli and a boutique that sold US$200 T‑shirts and incense no one lit. Its windows were dusted with time, stained by illusions too faint to register consciously. Tourists called it quirky; locals called it weird; the few who understood did not call it anything at all.

From the roof she observed how people responded. First, a young couple veered across the street moments before reaching the door, only to drift back once they’d passed it. Ten minutes later an older man with a cane limped inside. He emerged cane-less, holding a velvet pouch, and walked away with a steadier gait—never glancing back. She then realized something. The shop was not hiding itself from others. It was changing their perception to make their curiosity an inconvenience.

She knelt, pressed her palm to damp brick, and let the magic speak. It was silent yet deafening, like a pitch so high it lived beyond hearing but still rattled bone. Rising, she steadied herself against the wall; the pressure was thick enough to weigh on her lungs.

A glint of a glass caught her attention. A rented apartment across the street held another type of watcher. The Ancient One focused and felt the feint buzz of the microphones and the cold tick of a telescopic lens behind one curtain.

 She opened another portal and stepped to the pavement outside the door. The pressure intensified at once. She reached for the handle—only for the door to swing inward on its own.

With a final, silent prayer, she crossed the threshold.

The smell of amaranth greeted her the moment she crossed the threshold—odd, since no blossom was in sight. Behind the counter stood a man with emerald eyes who didn’t bother to look up. He measured a pinch of lavender into the kettle. As he moved, the tarot deck beside it began to shuffle itself, cards whispering like silk preparing for a reading. A two-tailed kneazle, dozing on a shelf, cracked one eye at her, decided she wasn’t interesting, and curled back into sleep.

She watched, entranced, as the teen brewed the tea. When it was ready, he gestured and the counter stretched to make room for two. Without noticing the transition, she found herself seated opposite him, a steaming cup in hand.

“You know why I’m here.”

A single nod.

“Not going to say anything about it?”

Harry shrugged. “What do you prefer— Sorry I killed the Lord of Nightmares? Sorry I did my job?”

“I was told you’d retired.”

“That was my understanding too.”

“Then what happened?”

“I discovered I was wrong.”

She stiffened. She still remembered the old tales of the Hunter.

Harry’s voice stayed level. “Relax. You’re not on the list.”

“Then who is?”

“That’s for me to know—and for you to find out.”

“I’ve protected this realm and its balance for six centuries,” she said. “I’m owed that much information.”

“Perhaps.”

He offered a smile better suited to a child mid-tantrum—all condescension, no warmth.

“I reviewed the timeline,” she pressed. “Possibilities sprawl, but only one ends well. You should have consulted me before acting.”

The air pressed down. Amaranth flooded the room. A flicker of anger crossed Harry’s face.

“Mind your place, girl. Remember who founded your order—who first handed sorcery to mortals so they could play at guardianship. I am not yours to question.”

Before she could answer, the tarot deck snapped into motion and fanned five cards face-down across the counter. Harry flipped the first without hesitation.

I – The Magician, reversed

“Brilliance mis-applied,” he said. “Genius aimed the wrong way—though course-correction is coming.”

“Stark,” she supplied.

“Probably.”

II – Two of Wands, upright

“Everything feels wide until the first gate closes,” he noted. “Choices look plentiful from a balcony.”

She tapped the card’s edge. “SHIELD thinks it still has balconies. It has ledges.”

Harry’s brow lifted. “Noted.”

III – The Hanged Man, upright

“A power waiting for its moment—certain the universe will kneel.”

“Sacrifice, or calculation?” she asked.

“Both. Someone willing to wait decades for one clean snap.”

Her fingers tightened on the counter. “We still don’t know his name.”

“You will,” Harry murmured. “In futures that end poorly, he wears a gauntlet.”

IV – Five of Wands

“A fight that shows humanity how helpless it can be,” he said. “They’ll bleed, but without blood they won’t be ready for what follows.”

V – The Hallows Sigil

The final card lay blank until ink bled across it—circle, triangle, line—glowing dull silver like moon-scratched metal.

The shop leaned in. She felt it. “That card isn’t in the deck.”

“It is when I need it.” His dryness was gone. “Fate can be inscribed by hand if you live long enough to steady the pen.”

“What does it mean?”

“My retirement was a misunderstanding,” he said. “She’ll pull me back into the story. Let’s hope the cost is lighter this time.”

“The cost for whom?”

“Everyone. But it buys a chance.”

She drew her hand back. “Then we prepare for cost.”

Harry gathered the cards, saving the Hallows sigil for last. “Preparation doesn’t lower the price,” he said quietly. “Sometimes it raises it.”

The Ancient One straightened. “I’ll keep the balance as best I can.”

Harry folded the silk, cards vanishing into the fabric. “Balance won’t be yours to hold—but you’ll help him find it.”

She inclined her head, understanding more than she cared to admit. Then she stepped out, leaving with far more than she’d come in to retrieve.

The mirror was quiet. But the room remembered.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: The Thread That Should Not Be  

The Howling Stag breathed a bit cleaner that morning. Dust that had settled on the store for the past decade found itself gone without warning. Trinkets that had been dull since the ’30s suddenly gleamed, polished as if new.  

But that wasn’t what woke Harry Potter.  

No, the yelling from downstairs did.  

Swearing under his breath, Harry made his way down to the study. Inside were two peculiar little creatures. Both were no taller than a ten-year-old, with flapping ears and wide eyes, their skin pale as ash. That was where the similarities ended.  

The one clutching a baseball bat wore a black uniform and looked old. Real old. He was shouting about disgraces to the Mistress and trying to hit the other one. The second, shrill-voiced and high-pitched, wore a colourful uniform, stacked with multiple hats and mismatched socks.   

When Harry entered, both froze. The bat slipped from the old one’s grip and flew straight toward him. Harry sighed, caught it mid-air without effort, and lowered his hand.  

“Yous tried to hurt Great Master Harry Potter, Sir!” squealed the younger one.  

Before the other could respond, Harry cut them off.  

“Dobby, weren’t you on holiday? I thought I gave you the next century off?”  

“Disgrace of a house elf. Going on holidays for a century,” the older one muttered.  

Harry turned to him. “Kreacher, weren’t you supposed to be with her?”  

“Dobby found out that Kreacher was going to clean the shop, Master Harry Potter, Sir!” Dobby said enthusiastically. “He didn’t even let Dobby know he was cleaning the Stag. But Dobby was smart. He wasn’t going to let his Master Harry Potter Sir’s Stag be cleaned without him!”  

“Kreacher was with mistress, but mistress told Kreacher that she would come here today. Kreacher was not going to let mistress come to a dirty house. Oh no, how would Kreacher let mistress to a filthy house?” he wailed.   

“What do you mean she is going to visit?”  

Before Harry could continue, everything stilled. The steady breath of the shop paused. The space between seconds stretched longer and longer.  

The kneazle watching from its bed went rigid. On the library’s top shelf, a glass ball that had spun since the ’20s froze mid-turn. The tarot deck—left in the study after its show for the Ancient One—stopped shuffling itself.  

The air grew colder. Harder to breathe.  

Harry sighed. A migraine already threatened behind his eyes. This was going to be a long day.  

“You know,” he muttered, “after a few millennia, the whole stopping-time bit feels old. It isn’t scary. It isn’t interesting. It’s just old. You do realise you can talk like a normal being, right?”  

As if the words were a challenge, the air grew heavier. The shop’s old magic, woven through its walls for a millennium, began to recede. It yielded like a sea pulling back from the shore.  

A scent rose faintly in its wake. Marigold. Gunpowder. Ash from an elder tree.  

The migraine sharpened. A memory stirred at the edge of his vision  

A room with black stone floors.  

A door that never opened.  

A veil of whispers and falling stones.  

Her hands were pale, cold, clawless, holding his face like it was a map she meant to reread forever.  

Harry forced his eyes open before the memory could finish. He sighed again, muttering profanities under his breath as he set water to boil. Two cups were placed on the table, one across from the other. Then he waited.  

The bell above the shop door gave a long, tired sigh—the same sound it had made when his first unwanted guest came months ago.  

There was no sound coming from the door. She simply decided to exist inside the shop, as though she always had.  

She stepped into the study where Harry was waiting.  

The elves vanished the instant she arrived—Dobby out of fear, Kreacher out of respect.  

Her skin was pale marble lit by moonlight; her hair fell like a spill of dark ink, swallowing colour without effort. Her eyes—unfixed to any nameable shade—held patience that felt older than language. Every curve of her face suggested warmth, yet none of it reached her.  

She wore black that wasn’t fabric so much as absence tailored into shape. The cut was simple, almost severe: a long gown that could have been spun in any century, without ornament, without seams. It clung as though the air itself held it in place, more suggestion than cloth. At her wrists, faint silver threads flickered when the light caught them like cobwebs, like the last traces of something undone.  

Harry didn’t bother to look away. You couldn’t. That was the trick of her. Every detail told you she was a masterpiece, but none of it let you forget she was also the end of all things.  

She sat across from him without waiting for an invitation, lifting the teacup with unhurried grace. One sip.  

“White lilies. How appropriate. I’ve always liked this about you, my dear. You always had class.”  

I am glad to leave such an impression. His face stayed expressionless, carved still as stone.  

Her gaze drifted to the shelves, tracing over books and trinkets collected across centuries. A silver compass on the wall spun aimlessly, as if it had forgotten what it meant to point.  

“Are we going to do this again, Harold? Still giving me the cold shoulder?”  

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said without an ounce of emotion in his voice.  

Do you know how rare it is for me to walk anywhere? And yet here I am giving you my full attention, but you are not acting like you enjoy me being here.”  

Her voice cooled, the warmth thinning to frost.  

“Well, since it’s okay to not give your full attention to me, I might as well pay some attention to others who are waiting for me as well. You wouldn’t object to that, would you, my dear?”  

Outside, a little boy tore free of his mother’s hand and darted toward the street, straight into the path of a truck.  

Harry met her gaze just as the brakes screamed. A man waiting at the crossing lunged forward, dragging the boy clear. The child lived. The man didn’t.  

Death’s lips curved, tender as a lover’s.  

“There you are,” she said, with affection.  

She stirred her tea with a finger. She brought the cup to her lips, inhaled, and didn’t drink.   

“Are you still not going to give me what I desire, my love?”   

She smiled, looking around the shop like a woman appraising an ex-lover’s new apartment.  

“Do you remember Alexandria?” she asked. “The library was burning around you, scrolls turning to ash while you carried that bleeding oracle down three flights of stairs. You were magnificent. And furious.”  

Her gaze softened. “Or Carthage. The night you dragged a god from his own altar. He begged, Harold. And you didn’t even slow.”  

Harry said nothing, though his jaw clenched.  

She leaned back, voice dropping to a whisper. “Or the war in the north. When you told an army they were already dead. They laid down their swords, every one of them. That was my favourite.”  

Harry exhaled through his nose, then answered:   

“Even though it is nice to remember the good old times, they are just that. Good old times. I am retired. Been retired for the last two millennia. In fact, it was you who gave it to me, if I remember correctly, though it might be the old age that started to get me.”  

Her head tilted, lips curving in something too sharp for a smile.   

“I remember that as well, my dear, but forgive me for assuming, but was it not you who vanished the iceberg just as it was about to hit the Titanic?”   

“Oh, I am still retired, I just didn’t want to hear that song after all this time. It was bloody awful. They played it everywhere.”  

Her eyes narrowed, amused. “And Auschwitz? Who carved the guards apart before they could burn the children?”   

The silence stretched. The compass on the wall kept spinning.  

“And the missile silo, Harold?” Her voice softened to a blade’s edge. “Who whispered in Russian so the world wouldn’t burn?”  

“I just planted a new petunia, you see. Didn’t fancy watching them all die and going to the hassle of re-planting them all over again. Hurts the back, you see.”  

“I am sure it does, my love. You do realize that even an idiot wouldn’t believe these excuses, right? You are and always will be my hunter. Or if you want to rest, you can just accept your mantle, and we can all leave this behind us and go somewhere to have a peaceful eternity.”   

Harry drew a shallow breath when he heard the other alternative again. His voice cracked as he answered her.  

“Didn’t I do enough?” he whispered.  

“Oh, Harry, my love.” She smiled like it hurt. “You act as if all I do is take. Didn’t I grant you two thousand years of peace, free from missions, free from orders? Do you know how hard it is to watch you like this? Fading away in a shop of dust and trinkets. To watch my hunter, my glorious hunter, pretend to be a frightened man.”  

Her hand rose, cold and delicate. She touched his face like a lover, lips brushing his cheek just shy of his mouth. She knew if she tried to kiss him there, he would not let her.  

Her voice lowered, almost breaking with tenderness.  

“You were meant to be my balance. My other half. The one to stand with me for eternity. But you refused. So, I gave you another way. I made you my hunter. I gave you power so vast the other Aspects begged me to take it back. I created you to tip the scale, to bring balance where none existed. And now… now you hide beneath it.”  

Unshed tears shimmered in her eyes. Kreacher, sensing her distress, popped into the study and silently offered her a paper towel. She dabbed them away as if nothing were unusual.  

Harry tried to move, to answer, but found himself fixed in place. His body refused him. His jaw locked. She acted as if she hadn’t noticed, though her gaze lingered long enough to make the restraint deliberate.  

After a pause, she continued in a voice soft and near to breaking.  

“You begged me. Once. Do you remember? After your youngest died. You stood in the ash and screamed for me. I couldn’t come, Harold. Do you know why? Even though I wanted nothing more than to hold you, I wasn’t allowed. I couldn’t stand at your side and watch you die, knowing what was waiting for you, for us.”  

She smiled sadly, a curve sharp enough to cut.  

“So I gave you a purpose. I unleashed you. I let you burn across epochs, take what you needed, bleed what you had to. And when the fury had spent itself, I gave you a holiday. Two millennia to heal. To listen to yourself. But you didn’t heal. You hid. You buried yourself in a dusty shop and pretended to be still.”  

Her grip on him loosened. Harry drew in a shallow breath, voice rasping when it finally came.  

“I never wanted to become your weapon.”  

Her smile turned indulgent, almost maternal.  

“But you never needed to become my weapon, my love. I gave you a choice, didn’t I? You could have left all behind us. You could have become my equal. You choose not to. You chose to become a weapon instead of my other half. You choose to become the weapon. You choose to be my hunter. Even though you rejected me, I still gave you purpose. I still stood by you. When you shattered timelines, I stitched them back together. When you lost someone, I took their hand and promised to guide them. When you starved, I stood over you until you could stand again.”  

Her eyes burned, dark and tender all at once.  

“And this is how you repay me? Coldness? Rejection?”  

Harry didn’t move. Couldn’t.  

She stepped closer, slower this time. Each movement measured, as if circling something fragile. Or already broken.  

“You are changing from how I designed you, Harold. And that scares me.” Her voice dipped, almost breaking. “Have you forgotten your purpose? Forgotten why we are here?”  

Her words hardened, silk wrapping steel.  

“Then let me remind you.”  

Darkness fell. Above her, the ceiling cracked like history itself splitting. From the fracture, something spilled.  

A field of stars unfolded across the ceiling. Millions. Maybe billions. Each one pulsing, each one his. Every hunt he had ever taken.  

She reached out and touched one. It flared brighter until a faint scream bled into the room.  

“You killed this one with a glass shard in the Old Forest. Said he spoke too much.” She chuckled softly.  

“He did,” Harry muttered. Once he realised he could talk, he continued, “I’ve met riddles with clearer sentence structure.”  

Another star flared.  

“You made a warlock so terrified he ate his own name rather than face you.”  

“Technically, I only introduced myself and handed him a scroll. Free will did the rest.”  

More stars pulsed to life, each one flaring, then dimming again.  

“Voldemort. Koschei. Morgan le Fay. Orpheus the Undone. The Ashen Seer. Eleven shades of Cain.”  

Every name glowed, flared, then faded back into the field.  

“Every last one of them outran me,” she said softly. “Until you.”  

Harry rolled his neck and glanced at the ceiling. “Quite an impressive list, is it not? And you still ask me why I wanted to retire.”  

“You called yourself the Master of Death.”  

“I was drunk, seventeen, and bleeding. It was a theme year.”  

“You meant it.”  

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “I also meant to save my loved ones. Look how well that turned out.”  

The stars shifted again. This time, they weren’t names but faces. Some he knew too well. Some still haunted him after all this time.  

“You still remember them,” she said softly. “Still feel them.”  

“I don’t forget easily,” he muttered.  

“But that’s the point, my dear.” She stepped closer until there was barely a breath between them. Her voice dropped to a whisper.  

“You were never meant to forget. You were meant to end. To offer them my comforts. To guide them.”  

Harry let out a short, humourless laugh.  

“Charming. I must’ve missed the part where you wrote my job description in blood and commitment issues.”  

She chuckled softly.  

“You’re still angry.”  

“Anger takes energy,” he muttered. “I’m just…too tired for this.”  

“You were always stubborn.”  

“I had to be.” His gaze didn’t move from hers. “You never gave me a way out. Just new places to break things in.”  

She stopped circling.  

“I gave you a choice.”  

“It was not a choice that I could make.”  

He stared at her for a long, cold moment. Then the corner of his mouth tugged in something that wasn’t quite a smile.  

“Purpose, orders, destiny… You dress it up well. Doesn’t make the leash any softer.”  

She ignored him, the way she always did when his words cut too close. Instead, the stars shifted once more, folding, twisting, until they became a spiral.  

They weren’t stars anymore. They were holes.  

Each one a wound.  

Every place he had burned through the multiverse.  

“Do you see it?” she whispered, reverent.  

“You are not a man. You, my love, are an event. A phenomenon. In some circles, they call you the Bringer of the End. They fear you and worship you in the same breath. Even in this new age, they still remember. You’ve always had names. In Sumer, Erra. In Egypt, Osiris and many more.”  

Her eyes glittered, merciless and tender.  

“You see, dear. You are not only a man anymore. Stop pretending you are.”  

Harry’s jaw worked, then he let out a low breath.  

“I’m just a tired bastard in a dusty shop. That’s what I’ve been for the last two millennia. And I don’t intend to change it now.”  

“The time is coming, Harry. If you wait and do nothing, it will be too late even for you.”  

“Maybe that’s better.”  

“If you believed that, you would have accepted my offer, love.”  

Harry’s mouth twisted. “Yes. But some days, I wish I did.”  

She smiled inwardly at his confession. Soon, he would break. Soon, he would come to his senses. How she wanted to push him just a little harder. But she stopped herself. Broken things were easy to keep. She wanted him whole. A little damaged but whole  

“I will give you an offer, my dear. Save this world with all you have. Stop the events that are going to happen, and I will let you leave. I will let you die.”  

“Deal,” he said without even thinking about it. Though after looking back to this specific moment, he would curse himself for agreeing to something without listening to the full deal.  

She smiled with a predatory look.   

“Good, my dear, but there is one minor detail. You will not be able to use my powers. You, of course, will still have your own powers, but the protections and cosmic powers you get from me will be shackled. So that if you save the world, you will know that you did it with your own powers, not with mine.”   

His body stiffened. But this was his only way to escape, so he nodded.    

She held his gaze one last time. Her voice was soft, but merciless.  

“But if you fail, if you disobey, we continue. Until the last star in the last universe dies, I will not let you go. You will belong to me. Do you understand me?”  

Harry’s breath caught.  

“I’ll never love you.”  

She smiled, indulgent in his defiance.  

“Then I’ll settle for keeping you.”  

And with that, she kissed his forehead from the place where he had a scar in his first world. Then he felt unimaginable pain. When he woke up, she was gone. Leaving only absence, as if she had never been there at all.  

He got up from the floor where he had fallen due to the pain. He looked around the room that he was in. It felt different somehow. The whole place was feeling different. He realised it was the wards. Before, they were humming with his power. They were listening to his every desire and whim on an instinctual level that no other magical wards could replicate. But now they felt dulled, lifeless. The next thing he realized was the silence around him. The reality no longer creaked around him. He felt like himself again.  

-May 1st 2008- 

A few months later, while he was manning his shop, a ticking sound caught his attention. After the last of the customers left, he turned the sign above the door to closed. He walked up to the counter. Every step carried the weight of something he didn’t want to do. Something he had been dreading.  

From beneath, he pulled out a box. Inside was a single clock. He stared at it for a long time before placing it on the counter. The ticking was getting louder and louder every second. He took the watch with him to his study. Ticking got much louder the closer he got to the TV in his study. With the knowledge that his mission had started, he turned the TV on.  

“Breaking news out of Afghanistan this morning. Defense contractor and billionaire inventor Tony Stark is missing after what officials are calling a ‘coordinated attack’ on a military convoy. Stark Industries representatives have confirmed that Mr. Stark was present during a demonstration of the company’s new weapons system when the convoy was ambushed by unidentified insurgents. U.S. military search operations are already underway, though no details have been released about casualties or the current status of Mr. Stark.” 

"Well, it is time to start then," he muttered while walking to the shelves of his library. 

The shelves responded at once, realigning themselves. Old things emerged. Trinkets that had been buried pushed forward.  

On the back wall, a shelf he hadn’t looked at in a century began to glow faintly, waiting. He reached for it and withdrew a folded parchment. Ancient, so fragile it could crumble into dust with a touch. But it didn’t. His things knew better than that.  

He spread it open across the counter.  

Leylines. Rupture sites. Magical zones. Surveillance markers.  

His finger tapped the map’s centre.  

It pulsed once. A red light appeared. Afghanistan.  

The clock on the counter started ticking, as if to say it was time.  

He rolled his shoulders. The cloak emerged from them, stirring like it had been asleep far too long.  

He looked around his shop. He knew what he was supposed to do. And for the first time in eons, he didn’t fight it. He embraced it.  

It was time to hunt.  

 The first thing he realised was the heat. After the cold of New York, the heat was a pleasant change. What was in front of him was a little village made from rocks and tents. Then he saw the weapons. There were enough missiles and guns for a small army. He read the mind of someone passing by. After learning their goals, he changed his mind about how to approach this mission. At first, he was going to silently save Stark and leave the premises. But after learning about what they were about to do with the weapons, he decided that was not an option.    

He started with the people inside the tents. Most of them were eating or talking to each other. None of them even realised something was amiss before they lost their lives. Some bone breakers to the skulls, or if there were more than a few, he would just cast a sleep spell on them, then finish the job while they were sleeping.  

There had been twenty-seven inside the tents. Once they were finished, he turned to the caves. A whispered Homenum Revelio revealed thirty-seven more stationed as guards outside. He then started to pick them up one by one. Some succumbed to the need for sleep and never woke up. Some suddenly decided that the knife in their hand would look wonderful in their necks, and others just fell like a puppet that was cut from its strings after a green light.  

After dealing with the people who were outside, he started to deal with the ones on the inside. There were 23 people inside the cave system. 4 were protecting the prisoners, 10 were guarding the room of their leader, and 9 were watching Stark and Yinsen from their monitors like a hawk. He turned himself invisible and started to walk up to the door that the prisoners were behind.

From the sounds coming from just outside the door, some of the guards were trying to break through the door. With a few well-placed reducto, the four that were trying to enter fell with their heads separated from their bodies. He then turned himself visible again and used an underpowered confringo to blow the door from its hinges. Then, with an arresto momentum, he stopped the door from flying through and hurting the people on the other side.  

Inside were two people. Stark and Yinsen. They were both looking dumbfounded at the entrance of a man with a bone white mask and battle armour.  

"Come on, I don't have all day to help you escape. Stark, leave the armour, we do not have the time for it. Come behind me, I am getting you out."  

Before they could say anything, the nine who were watching were at the door with their weapons. Harry waved his hand, and something explosive flew through the air and exploded the nine into mush.  

"MOVE YOU IDIOTS!" he yelled and started to walk up to the cave entrance.  Before they could get to the exit, all the remaining people were there waiting for them. The leader Raza Hamidmi al-Wazar had a rocket launcher in his hand and was smiling. Even before he could threaten them, Harry just waved his hand again, and the rocket launcher exploded, killing everyone around it.                

When they exited the cave and saw the massacre that was in front of them, Tony found his voice.  

"Who are you? Who sent you? Did you kill all of them by yourself? Can you help us get to the city?"  

"Doesn't matter, no one, yes, and I could, but I will instead just let your friend find you here."  

Before Tony could ask any more questions, he and Yinsen dropped to the sand with a sleeping charm. Harry raised his arm and sent a flare that would get the attention of the army that was searching for Tony. Then he erased himself from the minds of Tony and Yinsen. Now they would only remember up to the point that their door was blown up. After he was done, he turned himself invisible and started to wait for the army to find the place.  

It took less than 2 hours for the army to find the place. Once they realised the situation that Tony and Yinsen were in, they were taken to an emergency hospital. Then the army started to raid the place and catalogued everything they found. After the army left, Harry teleported himself back to his shop. The ticking that was coming from the clock had stopped. Which meant he was successful. At least for now. 

The stillness broke with him. And the story began to shift. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: The Price of Becoming

The ruins still smoked.

Harry stepped through the ash as if it didn’t touch him, cloak trailing behind like a shadow politely refusing to stain. Beneath a mound of scorched rubble, he found the limp, bloodied frame of Ho Yinsen. The man’s breath stuttered, shallow and broken. Fingers twitched in a mimicry of life. Not long now.

Harry crouched.

He didn’t speak. Just laid his palm gently on Yinsen’s forehead. The bleeding stopped. The breath steadied. Frozen — caught in the amber of borrowed time.

With a flick of his hand, Harry lifted the unconscious man from the ground. He floated upward like memory rising from grief and came to rest in the center of the compound’s clearing. Dust coiled, hesitant, around where he landed.

Harry moved again.

The fires hadn’t died. Some burned in barrels. Others in piles of shattered metal. Stark’s rage made manifest.

Harry didn’t smother them. He only looked — and they guttered. The smoke thickened, then sank.

He stepped lightly between scorched earth and dismembered machines, eyes scanning for the living.

There were a few.

One soldier, pinned beneath a steel beam. Another crawling, lungs wet. A third clutching a gun.

Each time Harry approached, time gave way. The air slowed, folded — like someone turning down the volume of a scream.

Each man froze. Suspended. Caught within a moment that refused to pass.

Except one.

Burned across half his face, shaking, barely breathing — a man too stubborn to die.

Harry paused. Looked.

And reached down. A shimmer passed between them. Flesh unblistered slightly. Lungs drew cleaner air.

“Not your time,” Harry murmured.

Then he moved on.

He placed each frozen body beside Yinsen — not for reverence, but containment. A shape began to form — concentric stillness, wrapped around a single man who’d once sparked a god.

Harry approached the weapons next. Assault rifles. Burnt-out RPGs. Scraps of high-grade ordinance.

He raised one finger.

The metals creaked. Rust bloomed in waves. Barrels folded in on themselves, pockmarked with time they hadn’t lived. The ground absorbed them like it had been waiting.

One by one, the tools of war became relics. Refused by time itself.

The wind shifted.

Somewhere beneath the ash, the ticking of a soldier’s watch stuttered, then stopped.

Harry exhaled — and only then realized he hadn’t been breathing.

Far above, a satellite adjusted its lens and found nothing but static.

He looked up, briefly.

And walked to the center of the silence.

The clock in his coat — the one that had ticked through timelines, through ruin and retreat — gave a final, thin click.

Then, it too, went still.

The silence didn’t last.
It never did, with her.

A breeze cut sideways across the desert — dry, deliberate, smelling faintly of rosewater and ozone.

And then she was there.

Not arriving. Simply present.

Red hair. Deathly pale skin. A white sundress that fluttered like a flag of surrender worn by someone who’d never surrendered in her existence. Oversized sunglasses hid her eyes, but not the smirk curling at the corners of her mouth.

"Nice place for a retirement party," she said, stepping over a half-melted rifle like it was litter. "Though I would’ve gone with a beach. Or a cliff. Or literally anywhere with less... charred spleen."

Harry didn’t flinch. Didn’t sigh. He just looked up with a gaze honed by centuries.

“Spying on me again?”

“Harold,” she cooed, pulling the sunglasses down just enough to reveal a glint of something ancient, amused, and faintly deranged. “I never stopped. You're my favorite reality show. Yes, the last two millennia have been a tad... sleepy. But I hear brooding sells well to younger audiences.”

He raised a brow. “If I knew you’d been watching, I would've charged a subscription fee.”

“Oh, darling,” she laughed. “You have no idea how many pantheons would pay top-tier for a front-row seat to your slow spiral into heroic depression.”

She drifted closer, sand refusing to touch her feet.

“But even with your ratings,” she said softly, “did you really think you could steal from me?”

Harry tilted his head. “I thought we’d moved past the whole possessive dramatics phase. I mean, you said this universe needed intervention. I intervened. Heroically, I might add.”

She squinted. “Heroic? You froze thirty-seven men in the moment of death and tried to bottle the moment like a souvenir.”

“They were soldiers.”

“They were mine.”

“I didn’t take them,” Harry said. “I just… stopped the clock.”

She stopped moving.

“That entire camp was a ticking altar,” she said, voice suddenly without ornament. “Breath held in ritual. Fate aligned like teeth. And you silenced it mid-prayer.”

He didn’t answer. Not right away.

“They didn’t deserve it,” he said finally. “Not all of them. Some of them were just scared boys in stolen uniforms.”

“They were dying,” she said. “And you made the whole desert forget how.”

A pause.

“Is that what you are now?” she added, quieter. “The god who grants amnesty to bullets mid-flight?”

“You said this world needed help,” Harry said, jaw tight. “You said it was fraying. I’m helping.”

“You’re reshaping.”

“I’m redirecting.”

“You’re overriding.”

He stepped back a pace. Not fear. Just space. Breathing room that didn’t help.

“You always said I was a weapon,” he said. “Maybe it’s time I tried to be something else.”

She laughed. Once. Sharp as glass.

“Then be a scalpel, Harold. Not a storm.”

He crossed his arms. “Compassion can be surgical.”

“You're not a surgeon, Harry. You’re entropy wearing a face.”

He looked away. “I was just trying to stop the screaming.”

She tilted her head. “Then why am I the only one screaming now?”

He didn’t answer.

She closed the space between them like gravity shifting sideways — not a step, just inevitability.

“You remember what happens when I get angry, right?”

“Vividly. I still have scars in timelines no longer in circulation.”

She smiled wider. “You have two choices, my wayward myth.”

“Let me guess. Play nice, or you pull the leash?”

She tsked. “Always so dramatic. No, Harold. This world doesn’t need gods wrapped in cloaks, meddling with echoes. It needs people. Idiots. Bleeding, sweating, failing.”

“Humanity porn. Got it.”

“You’re too loud. Even now, barely moving, you twist ley lines and rewrite causality. There’s a knockoff sci-fi show that thinks you're a British immortal with a phone box, for hell’s sake.”

Harry blinked. “...Seriously?”

She grinned. “And it’s not even the worst portrayal.”

But her amusement faded, quiet as dusk.

“You weren’t made for this kind of mercy,” she said. “You were made to end things cleanly. Quietly. Without favor.”

He held her gaze. “I’m unmaking what I was made for.”

“You say that every time.”

“And you never believe me.”

“Because it always ends the same,” she whispered. “You intervene. You bend. You break something. And then you ask me to forgive you after.”

His voice dropped. “I didn’t ask.”

“That’s the problem.”

She moved closer again — no steps, just presence.

“There are consequences, Harry.”

He stayed still.

She reached up and gently adjusted his collar. Fingers cool as river stone.

“I’ll gag your magic in your throat and let you choke on helplessness again. I won’t even have to touch you.”

His jaw flexed. “You already did that.”

“Zurich wasn’t punishment. It was rehearsal.”

She leaned in, voice in his ear. “You scream well, Harold. But not beautifully.”

He said nothing.

“This isn’t your story,” she whispered. “It’s theirs. You don’t get to rewrite every ending because pain doesn’t grant permission.”

Her tone softened, nearly fond.

“And don’t pretend you don’t want to. You always want to.”

He closed his eyes.

He saw the man he’d cradled from ash.
Yinsen. Still. Saved. For now.
And all the soldiers, frozen in a silence they hadn't earned.

A whole field of almost-corpses, waiting.

A god’s stillborn anger.

“This isn’t a leash,” Harry said. “It’s a muzzle.”

“You bark too loud.”

A pause.

“So choose.”

He didn’t move.

The weight of power gathered like breath in his chest. He didn’t want to let it go. Not after this. Not when for the first time in decades, the silence had answered him back.

But the world would bend again if he didn’t. Reality couldn’t keep folding itself around him like a favorite coat.

So he exhaled.

And opened his hand.

The last shimmer of mythic energy curled in his fingertips, then vanished — a silent agreement, a leash accepted by the wolf.

She smiled. Brushed her fingers along his cheek.

“Good boy.”

She stepped back — just once.

“Oh — and Harold?”

He did not answer.

She winked. “Next time, ask before you try playing saint. I might just say yes.”

Then, with a sound like absence folding in on itself, she was gone.

She did not vanish. The moment simply stopped needing her.

The desert blinked.

And was alone again.

The wind didn’t return right away.

Even after she left, silence lingered — brittle and sharp, like air around a lightning strike. Harry stood in it, still as ash. Around him, the soldiers remained frozen, their last moments suspended like breath caught in a dying throat.

He looked at them.

Dozens — frozen mid-scream, mid-stagger, mid-prayer. Some with weapons still clutched. Others already gone before he arrived. Expressions twisted in pain, fury, resolve. Not all deserved saving. But not all deserved this.

His shoulders sagged.

He knew what came next. Death never took what he’d stolen. She waited. Made him return it. Made him choose who died. It wasn’t punishment — it was intimacy. A different kind of cruelty. A sharper kind of leash.

He stepped forward and began to draw.

With a wave of his hand, the ash parted. The cracked earth beneath the battlefield shifted, baring dry stone. His finger dipped to the ground — drew a triangle, then a circle within, then a line bisecting both.

The Hallows.

The oldest mark he knew. The only one that still listened.

The symbol pulsed once, low and deep — not visible, but felt. In the air. In his ribs.

He rose, and the bodies followed.

Each floated forward with eerie grace, suspended by threads unseen. He laid them within the sigil — careful, reverent, like placing weights on a scale he couldn’t afford to tip.

Then he paused.

His eyes fell on Yinsen.

Not glowing. Not twitching. Still breathing.

Just a man — ordinary in the way martyrs are before history finishes writing them.

Harry’s hand hovered.

Maybe he couldn’t save them all. But maybe… just one.

He reached into his coat. Pulled a coin from the folds — simple, dull, worn smooth by centuries of indecision. He studied it a moment longer than he needed to.

Then he began to speak.

The language that followed didn’t belong to mouths. It hadn’t echoed in ears for eons. The sound curled rather than rang — like meaning that chose you instead of being heard.

The air responded.

Wind reversed. Gravity shifted a hair sideways. Ash recoiled.

The bodies glowed — not with fire, but with memory. A low pulse behind their eyes. The echo of choices they'd made, and ones they never would. Each breath caught. Each soul flickered.

And Harry chanted.

The light in the bodies brightened. Hummed. Danced. Then — as if pulled by a tide — it began to flow.

Toward the coin.

One by one, each soldier’s glow dimmed. Slowly. Reluctantly. Until they weren’t glowing at all. Until they weren’t paused at all.

Until they were truly, completely dead.

The coin in Harry’s hand throbbed with stolen radiance — not chaotic, not wild. Controlled. Buried. Anchored. Balanced against silence.

He turned.

Knelt beside Yinsen.

Pressed two fingers to the man’s brow.

And the visions came.

Chains. Steel. Cold, hot, and cold again.
Fingernails cracked from pulling metal in darkness.
A boy, barely ten, watching a village burn — his brother running back into the fire.
Years alone. Years teaching. Years fixing. Years kneeling next to broken men with no chance left and giving them one anyway.
A jail cell. A lie told in quiet Turkish. A breath held beside a stranger.
Then pain.
The explosion.
The ringing in his ears.
The blood.
And through it — the quiet acceptance of death.
Not passivity. Not surrender.
Choice.

Harry staggered slightly. The memory left slowly — like a blade withdrawing from his ribs. He opened his eyes.

“This is not a second chance,” he said, voice soft and heavy. “It’s overtime. A thank you. And a plea.”

He placed the coin in Yinsen’s palm.

“You gave yourself to save a man who would change the world,” Harry said. “I need you to do it again.”

Yinsen stirred — eyes flickering — breathing like someone waking from drowning. He didn’t speak.

“You’ll have time,” Harry continued. “Until the world calls. Then I’ll come for you. Do you accept?”

There was a pause.

Then — slowly — Yinsen nodded.

The moment the coin touched his skin, his body jerked. A flash of pain twisted his features — his shoulders, his breath — a cry caught in his throat and choked there.

Then silence.

And he was gone.

No flash. No swirl. No fire. Just… not there anymore.

Like he'd never been there at all.

Harry stayed kneeling.

The circle dimmed.

One by one, the other bodies inside the ritual faded into dust. Some left behind ash. Some left nothing.

Only the coin’s warmth in the air lingered — like breath held in stone.

He stood.

Stared at the mark on the ground — now dulled, fading.

“If she wants me limited,” he said softly, “then I’ll choose how.”

The coin was gone. But something in the world had shifted — subtly, deeply.

Time stirred. The weave of causality loosened its grip.

And slowly — slowly — the silence broke.

The wind returned. The temperature rose. The sun remembered it was day. The spell on the desert released its hold, and the world exhaled.

Harry felt it immediately.

He was smaller now. Not depleted. Not broken. But quieter. The weight in his bones lightened. The ripple he left in the air calmed.

He was no longer war.

Just a man.

He looked at the place where Yinsen had been — then at the coin’s imprint in the dust, already vanishing.

A slow breath.

And for the first time in hours, he felt real again. Grounded. Like gravity had forgiven him.

He turned away from the circle.

Behind him, the air held steady — just air now. Nothing watching. Nothing waiting. No thunder in his blood. No tremor in the seams of reality.

Just Harry.

Not the Ender.

Not today.

He glanced back once. The dust had already begun to settle, as if the desert was eager to forget what had almost happened. Only a faint mark remained — the shadow of a circle scorched into stone.

Harry crouched.

Brushed his fingers through it.

Then stood and walked away, leaving no footprints.

The world did not follow.

But something watched — quiet, hidden, and burning like a coin beneath the skin of time.

The screen flickered again.

“Still corrupted?”
Agent Leah Wessex leaned forward, her fingers tightening around a coffee mug gone cold. The image on the monitor stuttered, then smeared sideways — a distortion, not a malfunction.

“Not corrupted,” said Tech Specialist Jandro. “Just... real-time impossible.”
He tapped a few keys. The footage jumped back six frames and froze.

A man stood in the center of the desert, shrouded in heat shimmer — except there was no heat. No thermal reading. No heartbeat. No measurable shadow.

“Replay from the Jericho impact window,” Jandro murmured. “Stark escapes. Shockwave disperses. Then this... figure appears, exactly one minute and twenty-two seconds after detonation. Like he was waiting for the fallout to clear.”

Wessex frowned. “Is he doing anything?”

“Frame forward. Slowly.”

They watched.

The air bent around the man — and then, like dominoes in reverse, bodies rose behind him. Not by limbs. Not by strings. Just… upward. Slowly. Like time remembered them too late.

Then came the anomaly.

A single flash. White. Not saturation. Not static. Not any frequency SHIELD had clearance to quantify.

When the feed resumed, the crater was silent. Bodies gone. Gear rusted. Sand undisturbed except for—

“Freeze it there,” Wessex said. “What is that?”

At the blast zone’s center, a pattern had been burned into the earth.

—

Agent Reyes squatted at the perimeter of the mark, dragging his gloved fingers through loose grit.

“It’s deep,” he muttered into his comm. “Deeper than the ash layer. Not carved. Not burned. Imprinted.”

“What’s the shape?” Hill’s voice crackled over the line.

“A triangle. Circle inside it. And a line — straight through the middle.”
He stood and looked down at the full formation. “It’s too clean. No drag, no spatter. Not even wind erosion. Like it wasn’t made in this layer of the world.”

A pause.

“Radiation signature?”

“None. But the EM field is... weird.” He glanced at the handheld sensor. “It’s bending outward. Like it’s refusing to let anything in. You touch the line, it pushes back.”

“Psychic residue?”

Reyes hesitated. Then: “It’s... not noise, Director. It’s almost silence. Like standing next to someone praying, but you don’t speak the language and they won’t stop.”

Another agent knelt beside him. “Sir. Found partial footprints again. Same direction. Same boot pattern.”

“They stop again?”

The agent nodded. “Mid-stride. Into the mark. Then nothing.”

Reyes looked at the dust, then the sky. “Whoever this was — they didn’t vanish. They exited.”

—

Fury didn’t look up from the looping footage as Coulson entered the briefing room.

“I assume you’ve seen the satellite images, sir?” Coulson asked, tone soft.

“I’ve seen too much and not enough,” Fury replied. “We’ve got a man-shaped hole in physics standing on a battlefield with no bodies and a signature that doesn’t even register on Asgardian relic scans.”

Hill sat across from him, scrolling through a secondary feed. “The circle is old. I mean, pre-symbolic cognition old. We ran it through all known runic, proto-pantheonic, and arcane language databases. Closest match is Babylonian death-rites with overlaid Celtic geomancy.”

“Sounds fancy,” Coulson said. “Means?”

“It shouldn’t exist,” Hill replied. “Not in one piece. Not in one place. And definitely not glowing like it wants to be noticed.”

Fury finally looked up. “Remind me what we know.”

Coulson ticked points off his fingers.

“One: Stark escaped. Timeline checks.
Two: This figure appears after. Not before. Not during.
Three: Multiple enemy combatants disappear.
Four: Time signature anomalies register on orbital sensors — sharp dip in entropy field. Like something locked time in a box for seven minutes.”

“And five?” Fury asked.

Coulson hesitated. “There’s no record of this being. Anywhere. No face match. No gait profile. No suit. No tech. No scent.”

“Scent?” Hill asked.

Coulson shrugged. “We’re running out of ways to look for him.”

Fury’s stare stayed locked on the screen. “We’re not dealing with a man.”

Hill folded her arms. “You think it’s a god?”

“I think it’s something pretending not to be.” He stood. “He didn’t attack. He didn’t destroy. But he didn’t help either. He rearranged the mess. Cleaned the board.”

He walked to the window, looking out at the morning skyline.

“He’s not just above our paygrade. He’s beyond our paradigm.”

“So what’s our move?” Coulson asked.

Fury turned, one eye gleaming.

“First we find out if he’s local. If he’s been hiding in plain sight. You can’t make footprints without walking somewhere first.”

“And when we find him?”

Fury’s jaw flexed.

“We ask nicely. And if that doesn’t work... we learn how to whisper loud enough for gods to hear.”

The shop had changed.

It no longer strained to contain him.

No magic clung to the ceiling. No pressure thickened the air like storm humidity. The silence felt clean — emptied of reverence or fear.

Harry stepped inside and let the door close behind him. The bell above it gave a soft chime — off-key, slightly delayed. Like it had forgotten how to ring properly without pressure behind it.

The wards stirred. Their usual twitch of reverence was gone. Instead, they shifted aside — almost gently.

He paused in the entryway.

A brass lantern flickered overhead — not a warning, not intelligence. Something more like recognition.

The air was warmer than he remembered.

He crossed the threshold into the main room. Shelves groaned gently — wood stretching, as if waking from a long winter. A nearby cabinet creaked open by half an inch — a small movement he hadn’t heard in decades.

He moved behind the counter. The stool was slightly crooked, legs uneven, like someone had shifted it in his absence. The teacup on the counter was empty — but it was turned toward him.

He stared at it for a moment, then looked away.

The shop didn’t distort to meet him anymore. Its magic aligned beside his. That, he hadn’t felt in ages.

His hand drifted to an old jar — one sealed with a riddle instead of a lid. The words unfurled without prompting:

“Welcome home, boy.”

He blinked once.

That jar hadn’t spoken since the Siege of Prague. He hadn’t been “boy” to anything in a few millenniums.

His gaze scanned the room. A windchime above the staircase — tuned to detect ambient grief — gave a single ring and fell quiet. The feather on the far wall lifted slightly — not at magic’s call, but at something older. Familiarity, maybe.

The shop didn’t see a title or an echo of war. Only Harry.

He removed his coat. The fabric gave a small sigh — maybe from dust. Maybe from something else. He folded it over the back of the stool and sat down with care.

For the first time since sealing the coin, he let himself breathe all the way in.

He met no resistance, no echo, no shifting ley lines. Only breath. Only air.

He touched the worn wood beneath his fingers. Felt the grain. Let the magic in his bones settle.

He was still powerful. Still layered in runes no one could read, still shaped by war and wonder and too many deaths to name.

But the eldritch pressure had receded. The world no longer twisted to accommodate his presence.

And the shop remembered him.

It didn’t echo his myth. It remembered the boy underneath.

Something thudded lightly behind him — a drawer, half-stuck, finally sliding open. He turned.

Inside, wrapped in a fold of black cloth, sat a faded Polaroid. It hadn’t been there when he left.

He stepped over. Lifted the cloth.

The image was barely holding together. A young boy, untidy hair, one eyebrow raised in surprise — mid-laugh. Arms flung around the neck of a great black dog. Behind him, a redheaded girl blurred from movement.

His mouth twitched — a motion shy of smiling.

He didn’t remember placing this here.

Maybe he never had.

He returned to the counter with the photo. Set it down beside the cup. Then turned toward the wall that used to hold dangerous things.

The shelf was still empty. But something gleamed faintly in the gap between wood slats — a shimmer that refused to vanish entirely.

A memory of power. Or maybe its echo.

He left it untouched.

Instead, he poured tea. No spell. Just boiled water, loose leaves, and quiet hands.

The scent — lemon balm and black pepper — unfurled like familiarity returning.

He sat.

He drank.

He looked out the window.

Outside, the world moved. No flinches. No flight. No presence watching.

He could feel the difference in his bones. The strain was gone. He wasn’t dragging the sky behind him anymore. He’d unhitched it. Left it with the coin. And with it, the part of him that made silence scream.

He finished the tea. The cup stayed. The shop stayed still.

And yet — something responded.

A glint beneath the floorboards. A hum in the shelf he’d long since forgotten. A book shifted, just slightly, on the top row — as if finally remembering whose story it held.

He exhaled slowly.

“Let’s try it this way,” he said to the room, to himself, to whatever still listened. “For a while.”

He stood.

The photograph stayed behind.

So did the warmth.

And when he crossed the threshold into the back room, the bell above the door gave a soft chime — on key, this time — as if something small had nodded in return.

And for the first time in a very long while, the shop whispered back.

He left the god behind. The boy, it seemed, was finally welcome again

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 8

The Howling Stag was still.

One candle had burned nearly to the base, its flame twitching more from exhaustion than breeze. The record player sat idle, needle untouched. The Kneazle—curled tight atop the bookshelf—didn’t stir.

Harry sat in the chair by the window, paperback open in one hand, a chipped mug resting in the other. The book was a mystery novel. Someone had recommended it months ago. He’d forgotten who. He was three pages in and hadn’t turned one in half an hour.

His tea had gone cold.

The air was still — stale with age and shut windows.

He shifted slightly. Bone met wood. He felt it in his jaw — pressure, not pain. Even when the body didn’t complain, he noticed the wear.

The room had been quiet for so long, even the corners felt blurred.

Tap.

He blinked.

Tap. Tap.

Something at the front window.

A raven.

The bird looked ordinary. Black. Broad. Nothing strange except its eyes.

Its gaze held his. Steady. Familiar. Enough to tighten the space around him.

Of course.

Harry lowered the book.

“Of course you’d send a bloody raven,” he muttered.

The bird didn’t respond. Its feet shifted once against the glass. Nothing else.

Harry stared back. Made no move to stand.

He knew what it meant. She was watching again. This wasn’t a request.

He sighed through his nose and set the cold tea on the side table. The Kneazle opened one eye but didn’t stir. Smart creature.

He rose carefully. His knees didn’t pop, but they considered it.

He crossed the room. No magic stirred behind him. No light bent at his edges. He walked like a man. That had been the point.

Near the coat rack, the Cloak shifted slightly — just enough to catch his eye.

He ignored it for now.

Instead, he moved to the shelf by the till and checked the pocket watch. Still cracked across the face. Still ticking. No alarm. Only time, dragging on.

He grunted softly. “Stark. Again.”

His hand hovered near the watch a moment longer. Then he let it go.

He walked to the back room without rush. The floor creaked where it always creaked. The curtain dragged its same uneven line across the tile.

Inside: a simple drawer.

He opened it. Inside were four things. One black shirt, neatly folded. One protein bar—date just expired. A coil of cloth, long enough to wrap a forearm twice. A ring. Onyx, smooth, unadorned.

He took none of it.

Not yet.

Closed the drawer. Stepped back into the front room.

The raven hadn’t moved.

“You could’ve sent a note,” Harry said.

The bird blinked. Slow. Deliberate.

The Kneazle sat up now. Curious, but not concerned. It didn’t follow him. It never did when she sent something.

Harry moved to the cloak. Let his fingers rest on the edge for a beat. Then lifted it.

It fell over his shoulders the way an old coat should. Nothing showy — just fabric, worn but faithful.

He looked at the room instead.

“I’ll keep it quiet,” he said. “For now.”

He left without sound. The bell above the door stayed silent. Not from spellwork — from habit.

The raven remained on the windowsill for a full minute after he vanished.

Then it hopped once, spread its wings, and launched into the air.

It disappeared mid-flap.

Like someone had cut the frame.

The lab was still.

The power was off. Equipment sat cold. Heat clung to the floor like residue.

Wires lay tangled in loops. Drawers hung open. The air reeked of solder, coolant, and sweat. A cracked mug balanced on a blueprint sheet, its contents dried to a dark crust. One of the screens near the diagnostics bench had shorted — a line of melted plastic curled off its edge.

Tony Stark slumped against the workbench.

His shirt was torn open. The arc reactor socket in his chest was empty. Skin gray. Fingers twisted and motionless. One foot tapped a slow, unconscious rhythm against the metal flooring — the kind of movement nerves made when breath was failing.

A soft pop disturbed the air near the shelves.

Harry stumbled — barely — and steadied himself against a crate. His balance adjusted a second late. The floor felt half a step off. His stomach clenched like it had tried to arrive a moment earlier than the rest of him.

The air tasted like metal and old heat. A faint crackle stayed behind his teeth.

He breathed once. Shook his head.

“Right. Haven’t done that in a while.”

He rolled one shoulder. It didn’t help.

“Still unpleasant.”

He took in the room — the silence, the scattered tools, the shape of a man bleeding into stillness.

He knelt beside Stark. Placed two fingers against his neck.

The pulse was faint. Sluggish. But still present.

The socket was worse than expected. Torn wires. Burn marks. Swollen skin.

“Even unconscious, you make it theatrical.”

He stood. Crossed the room to the wall-mounted case.

The original arc reactor sat behind a panel of reinforced glass. Still glowing. Barely.

No AI. No standby hum. No warning. The room had gone dead around him.

He struck the glass with the heel of his palm.

It shattered in one hit. Shards hit the floor and rolled.

He reached in. Took the arc reactor.

It was warm. Not hot — but enough to feel alive. It buzzed faintly in his hand.

He returned to Stark.

The port was misaligned. The contacts were skewed. A fresh burn arced through one edge. A rushed job. Ripped out.

He set the reactor down and pressed two fingers to the socket rim. Tested the fit. It wouldn’t align without help.

He picked up the device again. Whispered something low — not a spell. Just breath and direction.

A line of faint light flickered across his forearm. Controlled. Minimal.

The wires adjusted. Contact leads shifted. The socket realigned by degrees.

He pressed the arc reactor into place. It clicked once. The core lit.

Tony jolted. A sharp inhale. His arms kicked once, then settled. His chest rose. Then again.

Color returned — not much, but enough to stay alive.

Harry waited.

One breath. Two.

“You better be worth this,” he muttered. “Again.”

He stood.

Glass crunched underfoot as he turned.

The display case lay in pieces.

He raised his hand. A line of faint light flickered across his forearm. Controlled. Minimal.

The shards lifted. Fitted back into place. The cracks closed. One seam at a time.

He reached into his coat, pulled a folded scrap of paper, and slid it into the case where the arc reactor had been.

Try not to lose this one.

He adjusted the Cloak at his collar.

“Pop. Still unpleasant.”

And he vanished.

—

Rhodey hit the stairs hard. Boots loud. Too fast to be careful.

He stopped halfway into the room.

Tony lay on the floor. The arc reactor was active. A few shards of glass scattered across the ground — warm, not recent. The containment case looked untouched. But something about it was wrong.

He stepped in closer.

A footprint marked the dust near the workbench. Narrow. Not Tony’s.

“Tony?”

Tony’s eyes flickered. “Someone… was here…”

Rhodey knelt. Checked the pulse.

Still there.

He scanned the case again. Something had been done. A repair. Not one of Tony’s.

“Pepper?” Tony rasped.

“She’s with SHIELD. They’re moving on Stane now.”

Tony grabbed his wrist. “She’s not safe.”

Rhodey nodded. “I figured.”

Tony tried to sit up. His arms failed him halfway.

Rhodey caught him before he tipped.

He helped Tony stand. One hand steady under the shoulder, the other keeping him upright.

Harry landed in the front room with a pop. His foot clipped the baseboard. He caught himself on the bookshelf.

The Kneazle looked up, blinked once, and lay back down.

He rolled his shoulder. The joint resisted partway. He hadn’t moved like that in a long time.

One candle burned on the counter. Wax had hardened into a slanted dish.

He walked to the door. The Cloak hung from its hook. When his fingers brushed the edge, it shifted.

He pulled it around his shoulders. The fabric changed against his back — silently and without instruction.

The boots formed first.

Black hide climbed to his knees. The soles landed heavy but balanced.

The leather came from a Romanian Longhorn. That one had lasted four days before it died — starved, wounded, and still dangerous. He remembered the way its breath shook the forest. He’d taken the hide after the heart gave out. Death had said it was excessive. He disagreed.

The boots were heat-bound, spell-sealed, and old enough to hold his shape without adapting.

The ankle flex held firm. The heel caught and stabilized. He pushed forward on the balls of his feet. No drag.

They gripped the floor like they remembered it.

The gloves followed.

Scaled leather slid from his sleeves. The fit compressed over his fingers and sealed tight across the palm.

Manticore hide. Taken from one of the desert breeds — the kind with longer claws and thicker spine plates. This one had punctured armour before he crushed its neck. The Ministry called it protected. He hadn't asked.

Obsidian thread held the joints in place. Markings on the inner wrist had been inscribed by an Unspeakable who later lost his tongue in a containment breach.

He curled his hands. The flex range was clean. No friction, no looseness.

They would not slip. They would not tear.

The chest layer came next.

A pale weave formed beneath the coat, tight across his ribs and spine. Dense. No airflow. Designed for pressure resistance and pain dispersion.

The inner lining contained a single strand of Death’s hair. She’d given it to him as a courting gift — centuries ago, before he learned better.

He hadn’t asked for it. He hadn’t accepted it, either. But the Cloak had taken it.

He wore it when he had to.

It dulled impact and stopped his bones from fracturing under force. He hated the way it felt — the way it wrapped under his arms and locked over his sternum. Too personal. Too deliberate.

But it worked.

The collar split.

A thin white plate extended and attached across his face.

The bone came from a god — something old, arrogant, and loud. Harry had killed it in a sky that no longer existed. The timeline collapsed three days later. The mask was what remained.

The Cloak absorbed the bone afterward. Now it remembered the weight.

It pressed evenly against his jaw and forehead. No eyeholes. No design. Just surface tension.

The seal was clean. Breathable through the lower gap. He tested it once and moved on.

He turned to the mirror behind the counter.

Coat high. Gloves fixed. Boots weathered and solid. Mask blank. No insignia.

A uniform built for function — nothing ornate.

He stood still. Watched his reflection without comment.

“Still fits,” he said. “That’s the worrying part.”

The Kneazle didn’t move as he passed.

He opened the door. The night air pushed in across the floor.

No bell rang.

He stepped into it.

“Let the hunt begin,” he said.

And disappeared into the dark.

The rooftop was cracked and uneven. Smoke lifted from scorched metal. Bits of flare casing lay scattered near broken panels. The Iron Monger suit stood upright, plates venting heat. One repulsor was aimed down at Stark.

Tony pulled himself backward. His right gauntlet scraped the rooftop. The Mark III’s side plating was warped. Sparks pulsed from a damaged arc line behind his hip.

Obadiah raised his left arm. Targeting light came online.

A short pop broke the air.

Harry stepped in behind him.

His boots hit steel. No flash. Just pressure and contact. The cloak had reshaped into a high-collared coat with reinforced seams along the shoulders. His gloves hung at his sides. The white bone mask faced forward.

“Move away from the big-headed playboy. Slowly.”

The repulsor stayed active, but didn’t fire.

Obadiah turned. The Iron Monger pivoted with him. Internal joints adjusted with loud clicks.

Obadiah’s voice came through the external speaker. “Who the hell are you?”

Harry: “Just the janitor.”

Obadiah: “You think you’re funny? Walk away before you get hurt.”

Harry: “Try.”

Obadiah moved first.

The Iron Monger charged. The servos in the legs whined under full power. The punch came fast — no hesitation, no delay.

It landed centre-mass.

Harry was lifted from the rooftop. The impact made a flat, heavy crack — like a mallet striking steel plate. He flew backward without spinning, arms slack, posture straight. He hit the ground ten meters back and skidded into the base of a rooftop vent unit. The panel dented inward. Dust jumped on impact.

Harry didn’t stay down.

One arm moved. Then the other. He pushed himself upright with quiet force. The coat smoked slightly where the left side had absorbed the blow. The shoulder plating was intact but scorched along the edge. The underlayer showed shallow scoring. The seam at the collar had frayed, but held.

He rolled the shoulder. It reset without sound.

Then he stood and walked forward.

Obadiah raised his right arm again. The repulsor flared.

The second blast hit Harry just above the hip. The force threw him sideways. He hit a collapsed cooling duct with a loud thud. The casing caved under his ribs. Sparks snapped from the metal behind him.

He dropped to one knee. One gloved hand touched the surface for balance. The other pulled his coat aside just long enough to check damage. Blackened, not breached.

He glanced up. “That one was louder.”

Obadiah fired again. The blast missed. Harry had already moved.

He crossed the rooftop fast, feet wide and steady. No cloak flutter. No blur.

First strike — a closed-fist punch to the outer thigh panel. The armour bent inward with a metallic crunch. Obadiah stumbled, recovering quickly, but Harry didn’t let up.

He struck again — this time into the elbow socket of the firing arm. The servos locked for half a second. Harry slammed the repulsor casing twice, each hit fast and direct. The housing cracked. The power light dimmed.

Obadiah swung wide with his left. Harry took the edge of the blow on his upper arm. The hit knocked him back two steps. He planted his foot and came back in.

He caught the arm by the wrist and twisted. The servo screamed. With the other hand, Harry drove his fist into the shoulder actuator. The joint groaned, visibly dragging now.

Obadiah pushed forward. He tried to lock into a grapple.

Harry dropped under it and used the full turn of his hips to land a knee into the left side vent — a hard, grounded strike. The plate warped inward. He followed with an elbow to the back of the joint.

The suit staggered. Obadiah adjusted his stance and tried to reset.

Harry stepped back, watching.

His arms were down. Breathing steady. No drama, no taunt.

“You don’t walk away from this,” Obadiah said, voice distorting through the speaker.

Harry’s reply came flat. “Then don’t miss.”

Obadiah surged forward again.

Harry didn’t give ground. He sidestepped the charge and kicked behind the left knee plate. The joint dipped. He moved to the front and hammered a punch into the arc frame. The casing flexed.

The Iron Monger swayed. Internal fans whirred under the strain.

Harry backed off three steps. His eyes never left the weak points.

Then he moved again.

This time he went for the repulsor assembly at the wrist. He struck the conduit, grabbed the housing, and drove it backward into the support pipe behind him. The casing broke. A sharp pop of discharged energy blew a vent seal.

Obadiah howled. He twisted out of Harry’s grip and tried another wild swing.

Harry dropped low, shoulder nearly to the ground, and used the momentum to drive his boot into the lower chest plate — directly above the harness rigging. The suit tilted back.

Obadiah tried to recover.

Harry gave him space. Just a second.

Enough to let him stand upright again.

Then he moved in — slow, deliberate. Arms relaxed. Ready.

Harry circled left.

The Iron Monger’s frame groaned under its own weight. The central stabilizers flickered. Obadiah adjusted his footing, recalibrating. Then the top shoulder panels slid back.

Missile ports.

Harry’s jaw tightened.

“I know that sound,” he muttered.

Obadiah didn’t wait. The first two missiles launched.

Harry moved instantly — a short dash right, one boot sliding across gravel. The pair detonated against a pipe outcropping behind him. Sparks and pressure hit his back.

The second salvo came straight.

He dove low, tucked hard, and rolled behind a steel outflow vent. The rooftop trembled as the next explosion knocked the vent casing over. Smoke and shrapnel fanned outward.

Another pair followed.

One struck the ground just behind him as he cleared the cover. The blast lifted him into the air. He hit the ground hard and skidded across concrete — coat smoking, knees leaving two sharp gouges in the dust.

He didn’t lie still.

He forced himself up. Both boots planted. Shoulder twisted slightly out of line.

He shoved it back into place with a grunt.

The coat was torn from collar to ribs. Armor showed beneath — dull, cracked, still whole.

Obadiah’s voice barked from the suit’s speaker. “What the hell are you?!”

Harry looked up. Voice flat.

“I’m the one cleaning up after your ego.”

Obadiah fired again. Two repulsor blasts. They struck Harry straight-on, centre mass. He staggered, feet dragging a half-meter before he grounded himself with a palm to the floor.

Smoke curled from the impact zone on his chest plate.

He didn’t pause. He moved again.

Obadiah opened fire with the wrist-mounted gun.

Rounds punched into Harry’s thigh, shoulder, lower ribs. One struck the mask near the edge and cracked the outer coating. He reeled slightly — more from angle than force.

He reached the suit’s arm and slammed both fists into the gun mount. The magazine jammed. He grabbed the arm by the elbow joint and twisted — hard. The limb snapped back with a sick mechanical crunch.

Obadiah tried to yank free.

“Seriously,” Harry muttered, “how do you screw up this badly with that much money?”

Obadiah growled, “I built this empire—”

Harry interrupted. “You built a coffin. I’m just making sure you get in it.”

He shoved Obadiah back — two meters, full force.

The Iron Monger tripped over a scorched vent pipe and stumbled to one knee. Jets flared from the back, trying to correct balance.

Harry charged.

He struck the chest plate twice — heavy, direct blows. Metal bent inward. Obadiah swung wild with his left. Harry ducked, pivoted, and kicked into the damaged knee joint again.

The suit dropped lower.

Harry leapt — one foot on the thigh panel, one on the chest. He grabbed a vent housing for balance and drove his elbow down into the upper shoulder casing. Something popped. A line of coolant hissed from under the plate.

Obadiah threw his weight up. The suit surged. Harry was thrown backward — not far — but landed off-balance near the roof’s ledge.

Obadiah rose fully. The left leg dragged slightly now. Both arms powered up, though one stuttered.

Harry reset his stance.

“I don’t know what you are,” Obadiah said, voice shaking. “But you’re dead.”

Harry shook his head. “I’ve been dead. Wasn’t impressed.”

He stepped in again.

Obadiah launched another repulsor shot. It hit Harry’s side, blowing him off the line of approach. He rolled, came up on one knee, and hurled a piece of bent debris — it struck the Iron Monger’s visor.

While Obadiah blinked, Harry closed distance again.

He drove a punch into the base of the right arm. Then another to the venting core. Then he stepped around the flank, yanked a support rod free from the outer plating, and stabbed it between two exposed cables.

Sparks blew outward. Obadiah screamed.

Harry grabbed the front of the suit and threw him backward into a water tank. The tank split at the seam. Water gushed across the roof.

Harry stood over him now.

Breathing hard. Mask cracked. Coat half-shredded.

“You’re out of missiles,” Harry said. “Wanna try something else?”

The Iron Monger’s right arm jerked. Systems strained.

The servo mount sparked as Obadiah tried to lift it again. Nothing responded. The suit listed sideways. Stabilizers had failed. Cooling systems blinked red. Thrusters flared, then died.

Harry advanced without hurry.

Obadiah tried to step back. The left knee gave out mid-motion. The suit dragged a strip of metal across the rooftop.

Harry didn’t slow.

He caught the right wrist.

Both hands locked around the armour joint just below the repulsor. He pulled. Adjusted his grip. Twisted up and back.

The servo screamed. The bracket snapped. The arm tore free and hit the ground.

Obadiah shouted inside the suit. “What the hell are you?”

Harry didn’t answer.

Obadiah fired the shoulder thrusters. The suit lunged sideways, unbalanced. Harry stepped through the burst and closed again.

He caught the left arm, braced a boot against the outer shell, and pulled. The limb cracked. Cables tore. It hit the roof beside the first.

“You think you’re some kind of hero?” Obadiah barked, breath ragged, voice cracked through the helmet.

Harry glanced down at him. “No. But you’re still breathing. So maybe I’m losing my edge.”

Obadiah tried to pivot the suit for a shoulder slam. Harry ducked under, drove his heel into the back of the right knee, and grabbed the plating behind it.

He pulled sideways. The leg snapped from its mount and fell with a crash.

Before the suit could rebalance, Harry stepped around it, drove a punch into the left thigh bracket, and crushed the actuator. The joint twisted out of line. The frame collapsed.

Now the Iron Monger lay half-upright. Arms gone. One leg useless. The other dragging.

Harry circled in front.

Obadiah triggered the chest repulsor. Harry stepped aside. The shot went wide.

He crouched and drove his fist into the collar seam. Once. Twice. A third time. The metal dented inward.

Obadiah screamed inside — muffled, short of breath.

Harry grabbed the collar rig and ripped it apart. Metal bent. Vents cracked. Steam burst from the seams.

He reached in, grabbed the harness rig, and yanked.

Obadiah came free — wheezing, kicking, stunned.

Harry dropped him beside the wreck.

A pause.

The Iron Monger sparked behind them. Wires hissed. The heat clung to the rooftop.

Tony stirred nearby. His suit was half-dead, but holding. He was conscious. Weak, but alive.

Harry looked at the wreck. Then at Obadiah.

He tilted his head toward Tony.

“Try not to let him steal your toys next time.”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

He vanished with a muted pop.

Time: Two hours after the rooftop fight. Location: SHIELD Mobile Surveillance Post – Manhattan perimeter.

The interior buzzed with low-grade tension. Fluorescent lights flickered above the desks, casting a sterile wash over walls lined with screens. The largest display at the centre showed the rooftop in high definition—paused at the exact moment Iron Monger’s right arm hit the concrete, sparking against the edge of an HVAC unit.

"Play it back," Maria Hill said.

The analyst keyed in a command. Footage rolled.

The black-armoured figure moved with mechanical clarity—no hesitation, no wasted motion. Iron Monger lashed out with a gauntlet-wide repulsor blast. Direct hit. The impact knocked the unknown down hard.

Hill leaned forward. "That should’ve cracked ribs. Or worse."

The analyst froze the image. Frame by frame, the figure rolled to one side, pushing up with fluid motion. The exposed section of armour—now clearly scorched—showed a momentary glow beneath, like heat retreating. Flesh was visible for half a second. Then it sealed. Damage reversed in real time.

Phil Coulson’s brow furrowed. "He’s not invulnerable. That was a hit. But tissue recovers before he’s even upright. We’re talking milliseconds."

Hill crossed her arms. "No tech signature. No fibre movement. Nothing external. Whatever this is, it’s happening beneath the surface."

Another analyst leaned forward. "Closest we’ve seen might be Weapon X. Possibly Wilson, on a stretch."

"Deadpool regenerates," Coulson said, watching the playback again. "Extensively, sure. But he’s slow, messy, and loud about it. Wolverine’s cleaner—but this? This recovery doesn’t even break rhythm."

Hill arched an eyebrow. "We’ve seen nothing like that. No formula. No implant. If this is bio-engineered, it’s operating deeper than anything on record."

Fury stepped from the back of the room. "And it’s not logged in any enhanced registry we have."

No one responded.

"Run it again," Fury said.

The footage resumed. The armoured figure ducked under Iron Monger’s follow-up swing, jammed an elbow into the shoulder joint, twisted—and ripped. Sparks fanned outward as the suit’s arm tore free.

"He’s dismantling it," Coulson muttered. "That’s not aggression. That’s targeted disablement."

Another analyst brought up a new window. "Facial recognition and biometric profile running. No matches."

Hill tapped a control. "Run gait profile. Armor dynamics included."

The system processed. Null.

"Still too clean," she said. "No signal traffic. No tactical footprint. No insignia."

Coulson folded his arms. "He enters quietly. Makes no sound. Leaves no mark unless he wants to. That’s deliberate training."

"Match it with old black ops footage," Hill said. "Same tempo. Different objective. He’s not eliminating. He’s neutralizing."

Another screen blinked on. An analyst zoomed into rooftop depressions—fracture lines, embedded gravel, stress shadows.

"Footprint pressure is high. Seven hundred pounds at motion velocity. But the stride’s perfect. No slips. No scatter. That’s weight managed by intent."

Coulson nodded. "He’s stronger than he looks. And he knows it."

The final seconds of the fight played.

The armoured figure stepped back, pivoted—and disappeared.

No smoke. No light shift. Present one moment, absent the next.

"Pause there," Hill said.

The analyst rewound. Playback dropped to 5% speed. Each pixel held steady. No lens lag. No drift.

"No thermal flare," the tech murmured. "No acoustic spike. No radiological bleed. And the visuals? Flat. He’s not phasing—he’s transitioning."

Coulson leaned in. "Some version of teleportation. But it's frictionless. No entry or exit signal."

"Trace it against known portals," Hill said. "See if it maps to Bifrost residue."

The analyst shook his head. "Doesn’t match. That tears space. This folds it."

Fury stared at the static image. "And it’s definitely not ours."

Hill opened a comparison feed. On one side: the rooftop fight. On the other: the cloaked figure from the Howling Stag incident. Holding a broom. Standing over an unconscious enhanced thug.

She didn’t speak.

"Same posture," Coulson offered. "Same balance. Same compression under stress."

"No face ID," Hill added. "No physical crossover. But the rhythms match."

"Run full-frame motion overlays," Coulson said. "See if shoulder and hip movement align. He's not improvising. He's repeating something he’s practiced."

Fury’s voice was low. "Don’t confirm anything yet."

He stepped closer.

"But don’t discard it either."

Silence held the room.

Fury turned. "Get me full readings. Floor stress. Heat diffusion. Metallic composition. I want his weight distribution tracked down to the ounce. If he scratched that roof, I want the fingerprint."

"Some prints stop partway through," one tech said. "Just end mid-stride. No lift. Nothing below."

Hill narrowed her eyes. "Could be cloaking. Or something stranger."

Fury nodded once. "Measure the absence as thoroughly as the presence."

Another analyst spoke. "Got metallic traces at the bend points of the armour. Doesn’t match anything in known alloys. Looks older. Rough texture. Like it’s been reworked too many times."

Hill looked to Coulson. "Seen it before?"

He shook his head. "No. Not in any file I trust."

Hill tapped her stylus. "Then we keep watching. Closely."

Fury looked back at the frozen screen.

"If he’s not playing the game, he might be rewriting it. Doesn’t matter. We find him."

The monitors dimmed. No one moved. The quiet tick of processors filled the silence.

Time: 2:37 a.m.
Location: The Howling Stag, back room

The lock clicked into place behind him. No alerts followed. The room stayed quiet.

Harry entered without hesitation. The shop interior was dim, untouched since he’d left. The air felt settled, as though it had been waiting.

He didn’t remove the mask. His cloak adjusted on its own, narrowing into a long coat as he moved down the centre aisle. His pace was measured, without intent to rush or display.

He reached the back of the room. The tea kettle issued a hiss. There were no runes on it—just habit baked into the metal.

He sat without sound. Though his face didn’t react, a sharp breath escaped through his nose. It levelled quickly. The coat relaxed against him, the faint edge of reinforced fabric receding into the lining.

Near the shelf, the tarot deck stirred inside its box, shuffled once, and went still.

He took off the glove from his left hand. The skin beneath was whole—unbroken, unmarred. But his fingers still twitched from the echoes of pain, not from injury. He felt everything. He always did.

He poured the tea. It filled halfway before he stopped. He didn’t touch it yet. Steam curled upward and hovered near his eyes. He kept still.

Behind him, a compass shifted. Its needle spun, stopped, and remained aimed at his chair.

He ignored it.

The pain was lingering—manageable, but slower to clear. It didn’t surprise him.

The cup stayed in his hands. He let the warmth soak in, but he made no move to drink.

The cloak, now fully passive, adjusted at the hem beside his boots. It had done this before. It would again.

His eyes fixed on the far wall. A moment passed. He blinked. A drop of sweat ran down his neck.

It wasn’t hot in the room.

A faint chime echoed somewhere in the structure. He didn’t look for it.

He spoke—a sound without target or spell form, something from memory. No language. Just intention.

The candles dimmed. His fingers steadied.

The tea remained untouched.

His knee tensed under the table, held stiff to stop a tremor. It wasn’t injury—it was aftermath. The body healed, but the cost always had to go somewhere.

On the shelf beside him, a tiny brass lion—no more than a charm—tilted forward in its case. It didn’t fall. It faced him.

He didn’t blink this time.

Outside, traffic passed and lights stayed green. The city carried on.

He would rest when the world allowed it—and not a second before.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: The Test

The desert sat heavy.

Harry rested in a cracked plastic chair under the warped edge of a gas station roof. A cup of tea balanced in his hand. Steam rose, thin and slow. The cup was warm enough.

The station was quiet. Far too quiet for this side of nowhere. The air held still. The usual background noise—distant engines, grit stirred by passing wind—was missing. Only a power box behind him made a faint, steady buzz. He didn’t turn.

The light across the desert shifted. Harry narrowed his eyes at the horizon. The air had changed—thicker, with a pressure that didn’t belong to the heat. It pressed at the edge of hearing, a weight without sound. Like the shift you feel just before the air thins. He stayed still.

He lowered the cup.

“Always with the entrance,” he said.

A line of light struck the earth. There was no signal before it hit. The impact churned dust outward in a wide ring. Heat rippled behind it, dull and slow. A tremor followed — real, this time.

Harry didn’t rise.

Another thud followed, farther off. He didn’t look, but his body already understood the sequence. Someone had landed harder than they meant to.

He stood. Straightened the sleeves of his coat.

“He’s early,” he said.

The gas station behind him crackled, then settled.

He walked down the gravel path, his steps even.

As he reached a rise, he stopped. The crater was sharp-edged. The soil at the centre had burned black, the sand around it melted in fractured rings. Small fires clung to dry brush at the edges. Heat drifted upward in thin curls.

He studied the shape of the damage. Familiar pattern. Intentional force. He remembered seeing the same shape before, scorched into frozen soil.

His coat shifted slightly as he moved again.

He moved without stirring anything out of place. The dust settled where he’d stepped.

The ridge offered a clean view of the road.

Harry stood with his coat settling at his sides, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his cane. Dust clung to the fabric. He hadn’t bothered to brush it off. Below, a trail of faint smoke rose from the crash site and drifted toward the dirt road outside Puente Antiguo.

A shape moved in the distance — a vehicle. He shifted his stance.

Gravel cracked quietly under his boot.

A single dust trail curved up the road. The headlights bounced across dips and dried-out gullies. The truck swerved briefly, then steadied. Overcorrection. Harry’s eyes tracked the motion.

“Late,” he murmured. “But not too late.”

He didn’t blink when the body appeared. Thor stumbled into view, his posture slack, movements uneven. The truck hit him squarely. There was no time to react.

Harry flinched. Not visibly. Just a subtle shift in weight. His body registered the impact even if his face didn’t.

“Every bloody time.”

The truck braked hard. Jane climbed out first. Darcy followed, already shouting. Erik checked for signal, one hand raised above his head. Thor groaned from the ground, already trying to stand.

Harry didn’t move. From this distance, his silhouette blended into the shape of the ridge. A figure almost indistinct from the ridge behind him. The wind pulled faintly at his coat.

He watched Jane lean in toward the fallen man. She spoke too quickly to be heard from here. Darcy circled them with a camera raised. Erik hesitated at the truck, then moved to help.

Harry counted the seconds. The quiet stretched—long enough to mean something.

Tires on gravel. Two black SUVs approached from a separate side trail. No lights. No sirens. Just the deliberate sound of arrival. Dust followed in two narrow trails that settled quickly behind them. Trained drivers. Standard formation.

Harry’s jaw tightened. He followed their approach with his eyes, not his head.

He murmured, “Faster than expected. Fury must be twitching.”

He adjusted his footing slightly to take pressure off his right heel. The injury from the rooftop fight had mostly healed, but the memory of it remained in the joint.

Below, movement sharpened. Jane’s voice rose, then dropped again. Thor sat upright, shoulders tensing as if pulled by muscle memory more than thought.

Harry didn’t need to see what happened next.

A flash of blue flickered across the road. The taser snapped once, loud and flat. Thor dropped hard, limbs loose, breath gone.

Harry let out a slow breath. He adjusted his grip on the cane and turned.

His boots shifted gravel as he made his way down the ridge, into the lengthening shade cast by the rock outcrop

The scrubland was empty except for a bent metal sign half-buried in dirt. Faded paint still clung to the words “Ice Cold Drinks.”

Harry crouched beside it, one hand pressed to the compacted ground. The surface still held the day's heat. Beneath it, the air had settled — dry, still, unmoving.

Magic threaded from his fingertips. Nothing visible. Just the faint resistance of the earth shifting to allow it.

He stood. Slid the wooden case from his shoulder and laid it flat.

The clasps released cleanly. Folded canvas unfurled in tight, heavy layers. Wooden poles extended and clicked into place. The stove pipe rose with a mechanical hiss and locked.

In under five minutes, the tent stood — canvas held taut, ropes sunk deep. It looked temporary, but solid. Inside, it was deeper than it should be.

Lanterns lit in soft sequence. Shelves unfolded themselves. Objects settled with dull clinks and thuds: a broken pendulum, worn cards in a cracked box, a small glass bird resting on its side.

Harry stepped inside. Let the flap fall behind him. He rolled out a mat and sat behind the counter.

The kneazle padded in and settled beside a stool.

Outside, a pair of headlights slowed. A pickup coasted past. A voice from the cab:

“Is that—”

The vehicle continued.

Harry arranged a few items near the flap: a coin etched with pits, a hammer-shaped keychain, a tarnished sundial with no readable face. He placed a carved paperweight beside them — shaped like a skull, no jaw.

Darkness settled. In the distance, a single bark cut through the air, then went quiet. Floodlights blinked on far off.

Around midnight, a teenager arrived. He didn’t speak. Looked over the table. Turned one item in his hand. Left a bill on the counter. Walked away.

Later, a SHIELD agent drifted by. Looked around. Picked up a keychain. Kept moving.

Harry didn’t respond.

A drone passed overhead. He lifted his cup slightly. The drone paused. Then continued.

In SHIELD’s mobile post, a technician leaned toward the screen. “Was that thing there yesterday?”

Coulson didn’t answer.

Harry opened a notebook. Wrote a single line:

They arrive late. But they arrive.

He paused. Didn’t add more.

Behind him, a wind chime shifted once, then went still.

The sun sat high over the desert, casting sharp shadows off SHIELD’s mobile outpost. The hammer site buzzed with low conversation and clipped radio calls. But Harry’s tent remained untouched—just beyond their perimeter, present but deliberately unmarked.

Coulson approached alone.

He stopped at the table outside the tent and examined the display. Trinkets glinted in the sunlight. He picked up a small Mjolnir keychain.

“Five dollars,” Harry said, not looking up.

Coulson turned it in his fingers. “It’s ugly.”

“That’s what makes it authentic.”

He set it down and stepped inside.

The interior was cooler than the desert outside. Faint scents of paper, wood smoke, and something herbal lingered. Coulson stood just past the entrance.

“Nice setup,” he said. “You got a permit for it?”

Harry crouched behind the counter. Came back up with a laminated folder and handed it over. Coulson opened it. State and federal forms. Dates lined up. Everything signed and stamped.

“These are legitimate.”

“They are.”

Coulson flipped to the back. A SHIELD compliance tag was attached.

"Let me see your local vendor registration."

Harry reached beneath the counter again and produced a second laminated sheet. Coulson took it, scanned the QR code with a device on his wrist, and raised an eyebrow.

"Okay. State health inspection?"

Harry handed over another folded page.

"That's current. Surprising."

"I like my tea clean."

Coulson tapped the stack. "Insurance bond? For vendor liability and civil indemnity?"

Harry didn’t blink. Reached again. Another slip appeared — notarized.

Coulson paused. "Okay. Local tribal permit? You’re near boundary land."

A new form, stamped with a Navajo Nation seal, slid across the counter.

"Event certification for mobile commerce in declared federal emergency zones?"

“Back page,” Harry said.

Coulson flipped. There it was. Signed by someone Coulson knew was out of the country.

He looked up slowly. "You’re enjoying this."

Harry finally smiled. "I believe in preparedness."

Coulson narrowed his eyes. "If I ask for a temporal operations clearance, would you have that too?"

Harry leaned forward just slightly. "Only if you're sure you want to see it."

Coulson didn’t smile. “You’re the one from the shop in New York. Harold Evans.”

Harry tilted his head. “That’s an easy mistake. But Harold runs a shop. I run a tent.”

Coulson crossed his arms, watching him. “Same face. Same voice. Same precision. You’re telling me that’s a coincidence?”

“I’m telling you it’s genetics. And maybe good posture.”

Coulson’s tone didn’t shift. “You’re twins.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I ran a full scan on Harold Evans two days ago. No mention of you. Today you’ve got matching paperwork, medical history, tax filings, even a blurry middle school photo.”

“Guess I finally got around to existing.”

Coulson stared. “All files were dated years ago. Old uploads. Old caches. They’re buried deep, like they’ve been in the system all along.”

“I hear retroactive continuity is in fashion,” Harry said. “At least in intelligence circles.”

“Who wrote these?” Coulson asked, tapping the permits. “This doesn’t just pop up. Our analysts found metadata embedded in archived secure servers.”

“Maybe someone’s doing you a favour,” Harry replied. “Or maybe the system just really doesn’t like being incomplete.”

Coulson leaned in slightly, voice lowering. “You know what makes me nervous, Mr. Evans? When someone shows up on three separate surveillance feeds, across two states, with no digital footprint until the day we meet—and suddenly, you’ve got paperwork so old our analysts had to pull it from archived servers that don’t even sync anymore.”

“I sell trinkets and tea. Paperweights. Fake meteorites. A few items shaped like hammers. Nothing that requires black-bag teams or cross-checking the metadata of my birth certificate.”

“You set up shop inside a sealed perimeter during an active containment sweep. That’s not subtle. That’s not even plausible coincidence.”

“And your men keep wandering through it,” Harry said, leaning slightly forward. “Should I start charging for foot traffic? Because they’re not exactly stealthy about it.”

“Funny.”

“Reasonable.”

“You’re hiding something.”

“Of course I am,” Harry said, standing straighter. “So are you.”

Coulson let that sit. Then tapped his comm. “Cross-check Harold Evans’ physical profile against this man. Motion signature, gait, height. Any match above 85%.”

A voice crackled back. “84.9%. Could be siblings. No more.”

“Convenient,” Coulson said.

Harry shrugged. “I get that a lot.”

Coulson studied him for a few seconds. “We’ll be watching.”

“I’d be worried if you weren’t.”

Coulson stepped into the sun. Walked two steps past the display table. Then stopped.

Another Mjolnir keychain had reappeared where the first had been.

He picked it up. Weighed it in his hand.

Pocketed it.

Didn’t look back.

The hospital sat hunched against the morning sun, all brick corners and boxy add-ons. Generators thrummed behind the main building. Heat shimmered across the alleyway between two concrete service sheds.

Harry sat on a narrow bench beside a recycling bin and a dented dumpster. His cane rested against the wall. The kneazle dozed at his feet, tail twitching faintly.

In his hands: a thin, waxed paper cup with the hospital’s logo half-scratched off. Tea. Barely warm.

Two SHIELD agents stood near the entrance twenty meters away, one holding a clipboard he wasn’t writing on. Another paced slowly along the opposite wall, radio clipped but silent. High above, a third figure stood still on the roof.

Harry didn’t look at any of them. His gaze was on the second-floor corner window, just behind a metal utility pipe.

A voice cracked from above — muffled but unmistakable:

“I am Thor of Asgard, son of Odin! You will release me at once!”

The window frame rattled slightly.

A second voice followed. Stern. Human. American. “Sir, please lower your voice. This is a secure facility.”

Harry didn’t look up. He shook his head once, faintly.

“That explains the volume,” he murmured.

The kneazle blinked open one eye, yawned, and laid its head back down.

A nurse pushed a cart too quickly out the side entrance. The back wheels clipped the curb. A full metal tray toppled. A dozen tools clattered like sharp coins. The crash echoed through the alley.

The two agents near the door flinched. One reached toward his holster.

Harry didn’t move.

He took another sip of the tea. Made a face. It had gone tepid. He set the cup down on the bench beside him — dead centre of the slat, precisely balanced.

From overhead, faint footsteps crossed the rooftop.

Another agent exited from a rear stairwell. He spoke quietly into his collar mic, but Harry didn’t catch the words. The man moved past without glancing down the alley.

Harry stood slowly. The kneazle followed suit, arching its back.

He adjusted his coat. Nudged the cup so it wouldn’t roll. Then turned away from the hospital.

Behind him, the wind shifted. One of the rooftop agents turned slightly. His hand hovered over his ear.

Harry didn’t look back.

As he reached the street, a second voice rang out — Thor again, hoarse but rising:

“You dare cage a prince of Asgard!”

Harry muttered, half to himself, half to the kneazle, “And yet here we are.”

They disappeared around the corner.

Thor saw the tent from the road.

It wasn’t there before — he was sure of it. Just canvas and ropes in the middle of nowhere, pitched like a challenge. There was something off about it. Not ominous, not magical. Just wrong in the way forgotten things often were. It looked too solid to be temporary and too temporary to be permanent.

Which meant someone had put it there with intention.

He stood outside it for longer than he should have, pretending to assess the construction when really he was listening. Not for danger, but for something quieter — for that same weight he’d felt in the hospital, in the hallway, after the first sedative wore off.

It felt the same now. Tense. Watching. Familiar.

Thor stepped through the tent flap like he expected answers. His movements were deliberate, still wrapped in the entitlement of a man who hadn’t yet accepted exile. The hospital scrubs hung loose across his frame, but his shoulders were still set like a prince walking into court.

Harry didn’t look up. He poured water into two ceramic cups.

“Sit,” he said. “Or pace. Either way, you’re not breaking the silence by towering.”

Thor frowned but sat. He took the water without comment, drank half of it, then set the cup down with the kind of force meant to suggest he hadn’t needed it.

“You’ve been watching me.”

Harry shrugged. “You landed hard. Then shouted louder. The part where you got tased—twice—was honestly the quietest bit of the day.”

“They treated me like a beast. Lashed down. Injected. Prodded like a creature.”

“Well,” Harry said, “you did throw three men across a corridor and tried to tear a door off its hinges while quoting royal edicts.”

“They laughed at me.”

Harry didn’t blink. “You were wearing paper slippers and a plastic bracelet with the name ‘Donald Blake’ sharpied on it. I think they showed restraint.”

Thor scowled. “They are unworthy.”

“They’re underpaid,” Harry said. “And they don’t have the context for a man claiming lineage from a realm no one’s ever heard of. You’re lucky they didn’t sedate you again just for saying ‘Midgard’.”

Thor looked around the tent then. Slowly. “This place... It’s not what it seems.”

“Few things are,” Harry replied. “Especially when you think everything should bow to your expectations.”

“You’ve cloaked it. It’s hidden from them. From SHIELD.”

“It’s not cloaked. It’s boring. That’s more effective. No one questions a man selling carved rocks and weird coins. They just assume he’s paid too much in rent and gave up on life.”

Thor stood again, visibly agitated. “You speak in riddles, and I grow tired of games. If you know something—anything—about why I am here, speak it.”

Harry raised his eyebrows but didn’t rise. “You’re here because someone decided you needed to fall. And because someone else decided you needed to land somewhere survivable.”

“I was cast out by my father.”

“And yet here you are, with every intention of making your return dramatic. Still talking like a man who hasn’t sat still long enough to feel small.”

Thor paced now, hands balled into fists. “I was meant to lead armies. To bring peace through strength.”

“Peace through strength usually means war first. You skipped the ‘understanding’ part.”

“You know nothing of my burden.”

Harry didn’t smile. “I know what it’s like to carry something too long. And I know what it means to find out the weight was never yours to begin with.”

Silence. Then:

“I had friends,” Thor said, more quietly. “Warriors. Brothers-in-arms. None of them came.”

“Maybe they’re not allowed. Or maybe they didn’t know. Or maybe they were told not to care. That’s what happens when you’re no longer the son they built thrones around.”

Thor looked at him then — really looked. “You speak like someone who has stood where I stand.”

“No,” Harry said. “I speak like someone who remembers what came after.”

Thor clenched his jaw. “Then tell me what I need to do. How I make this right.”

Harry considered. “You’ll be surrounded by mortals soon. And you’ll bleed for them. And the worst part is—you’ll mean it.”

Thor’s eyes darkened. “I do not bleed easily.”

“You will.”

Harry reached beneath the counter and placed something between them. A small, broken brass crown keychain.

Thor stared. “What is this?”

“Something that won’t make sense until you’re ready to ask better questions.”

Thor picked it up, slowly. Turned it over. “It feels… wrong.”

Harry said nothing.

“I’ll find my hammer,” Thor said finally. “And I will return home.”

“Sure,” Harry replied. “But maybe ask yourself—if you do find it… will it still come to you?”

Thor turned toward the flap, pausing. “I will remember this place.”

Harry looked down at his cup. “Not for long.”

Thor stepped out.

Harry poured himself another cup of water.

Didn’t drink it.

The wind was beginning to shift.

Harry stood on the ridge, coat still heavy from the earlier heat, though the day had finally begun to bleed into dusk. The sky glowed orange along the western edge, clouds stretched thin and uneven like gauze over a half-healed wound. From this distance, the world below looked nearly peaceful. A lie, of course, but a well-dressed one.

SHIELD’s perimeter had been extended. Floodlights cast long, symmetrical shadows across the sand, pooling around the crater like artificial moonlight. The fencing buzzed faintly in the dry air.

Harry watched without moving. His cane rested against his shoulder, one hand light on the curve of its handle. His breath was quiet. Even.

Below, inside the ring of security and steel, Thor moved.

He walked with the deliberate weight of someone trying not to limp. The hospital scrubs flared around his calves as he knelt in the dirt. The wind caught the edge of his shirt as he leaned forward.

Mjolnir sat where it had landed. Unmoved. Unmarked. The sand around it had hardened into a shallow basin of heat-glazed dust, like a fingerprint pressed into the desert.

Thor’s hands curled around the handle. His shoulders tightened. Muscles flexed. Breath held.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. Dug his feet into the hardened sand. His back arched, arms straining — but the hammer didn’t shift. Not even a tremble.

Thor gritted his teeth. Gave a guttural shout and heaved.

The hammer remained still.

He staggered back and slammed a fist into the sand beside it. Dust kicked up and clung to his skin. He crouched there for a moment, breathing heavily, chest rising and falling with uneven rhythm.

Then he stood abruptly, fists clenched, and turned away from the crater. He paced three strides out into the open, shoulders stiff, jaw locked — then stopped, as if the act of walking away took more effort than staying.

His body shook with tension. But he didn’t scream. Didn’t lash out again. The anger sat in him like weight with nowhere to go.

Slowly, Thor turned back toward the hammer and walked back to where he had started. Not as a prince. Not even as a warrior. Just a man with no answers.

He sank to his knees again. This time, he didn’t touch the handle. Just sat there.

Eventually, his breath stuttered. He exhaled, sat back on his heels, and bowed his head. The weight that dropped through his body wasn’t exhaustion. It was absence. Something missing that had been invisible until now.

Harry didn’t blink. He watched the curve of Thor’s spine settle, the way his hands stayed open, palms up. Not pleading — not quite. Just… asking.

He murmured, to himself and no one else: “It’s never about lifting it.”

Thor stayed there. The lights didn’t dim. The wind moved on.

Harry’s gaze drifted briefly to a gap in the fencing. No keychain in Thor’s pocket. No small crown tucked into a boot. Nothing carried from their conversation.

“Didn’t even bring the keychain,” he said, voice dry. “Typical.”

He exhaled through his nose. Adjusted his stance slightly to take pressure off the heel.

The hammer remained where it was.

So did Thor.

Harry turned.

“Now,” he said quietly, “you begin.”

The diner buzzed. Cutlery scraped across ceramic. A ceiling fan ticked every fifth rotation. The light overhead hummed in place of conversation.

Jane sat with Thor in the corner booth. Her fries had gone cold. She pushed the tray toward him anyway.

“You should eat something,” she said.

Thor didn’t answer right away. He picked up one fry, held it like a weapon he didn’t know how to use, then took a bite. It was more defiance than appetite.

At the far end of the room, Harry sat beneath a flickering beer sign, a paperback open in one hand. The title was unreadable, the cover sun-bleached and curling at the edges. A cup of tea sat beside him, the steam long gone.

He hadn’t turned the page in minutes.

Jane’s eyes drifted across the room and landed on him.

Harry looked up. He gave her a polite nod. Nothing more.

She frowned and leaned toward Thor. “That man. Near the door. Was he there before?”

Thor didn’t move. “He was outside the tent.”

“The one in the scrubland? You went in?”

“I remember the scent. Smoke and dust. And a feeling I didn’t like.”

Jane narrowed her eyes. “What kind of feeling?”

Thor scowled faintly. “Like I was being measured and found… lacking.”

Jane turned her gaze back to Harry. “He’s not SHIELD.”

“No,” Thor said. “He’s worse. He watches like someone waiting for a verdict he already knows.”

She tilted her head. “You don’t usually get this rattled.”

“I’m not rattled,” Thor snapped. “Just tired of riddles in desert tents.”

Behind them, a man two booths down hadn’t touched his coffee. Too crisp. Too alert. Listening.

Harry shifted slightly in his seat. Not toward his cane. Just enough to let the room know he was still aware.

Jane kept her voice low. “Do you think he’s watching you?”

Thor leaned back. “I think everyone’s watching. Him most of all. And none of them are saying what they mean.”

“He was near the crater. Someone said a man stood on the ridge.”

“He didn’t flinch when I fell. Didn’t move when they struck me down. Like he already knew how it would go.”

Jane glanced back again. “And you don’t remember him?”

Thor looked at her. “Would you admit to forgetting someone who makes you feel smaller just by existing?”

Jane blinked. “You’re not usually this honest.”

“I’m not usually this unsure.”

The kitchen clanged. Jane jumped. Thor’s hand twitched toward where a weapon should have been.

Harry didn’t move.

Jane followed her gaze back to him. “He doesn’t look like much.”

Thor grunted. “Neither does the hammer. Until it does.”

They sat in silence a moment longer.

Harry turned a page. Still slow. Still watching without watching.

Jane whispered, “He’s not here for you.”

Thor muttered, “Then I should be even more concerned.”

From across the diner, the suited man scratched his neck — but didn’t break his stare.

Harry’s gaze flicked toward him. They’re getting sloppy.

Jane noticed the same. “That one’s definitely SHIELD.”

Thor exhaled. “And yet it’s the man with the tea that makes my bones remember things I shouldn’t.”

Harry closed his book.

He stood. Adjusted his coat.

Didn’t look back.

Jane’s eyes followed him to the door.

Thor didn’t stop her

Harry leaned against a bus stop half a block from the hospital’s west side. The metal frame rattled slightly in the evening breeze, but the noise didn’t carry. A half-empty cup of tea cooled in his hand. It had gone bitter from sitting too long.

The rooftops had been quiet all day. That changed a moment ago.

He glanced up—no tension in the movement, just a quiet scan of the roofline. Something was shifting along the hospital’s top edge. It wasn’t a shadow or a ripple—more like a warping of normalcy, where angles softened and corners no longer held true. A false alignment, barely perceptible unless you knew where to look.

Glamour magic. Clean. Precise. Harry could feel it draw a line between reality and performance.

He shifted slightly and kept watching.

The illusion arrived with practiced subtlety, designed to evoke trust rather than suspicion. A figure formed—tall, polished, measured in every motion. It bore resemblance to Loki, but only in the curated details: the shape of the posture, the tilt of the head, the restrained smirk. It wasn’t real, but it didn’t need to be. It only needed to feel real to the man inside.

Harry watched the spellwork unfold. Every line of magic was deliberate, placed with the intention of being seen but not understood. The structure wasn’t made for surveillance; it was staged with the rhythm of a well-rehearsed lie — the kind meant to inflict emotional damage while wearing a friendly face. This was theatre, and the script had been sharpened for impact.

He watched as the projection moved across the rooftop, slowly, deliberately. Inside the building, Thor’s voice broke through the open vent — too loud to ignore, shaped by old grief and new rage. He was shouting, but the words came out brittle. Then quieter. Then again, a spike of anger.

The projection leaned in. Harry couldn’t hear what it said, but he didn’t need to. The rhythm of the exchange was old. Rehearsed. The posture was about control, not comfort.

His eyes narrowed faintly. The cadence wasn’t just manipulation — it was familial. The kind of poisoned intimacy he’d seen before. Old nobles, crown-wearing siblings, monarchs who softened cruelty with storybook syntax.

He remembered a balcony in Vanaheim. A council dispute between a younger Loki and a visiting envoy. The boy had lied with such charm it took two minutes before the ambassador even realized he’d been insulted. Thor had clapped him on the back and laughed like it was a game.

And Harry had said nothing. Had let it happen.

Now he watched that same skill, sharpened and turned toward the one brother Loki hadn’t planned to survive.

Harry exhaled through his nose. “Of course he sent a goodbye dressed as pity.”

He didn’t step forward. He raised a hand, letting his magic drift across the illusion’s surface. He didn’t dismantle it all at once. Instead, he loosened the threads that held it together. A practiced unravelling.

The projection paused. Its shape faltered. It twitched slightly, like a man caught between roles, uncertain which expression to hold.

Inside the hospital, Thor’s voice broke off mid-sentence.

The illusion trembled for a moment longer, then lost its cohesion. Its shape collapsed inward and faded away — uneventful, quiet, and final.

Harry lowered his hand.

The rooftop returned to what it had been: plain, still, and lifeless.

He tossed the rest of the tea into a nearby planter. The liquid sank quickly into dry soil.

On the far side of the street, a SHIELD agent touched a hand to his ear and looked up. But the shimmer was gone. There was nothing to trace.

Harry turned and started walking.

Half a block later, he passed a bakery with a shattered display window. A bird had hit the glass earlier that week, and no one had gotten around to sweeping up the feathers. One rested near his boot.

He didn’t step on it.

He turned down a narrow alley behind the dry cleaner’s. The light back here was harsher. Artificial. Fluorescent tubes strung along the overhangs.

He crouched beside a storm drain and retrieved a small glass disc. The edge was scratched from use. He flipped it between his fingers and set it against the ground.

“No trace. No signature,” he murmured. “Almost polite.”

He tucked the disc away. Stood. Rolled his shoulder.

“They always script their farewells. Never their arrivals.”

The wind caught the hem of his coat as he stepped back into the open street.

High above, the hospital rooftop looked plain. Clean lines. Sharp edges. No shimmer.

But Harry knew better.

He stopped at the corner, glanced back one last time.

A faint scuff remained where the illusion had stood. The gravel ring was shallow, uneven. It didn’t look like the result of impact. More like someone had drawn a boundary with exact intent—meant to linger, not to impress. It waited for someone to notice.

Loki wanted Thor to believe something.

Harry had watched enough performances to know the difference between grief and guilt.

He tapped the side of his cane twice. A quiet pulse of reassurance ran up the wood. Wards still held. Nothing new had slipped past them.

Not yet.

He stepped into the crosswalk. Let the traffic pass. His coat flared slightly in the movement, then settled.

A SHIELD vehicle turned at the far end of the street. Slowed when it neared the hospital.

Harry didn’t look at it.

He walked until he passed the town’s only laundromat. A child inside pressed their face against the glass to watch him go.

He kept walking.

Harry sat on the roof of the hardware store, legs stretched out, a half-empty cup cooling by his side. The wind had dropped. Even the dust had settled. The silence didn’t stretch — it pressed. Unwelcome. Intentional. The town held its breath without knowing why.

He felt the tremor through the concrete. It wasn’t enough to shake dust. But it was steady. It was measured. Like footsteps before a speech. A signal with no source.

His eyes turned west.

The sky opened. A seam split through the clouds — straight, quiet, wrong. Something fell through. Broad. Heavy. Built with intent. There was no flash, no roar, only the unnatural parting of something that had never meant to move.

The impact struck seconds later. Cracks webbed across the asphalt like glass under strain. A low burst of pressure slid between buildings. Dust curled up and settled again, thin as ash, precise as a line drawn in chalk.

Harry stood and looked down. SHIELD vehicles realigned. Agents scrambled to redirect traffic. Phones came out. A child yelled something. One agent shouted into a radio, voice rising in pitch. The crowd didn’t scream — not yet — but they leaned toward it.

From the centre of the disturbance, a figure stepped forward. Metal limbs. Smooth joints. Controlled weight. It didn’t look. It chose. Every step landed with deliberation, like it was reading from a script.

Harry stayed still. No one saw him. He watched the machine advance without hesitation. The wind didn’t rise. Even the banners strung across Main Street hung limp.

He moved to the far edge of the roof. His hand shifted slightly, and a shimmer passed at the edge of the next block. Invisible. Anchored. A directional ward. Another followed on the other side of town.

He didn’t stop there. Four more, cast at junctions beyond SHIELD’s cordon. One at the south access road. Another at the church parking lot. Two at overlooked footpaths behind the grocery and beside the dry cleaner’s. All of them quiet. All of them forgotten the moment they were placed. They didn’t glow. They didn’t hum. They simply held.

No one noticed. No lights. No sound. Just pressure moving through the street in waves, folding around the protective barriers. Harry added a reinforcing barrier around the nearest cluster of civilians, just in case. The heat might spread. He knew how these machines behaved. It had a pattern.

He descended the fire escape, boots tapping iron. He didn’t rush. One hand slid along the rail. His eyes scanned the angles below.

By the time he reached the sidewalk, the Destroyer had crossed into Main. Its chest had shifted slightly, exposing heat vents. SHIELD hadn’t fired. They were still trying to understand it.

He stopped beneath a lamppost. The air had changed. Still, weighted, waiting. The kind of stillness that came before instruments failed.

He pulled a coin from his coat, turned it between his fingers, then tucked it away.

“They’ll try. He’ll try harder.”

He crossed the alley. Unseen. The coat shifted with each step, catching the dry breeze. At the alley’s far end, he paused briefly to check that the last ward still held. The shimmer barely registered in the corner of his eye — good enough.

The hum started — mechanical, focused, without hesitation. The kind of buildup that gave no room for error.

He passed between two parked trucks. SHIELD agents barked orders. Civilians ducked behind whatever they could find.

Ahead, someone shouted. Another voice cut through the tension. Thor moved into view.

Harry didn’t pause. His pace didn’t falter. He looked once toward Thor, then ahead.

He had already sealed the exits. Already shielded the crowd. No one else needed to act. Not yet.

This part wasn’t his.

He kept walking.

Smoke drifted low across the intersection, curling against shattered pavement. The heat warped the air in long ribbons. SHIELD’s perimeter held a loose ring around the ruins of Main Street, agents crouched behind vehicles and barricades. Glass crunched. Somewhere, a car alarm chirped and died.

Harry leaned against a power pole at the far end of the street, hands in his coat pockets. He hadn’t moved since the machine arrived. His coat was still buttoned. His shoulders relaxed. The expression on his face wasn’t concern — it was assessment.

The Destroyer turned. Its torso realigned. Steam hissed out from the edges of its shifting armour.

A dozen meters ahead, civilians were trapped behind a fallen bus — its roof crumpled inward from shockwave impact. What they didn’t know was that a layered protective ward had already flared into place before the metal bent. Not a shield against all force, but a buffer. A split-second spell meant to scatter the heat and dampen the concussive wave just enough to leave them shaken, not broken. Darcy’s face appeared in a crack between the bus and curb. Behind her, Jane tried to reach someone by phone, but the signal had died minutes ago.

The Destroyer took one step closer. Then another. Its shoulders flexed. The chest began to open.

Thor stepped into its path.

No armour. No hammer. Torn shirt. Dirt-streaked face. His body still carried the weight of recovery, but he stood straight. Feet set. Arms loose at his sides. He said nothing.

Jane called his name. Harry’s eyes didn’t leave the machine.

The chest of the Destroyer opened fully. The hum deepened. Light gathered at the core — not bright, but concentrated. Directed.

Thor didn’t flinch.

The beam struck.

It hit centre-mass, and the sound followed half a second later. A single, dense crack. Dust burst sideways from the point of contact.

Thor fell without ceremony. No slow-motion collapse. His knees buckled. He crumpled where he stood.

Behind the bus, Jane screamed.

Harry pushed off the pole and began walking.

No one noticed him. The chaos didn’t make room — it simply didn’t acknowledge him. He moved through the wreckage at a measured pace, eyes forward.

As he passed the edge of the ruined storefronts, the civilians looked at him. Jane froze mid-breath. Darcy stepped backward without thinking.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t stop.

The wind shifted.

And Harry walked on.

The Destroyer stood motionless, its frame steaming under the midday heat. Residual heat shimmered around its armour like oil on water. The chest vent remained partially open — not recharging, but watching.

Harry walked forward through broken glass and fine ash.

He didn’t reach for his cane. Didn’t pause for the crowd or the wind or the stink of scorched plastic. His eyes tracked the machine’s posture. No urgency in his stride. Just presence.

The Destroyer turned toward him. The hum returned.

A beam lanced out — a clean line of destructive heat. It hit an empty stretch of street ten feet to Harry’s left. Asphalt boiled.

“Closer,” Harry muttered. “That one almost singed the coat.”

A second blast came. This one hit the sidewalk in front of him. He didn’t stop. The heat rippled against his barriers, already anchored to the street’s edges.

He raised one hand.

No gesture. No glow. But the wind shifted — subtly. The next blast curved. Not deflected. Redirected. It scorched an empty storefront window instead of the crowd behind him.

From behind the wreckage, civilians stayed low. Coulson barked instructions, but didn’t move.

Harry circled slowly. The machine tracked him. He passed close to the shattered windows of the hardware store. Reflected shapes swam briefly in the broken glass — the machine, the crowd, the quiet man.

He spoke louder this time. “Still slow. Still predictable. Have you learned anything since Nidavellir?”

The Destroyer reacted. Its head turned slightly faster. The hum grew louder. But it didn’t fire.

Harry’s footsteps echoed off the nearby brick.

“Tell whoever sent you that next time, they should come themselves. Or send a machine with ears.”

A surge of energy gathered in the chest cavity. Harry flicked a hand, and a shimmer danced across the face of a parked sedan. The beam struck — redirected again. A wall of rubble absorbed it.

He moved closer to the trapped bus. He didn’t run. He didn’t blink. The ward flared gently across its frame, like the ripple of heat across stone. The civilians behind it never saw the barrier hold.

The machine fired three times in rapid sequence — each beam turned, scattered, absorbed by reinforced glass or redirected into ruined walls. A nearby transformer exploded in sparks.

Harry crouched beside a fallen mailbox and ran a hand along its dented metal, murmuring a few clipped words. A pulse of pressure swept outward from its base, anchoring a stabilizing field.

The Destroyer advanced.

Harry rose and walked toward it.

“You’re not the first weapon to mistake heat for power,” he said, tone dry. “And you won’t be the last to misunderstand restraint.”

The Destroyer responded with another blast.

This one Harry blocked — flat-palmed, silent, the heat collapsing inward against a wall of invisible pressure. His boots scraped slightly as he stepped back.

Behind him, something shifted.

The hammer moved.

Mjolnir twitched once — then flew.

It passed within inches of Harry’s head, a blur of steel and storm light. He didn’t react.

It landed with a sound like thunder made small. Dust jumped.

Thor stood. Whole again. Alive in the way few beings ever were.

The Destroyer turned — but this time, it hesitated.

Thor raised his hand. Lightning cracked above the rooftops.

The first strike knocked the machine back two full steps. The second staggered it. On the third, Thor spun the hammer once, then hurled it.

Mjolnir struck the Destroyer dead centre. The beam charging in its chest sputtered. The core ruptured. Plates bent inward.

It tried to fire. Thor landed on its back and drove his fist through the upper panel. Sparks burst. The machine convulsed.

Harry shielded the storefront beside him as metal flared outward in a ring.

Then it collapsed.

Thor stood over it, chest heaving.

Harry exhaled and finally looked toward him.

“Welcome back.”

Thor stepped forward, gaze fixed not on the wreckage, but on Harry himself. His eyes flicked down to the cane, the coat, the small insignia stitched near the cuff — weathered, but unmistakable. A half-forgotten memory stirred.

“I’ve seen that symbol before,” he said, voice low. “In the vaults. In old records. You were—”

Harry cut him off with a tilt of his head. “Don’t finish that sentence.”

Thor’s brow furrowed, not with confusion, but recognition clawing at the edge of certainty. His gaze travelled over Harry’s worn boots, the heavy coat, the way the wind didn’t quite touch him.

“You wore the same coat,” he said slowly, “when the storm giants fled from shadows they couldn’t name. When Father’s voice broke mid-sentence.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “A lot of people wear coats.”

“Not ones that make Odin go silent. Not ones with runes lost to time stitched under the lining.”

Harry glanced toward the ruined street. “You should check on your people.”

Thor took another step forward. “You left before we could ask questions.”

“And you stopped asking.”

“You could’ve helped.”

Harry finally met his eyes. “And you could’ve listened.”

A beat passed. Not angry — weighty.

Harry offered nothing more. Just a small nod, half approval, half warning.

Thor didn’t press further. But he didn’t forget either. And now, he was sure he wouldn’t.

Dust hung in the air, low and stubborn. Emergency lights flickered across broken glass and blackened pavement. The sun had slipped behind the buildings, leaving Main Street in long shadows and the slow grind of cleanup. A smell hung in the air — scorched wiring, ozone, disturbed soil.

SHIELD agents moved with efficiency. Barricades were reinforced, evidence collected. Civilian medics triaged minor injuries. No deaths. Not a single fatality. The local EMTs would never know why the heat blast hadn’t incinerated the bus. A few of them would assume divine intervention. Others would quietly not ask.

Harry sat on the curb, coat buttoned, sipping from a paper cup that hadn’t existed five minutes ago. Someone might’ve brought it to him. Or maybe it just was. He drank slowly, watching a pair of agents argue over whether the crater had warped the water lines.

Coulson approached.

He didn’t speak right away. Just stood nearby, watching the wreckage being dragged away, the stunned civilians still murmuring in little knots. His hands were in his coat pockets. The line of his shoulders was tired, but he wasn’t slouched. Eventually, he said,

“No casualties. Not even burns. That wasn’t luck.”

Harry raised his cup slightly. “Could’ve been worse. Always can be.”

“You helped them.”

Harry shrugged. “Didn’t say I wouldn’t. Just said I didn’t like being watched while I do it.”

Coulson studied him. “You’ve interfered three times now. Four if we count the satellite incident.”

“Five, if you count the Stark cave. Though I wouldn’t. That one barely counted.”

“So why help at all?”

Harry tilted his head. “Because soon, you’ll be dealing with things that don’t care about protocols or clearance levels. And you won’t have the luxury of guessing.”

Coulson took a breath, glanced sideways. “SHIELD owes you. Or at least, recognizes that we don’t fully understand you. But we’re trying.”

Harry stood. Brushed ash from his coat sleeve.

“You won’t have to try much longer. Time’s coming when playacting won’t be enough. You’ll need help — real help.”

Coulson’s brow furrowed. “That sounds ominous.”

“Only if you’re unprepared.”

“And you’re offering?”

“One favour. One time. When you ask properly. No tricks. No games.”

Coulson gave a thin smile. “Define ‘properly.’”

Harry’s expression didn’t change. “No guns. No surveillance. No files stamped with red ink. Just ask. Sincerely.”

“What’s the price?”

Harry’s face didn’t shift.

“Fury uploads a video to YouTube. Purple lightsaber. Full Jedi outfit. One-minute lightsaber routine. Bonus points if he makes the sound effects himself.”

Coulson blinked. “You’re joking.”

Harry didn’t blink back. “Dead serious.”

“Can it be a short saber?”

Harry looked thoughtful. “I’m not unreasonable.”

Coulson hesitated. “Different colour, maybe?”

Harry didn’t even blink. “Purple. Non-negotiable.”

“…I’ll pass it along.”

“You do that. Tell him choreography counts.”

Coulson exhaled with the weariness of someone already regretting tomorrow. “He’s going to love this.”

Harry clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Good man.”

Behind them, SHIELD trucks rumbled to life. Hill’s voice carried orders over the noise. The press hadn’t breached the perimeter, but the town was already buzzing. People talked. Stories would spread. Some true. Most not. A few agents glanced toward Harry, said nothing, and moved on.

Harry stepped off the curb and walked toward the far end of the street. No one called after him. No one followed. He passed by a stunned couple holding hands and murmured something under his breath — the twitch in the air suggested another ward closed.

A newspaper blew past. The headline, half-crumpled, read: ALIEN WEAPON DEFEATED?

The streetlamp above him flickered once.

Then he was gone.

Somewhere in SHIELD’s files, a new folder was made: “Unknown Asset – Jedi Blackmail Protocol.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 10 –"The Gathering Storm"

The sky held its breath.

Harry stood beneath the warped overhang of the conjured tent, arms folded, back resting against sun-bleached wood. The old painted sign above him — Oddities, Fortunes & Trinkets — had faded into something more memory than message, its lettering cracked and dulled by both sun and something older.

Dust moved in slow spirals, carried by a breeze that slid past the bones and left the skin untouched. It didn’t sing. No birds. No insects. No hum of passing life. Only the whisper of nothing pressing into everything.

Far off, beyond the warped shimmer of heat haze, the Bifrost crater still pulsed faintly. The glow had diminished, but it hadn’t died. Scorched earth tended to remember things.

Across the street, a local family collected debris in silence. A boy, maybe nine, looked up from his father’s shadow and lifted one hand in a hesitant wave. Harry nodded once. The boy smiled — just briefly — before returning to his task.

The interior of the shop was dark. Protective wards sealed every entry, charms bound into silence. The lights didn’t flicker anymore. They obeyed now — not out of fear, but reverence.

A SHIELD vehicle rolled past two blocks away, tires crunching gravel. Harry didn’t tense. They weren’t coming today.

He reached into his coat and withdrew a coin. Small, smooth, black as molten glass gone cold. The sigils etched across it weren’t visible in the shade, but his thumb found them anyway. Familiar. Unforgiving.

He turned it once, twice. Let it rest in his palm. The weight sat heavier than metal.

“He left his mark,” Harry thought, gaze drifting to the crater’s edge. “The ground still stinks of it.”

From within the sealed shop, something clinked.

Harry didn’t startle. He pushed off the wall, turned, and stepped inside.

On a shelf near the far counter, a sealed crystal vial rattled violently. Inside, a raven-feather quill thrashed against the glass — no cracks formed, but each movement rang louder than it should have.

Harry raised one hand. No flourish. No chant. Just a gesture of dismissal. The quill stilled instantly.

He exhaled.

“Already?”

The hum of fluorescent lighting buzzed through the command trailer like a hive never quite asleep. Screenlight painted every wall in pale data-glow — footage, readouts, heatmaps, and one slowly pulsing waveform that didn’t match any they’d catalogued.

Fury stood at the centre table, eye locked on a grainy satellite overlay of the Bifrost crater. Still active. Still hot. But no movement. Just pressure.

Hill stepped beside him, crisp as ever, holding the latest report. “Crater reads live. But nothing’s crossed the perimeter in two days.”

“Not nothing,” Fury muttered. “Just quiet.”

A soft chime pinged from the far terminal. One of the analysts — barely twenty — squinted at his monitor. “We’ve got a phase shift spike. Vault Seven. The Cube’s... twitching.”

Hill straightened. “Location integrity?”

“Still in containment. But the pulse profile’s new.”

Footsteps. Sitwell entered, tablet in hand. “Reports from Puente Antiguo say the ground’s humming again. Civilians are nervous.”

He paused, exchanged a look with Hill, then addressed Fury.

“The wizard’s tent is still sealed. No movement.”

Fury didn’t answer at first. Just rubbed the edge of his temple. Hill leaned over the display again. “No Bifrost signature. If Thor’s gone, he didn’t use the bridge.”

“Because it’s broken,” Fury said.

Silence stretched — just for a breath.

“Do we trigger Phase Two?” Hill asked quietly.

Fury’s gaze had already shifted. The Tesseract’s telemetry streamed in cold blue pulses, each rhythmically wrong. He didn’t answer.

“Last time it opened,” he said finally, “it brought a god.”

He looked up. “This time... might be worse.”

A second chime. Louder.

“Sir—” the analyst choked out. “It’s gone.”

Fury turned.

The screen showed Vault Seven. Empty.

Another feed snapped in — distorted, skipping frames. Barton, eyes vacant, walked past the final seal. The Cube clutched calmly in one hand.

Fury didn’t curse. Didn’t flinch.

“Sound the lockdown.”

He was already walking away.

The knock was deliberate. Inevitable. The kind that didn’t ask permission.

Harry opened the door without looking. The wards had already told him who it was.

Coulson stood there, framed against the desert sky, tablet in one hand, expression perfectly neutral — which, for him, meant something was very wrong.

The conjured tent wasn’t large, but it shifted its weight around guests like a living thing. The air inside was dim and dry, tasting faintly of iron and spell-oil. Shelves rotated. One chair unfolded itself in the corner.

“We need help,” Coulson said.

Harry didn’t nod. Didn’t move. “I’m aware.”

He turned his back and walked to the counter. He didn’t ask Coulson to sit.

The agent stepped inside without hesitation, setting the tablet down and flicking it on. Surveillance footage — poor resolution, airport chaos, the glint of a sceptre vanishing into fog. A man behind Loki blinked once in an entire minute of film.

“We tracked him. Briefly. He slipped.”

Silence. Not heavy, just full. The shop settled. Harry did not.

“You’re calling the favour,” he said, voice flat.

Coulson didn’t blink. “Yes.”

That earned the smallest of reactions — not an expression, but a shift in breath. Harry stepped to a shelf and picked up a stone, thumb rubbing over its rough edge.

He didn’t speak for several seconds. The quiet pressed harder.

Then Coulson, with the patience of someone who’d had this queued for weeks, pulled out a phone. He didn’t say anything. Just tapped play.

Fury appeared onscreen — in full Jedi robes, wielding a purple toy lightsaber with exaggerated flair. There were sound effects. Possibly cheering.

Harry watched the entire thing, arms crossed.

When it ended, the stone in his hand dimmed. A shelf somewhere to the left clicked shut like a door finally answered.

He exhaled through his nose.

"That’ll do."

And vanished, leaving a scorch ring in the shape of a boot sole.

Coulson stood alone. He slid the phone away with something that wasn’t quite relief.

Outside, the wind had stopped.

The Helicarrier hung in the sky like a secret, silent judgment. A leviathan with no chains, drifting above the world it meant to protect — or control.

Inside, everything felt brittle. Not silent — charged. The hum of fluorescent lighting was constant, but it carried with it the breath-holding stillness of anticipation. Consoles blinked too fast. Technicians moved with a kind of orchestrated nervousness. Their hands typed, but their eyes flicked constantly to the side monitors.

Hill moved like a knife through it. She passed a data pad to Fury with practiced efficiency. He scrolled through it slowly, every motion deliberate.

“You really uploaded it?” she asked, voice low.

Fury didn’t look up. “He asked.”

Hill raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t say when he’d show up.”

“Exactly.”

The implication hung in the air. Fury wasn’t worried. That worried her more.

Two decks below, the lab was brighter — sterile, humming, the lights casting a pale gleam off every surface. Tony Stark paced with impatient grace, fingers twitching as he manipulated holographic overlays. The arc reactor glowed under his shirt like a second heartbeat. Bruce Banner hovered beside him, watching the waveforms curl and snap.

“Tell me this doesn’t look like an invitation,” Tony muttered. “It’s like he’s handwriting a RSVP in cosmic radiation.”

Bruce frowned. “The readings are reactive. Like it’s echoing what’s happening in the field. Almost like feedback — not from the Cube, but from what Loki’s doing with it.”

Tony paused. “Okay. Creepy and flattering.”

“Maybe just creepy,” Bruce said.

On the upper deck, Steve Rogers stood in front of a monitor. Loki’s smirk was paused mid-frame. The crowd below him knelt in frozen stillness — except for one man who stood tall. Steve stared at that man more than at Loki.

Natasha watched Steve from the shadows near the bulkhead. She didn’t interrupt. She rarely needed to. Observation was its own weapon.

Coulson entered the control centre. Calm as ever. Eyes sharp.

“We have another variable,” he announced.

Tony didn’t turn. “Let me guess. Wears cloaks, talks like a riddle, and looks like he stepped out of a Tolkien appendix.”

Coulson didn’t miss a beat. “He’ll be meeting you in Germany.”

Steve turned, brow furrowed. “Who is he?”

Coulson’s voice didn’t change. “An asset Fury’s worked with before. Not officially on the books. But when he moves, the scales tend to shift.”

Steve grimaced. “Not exactly a glowing reference.”

“Sometimes that’s as good as it gets,” Coulson said.

Fury’s voice crackled through the intercom. “Prep the jet. He’s already en route.”

Tony frowned. “We didn’t send him transport.”

Coulson checked his watch. “Twelve minutes ago, he was in New Mexico.”

That stopped the room.

Natasha broke the silence. “Did he teleport?”

Tony muttered, “Brilliant. We’ve got Gandalf on retainer.”

Bruce, looking toward the ceiling, added, “Just as long as he’s not Sauron.”

This time, someone snorted. Maybe even Steve.

Outside, far ahead, Stuttgart waited. And the storm was already forming.

The plaza shimmered in the summer heat, wide and pristine, lined with flagpoles and marble facades. Men in tuxedos and women in long dresses still reeled from the sound of the blast. Screams echoed off high glass and stone. Smoke curled from the collapsed security post.

Loki walked with slow, deliberate steps into the centre of the crowd. His armour gleamed. The sceptre crackled faintly with restrained malice.

“Kneel,” he said. The word was power. It burrowed into the air like a blade. Minds bent to it.

The crowd froze. Then slowly, one by one, they dropped to their knees. An old woman whimpered. A suited diplomat pressed his forehead to the stone. A child clung to his father’s arm.

Only one man remained standing. Pale. Rigid. Unmoving.

Loki turned toward him, smirk already forming—

The sceptre’s glow blinked out. Gone. No warning.

The air next to the standing man tore, a shimmer fracturing like glass.

Harry stepped through.

No flash. No flare. Just presence — sharp and undeniable.

He looked once around the plaza, eyes tracking the damage, the civilians, the Asgardian.

“Really?” he said. “A speech, a sceptre, and a bomb threat. Did you lose your flair or just forget taste?”

Loki’s smile twisted. “You interrupt royalty.”

“No,” Harry replied. “I interrupt bad theatre.”

The sceptre flared. Loki fired.

The beam tore through the air — fast, white-hot.

Harry shifted his hand. The bolt bent unnaturally and detonated against a statue behind him. Stone hissed into steam.

Another blast. Faster. Arced low.

Harry stepped. Not fast — absolute. The beam cracked against something unseen, scattering light.

Loki didn’t hesitate. He fired again — three bolts this time, angled, spiralled. One shot for the crowd.

Harry raised a palm. Runes spun into being — transparent, layered. The bolt meant for civilians collapsed into a gold lattice midair.

Smoke curled at Harry’s feet. The plaza dimmed.

“You cheat,” Loki growled.

“You repeat yourself,” Harry said.

Daggers appeared. Loki sprinted forward.

Harry didn’t blink. He twisted aside, let the first blade pass — then slapped the second down with the back of his hand. Sparks flew. He pivoted, coat flaring.

Loki spun, slashing at Harry’s flank — steel meeting layered wards with a metallic screech. Harry responded — not with force, but with stillness. One foot angled. A pressure pulse knocked Loki back a step.

Loki snarled and summoned ice — jagged shards hurled toward Harry’s heart.

They froze in flight.

Literally. Frost bloomed in the air as Harry exhaled once, cold as moons. The shards dropped, inert.

“You posture like a king,” Harry said. “But you bleed like a spoiled heir.”

Loki screamed in Jotun and slammed the sceptre down. A shockwave blasted outward.

Harry raised both hands. A ripple of translucent stone flowed up from the plaza like rising tide. The wave met the blast and swallowed it.

Then — Harry stepped forward. Whispered something.

The cobblestones lit. A ring of gold fire burned beneath Loki’s feet. Roots burst through, alive and thorned. They snapped tight around limbs and chest.

Loki twisted. Screamed. Sent an illusion forward — a clone with eyes of fire.

Harry didn’t even look. The clone burst into black feathers.

Loki’s eyes widened.

He tried to fire again. The sceptre sparked.

Nothing came.

A shadow fell across the plaza.

The Quinjet.

Tony slammed down in a blaze of repulsors. “Well,” he said, glancing at the scene, “I see you started the party without us.”

Steve landed with a roll, shield up. Natasha dropped next, eyes scanning.

No threats remained.

Harry stood. “You’re late.”

Tony gestured at Loki. “Handled?”

Harry nodded once.

Steve eyed the vines. “Did he resist?”

Harry’s mouth tugged upward. “He tried. That counts for something.”

Loki hissed a phrase — sharp, bitter, ancient.

Harry answered it. Clear. Unflinching. Perfect.

Loki went quiet.

Harry turned and walked.

Tony muttered, “We’re the backup now, huh?”

Natasha, watching Harry’s retreating figure: “What language was that?”

Steve said nothing. Thinking.

Above them, the Quinjet waited.

The Quinjet thrummed quietly, its cabin dim with low lighting. The hum of the engines faded beneath tension that clung like humidity. Loki sat restrained at the centre — cuffs gleaming, gaze distant, smirk faint. Across from him, Harry sat with eyes closed, body unnervingly still. If he breathed, the plane didn’t notice.

Steve leaned against the rear bulkhead, arms crossed. Natasha cleaned a knife she hadn’t used. Tony tapped through a holo-display with one hand while watching Harry with the other.

A warning blared. The cabin lights flickered once. Then again — harder.

“Uh,” came the pilot’s voice. “We’ve got...something descending. Fast.”

The jet rocked. A deep thoom rang from the roof.

“We’re being boarded — again,” Tony muttered.

A beat of silence. Then the side hatch exploded open — not blasted, but ripped. Lightning filled the frame. And through it stepped Thor.

His armour sparked. Hair whipped in the wind. Mjolnir crackled like a storm barely leashed. He strode in like the jet belonged to him.

Coulson stepped forward. “Thor—”

Thor didn’t stop. His eyes were on Loki.

Harry opened his eyes.

“Put him down,” he said.

It wasn’t loud. But it landed. Thor stopped mid-step.

His gaze shifted. Took in Harry — fully, now.

“You,” he said. Not hostile. Not sure.

Harry tilted his head. “Me.”

Steve stepped forward. Tony raised a repulsor.

“Great,” Tony said. “Now it’s a thunder god convention. Who brought the popcorn?”

Thor’s eyes snapped to him. “He is Asgardian. He answers to us.”

“And he attacked us,” Coulson said. “This is SHIELD jurisdiction.”

Loki watched it all, chin tilted. He didn’t smile. But the corner of his mouth twitched.

Tension built. Mjolnir rose a fraction. Tony’s hand lit up. Natasha moved a step left. Steve raised his shield slightly.

Loki inhaled, about to speak—

Everything stopped.

No sound. No movement.

Even the hum of the jet dulled.

Harry stood. One hand raised. A stasis ward shimmered around them — a bubble of thickened air and held time.

He looked at Thor. Then Tony. Then Steve.

“You’ve made your point,” he said. “Now decide if you’re going to adhere to the lesson you just learned — to think before acting — or throw that growth away with another impulsive mistake.”

For a breath, no one moved.

Then the spell eased.

Thor lowered the hammer.

Harry didn’t smile. “Good. After this mess is cleaned — the Cube, the scepter, everything your brother stirred up — he’s yours. Until then, he answers to this world.”

Coulson exhaled quietly. Tony dropped his hand. Steve relaxed — a little.

Thor stepped back. Said nothing. But the storm around him dimmed.

Loki’s cuffs glinted. He didn’t look up.

The hatch resealed. The Quinjet course corrected.

They didn’t speak.

Minutes passed.

Then Loki said, almost bored, “You all came together — just to glare at each other.”

Harry, eyes on the window: “Progress.”

The Quinjet's hydraulics hissed as the bay doors slid open, revealing the hangar’s stark lighting. SHIELD agents moved quickly, escorting Loki out first — chained, chin up, eyes sharp. His smirk was half-hearted, like a habit worn thin.

The rest of the team followed. Stark removed his helmet with a practiced twist. Steve’s steps were crisp, measured. Natasha’s gaze moved constantly, even now. Bruce walked quietly, hands tucked in his sleeves, a slight tension in his shoulders that hadn’t eased since they took off.

Harry came last. No cloak, no noise, just a tired man stepping into yet another battlefield. His coat hung loose around him, scuffed from travel and wind. He didn’t look like a threat. Maybe that was the point.

No one stopped him.

Hill waited at the foot of the ramp, datapad in hand. “He’s not cleared.”

Fury, a few paces behind her, didn’t slow. “He’s with me. For now.”

Hill didn’t argue, but the way her grip tightened around the tablet said plenty.

The group moved into the corridor. Scanners blinked as they passed, flickering once when Harry crossed the threshold. No alarms. No glitches. Just a pause, like the system was checking a file it didn’t know it had.

Steve positioned himself subtly closer to Natasha. She noticed. Didn’t comment.

Tony murmured to Bruce, “I don’t even know his name.”

Bruce offered a faint shrug. “Maybe that’s safer.”

They stopped outside a glass-walled debriefing room. Coulson gestured to the open door. “Room’s prepped.”

Harry glanced sideways. “I don’t do debriefs.”

“Suit yourself,” Coulson replied, unmoved. “It’s there if you change your mind.”

Harry didn’t respond. Just kept walking.

Hill stepped in beside him. “You’re not exactly building trust.”

“I’m not here to be trusted.” His tone wasn’t defensive — just quiet. Like someone explaining the weather.

“Then why are you here?”

He shrugged. “To keep the floor from cracking beneath all the posturing.”

She slowed her pace, thoughtful. That wasn’t the answer she expected. Or wanted.

Down a side corridor, Harry paused. Reinforced glass lined the right wall. Behind it, Loki sat in silence. He didn’t move, but his eyes tracked Harry instantly. Their gazes met. It held.

The hallway dimmed slightly, the hum of the containment cell steady. Normal. No reactions. No magical tension.

Harry didn’t speak at first. Just watched him. Then, quietly: “You went through all that... just to land behind glass again?”

Loki’s mouth twitched, something between amusement and disdain. “Better to fall on your feet than never climb.”

“You never climbed,” Harry said. “You skipped the hard parts and called it ambition.”

A silence stretched. Loki leaned back against the wall.

“You sound like Odin.”

Harry snorted softly. “Insulting both of us in one sentence. Efficient.”

Loki tilted his head. “You’re not what you seem.”

Harry gave the faintest smile. “Neither are you. But I’ve stopped pretending I’m not tired.”

He turned.

Steve stood down the hall, arms folded. Watching.

“Are we sure he’s on our side?” he asked, not loud, but not hiding it.

Hill didn’t look away. “He hasn’t picked a side. That’s the problem.”

The lab’s hum wasn't loud, but it was constant — just enough to set nerves on edge. A background presence, like a mosquito you couldn’t quite find, buzzing just beneath perception.

Tony leaned over the console, tapping through readings. “Radiation output’s spiking again. Doesn’t match the baseline. This thing’s not just glowing pretty anymore. It’s pulsing. Like it’s breathing.”

Bruce stood beside him, blinking slowly. “You think it’s reacting to us?”

Tony didn’t answer right away. His brow furrowed. “It’s been reacting since we brought it aboard.”

Steve paced near the far end of the lab, arms folded. “Feels off in here. Like the air’s tighter. Like something’s holding its breath.”

Thor didn’t move. He stood by the window, gaze distant. “It speaks, even now. Not in words, but weight.”

Tony turned. “Right. Creepy magic feelings. Helpful.”

“Maybe take the creepy feelings seriously,” Steve muttered. “Your people weren’t exactly honest about what the Tesseract could do.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So now you’re blaming SHIELD too?”

Steve’s jaw tightened. “I’m saying we were lied to. About the Tesseract. About what it can do.”

Tony’s head snapped up. “Right. Here it comes — Phase Two paranoia again.”

Steve stepped forward. “You’ve got a weapon of mass destruction sitting in our lab, and you’re acting like it’s just another toy.”

Bruce raised a calming hand. “Guys—”

“No, let him talk,” Tony snapped. “Let’s hear Captain Virtue explain how we’re supposed to beat gods with good intentions.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “At least I don’t build suits of armor to protect my ego.”

Tony took a step forward. “And I don’t follow orders just because they come with a salute.”

The tension cracked — fast and brittle, like a snapped wire. The air felt electric. Everything too close.

Bruce stepped back, voice suddenly tight. “Is it hot in here?”

Thor’s fingers clenched around Mjölnir. “You all feel it. The tension. It grows.”

Steve jabbed a finger toward Tony. “You’d weaponize anything. That’s what you do. That’s what got us here.”

Tony snapped, “Better than sitting on your hands waiting for the world to burn!”

Bruce gripped the edge of a table, knuckles white. “Stop. Something’s wrong. This isn’t—”

“You think this is new?” Steve growled. “You’ve been picking at everything since the jet.”

“And you’ve been judging since day one!” Tony shouted.

A chair toppled with a sharp scrape. Natasha entered the room and froze at the sight.

Only Harry hadn’t moved. He stood in the corner, arms folded, watching. Silent.

Then: “It’s not just the scepter,” he said quietly. “It’s you.”

Everyone turned.

Harry stepped forward. “You’re raw. Worn thin. The thing’s just... pulling threads. It doesn’t need magic. You brought the matches.”

Tony turned, fists clenched. “And you waited this long to say something?”

“I wanted to see how much it took,” Harry said. Then he smirked faintly, the expression cutting. “Honestly? I was bored. Thought it might be educational.”

Tony’s fists tightened. “You’re kidding.”

Harry shrugged. “You were already halfway to gutting each other. I figured I'd see how far it would go. Call it boredom. Or morbid curiosity.”

Tony turned on him, sharp. “You let us lose control? For fun?”

Harry’s expression didn’t change. “No one was listening. I thought maybe you’d hear yourselves if it got loud enough.”

Bruce, breath shaking, muttered, “It’s us. It’s using us.”

Harry walked to the containment case. “No. It’s revealing you. It’s not planting thoughts — just tearing the covers off the ones you try to bury.”

He touched the glass. No reaction. Not from the sceptre, not from the room. Just silence and stillness — almost like it was never there.

The tension didn’t pop like a balloon. It sagged. Deflated. Everyone’s shoulders eased — but no one looked comfortable.

Tony blinked hard and glanced at Harry. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

Harry looked back without a trace of apology. “Takes one to know one.”

Steve rubbed his face and muttered, “This is a mess.”

Natasha walked further in, slowly. “We need space from it.”

Harry didn’t look away from the case. “You need to figure out which parts of that argument were yours… and which ones the stick just made louder.”

He turned and left. No one followed. Nobody stopped him.

Loki sat in the centre of the cell, spine straight, hands clasped loosely in his lap. He didn’t look up when Harry entered. Not at first. But the shift in the hum — the subtle resonance in the glass — gave him away.

Harry stopped two paces from the reinforced wall. Said nothing.

Finally, Loki raised his eyes. His smile was slow, practiced. “Come to gloat, sorcerer?”

“No,” Harry said evenly. “Just watching the cage hold.”

Loki rose with feline grace, circling inside the perimeter. “Thor mentioned you. Said you carry a magic not born of Midgard. Something older. Wilder.”

Harry didn’t blink. “You believe everything he says now?”

“Only the parts he doesn’t mean to reveal.”

Loki circled the curve of the glass slowly. “Of course, that’s always been the flaw with Asgardians. They stumble through eternity thinking strength is subtlety.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Bold words from a man who got arrested in under an hour.”

Loki smiled wider. “But you… you’re not burdened with their crudeness. I imagine your magic is older. Leaner. I’d wager it costs more.”

“All real things do,” Harry replied. “But pretending it does makes a good excuse for the cheap tricks, doesn’t it?”

Loki’s expression sharpened. He shifted tone. “Curious, really. A man who walks like he’s seen gods die and yet plays errand boy to mortals. You must be terribly bored.”

“Was,” Harry said flatly. “Then you showed up with enough ego to drown a sun, and I got mildly curious.”

Loki’s voice thinned, the last mask tighter. “Or is that your trick — drifting from war to war, pretending you’re better because you’ve outlived your mistakes?”

Harry’s gaze didn’t waver. “No. I’m worse because I survived them. But at least I don’t lie to myself about it.”

Loki paused mid-step. For the first time, his smile slipped.

Harry tilted his head slightly. “That’s one of your tells, isn’t it? You hide behind borrowed insights. Easier than risking something of your own.”

Loki paused mid-step. “You sound like Odin.”

“Insulting both of us in one sentence,” Harry murmured. “Efficient.”

The cell's lights caught a flicker in Loki’s eyes. He approached the glass — not too close, just enough. “You're hiding something. Even the air around you knows. It hesitates. It listens.”

Harry’s tone was dry. “I’ve lived long enough to forget how death is supposed to scare me. Maybe the air just learned that too.”

A beat.

Loki’s voice dipped low. “You’re not what you seem.”

Harry met his gaze, level and steady. “Neither are you. But one of us got tired of pretending.”

The silence that followed wasn’t tense. It was sharp — like a blade laid gently on a throat.

Then Loki said something in a long-forgotten dialect of Old Vanir. A threat. Intimate, cruel.

Harry didn’t flinch. “You’re mispronouncing the third verb.”

Loki blinked.

Harry added, perfectly enunciated in the same tongue: “You can’t even threaten properly in your own language.”

He turned.

Loki called after him — but the words were hollow now. Without weight.

Harry didn’t respond.

He left without another glance.

Behind him, Loki stood very still — the way only someone with too many thoughts and too few certainties could.

And for once, he didn’t smile.

The lab’s lights buzzed quietly, matched by the soft chirp of monitors tracking blood metrics. Bruce hunched over the display, one hand steady on the bench, the other adjusting a slider by millimetres. Data poured in. It didn’t say anything new. It never did.

The quiet stretched too long.

He didn’t hear the footsteps, but he felt the shift — that subtle pressure in the air when someone entered without making noise.

Harry leaned against the doorframe. No sound, no announcement. Just there.

Bruce flinched.

Harry raised a hand, palm open. “Not here to test you.”

Bruce let out a short breath. “That’s new.”

Harry stepped in slowly, gaze scanning the screen but not intrusively. “Still checking for what might set you off?”

“Still hoping nothing does,” Bruce said. He tried to keep it light. It didn’t land.

Harry gave a small nod. “Hope’s good. Contingency’s better.”

Bruce eyed him warily. “That what this is? A check-in?”

“No.” Harry moved to the wall opposite the terminal, laying his fingers flat against the concrete. “This is preparation.”

The surface under his hand shimmered faintly — barely a flicker. A line of sigils glowed once and sank into the wall like breath fading on cold glass.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”

“Wards. They won’t stop you,” Harry said. “But they’ll slow you down. Give the others time.”

Bruce straightened. “You think I’m going to lose it?”

“I think this ship is full of sharp edges,” Harry said quietly. “And people who still see you as a scalpel. Not the hand holding it.”

That silenced Bruce. He looked down at the screen again — at the numbers that couldn’t explain the knot in his ribs.

Harry’s voice came softer. “I’ve seen worse. I’ve been worse. Don’t let the thing wear your name.”

Bruce didn’t answer. But something in his shoulders dropped, just slightly.

Harry turned to leave, pausing at the door. “You won’t have long. This place hums like thunder waiting for sky.”

And then he was gone.

Bruce stayed where he was. One hand drifted to the wall — to the spot where the sigils had disappeared. He touched it. It was warm.

The containment chamber thrummed. Quiet — but deep enough to press behind the ribs. Lights stayed low, casting the Tesseract’s glow across the walls in faint blue ribbons. No pulse. Only presence.

Harry stepped through the door like a janitor reporting for inspection. No cloak, no wand — nothing that left a trail. His boots clicked once on the tile and then fell silent as he crossed to the containment perimeter.

He didn’t touch the glass or speak. He stood, still and watchful.

The Cube floated midair, spinning too smoothly to register motion. Inside its edges, the light folded inward — centreless, unstable. Like it refused to settle on one shape.

Harry tilted his head. The Cube didn’t react. It waited.

“That’s not Earth magic,” he murmured. After a pause: “It’s awake.”

A shimmer curled at the edge of his vision — subtle, like a trick of light at first. He didn’t blink or turn. Tracked it like a hunter follows smoke — calm, alert.

He let his senses stretch — not through spell work, but through knowing. The air around the Tesseract was colder, but not in degrees. The chill carried purpose. Like a breath trapped beneath the skin of the world.

“No runes. No boundaries,” he whispered. “It doesn’t push or pull — it invites.” His voice thinned further. “And it watches. Always.”

The Cube’s light flared faintly. Most wouldn’t have seen it. Harry did.

He scanned the containment wall, where shield runes — mismatched and angular — clung to the infrastructure like scabs. Probably Asgardian. They held — but only just.

“Crude work,” he muttered. “Built to contain, never to understand.”

He eyed the monitoring equipment. Numbers scrolled across the screens out of rhythm — as if reality kept glitching at the edge of perception. One reading flashed a second too late. Another repeated.

“This isn’t a key,” he said. “It’s a lens. And something’s already on the other side.”

He looked down to his hand — flexing his fingers once. Not thinking. Remembering.

Then, slowly, he turned.

Up in the corner, a SHIELD camera lens watched in silence.

“Keep watching,” he murmured. It wasn’t addressed to the camera.

He stepped out. The door sealed behind him.

Inside the chamber, the Cube shifted again. A fraction slower. Not toward the sensor array — but toward the spot where Harry had stood.

Like something unseen had leaned forward

The surveillance room was quiet except for the occasional click of keys and the low whir of fans. Multiple monitors showed overlapping footage of the helicarrier’s interior — one square for each hallway, lab, and locked chamber.

One screen played a silent clip-on loop.

Harry. Standing in the Tesseract chamber. Not moving. Not touching anything.

Fury watched it again.

A technician leaned in. “He’s not on the access logs.”

Hill crossed her arms beside him. “There was no breach?”

“No alarm. No bypass. No trace.” Fury’s voice was flat. “He didn’t use a door.”

They switched angles. Different hallway. Different timestamp. Harry again — this time passing through a security checkpoint. The guards didn’t flinch. Didn’t even look up.

Hill frowned. “They didn’t see him.”

Fury rubbed the corner of his eye. “He wasn’t cloaked. He wasn’t invisible. He was just... unregistered.”

The tech pulled up another file. Audio from New Mexico. Garbled. Blurry heatmaps. Muted screaming. A still-frame: Puente Antiguo. A shopfront torn open by something that didn’t leave physical marks. The same man — older, maybe. Maybe not.

Hill tapped the screen. “Same signature from the Loki incident. The same energy curves. Only this time it didn’t spike — it folded inward.”

Fury didn’t answer.

Another monitor lit up with internal file requests: a ghost trail of Coulson checking known metas, sorcerers, incident logs. One result came back flagged and classified beyond Coulson’s level. Redacted across every line.

Hill glanced at him. “Do we go to the Council?”

“No,” Fury said. “Not until we know more.”

“What do we tell the others?”

“We don’t. Not yet.”

Hill hesitated. “If he turns—”

“We’ll be ready,” Fury said. “No agents. No contact. I want him watched. Off the books. Eyes only.”

She looked toward the looping footage. “He stood in front of a cosmic artifact and did nothing.”

“Exactly,” Fury said. “That’s what worries me.”

The helicarrier shuddered, its frame groaning under the strain. Red warning lights blinked against steel bulkheads as agents rushed to emergency stations. The low moan of failing metal reverberated across multiple decks, overlapping with the sharp crack of explosive charges. Barton’s team was deep inside, hitting critical control nodes with brutal efficiency.

Harry stepped onto the upper technical deck just as the fractures spread. The deck flexed beneath his boots, seams along the upper hull seams blooming into fresh cracks. A blast door half-sealed behind a group of agents buckled inward as the air pressure shifted. One agent lost her footing. The vacuum pulled, catching her leg. She screamed, her body half-pulled through the narrowing gap.

Harry moved with steady intent. To the agents nearby, it appeared as if he simply steadied himself against a rail. But beneath his fingertips, threads of controlled magic pushed into the stressed metal. The alloy resisted for a moment, then adjusted. The groan lowered in pitch. The fractures eased.

With surgical control, Harry reinforced the compromised seam. The pull of the vacuum weakened. The hatch trembled, realigned, and sealed fully. The rupture stabilized.

The agents around him exhaled, stunned. One glanced at Harry with wide eyes, murmuring, "Lucky break."

Harry offered only a faint nod, face unreadable.

Inside, his mind remained sharp. Each silent rescue frayed the boundary he fought to maintain. If they saw what he truly did, the questions would follow. And SHIELD was already far too close.

Klaxons blared overhead. Fury’s voice crackled through the comms, issuing containment orders. The deck beneath Harry trembled again as Barton’s team continued their assault. Below, engines fluctuated. Stabilizers struggled to compensate.

Harry moved quickly, slipping past evacuating personnel. The emergency lighting stuttered as he cut through narrow maintenance access shafts, staying ahead of the collapse. He sealed another breach—this one minor, barely a hairline fracture. Another followed. Three total. Each one required more care, more subtlety. One he stabilized while silently apparating inside a pressurized conduit, the spell compressing into the smallest thread possible.

Near an intersection, Hill barked orders into her comm. Her voice cut through the panic: "All agents to emergency stations. Triage protocols active. Move!"

A young tech, still catching his breath after narrowly avoiding being sucked through the failed hatch, paused long enough to murmur, "Thanks for the help, sir. I thought that hatch was going to take me."

Harry met his gaze for only a moment. Distant. Quiet. "Stay on your feet."

The tremors subsided briefly, but Harry could feel the deeper fracture spreading beneath them—a destabilization designed for more than just structural failure. His eyes lifted toward the ceiling where the next storm waited.

The Hulk.

The helicarrier lurched, harder this time. Not like the earlier tremors—this one pitched sideways, as though something inside had shifted wrong and wouldn’t settle.

Harry adjusted his footing against the tilt. Overhead, lights cut in and out. The klaxons changed tone. Lower now. Urgent. Systems had stopped compensating.

He didn't need sightlines to know where the failure was. Banner.

Deep below, in the containment lab, Bruce Banner's breathing faltered. The screams of buckling metal only added to the rising flood of pressure behind his eyes. Natasha spoke, calm and steady, but it no longer reached him.

Another blast went off beneath Harry’s position. Not large, but perfectly placed. Barton’s last strike along the vibration lines. Fuel ruptured. The flames spread fast.

Harry heard the containment room fail long before the deck shook. The pulse came through the ship’s bones. Then came the roar. Not mechanical. Not structural. Primal.

The Hulk tore upward, blasting through twisted steel, fists shredding bulkheads that had once been engineered for orbital resilience. His fury punched through decks like wet paper.

Harry didn’t chase it. He couldn’t. Not here.

A steel beam collapsed nearby. Debris pinned two agents against a sealed hatch. Harry reached them fast, steadying the broken frame. No theatrics. No displays of force. The beam shifted enough for them to scramble clear. They didn’t see his hand briefly glow against the steel. They called it luck and kept running.

A burst pipe blew apart ahead. Steam, blinding and hot, filled the corridor. Harry raised his arm, drawing a sharp circle into the metal skin of the valve with one finger. The flow slowed. The evac team behind him barely noticed.

He kept moving, eyes narrowed against smoke, pressure, and the rising noise of panic. His mind weighed every corridor, every access shaft. How many he could hold. How many he could save. How much he dared.

"If I stop one, I must stop them all. And this time, I cannot."

He did not watch the Hulk tear upward through the structure. He didn’t need to. The roar carried everything.

Hill’s voice cut sharply over the comms: "Multiple decks losing integrity. We’re losing containment. Evacuation’s fragmented."

Fury answered, flat: "We hold what we can."

Harry slowed as the deck above cracked open, light spilling through twisted gaps. Far above, the Hulk reached open sky, launching himself from the torn hull into the clouds.

Harry exhaled. No anger. Only cold calculation.

"You’re not my battle. Not yet."

The deeper corridors of the carrier burned with flickering light. Smoke crawled through broken vents. Support beams groaned with every shift of the deck. Coulson advanced carefully, specialized weapon tight in his grip, eyes scanning the narrow, ruined passageways. His breath stayed steady, but his pace carried weight.

Harry followed at a distance. Silent. Measuring.

Ahead, Loki emerged from the shadows.

Coulson didn’t hesitate. He fired. The shot struck centre mass. The figure shattered into nothing—a projection.

The real Loki appeared behind him. Smooth. Efficient. The staff drove forward in one clean motion. The point pierced Coulson’s chest with a wet, controlled punch. His breath caught as the staff retracted, blood spreading fast across his shirt.

Harry was already moving, closing the distance as Loki vanished with the fading echo of displaced air. The corridor trembled under another distant explosion.

Harry dropped to one knee beside Coulson. The overhead lights flickered wildly, struggling to stay alive. The air thinned, vibrating like it couldn’t decide whether to collapse or hold steady.

He pressed his hand gently against the wound, feeling the warm blood seep through his palm and into the floor’s cracks.

The world narrowed. No spell. No chant. No verbal command. Just intention. Harry let his magic reach out into the delicate gap where breath and death hesitate.

He didn’t force it. He requested.

The pulse came back faint. A subtle ripple moving through the air around them. Coulson’s chest spasmed once. His heart stuttered, then caught. Breath returned—ragged, unstable, incomplete, but present.

"Every gift like this carries a debt. And I am always the one left to pay."

The ritual tightened something deep inside him. He wasn’t saving Coulson for mercy. It was necessity. Fury would need him alive. Not now—but later.

Footsteps approached from behind. Harry didn’t move as Fury entered, weapon drawn. The director froze at the sight of Harry kneeling beside the bleeding agent, his hand still faintly glowing beneath the spreading blood.

They locked eyes. No words passed. But understanding settled between them.

Fury glanced down at Coulson’s barely conscious form. His voice was cold, deliberate.

"He died. Let that stand."

Harry held the gaze a moment longer, then gave a single, slow nod. Agreement made. The narrative would stand. The myth would serve.

The hallway trembled again. Distant alarms rose beneath the ringing silence. Fury holstered his weapon without another word.

Harry withdrew his hand, blood drying against his glove. As SHIELD medics arrived, he moved past them into a side passage. No flash. No noise. The flickering lights masked his exit.

Fury watched the medics work in silence, his face unreadable as they lifted Coulson onto a stretcher.

If the man lived. The symbol would die.

For the myth to be born. The man remained hidden.

The fires had burned down to flickers. Steel walls gleamed with heat stains, patches of melted wiring hanging like scorched vines. The air was thick—plastic, coolant, and something older beneath it, the faint residue of magic tangled in machinery. The worst was over. The visible worst. What remained were fractures that didn’t scream anymore. They simply waited.

Loki moved through a maintenance passage near the secondary hangar. His steps were measured, deliberate. He wasn’t fleeing. He wasn’t rushing. Every motion spoke of careful control, as if performance still mattered even here, in corridors stripped of audience.

Harry stood ahead, waiting.

The corridor narrowed sharply. Exposed panels blinked fitfully as dying systems tried to compensate. Wires arced briefly in silent sparks, leaving faint ozone in the heavy air. Steam curled from a ruptured valve near the floor, fogging the space just enough to blur their shapes.

Loki paused before he fully saw him. The presence was enough.

Harry stepped forward into clearer view, coat settling with each step. His hands stayed loose at his sides, deliberate in their stillness. The two faced each other across the narrow throat of the ruined hall.

Harry sent out a thin lattice of magic, anchoring a ward into the walls. Subtle. No glow. No pulse. The tether wouldn’t stop Loki—not fully—but if the god struck first, the bulkheads would collapse inward and end this before it grew messy. Quiet insurance.

Loki's voice broke the silence first. "I wondered when you would stop watching."

"I'm not here to stop you. Yet." Harry's tone was flat, giving nothing.

Loki tilted his head, studying the man in front of him. "You leave a strange trail. You intervene. Just enough to delay collapse. Not enough to rewrite the page. You let the others believe this is still their story."

Harry didn’t blink. "I’ve learned patience."

Loki smiled faintly, voice smooth and steady. "Patience is dangerous. Most here are short-sighted. You’re planning past them. I find that intriguing."

He took a single slow step backward, eyes never leaving Harry. Behind him, an auxiliary portal blinked open—thin-edged, unstable. The frame of its magic wavered, stitched hastily from stolen Asgardian theory and whatever scraps he could twist. A workable escape, if fragile.

Harry could have shredded it. The threads exposed themselves for the taking. But he didn’t move.

"You're playing a longer game," Loki said. "That's rare here."

Harry offered no reply. The choice had already been made.

Loki continued stepping back toward the swirling arc. "One day you'll tell me why you let me walk."

Harry allowed a thin, dry edge into his voice. "If you live long enough."

Loki smiled, turning slightly as the portal pulled him inward. The unstable gateway folded behind him, rippling once before it collapsed into empty air.

Harry lowered his hand, though he had never raised it.

The corridor fell still. Buzzing panels crackled softly as systems struggled for stability.

His voice, quiet, more to himself than the room: "It isn’t your time."

The portal cracked open above Midtown, its swirling core tearing into the sky like a wound stretched too wide. Stark Tower pulsed with alien light as the first Leviathan burst free into open air, followed closely by swarms of Chitauri ships spilling outward into New York’s grid.

Sirens screamed almost immediately. Traffic froze. Horns blared in rising panic as pedestrians scattered in waves. Screams bounced between glass towers. The skyline fractured under the weight of something too large, too sudden.

Harry arrived without sound. No flash. No displacement signature. Just a figure in a dark coat standing atop a rooftop several blocks from Stark Tower. His cloak settled as the first screams echoed beneath him.

He scanned the city. The pattern emerged quickly—avenues clogging, intersections collapsing, evacuation routes breaking down as civilians jammed streets meant for flow, not retreat. The Chitauri moved fast, spreading like liquid through the gaps.

A Leviathan roared overhead, its segmented body coiling between buildings like a living siege engine. Chitauri riders peppered the avenues below, targeting police barricades and fleeing civilians. Energy blasts shredded storefronts. Cars overturned. Fires started.

Harry didn’t move. Not yet. His eyes tracked movement patterns—where the collapse points were forming, where the structures leaned hardest, where the smallest shift could bring down entire blocks.

The weight pressed behind his ribs. The familiar temptation stirred: release the seal, unleash power, stop it all at once. The craving for control.

But he held.

"This is not a war of glory. This is a war of stitches."

He extended his will outward in narrow threads. Protection wards formed quietly, nested deep into foundation lines beneath hospitals, shelters, and transit hubs. Not barriers. Anchors. Stabilizers. Threads that would hold weight when beams cracked and concrete shifted.

At a subway entrance two blocks down, a surge of fleeing civilians forced against the gate. Harry flicked his hand. The gate locked itself behind the last evacuees, sealing them inside. Seconds later, a collapsing support beam dropped heavy slabs of concrete against the reinforced entrance, holding firm. The people below never saw how close it came.

Above 5th Avenue, another Leviathan twisted toward a column of stalled buses. Harry moved now—sliding down a service stairwell, boots silent against the metal rungs, cutting across alleys as the beast passed overhead.

Glass exploded from an office building ahead. A girder fell, aimed squarely toward a crowd pinned beneath a collapsed awning. Harry flicked his fingers, transfiguring its weight at the final instant. The girder twisted mid-drop and slammed harmlessly beside them.

From across the street, a fire captain made brief eye contact with him as Harry pulled trapped civilians from a burning lobby. The man opened his mouth to call out—but Harry was gone before words formed.

Farther down, a child in a bright yellow jacket clutched his mother’s hand, pointing upward. "The man in the coat... he saved them."

Overhead, Iron Man streaked across the skyline, engaging aerial squadrons. Thor landed hard against a Leviathan’s flank, hammer driving the beast sideways into a nearby building. The larger battle unfolded above. Harry remained below, walking the weave beneath it.

He reached a hotel where the corner foundation had begun to shift dangerously. With a slow exhale, he pressed his palm against the sidewalk, transfiguring the deep structural lines underfoot. The building held.

"Every small act holds the city upright."

The weight sat heavier with each step, but his restraint stayed intact. He would not unleash what lurked beneath the seal. Precision mattered.

Harry paused at an intersection as another Leviathan roared overhead, its shadow splitting the smoke.

The invasion had thickened. Midtown roared beneath tangled lines of smoke as the battle carved deeper into the city grid. Leviathans circled wide arcs overhead, their armoured bodies carving shadows into glass towers. The Chitauri on foot pushed hard toward every remaining stronghold, snapping through barricades like brittle branches.

Harry moved through ruined streets, his coat streaked with ash and debris. Sirens pulsed behind him. The air reeked of plasma discharge, burning insulation, and pulverized stone. Every intersection now held some makeshift triage point or evacuation cluster, pinned beneath SHIELD cover fire. Too many civilians were still exposed.

Ahead, a children’s hospital stood half-compromised, its west wing already leaning under the strain of fractured support beams. Chitauri aerial squads swarmed toward it, Leviathans following.

Harry apparated into position without theatrics, materializing between the oncoming Leviathan and the exposed side of the hospital. The creature barrelled forward, momentum set.

His hand moved once.

A circular rune flared briefly beneath the Leviathan’s path—not luminous, not grand. Controlled. It triggered mid-air, pulling downward with layered force. The beast halted mid-flight, its momentum crushed into the binding field. The massive body crumpled downward, crashing in a controlled descent away from the hospital's compromised wing. The ground shook but held.

Harry crossed the debris field immediately, pressing his palm against a failing load-bearing beam. With practiced speed, he etched stabilizing runes into the structure, reinforcing the wall before its collapse could cascade further.

Another shadow fell across him.

A second Leviathan descended fast. Harry drew a long sigil into the air with two fingers. The kinetic ward unfolded in a sharp vertical arc. The Leviathan struck the ward with full momentum and careened sideways, slamming into the upper floors of a vacant office block. The structure groaned but absorbed the impact.

The pace grew heavier. Harry tracked the civilians huddled behind improvised cover—small clusters of parents, hospital staff, and children crouched behind overturned vehicles and shattered concrete. He counted them instinctively.

Every life breathing behind him was a number that could still drop.

Chitauri squads closed from opposite sides. Harry split focus. One sharp cutting spell severed flight packs mid-air, sending several to crash into the asphalt. Another quick sequence pinned an advancing ground unit beneath collapsing debris as support columns gave way by design.

Farther east, an abandoned parking structure cracked as yet another Leviathan slammed through its outer levels. Dust plumed outward. Harry shifted again, reinforcing the adjacent apartment block with pulse stabilizers, locking the collapse before it spread.

Radio chatter flared nearby. A police evacuation team called into SHIELD command:

"South sector stabilized—unknown support unit active. No ID. We don’t know who."

At SHIELD command, Harry’s marked position appeared on their tactical feed. But no orders were given to engage. Not yet.

A wounded paramedic froze as Harry lifted a collapsed steel beam off two trapped civilians, transfiguring its density as though it were weightless. The paramedic whispered to a nearby officer, barely audible over the chaos:

"That man isn’t one of ours."

The officer replied flatly, watching Harry vanish behind falling debris: "He’s on our side today."

Above them, the air shifted.

A new sound rolled across the rooftops—deeper, heavier. The Chitauri command carrier breached the low cloud cover, releasing larger assault units into the cityscape.

Harry stepped onto a battered delivery truck for better visibility, narrowing his eyes at the descending force.

His breath slowed. The rhythm pressed against him now. No theatrics. No speeches. Only the next wave demanding his attention.

He flexed his gloved hand once, steady.

The next phase would demand more.

The sky had turned into something more primal now. Thick coils of smoke twisted between shattered towers, blurring the line between cloud and ruin. Midtown no longer resembled a city. It sounded like a throat choking on its own breath.

Harry stood at the broken edge of an overpass, boots planted against the cracked concrete. The fires below were burning too clean now — not rising flames, but smouldering pockets, feeding off ruined vehicles and torn asphalt. Behind him, SHIELD teams scrambled in tight clusters, working furiously to move survivors toward any remaining safe zones.

A fresh swarm of Chitauri dove into the lower residential blocks. Harry watched as one Leviathan peeled sharply toward a hospital rooftop where civilians huddled beneath shattered antennas. Another Leviathan sliced clean through a bridge support. Steel groaned. Vehicles tumbled into the swollen river, some bursting apart as they struck the water.

He vanished.

Reappearing mid-motion, Harry landed on the riverbank as the bridge’s remains plummeted toward the current. His hand moved once — precise, sharp. Ancient equations unfolded into the air around him. Time faltered. The heavy debris froze mid-collapse, held in tight, silent suspension above the waterline.

He didn’t stay to watch.

Above him, the hospital wing cracked open, the upper level folding inward as its core failed. The screams had already started.

Harry apparated again. The displacement barely whispered through the air. One breath later, he was standing atop the rooftop as tons of concrete began to break free.

He rotated his hand slowly. The falling sections reversed their motion, shifting backward into partial alignment as if time itself hesitated. Structural seams bent back into place, cracks groaning as weight realigned against unnatural reinforcement.

The building held, barely.

The Chitauri nearby opened fire instantly. Bright arcs of plasma snapped toward him. Harry’s left hand traced a tight vertical line. The incoming energy collapsed against an invisible wall. With a flick of his fingers, the absorbed charge redirected outward, slicing into the incoming squads. Their ranks collapsed in staggered heaps.

Another swarm followed, forcing closer range.

Harry exhaled once, steadying. No grand gesture. A sharp twist of his wrist ignited a condensed firestorm arc, burning clean through the advancing line. The Chitauri disintegrated in bursts of white heat. No remains.

A Leviathan banked lower, jaws widening as it surged toward his position.

Harry whispered into the wind. A narrow hex threaded forward — not a blast, but a focused unravelling. The Leviathan shuddered mid-flight. Its plated segments folded inward as if imploding on a silent command. It vanished, erased without impact.

For a moment, the air was still.

Harry’s breath came slower now, tension coiling behind his ribs. The precision demanded more with every passing second. His mind narrowed: “This is survival. Not spectacle. Keep them breathing.”

Nearby, a collapsing bus stop crushed downward into tangled steel. Harry caught the movement under it — a boy, curled small beneath the frame, gripping a torn backpack.

No hesitation.

Harry vanished again. He reappeared mid-motion beside the debris, one arm pulling the child free. They shifted together into the interior of a half-collapsed storefront still holding under steel reinforcement. The boy coughed but clung tightly to Harry’s coat.

Their eyes met. The boy whispered faintly, "Thank you."

Harry glanced down briefly. The cracked plastic badge on the boy’s bag caught his eye: Peter Parker.

No time.

He gently set the boy down inside the secured zone, ensuring the structure would hold. Then Harry turned, stepping back into the chaos outside.

A firefighter who had seen only the brief flash of movement spoke into his comm, voice tight: "Unknown metahuman pulling civilians. We don’t know who."

High above, SHIELD command traced his outline against the burning skyline.

The fires burned sharp lines across Midtown’s remains. Glass towers bent under their own weight. Smoke curled between broken beams, rising into the wounded sky where the portal still pulsed, feeding the endless flow of Chitauri.

Loki stood atop the shattered balcony, the wind pulling at his coat. His gaze scanned the destruction with thin satisfaction. But it wasn’t victory he searched for.

He found it.

Harry emerged from the wreckage below, stepping through dust and fractured stone. His coat dragged along the broken concrete. His breathing was steady, unhurried. The city’s ruin, the screams, the battles above — none of it touched him. His eyes stayed fixed on Loki.

Loki smiled when he saw him.
“Ah. You again. Come to kneel? Or simply to watch your failures more closely?”

Harry stopped below the balcony. He said nothing.

Loki paced along the crumbling ledge, eyes narrowing as his magic probed beneath the surface. Most defences held — resilient, locked — but there, faint beneath the solid walls: a fracture.

A remnant.

Loki’s voice dipped lower, finding the thread Nightmare once failed to break.
“The fear-eater couldn’t open you, but he left something behind, didn’t he? A scar you buried deep. You’ve kept it chained. But not sealed.”

Harry’s jaw flexed, barely.

Loki’s voice smoothed into precision.
“You saw them die. Again and again. Worlds lost. Faces you swore to protect. Hands reaching for you. No anger. No blame. Just the weight of what they wanted from you.”
He smiled thinly.
“You endure by calling it purpose. By convincing yourself you tried.”

His voice sharpened.
“But what if you failed because you were never enough? What if this endless survival is not mercy — but punishment?”

The pressure behind Harry’s ribs stirred. But his breathing remained controlled. Every word landed, but none unseated him.

His reply came—quiet, steady.
“I was going to let you walk.”

Loki straightened, mistaking the calm for hesitation.

“I was meant to observe,” Harry continued. “To act only when necessary.”

The dust near his boots curled inward. The ground beneath him compressed. A faint pulse glimmered beneath his skin, tracing along his forearm.

“I’ve seen gods drain worlds dry to fuel themselves. I’ve seen angels fall while cities burned beneath them. And every time, they call. Quiet at first. Then louder. It always starts the same.”

He drew one breath deeper.

His voice dropped lower, heavier now.
“Because I am the one they call when it’s time to end them.”

He met Loki’s gaze fully now.
“You didn’t reach for the sorcerer.”
The air around him tightened.
“You reached for the leash. And when you pull the leash—”

The stone under his heel cracked.

“—you reach the Hunter.”

The ground beneath him rippled. Nearby Chitauri froze in place, weapons lowering involuntarily.

Far above, SHIELD surveillance feeds streamed the scene. Hill leaned forward, breath catching.

Loki’s smile wavered. Not fear yet—recognition.

Harry stepped forward once.

The air bent inward as he moved. The weight thickened. The city held its breath.

Loki’s voice trembled. “What are you—”

Harry didn’t answer.

The air thickened with weight. The temperature dropped sharply, breath turning to mist between broken towers. Magic hung so dense it pressed against skin and lungs, choking even the wind itself.

Harry stepped forward. Slowly. Deliberately.

Loki’s smile was gone now. The tremor in his breath betrayed him as Harry advanced.

With barely a movement, Harry raised one hand. A flick of his finger.

Loki was slammed backward, spine striking the wall behind him with a crack that shook loose broken stone. Gasping, Loki snapped a barrier into place, shimmering around him like glass.

Harry saw it. And smiled.

It was not a kind smile.

His right hand glowed faintly beneath the skin, light pulsing with something older, heavier. Another flick.

The curse tore through Loki’s shield like wet paper, slicing it open without resistance. The burst of pressure drove Loki stumbling across the balcony, panic flaring.

Loki turned.

He ran.

The command shouted from his throat before his mind fully processed it:
“Protect me! Protect your king!”

Chitauri swarmed between them in thick waves. Hundreds rushed forward. Loki retreated behind their lines, forcing bodies between himself and the figure walking toward him.

Harry didn’t slow.

He snapped his fingers once.

The first rows of Chitauri screamed, their bodies igniting in green flame that burned through flesh without touching armour. The air filled with the scent of vaporized bone.

He kept walking.

Leviathans swept down next, jaws wide as they bore toward him. They never reached. Their flesh melted mid-air, metal bones twisting as wings folded in on themselves. Their remains fell in wet, steaming piles.

Still, Harry walked.

The entire invasion force, drawn now from across the city, collapsed inward toward him as Loki screamed desperate orders. Chitauri ships turned from the skyline to descend. The full weight of the remaining army funnelled into a single desperate wall.

Harry stopped.

His voice broke the silence for the first time.

“You think numbers protect you.”
His hand lifted slightly.
“I don’t need to aim.”

The entire frontline detonated. Chitauri exploded into mist. Their remains drifted as fine red vapor, carried by heat currents.

Leviathans shrieked. Their spines cracked mid-flight, folding backward like crushed shells. Some simply collapsed, falling through buildings as their bodies liquefied on impact.

Loki had already fled the balcony, retreating into the tower as his army collapsed behind him. The last lines of defence disintegrated under Harry’s steady advance. Harry kept moving. No haste. No visible strain.

He reached Stark Tower’s base, the final shield pulsing around the still-open portal. Loki crouched behind it, pressed to the far wall, eyes wide, pupils dilated, body shaking as the horror unfolded faster than his mind could process it.

Harry rose from the ground slowly, weightless as he ascended toward the balcony. He landed without sound.

The portal still churned, but nothing else came through. There was nothing left to send.

Harry had already slaughtered everything that dared cross. The invasion had emptied itself into his path — and ended there. He stepped toward the shield. The air didn’t hum—it simply tightened.

With a simple snap of his fingers, both the shield and the portal’s core device unravelled. The light vanished.

Loki collapsed fully, breath ragged. His voice barely whispered through clenched teeth.
“Stop… please…”

Harry stood over him.

“You should have listened,” his voice flat, almost quiet.
“They told stories of the Hunter. You should have listened.”

Loki said nothing. His mouth opened once, but no sound followed.

Harry lowered his gaze, eyes cold and steady.

The air remained suffocating.

The silence pressed heavy against ruined stone. Fires still smoldered across the broken skyline. Midtown had fallen into breathless stillness, its destruction stretching endlessly under the choking ash.

Loki stumbled backward, boots scraping against fractured marble. His breath came sharp, uneven. Hands trembled as he clawed at empty air, searching for something — anything — that might shield him. Harry advanced slowly. No haste. No expression. Only steps.

Loki’s voice cracked, thin and raw.
“You shouldn’t exist…”

Harry’s gaze didn’t shift. No words came.

Desperation surged through Loki. His hands snapped upward, forcing a dense golden barrier between them — multiple interwoven layers, reinforced by ancient Asgardian wards. Harry barely inclined his head. The barrier shuddered, crumpled, then imploded into itself like brittle glass drawn into a void.

Panic burst into Loki’s eyes. He lashed out wildly.
Spears of hardened magic shot toward Harry’s chest, brilliant and vicious. Harry’s fingers twitched. The spears unraveled mid-air, threads of energy disassembling like silk fibers pulled apart, vanishing before they reached him.

Loki staggered again, breath choking.
“Stay back—”

Another defence bloomed—a shifting dome of protective runes swirling rapidly around him, desperate in its complexity. Layers within layers, raw magic woven tighter than anything he had conjured before.

Harry didn’t even pause. He flicked his fingers once.
The dome convulsed inward and collapsed, eaten by its own collapsing geometry. No resistance.

The temperature fell sharply. Frost crept across broken steel and shattered glass, forming fragile veins of ice along the wreckage. The air thickened with pressure. Each breath Loki tried to take grew tighter, harder.

Driven to his final weapon, Loki twisted at the seams of reality itself. The space behind Harry convulsed as illusions surged to life — shadowed figures materializing from Harry’s past: familiar faces, beloved ones. Their silent gazes bore down on him, hands outstretched in accusation, full of needs he could never answer.

Harry didn’t glance. His voice sliced through the illusion with surgical coldness.
“You think you can find a fracture Nightmare couldn’t break?”

The illusions shattered into ash before fully forming.

Loki’s chest heaved. His knees buckled. His back hit a collapsed support column. Sweat streaked through the ash on his face. His voice dissolved into quick, panicked gasps.

Harry raised his hand again — not fast, not violent. Slow. Certain.
The air compressed as if the world itself were drawing inward toward the raised palm.

“You declared yourself a god.”
His voice was flat, dispassionate.
“This is what answers gods.”

The floor beneath Loki cracked. Hairline fractures bloomed outward from beneath him, spidering through stone. The pressure gripped his chest like iron bands.

His first scream tore loose — sharp, high, breaking apart into desperate sobs.
“No—please—I yield— I— I can’t—”

The weight increased. Air seemed to shrink around him. The stone above groaned. Bits of marble rained down as the entire structure trembled.

Loki collapsed fully onto his side. His eyes stretched wide, pupils blown, body convulsing with each shallow breath. Behind his eyes there was nothing left but terror—primal and raw.

The final compression gathered—

Cold fingers closed around Harry’s wrist.

The world froze.

Lady Death stood beside him. Her presence arrived without sound or transition—simply there, as if she had always been beside him. The very atmosphere recoiled subtly around her.

Her voice was soft, but absolute:
“You are slipping, my Hunter.”

Harry’s jaw locked, teeth grinding beneath clenched breath.
“He crowned himself god.”

Her answer came gently, unshaken:
“And yet— not his time.”

She lowered his arm without effort. The pressure dissolved instantly. The collapsing field around Loki unravelled. Air expanded, as if the room exhaled.

Loki crumpled fully into unconsciousness, still gasping faint, jagged breaths, his body twitching beneath the fading weight of terror.

The smoke still drifted over the city, but the screaming had stopped. Ash fell like snow through broken beams. Midtown no longer burned — it simply smouldered.

At the centre of the devastation, beneath the ruined balcony, Loki knelt alone. His body shook. Ash clung to sweat-soaked skin. His breaths came shallow, as though drawing each one might snap him apart.

The soft crack of displaced air marked Thor’s arrival. He descended with controlled weight, boots crunching into the scattered debris. His eyes swept the carnage—seeing the levelled blocks, the piles of Chitauri remains, the silent emptiness—and settled on the figure before him.

Thor’s voice was low, careful.
“Brother.”

Loki flinched at the sound. His head jerked up. Wide, frantic eyes locked onto Thor. His voice broke immediately into gasps.
“Don’t… don’t let him touch me again. Don’t let him near.”

Thor stepped closer, crouching beside him, his voice steady but wary.
“Who?”

Loki’s shaking fingers grabbed at Thor’s arm, holding like an anchor.
“The Hunter…” His voice thinned, barely a whisper.
“The one behind endings… She holds him. He comes when gods fail.”

Thor’s brow furrowed, unsettled. This was not the Loki he knew — no pride, no venom. Only raw fear.

Loki’s hands dug tighter into Thor’s sleeve, voice falling into broken fragments.
“I thought it was legend… old warnings. They said no one would see him again. No one…”

He trailed off, shuddering. Thor placed a firm hand on his shoulder, grounding him.
“You are safe now. He is gone.”

Loki’s head shook violently.
“No one is safe from him. He doesn’t chase. He waits.”

Around them, first responders and SHIELD recovery teams carefully moved through the ruins. Some paused at a respectful distance, watching the gods in silence, unsure whether to approach.

Thor kept his voice calm, but the unease pulled behind his words.
“You are under my protection, Loki. You are safe.”

But Loki barely heard him. His gaze darted, unfocused, as if expecting Harry’s silent figure to emerge again from the ruins.
“He let me live…” His voice dropped. “That isn’t mercy.”

Thor steadied him again.
“You survived.”

Loki gave a faint, bitter laugh — hollow and shaking.
“Survived… until next time.”

Thor said nothing.

He rose carefully, pulling Loki gently to his feet. Loki clung to his arm, legs weak beneath him. The broken god leaned into his brother’s hold like a drowning man.

From a distance, Hill watched with Coulson, neither speaking as the two brothers stood amid the ash.

The camera pulled back slowly, revealing the full breadth of devastation stretching outward in every direction — shattered towers, burning husks, empty streets. The city held its breath, as if waiting for something else to descend.

But nothing moved.

Only silence.

The mobile command post hummed with quiet urgency. Outside its reinforced windows, the ruins of Midtown sprawled beneath heavy grey smoke. Inside, silence pressed heavier than the static of equipment.

Fury stood before the central display wall, arms crossed, jaw tight.

Footage looped in steady cycles across multiple screens — drone captures, ground-level cameras, satellite feeds. All focused on one figure.

Harry Evans.

The clips played again: Harry walking forward as Chitauri burned alive in green flame; Leviathans folding mid-air; entire blocks collapsing in synchronized disintegration. Each frame carried the same terrible calm — no spectacle, no rage. Only precision.

Hill broke the silence first, voice steady but pale.
“We had no idea.”

Coulson sat beside her, leaning forward. His voice was low.
“We thought he was hiding power. But that wasn’t hiding. That was restraint.”

Fury didn’t turn from the screens. His eyes narrowed slightly as the footage shifted: Harry’s silhouette standing alone beneath the burning skyline, unmoved as hundreds of Chitauri dissolved around him.

“He moved like he’s done this before.”
His voice was cold.
“Like this isn’t the first world he’s emptied.”

Hill’s lips tightened.
“We still have no biological data. No radiation traces. No foreign energy signatures matching anything in our files.”

One of the techs at a rear console whispered almost involuntarily.
“No enhanced we’ve catalogued… no alien, no sorcery we know fits this.”

Fury exhaled slowly.
“He’s not one of ours. And he’s not one of theirs.”

The room held its breath for a beat longer.

Hill spoke again, quieter.
“Do we even have a contingency?”

Fury finally turned. His voice was sharp.
“No. Not now.”

Coulson’s tone was softer, but edged with unease.
“Do you believe he’s… one of the old ones? From the ancient mythologies?”

Fury’s reply was blunt.
“He’s worse. He walks like a man.”

The words hung there — heavier than the devastation still outside.

Hill pressed again.
“What do we do about him?”

Fury’s jaw clenched.
“We prepare. We watch. And we pray we never have to find out what he’s truly capable of.”

Then quieter.
“But I want every file pulled. Every archive. Every ancient record, no matter how obscure. I want theories. Scenarios. Backdoors. I want contingencies that sound insane.”

He stepped forward, pointing at the frozen frame — Harry’s lone figure framed in flame.

“Because if this isn’t him losing control — I don’t want to see what happens when he does.”

The room fell silent.

The monitors kept looping.

The extraction zone sat in uneasy stillness. SHIELD containment units ringed the ruins, their floodlights cutting harsh beams through the grey ash that still drifted over Midtown. Leviathan corpses lay like broken monuments among shattered towers. The battle was over, but the air refused to breathe.

Thor stood near the secured transport platform, motionless.

Loki sat at the edge of the ramp. Shoulders hunched inward. Arms locked tight across his chest. His head bowed, eyes hidden behind strands of sweat-soaked hair. His body shook in small, uncontrolled tremors.

Thor lowered himself slowly to one knee, studying him in silence for a long moment before speaking.
“Brother.”

Loki flinched at the word. His breath hitched as his fingers dug tighter into his own arms. His voice came thin, fragile.
“Don’t… don’t take me back.”

Thor’s brow furrowed. “Back where?”

Loki shook his head violently, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Not to Odin. Not to Asgard. Not before them. Don’t let them see me.”

Thor paused. This wasn’t the defiant brother he had known — not the arrogant prince who mocked and postured. That man was gone. What sat before him now was stripped down to something smaller. Something broken.

“You are safe now,” Thor said, voice lower, gentler. “The battle is finished.”

Loki’s head jerked up abruptly. His eyes met Thor’s — wide, frantic, dilated with fear.
“No. You don’t understand.”
His voice cracked into desperate fragments.
“He let me live. That isn’t mercy. That’s the warning.”

Thor steadied his voice, trying to anchor him.
“You survived.”

But Loki’s breath grew more uneven.
“Survived… until next time.”

His gaze darted to the shadows behind Thor as if expecting Harry to materialize again from the ruins.
“The stories were true, Thor. The Hunter. The leash of Death. The one who ends gods.”
His voice dropped lower, trembling.
“She holds him. He waits. He watches.”

Thor stiffened slightly. The old myths whispered through his mind — half-forgotten warnings once dismissed as legends. Stories reserved for children and scholars. Stories that should have stayed buried.

“They were only stories,” Thor said, but his voice lacked weight.

Loki’s hands reached forward, gripping Thor’s arm with sudden force — like a drowning man grasping at any remaining surface.
“I saw him. I stood before him.”
His whisper broke into a harsh rasp.
“Stories don’t stare back.”

Thor exhaled slowly. His brother sagged against him, unable to support his own weight.

“You are with me now,” Thor said quietly. “You are safe.”

Loki shivered against him, repeating softly under his breath.
“For now.”

Thor closed his eyes briefly, grounding himself against the weight settling over both of them.

Around them, SHIELD personnel moved cautiously. Even in victory, the fear hung heavy in the air.

Thor rose carefully, pulling Loki with him. Loki leaned fully into his brother’s hold, legs weak, breathing shallow. His hands never released Thor’s sleeve, clutching it as though letting go would invite something worse.

The extraction team completed its perimeter. The camera pulled back slowly, revealing the vast devastation surrounding them — silent towers broken open, streets hollowed out beneath fallen sky. The city held its breath.

And far behind them, though neither dared look, the shadow of what they’d witnessed still lingered.

The world fell away.

Not with light. Not with sound. With absence.

Harry stood in the void.

There was no ground beneath his feet, but he did not fall. No sky above him, but the space stretched outward, endless. Grey mist coiled in slow spirals around him. The air had no temperature, yet cold settled inside his chest, tightening with each breath.

Lady Death’s realm. Still. Absolute. Weightless and crushing all at once.

Harry remained frozen. His fists clenched at his sides. The aftershock of power still pulsed faintly under his skin, threads of light tracing beneath torn sleeves. His jaw locked tight, his breath sharp beneath the emptiness pressing against him.

She appeared without motion.

No arrival. No step. She was simply there, as if she had always been standing before him, waiting for him to recognize it.

Her eyes traced him with detached calm.
“You lost control.”

Harry’s throat tightened. He said nothing.

She continued, voice soft but cold.
“You slaughtered millions.”

Harry’s jaw flexed. His voice came steady, bitter, controlled.
“I did what had to be done.”

Lady Death moved — not walking, but drifting, circling him as though the mists themselves pulled her along.

“You intervened early,” she whispered. “You killed not in balance, but in anger.”

Her steps slowed as she moved behind him, her voice lower.
“You didn’t ask whose time it was.”

Harry’s breath thickened.
“They would have killed millions more.”

She paused, voice sharper now.
“And this time—” her tone sliced like a blade— “you were lucky. Their deaths were written. This time.”

The words struck deeper than any accusation. Harry closed his eyes, forcing his breath out through clenched teeth.

Her voice pressed closer behind him.
“Shall I remind you of Carthador? Of the stars you burned? Of the countless lives lost when you last forgot your restraint?”

Flashes surged through his mind—worlds collapsing, fires stretching into the void, the soundless collapse of entire civilizations.

His teeth ground harder.

Lady Death’s voice dipped into a whisper.
“You are always most useful when you fear yourself.”

She drifted in front of him again, lifting one pale hand. Her fingers traced his cheek with unsettling softness.

Harry’s voice rasped beneath clenched control.
“You always wait until I fall far enough.”

Her smile was faint.
“Because only then do you remember the leash you wear.”

The grey mists tightened around them, swirling inward as if the void itself were listening.

Harry’s body remained rigid. The weight settled deeper than muscle. Deeper than anger. The same ancient weight he always carried — the one she never let him drop.

The one she called hers.

The grey mist coiled tighter around them. The realm pressed in closer, not violently, but possessively. The silence was complete, thick enough to compress every breath.

Lady Death’s voice slid through the still air, calm but colder now.

“You are mine, Harry. You always have been. And still… you test the leash.”

Harry’s jaw tightened. His breath slowed, but he held her gaze.

He said nothing.

She circled him slowly. The void seemed to bend around her, not with grandeur but inevitability.
“You walk because I allow it. You act because I will it. But you forget—each time you step beyond what is written, you gamble on my patience.”

Harry’s fists curled. His voice remained even, but the bitterness seeped through.
“You drag me back. You hold the chain tight. You whisper of balance while I drown in your debts.”

Lady Death’s eyes narrowed. Her tone sharpened into something colder than threat.
“You slaughtered without pause. Without weighing the scales.”

She stepped closer, almost intimate.
“You nearly fractured everything. You did not check the names. You took because you were angry.”

Harry’s voice lowered. Bitter. Controlled.
“They would have slaughtered millions.”

“They were marked. This time.”
Her voice cut sharper.
“But you forget how quickly your judgment falters. How quickly your rage decides who lives.”

The swirling grey pressed closer, as though listening.

Lady Death leaned in, voice lowering.
“Do not confuse restraint for freedom. You are not free, Harry. You are not a savior. You are mine.”

Harry’s breath caught in his chest. The truth wasn’t new — but it burned every time she said it aloud.

She raised one hand, touching his chest. The faint residue of leaking magic beneath his skin cooled under her fingers.

“Loki remains untouched,” she said.
“He is not yours to break. His path is still needed.”

Harry’s reply came low, sharp.
“He calls himself a god.”

“Then let gods deal with him.”
Her voice softened, but the weight behind it grew heavier.
“If you lose yourself again, I may not pull you back.”

Harry’s gaze never left hers.
“Maybe that’s the point.”

Her hand pressed a fraction harder.
“You’re not a man anymore. You are my instrument.”

The words hung between them.

Harry’s voice barely moved.
“One day… you may regret that.”

Lady Death smiled faintly — no warmth behind it.
“I look forward to it.”

With a silent gesture, the mists coiled tighter, and the realm answered her call.

The grey mist had quieted. The crushing weight had eased, but the realm remained cold. Breathless. Absolute.

Harry stood where she left him, shoulders rigid, breathing steady. The aftershock of power had faded; only the hollow ache remained.

Lady Death drifted closer, slow and deliberate. Her voice was softer now — not cruel, not triumphant. Simply certain.

“You always return.”

Harry’s jaw tightened. His voice came low, flat.
“Because you leave me nowhere else to go.”

She smiled faintly.
“Exactly.”

The mist coiled tighter, folding around them as if the void itself listened.

Her hand rose, fingers brushing along his jaw — no longer a threat, no longer a warning. A reaffirmation.
“You carry me wherever you walk. You always have.”

Harry closed his eyes briefly. Not in comfort. In surrender.

Her voice lowered into a whisper, inches from his skin.
“You are mine. Even your rage bends to me. Even your mercy.”

The swirling grey condensed further, almost intimate now. The void around them shrank, closing like a sealed chamber. The entire world reduced to her voice and his silence.

Harry exhaled slowly. His voice was quieter, bitter beneath the surface.
“One day… I may tear the leash from your hands.”

Lady Death smiled again.
“Perhaps. But not yet.”

Her fingers lingered along his cheek.
“Until that day… you serve. As you always have.”

The words settled heavier than any blow.

Then, without command, the realm responded. The grey mist thickened, coiling inward. Space folded around them, reality compressing.

And with a breathless twist, she released him.

The shop reappeared around him.

The silence was smaller here. Contained. Familiar.

Dust hung suspended in the first thin beams of dawn creeping through the narrow blinds. The weight pressing behind his ribs remained, but the crushing grip had loosened.

Harry leaned forward, resting his forearms against the counter, head bowed.

For a long moment, he simply stood there. Not moving. Not thinking. Only breathing.

The city would wake soon.

He remained still.

"And once again, the leash held."

Omake:

The shop was unusually quiet, which should have been Harry’s first warning.

Deadpool peeked around the corner of the cursed snow globe display, a pair of comically oversized binoculars pressed to his mask.

Harry sighed. “Wade.”

“Shh! You’ll spook it.”

Harry closed his ledger. “Spook what, exactly?”

Wade lowered the binoculars dramatically, eye sockets wide with mock horror. “You!”

Harry blinked once. “That seems unlikely.”

“No no no, not you-you. The you that you’re pretending not to be. The ancient, tentacled, slumbering horror that I have finally—finally—unmasked.”

A long pause.

Harry rubbed his temple. “Is this about the eldritch god theory again?”

“Obviously!” Wade gestured wildly, nearly knocking over the regret mirror, which wisely turned its face to the wall.

Harry didn’t move. “Wade. I’m not Cthulhu.”

“Exactly what Cthulhu would say.”

Harry exhaled slowly.

Wade whipped out a notebook titled ‘Definitive Proof Harold Evans is Actually Cthulhu’ in sparkly pink marker.

“Exhibit A: You don’t age. Neither does Cthulhu.”

“Wade.”

“Exhibit B: Your shop breathes sometimes.”

“It’s called living magic. You’ve seen me do this.”

Wade waved him off. “Details. Exhibit C: The kneazle twitches whenever you mention seafood.”

Harry glanced at the kneazle, who promptly ducked under the counter with the dignity of a creature who was done.

“And Exhibit D,” Wade continued, voice lowering dramatically, “you talk to Death. Multiple witnesses.”

“That is not proof of tentacles.”

“Counterpoint: Eldritch girlfriends are a known trope.”

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose.

Wade leaned in. “Just admit it, man. I mean, look at your vibe. Dark cloak, cryptic answers, reality bending shop, the suspicious tea obsession—”

“Tea obsession?”

“No one drinks that much tea unless they’re hiding unholy power.”

Harry opened his mouth. Closed it. He’d walked into that one.

“And then...” Wade flourished the notebook like a mic drop. “The 300-foot giant squid.”

Silence.

Harry froze. The cursed tarot deck stopped shuffling mid-air.

“Ah,” Harry said finally. “That.”

Wade’s eyes sparkled triumphantly. “That.”

Harry sighed. “It wasn’t supposed to get that big.”

Wade blinked. “...You’re admitting it?!”

“I raised a small trans-dimensional squid as a pet. It was... lonely times. The cosmic resonance in that realm was more volatile than expected. The growth was... exponential.”

“Exponential.”

“I underestimated the leylines.”

“You created Cthulhu by accident.”

Harry raised a finger. “Technically, I created a squid. Humans created Cthulhu after certain sailors encountered the squid centuries later and told... embellished stories.”

Wade threw his hands up. “So the legend of one of the greatest horror icons in human history is your fault.”

“In my defence,” Harry said dryly, “it did keep the coastline free of pirates for three centuries.”

Wade paced in circles, muttering. “You’re like the eldritch Bob Ross of world-ending monstrosities. ‘Just a happy little tentacle beast right here—oops, it ate Denmark.’”

Harry finally turned, voice flat. “No. It ate Atlantis. Denmark was fine.”

Wade blinked. “...Oh. Right. Atlantis.”

“I put it on timeout after that.”

“Timeout.”

“Yes.”

Wade threw his arms wide. “You banished a world-ending cosmic squid to a corner.”

Harry sipped his tea. “Technically, I relocated it to a null pocket outside linear causality with limited dimensional feedback access.”

“...You gave it a corner.”

“Essentially.”

Wade stared out at the calm ocean. “That thing is still out there, isn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“Sleeping?”

“Hopefully.”

Wade drummed his fingers on the cooler. “Can I visit?”

“No.”

“Can I send it a letter?”

“No.”

“Can I name it?”

Harry sighed again. “You’re going to anyway.”

“Squiddy McReality Bender.”

“No.”

“Come on. Giant death squid deserves a fun name.”

“You’re insufferable.”

Wade beamed behind the mask. “You love me.”

“I tolerate you.”

Wade raised his drink. “To eldritch mistakes.”

Harry raised his tea. “To better supervision next time.”

Wade paused. “Wait, next time?!”

Harry smiled faintly into his cup.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: The Hunter Becomes Prey

The ruins of Diagon Alley flickered like a broken memory trapped between waking and nightmare. Flames pulsed in unnatural rhythms, sometimes frozen mid-air as if trapped in amber, other times lurching forward in violent surges before snapping back, like time itself resisted the moment’s existence. Smoke writhed in impossible spirals, curling sideways into the pale, infinite void that stretched beyond fractured brick and stone, where gravity surrendered to something older and colder.

Beneath the boy’s feet, the ground pulsed faintly. The shattered cobblestones felt both solid and insubstantial, as if he balanced atop the fragile skin of a dream. Stone shifted underfoot without sound. What had once been shops now twisted and sagged, their upper floors melting into the void’s horizon like candle wax, stretching into thin spires that trembled against a weightless sky. The world seemed caught in contradiction: both anchored and slipping, as if it remembered being real but no longer fully believed it.

His breathing came shallow and sharp, a rasping whisper breaking into the air with each unsteady exhale. Wide, desperate eyes darted across the surreal landscape, hunting for some anchor — a wall, a shadow, anything constant — but found only shifting fragments. The echoes of burning voices drifted behind him, looping in endless patterns, their cries no longer sharp but drawn thin and hollow, dissolving into static before reaching his ears. His mind strained to hold onto what was happening, but the world offered him nothing steady.

Then she came.

From the distant edge of the pale void, a silhouette took form. Towering. Vast beyond comprehension. Her presence bent the thin threads of light, warping the horizon as though space itself bowed around her. She did not walk so much as glide forward, folding scale and distance with each graceful movement. The impossible expanse of her shape collapsed inward as she approached — the vast became small, the unreachable drew close, until the boy could see her clearly before him, intimate, present.

Lady Death stood in silence. Her coat swayed as though moved by some breathless current. Her smile was soft, exquisite, and utterly wrong.

“Do you remember?” she asked, her voice a delicate hush, velvet gliding across still water. “The flames. The screams.”

The boy flinched, his voice breaking as if speaking might shatter him. “I... there was fire. People... they screamed.”

She drifted closer, fingers brushing against his shoulder with featherlight grace, as though wiping away soot that hadn’t stained him yet. “You were brave,” she whispered. “You tried to fight.”

His breath hitched, chest rising in uneven waves. “He would have come. He always said he’d protect me.”

Her smile deepened, a tenderness so perfect it hollowed the air. “He promised. Yet you burned. Alone. Just as others burned before you.”

“No...” the boy gasped, voice breaking. “He must’ve tried... maybe... maybe he couldn’t get there in time...”

“As he couldn’t before?” she continued softly, almost sorrowfully. “How many times have others fallen while he endured? How many times did you wait? And still... he stands.”

The words coiled around him like smoke, slipping into his breath, sinking beneath his skin. His knees buckled beneath weight that was not his own. The air pulsed with his heartbeat. Each tremor shook loose faint cinders from the fractured buildings, raining down like soft, glowing snow.

“You still love him,” she whispered. “That is why it hurts. You trusted him. You believed in him.”

The boy sank fully to his knees now, the weight inside him unbearable. Tears burned trails down his face, glowing faintly as they cut through the ash in the air. “I just want him to know… how much it hurt. If he knew… maybe…”

Lady Death’s fingers cupped his cheek, cold as stone resting beneath winter’s river. “Yes. If he feels your pain, if he sees it—perhaps then he will return. To what you both lost.”

His sobs softened, but desperation gleamed through the wetness in his eyes. Hope surfaced, thin but unyielding.

“You can make him see,” she breathed. “Show him. Let him feel it. And perhaps — perhaps he will finally come home.”

Black mist bled from her fingertips, rising in swirling currents around him, folding into his skin. His form flickered violently. The boy’s innocent outline twisted, blurring into a burned, skeletal shadow. For a moment, long hunched limbs extended unnaturally behind him. A flash of fangs gleamed. Brief, sharp movements hinted at something neither fully human nor fully beast. The air grew dense, thick with ember-filled smoke, as his shape destabilized and shifted again.

Lady Death watched, her expression a portrait of maternal devotion framed within possessive hunger.

“My Hunter cannot resist what he loves,” she whispered. “Show him what he lost. Make him see.”

The mist fully cocooned him now, the shadow vanishing into its folds. His voice slipped through, small and broken beneath the rising shroud:

“I just want him to know.”

Lady Death smiled.

The void trembled like stretched fabric snapping gently inward. The transformed shadow slid into the flickering darkness, joining the mist that spiralled outward like a silent predator unleashed.

The Howling Stag breathed with quiet familiarity. The candlelight held steady, casting warm pools across polished wood and shelves lined with trinkets collected across centuries. The Kneazle lay curled on the highest bookshelf, its twin tails lazily draped over the edge, flicking once before settling back into rhythmic stillness. A faint scratch of an enchanted record whispered through the room—low, old, steady—its tune lost to time, but persistent. The hour was late, but the shop felt safe. It pulsed with a kind of familiar magic that wrapped around Harry like an old, threadbare cloak.

Harry stood behind the counter, gently sorting a small box of hexed paperweights—objects that once carried the faint sting of petty curses but now held little more than stubborn echoes of forgotten malice. His hands moved with absent care, checking faded labels, adjusting minor wards that protected the more volatile trinkets. Routine. Familiar. The kind of quiet that settled easily across tired bones and long-worn habits. This was his sanctuary, built from centuries of careful restraint.

A faint draft teased the back of his neck.

He paused, instinctively scanning the warding lattice in the corner of his mind. The windows were closed. The defences untouched. He glanced toward the front, saw nothing amiss beyond the gently warped glass, and returned to his work, dismissing it as the building’s usual groaning breath, too old to protest anymore.

The candle to his left twitched. It flickered in opposition to the faint draft—subtle, unnatural, as if momentarily uncertain whether it should burn at all. An offbeat flicker. Small enough to dismiss, but persistent enough to nag at the edge of awareness.

The regret mirror caught his eye as he reached for another trinket. In its surface, his reflection mimicked him—but not quite.

For the briefest moment, his mirrored hand hesitated behind his real one, as though second-guessing its own movement. A subtle lag. Like two overlapping frames misaligned in an old film reel.

Harry stilled, eyes narrowing, observing it with clinical detachment. He said nothing. After a beat, he resumed his task. Fatigue, perhaps. Or something less innocent.

As he moved across the counter, the air pressed slightly heavier, thickening with an almost imperceptible density. Shadows lengthened along the floorboards, curling inward at the edges, as though subtly drawn toward him. The tarot deck on the far shelf shifted inside its case, the deck's top card sliding slightly askew as if nudged by an unseen hand.

The Kneazle lifted its head, ears angling toward the rear of the shop’s darker recesses. Its tail unfurled in a deliberate arc, tensing with a silent warning, though it made no sound.

Then came the breath.

A whisper reached Harry’s ears—faint, soft, disturbingly intimate. Like someone exhaling from just beyond his shoulder, breath ghosting across the sensitive hairs at the back of his neck.

He turned with precision.

Empty shelves. Silent shadows. Only the faint sway of hanging charms disturbed the air.

His frown deepened. Calm, but alert.

With a flick of his fingers, Harry extended a passive detection field. Thin, silvery threads laced outward from his skin, interweaving into the room’s ambient magic, brushing against the network of wards. The weave held, but something shifted beneath it. The wards hadn't been breached—it felt more like an encroaching presence softly pressing from the edges, as though circling beyond reach, testing its weight against the boundary.

More whispers followed. Fragmented this time.

"...left..."

"...forgotten..."

"...burned..."

"...waiting..."

The broken voices swirled behind him, skimming across his awareness like breath against frozen glass. The Kneazle rose fully now, arching its back, its luminous eyes tracking something that remained invisible.

The regret mirror twitched again. This time, Harry’s reflection moved first—its hand rising ahead of his own. The movement stuttered, corrected itself almost instantly, as if the glass remembered too late how it was supposed to behave.

He remained motionless, breath steady. Eyes locked on the reflection.

The shop’s ambient hum faded into total silence. Even the enchanted record lost its scratchy whisper. The air held its breath along with him.

Then, clarity.

Words formed directly behind him, no longer fragmented, but gentle. Whispered with the tenderness of accusation:

"You weren’t there."

Harry spun, steps sharp and grounded.

Near the far corner, where shelves met creeping shadow, something flickered.

A humanoid silhouette—not fully formed—hovered, its edges rippling like heat distortion against glass. Embers trailed faintly from its outline, drifting upward before dissolving into the air, vanishing like dust disturbed by unseen currents.

Before Harry could fully register the figure’s intent, it collapsed inward on itself—gone, like smoke devoured by its own absence.

He stood still, breathing evenly, listening to the shop settle again. The surface calm returned, but beneath it, the weight remained—coiled tightly into the silence.

The shop exhaled softly as Harry slid the lock into place. The wards folded down into their resting hum, silent and obedient. The Kneazle, still perched high on the bookshelf, blinked once at him but didn’t stir. For a moment, the air pressed faintly against the doorway—as though the Howling Stag itself hesitated to release him into the night beyond. Harry adjusted his cloak, stepping into the quiet street with the measured calm of someone used to being followed by shadows.

The street outside lay wrapped in late-night quiet. Lamplight pooled beneath iron posts, casting elongated shadows that reached across empty asphalt. Above, a faint mist clung to the corners of old rooftops, making the distant shapes of chimneys and antennae waver slightly like mirages. The familiar hum of distant traffic buzzed low, layered beneath the faint breath of wind curling through alleyways. The quiet felt dense, like a soft pressure gently folding into every crevice of the empty street.

Harry walked without haste, cloak shifting against his legs, his steps steady and deliberate. The weight of habit carried him forward—a nightly ritual done countless times. His eyes moved smoothly across familiar facades: closed shops, quiet windows, the faint glow of neon signs washed out by the scattered lamplight.

The air felt cool, but not cold. Familiar. The kind of night he had wandered countless times before. The type of silence that allowed thoughts to surface and memory to settle.

Then, as he moved farther from the Stag, the first notes of distortion began to whisper at the edges.

A passing car’s engine stretched unnaturally, its fading rumble elongating far beyond the corner, as though time itself resisted releasing the sound. The steady rhythm of his footsteps began echoing longer, each heel strike folding backward into faint repetitions—delayed, then repeated, like walking through layers of thin glass reflections.

The streetlights pulsed softly, their halos thickening at the edges like breath on frosted glass, each light gently swelling and shrinking as though breathing in rhythm with something unseen. Harry slowed his pace slightly, his brow lowering in mild curiosity. His head tilted, listening. Nothing dangerous yet. But curious.

As he passed an old storefront, he caught his reflection warping faintly in the darkened glass—his shape stretching an inch longer, then snapping back. The distortion was so subtle it might have been dismissed as fatigue or poor lighting, but Harry registered it.

Several blocks ahead, beneath a flickering streetlamp, a silhouette stood.

It was human in shape. Upright. Still. But wrong.

Its head was tilted slightly, too still for something alive. Ember trails bled faintly from its shoulders and along its outline, like ash lifting gently from unseen flames, drifting upwards before evaporating into the cool air. The glow was dim, fragile, yet steady.

Harry paused, studying it. His eyes narrowed, gaze sharp, but not tense.

Neither of them moved.

After a long heartbeat, the silhouette dissolved, slipping backward into the shadow as if retreating into itself. Nothing remained but the flicker of the old lamplight above, which buzzed once more as though sighing into place.

Harry exhaled slowly, the faintest trace of breath curling into the air, and continued walking.

With each step, the distortions deepened.

The air thickened with an invisible weight that pressed gently against his shoulders, like a heavy quilt held just above the skin. Storefront windows warped faintly as he passed, their reflections shimmering with subtle ripples—an underwater effect gliding across glass. The echoes of his footsteps stacked unnaturally, overlapping like mismatched recordings, some arriving too soon, others dragging behind, threading into thin discordant waves.

The distant hum of the city stretched longer, looping in fragile waves that bent his sense of distance. A faint, rhythmic pulse began weaving through the background—not quite a sound, not quite a heartbeat, but present.

He turned a corner.

A familiar lamppost greeted him. The same one.

The faint graffiti etched into the brick nearby was identical. Too identical.

He walked again, testing the pattern. Another turn. Another block.

The same corner returned.

Harry's lips pressed into a thin line. There was no concern, only a growing sense of intrigue. The loop was subtle, well-crafted. Someone clever had built this recursion carefully enough that he hadn’t noticed it at first. He came to a stop in the center of the intersection, standing beneath the recycled lamplight. The silence hummed faintly around him, like the world was holding its breath.

With a small motion of his hand, he released a delicate thread of spatial disruption magic—a thin ripple designed to sever minor warps, like slicing a fraying thread from a tapestry.

The ripple passed through the air, shimmering faintly as it cut across the street—but the loop remained. The street held its shape.

Harry’s brow furrowed, briefly surprised.

"Hmm."

He narrowed his focus. A second spell pulsed from his fingertips—still controlled, but stronger now. A deliberate push, less surgical, more forceful.

This time, the recursion fractured with a soft, almost reluctant shudder. The repeated streets snapped back into linear progression. The distortions bled outward and dissolved. The hum of the city steadied, returning to its familiar cadence.

Harry stood still, watching the street settle.

At the far end of the now-straightened road, beneath the same lamplight, the silhouette returned.

Still. Watching.

Harry met its gaze, unblinking.

The figure made no move to approach. No flicker of aggression. It simply stood in perfect patience, embers drifting slowly from its form.

Seconds stretched like thin threads.

Then, as before, it dissolved—fading backward into absence.

Harry remained in place, eyes narrowed, listening to the silence that followed. Even the city’s returning noise seemed reluctant, as though uncertain if it was truly safe to resume.

The city exhaled as the silhouette vanished, but the weight in the air didn’t ease. Harry remained still for a moment longer, listening to the quiet hum return around him. Then, without haste, he turned toward the deeper district—toward the zone few ventured after curfew. His senses traced the faint residual threads of distortion lingering like spider silk in the cracks of reality. They pulled him forward. The trail led to one of the old salvage yards, a forgotten corner where remnants of larger battles gathered dust. The night followed him.

The salvage yard swallowed him in silence. Wrecked alien debris loomed in jagged piles, their metallic spines piercing upward like the remains of some fallen creature still struggling to rise. At the far end of the lot, the warehouse waited—its wide rusted doors hanging open like broken jaws. Distortion pooled thickly beyond the threshold, folding the air inward in faint ripples. The trail had led him here. And it wanted him inside.

Harry paused at the threshold, gaze narrowing as the spatial tension prickled across his skin. Then he stepped forward without hesitation.

The air inside was heavy before he even crossed fully into the cavernous space. Shadows bent unnaturally across warped rows of steel and broken crates. Towering piles of Chitauri wreckage lined the interior—twisted armour, shredded organic plating, fragments of broken weapons frozen mid-dissection. Alien tendrils, long withered, twitched faintly as if responding to currents only they could sense.

The warehouse breathed.

The pulse of distortion was layered into every surface: echoes returned from impossible angles, the metallic groans came from points that shifted every few seconds, always out of sync. Overhead beams stretched too long, swaying imperceptibly, as if reality had softened at the edges.

Harry moved carefully between the debris. His eyes tracked every shift, reading the rhythm. This was deliberate. Designed. He adjusted his grip on the cane but did not draw power yet. Curious first.

As he ventured deeper, the distortions thickened, pressing against his skin like invisible waves of tension. Doorways narrowed into uneven arches, their frames bowing inward as if reluctant to hold their shape. The walls pulsed subtly, as though breathing alongside the rhythm beneath his feet. Here and there, pieces of Chitauri armour shifted in slow, unnatural motions—glimpses of ancient energy bleeding faintly through torn flesh and fractured exoskeleton. Patches of organic plating shimmered with dull, iridescent colours that seemed to ripple beneath the surface, reacting to his proximity.

The air grew denser, vibrating with an almost imperceptible hum, like whispered voices folded into the static of collapsing space. He caught flickers of movement within piles of alien wreckage—nothing concrete, but enough to register a presence lurking at the edge of awareness.

A rhythmic pulse hummed through the floorboards, soft but steady. Like breathing. Each beat carried a subtle shift in gravity, making the ground feel momentarily lighter, then heavier. The entire space seemed to inhale and exhale, folding itself tighter as he moved.

His brow lowered slightly. The precision here was intentional. This wasn’t merely chaotic residual magic. This was constructed—shaped by a mind that understood how to twist space like cloth. Someone was studying him, narrowing his options with delicate control, forcing him deeper into the snare.

He reached a dense cluster of alien wreckage where the distortion knotted tightly. Spatial threads bent inward unnaturally, drawing the angles of the surrounding debris into impossible arcs. The air thickened like congealed fog. Here, the tension snapped.

The Hound struck.

Harry sensed the break in pattern a heartbeat before impact—the silence folding wrong behind him, like a predator holding its breath.

He pivoted sharply, raising a shimmering shield with calm precision. Magic flared into existence—smooth, confident, a familiar rhythm honed across countless lifetimes.

The claws tore through it like silk.

Sharp talons slashed across his side, drawing the first true blood he’d shed in eons. The wound burned hot against his ribs, sharp and immediate. It wasn’t deep—it was measured, deliberate—controlled with surgical precision, a warning more than an attempt to kill.

Harry’s eyes sharpened into focus.

Without hesitation, he retaliated. Binding lashes snapped from his fingertips, sharp piercing strikes unfolded in quick succession—all aimed to lock and disable. But the Hound slipped between them like liquid shadow, each movement disturbingly graceful, folding through space as if it bent away for him.

The creature closed in again, claws flashing with brutal precision.

Harry adjusted immediately, conjuring more aggressive bursts: stasis fields collapsed inward, rotating chains of compressed energy spiralled out, and writhing tendrils shot forward, weaving intricate traps meant to bind its limbs. But the Hound wove through them, no longer merely dodging—it anticipated his every sequence, as though it had already memorized his rhythm before the engagement even began.

Refusing to yield ground, Harry lunged forward physically, striking with his cane in swift, precise arcs, each blow calculated for maximum reach. The Hound danced backward, its liquid speed unnerving, evading each strike by the barest margins. Harry’s hand darted forward to grab, fingers closing on empty air as the creature retreated just beyond his grasp, always one step ahead, almost playful in its precision.

The claws returned with cold confidence—a second set of shallow cuts carved into his shoulder, then another slicing across his thigh. The wounds were deliberate, measured to mark without disabling him.

It was marking him.

Harry’s breathing remained steady, but beneath it, his calculations shifted. This was not random. This was a predator testing boundaries, dissecting his defences in real time.

The Hound stepped back fluidly, embers trailing softly from its flickering form. It paused, hovering within full view, embers twisting upward like lazy smoke, watching him bleed. The air between them felt heavy with unspoken intent—not hostility, but evaluation.

Harry met its gaze, eyes cold, studying the patience behind those flickering embers.

After several long seconds, the creature dissolved into the distortions once more, retreating as though drawn backward into unravelling space.

Harry remained where he stood, blood seeping warm into his coat, breath calm but sharpened.

This was personal. Designed. And whoever had crafted it—knew him intimately.

The distortion faded as Harry moved away from the warehouse, but the weight of it clung faintly behind him, like thin threads stretched to their breaking point. A few blocks deeper into the hollow salvage district, he scaled the rusted fire escape of a derelict apartment building, ascending toward clean air and higher vantage.

The rooftop met him with stillness. The city’s distant hum returned, wrapping around his senses like a half-forgotten song. Here, above the ground’s corrupted seams, the air felt steadier—but not innocent.

Harry raised his hand, fingers tracing careful, deliberate patterns through the cool night air. Thin bands of warding magic unfurled in layers, each thread folding into place with precision earned through centuries of repetition. The spells wove together like threads in a masterful tapestry—complex, beautiful, unbreakable. Spatial anchors sank deep into the bones of the rooftop, locking his sanctuary into place. The distortions outside pressed faintly against the barrier, testing, then washing away like waves breaking against an unyielding stone wall. Inside his circle, the world settled into perfect stillness.

He exhaled, slow and controlled, allowing himself a moment of silence before the next task.

Only then did he part his coat.

The wounds gleamed dark beneath the moonlight—precise, deliberate. Shallow cuts marked his ribs, shoulder, and thigh, placed with surgical care. They weren’t intended to incapacitate. They were messages. Marks. Each stroke measured not to kill, but to bleed, to remind him what it meant to be mortal. The blood ran warm against his skin, its coppery scent sharper than memory had preserved—stirring echoes of long-forgotten battlegrounds.

Harry pressed his palm against the first wound, whispering the words of restoration. Pale strands of healing magic uncoiled beneath his fingertips, threading into torn muscle and skin, knitting the wound closed with clinical efficiency. The motion was instinctive, as familiar as breath.

But as the wound began to close, the magic staggered.

Beneath the nearly healed flesh, something writhed.

Dark threads of corrupted curse energy coiled like invasive roots beneath ice, twisting, shifting. Harry narrowed his gaze and adjusted the weave, sending finer threads of magic to probe deeper. The corrupted strands responded immediately—tightening, resisting, pulling away from his reach. The tension in the wound fought back with an almost intelligent stubbornness, as if the infection itself knew him and resisted submission.

Frustration simmered at the edge of his breath. He recognized parts of the energy. Familiar in some ways, though not completely. Primal werewolf curse magic hummed at its core—old magic, raw, savage. Yet it had been twisted, warped into something more refined, more insidious. The pattern was altered—sharp edges where there had once been wildness, purpose where there had been chaos.

And beneath that corruption, deeper still—something colder.

Older.

Death.

A faint current of her energy wove through the corrupted strands, thin veins of black glass laced into living muscle, faint but undeniable. His healing magic faltered against it. This was no accident. This was crafted. A deliberate combination of curse and dominion—violence infused with intimate design.

His jaw clenched.

“Sloppy,” he muttered. “Should’ve seen that break coming.”

The second wound proved more stubborn. The cursed strands had tangled themselves deeper, requiring him to work carefully—unravelling the corruption like pulling barbed wire free of exposed nerves. Each twisted knot resisted until, finally, they unravelled under the persistent force of his will. As the last strand dissolved into nothing, Harry exhaled through his nose.

“First blood in centuries. Brilliant.”

The third wound closed slower still, though the pattern was familiar now. The corrupted residue burned away as his healing finally overcame it, but the sensation lingered. The injury was gone from his flesh, but not from his mind. The awareness of it lodged itself deeper—mental, not physical.

He breathed evenly, gaze lifting to the distant skyline where thin clouds crept across the stars. The city below thrummed with its usual distant pulse, oblivious to the hunt unfolding in its forgotten corners.

Whoever this was—whoever had crafted this—had studied him intimately. This wasn’t random. It wasn’t wild. It was personal.

Harry straightened, closing his coat, the movement slow and deliberate. His cloak whispered against the rooftop as the wind caught it.

The bleeding had stopped.

The game had changed.

And now—it was his turn.

And somewhere in the growing dark, the predator waited—for him to bleed again.

OMAKE — "The Goblet of WWE”

The Great Hall glowed with magical tension as the parchment fluttered gently from the Goblet of Fire’s flames. The enchanted paper swirled once, twice, before landing perfectly in Dumbledore’s waiting hand.

He read it aloud, voice disturbingly calm:

“Harry Potter.”

Every head turned in perfect unison. The hall went dead silent.

Harry blinked. “Er… what?”

And then—

Wade Deadpool Wilson burst through the enchanted ceiling like a meteor in a purple tuxedo, landing with a flawless superhero pose.

“LADIES! GENTLEMEN! CHILDREN ABOUT TO BE SCOLDED! WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S MAIN EVENT!”

A conjured floating microphone descended into his hand. The enchanted ceiling politely repaired itself behind him with a soft pop.

Wade spun theatrically, voice booming.

“Tonight’s title match: The Boy Who Lived... Versus Everyone With Authority Issues! Sponsored by: The Department of Magical Trauma and the Hogwarts Liability Insurance Fund.”

Harry barely had time to register this before Dumbledore calmly teleported across the hall, robes billowing with celestial gravitas.

“Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire, Harry?”

“Wha—I—”

SLAM.

Dumbledore grabbed Harry by the front of his robes and gently suplexed him through the enchanted table.

Wade:
“FIRST CONTACT! Dumbledore opens with the Enlightenment Slam! Five house points deducted for structural damage! That table had a family, folks.”

The students roared.

Harry groaned from inside the wreckage. “I swear I didn’t—”

McGonagall descended like a Scottish hawk, landing gracefully on the nearest floating piece of debris.

“Did you put your name in the Goblet, Mr. Potter?”

“NO—”

Without breaking composure, she transfigured her wand into a solid steel chair, spun it once for flair, and piledrove Harry straight into the next layer of enchanted marble.

Wade:
“OH SNAP! McGonagall hits him with the Tartan Folding Chair of Discipline! Calm, cold, and classy! A performance worthy of an Order of Merlin, folks!”

Madame Pomfrey conjured a stretcher and a tray of potions but made absolutely no attempt to intervene.

Wade:
“And our lovely medic team is standing by, fully prepared to treat injuries but absolutely unwilling to prevent them!”

Snape glided across the wreckage, robes swirling like a dark cloud of judgment.

“Explain yourself, Potter.”

Harry’s head lolled. “I DIDN’T—”

Snape’s hand flicked and Harry went airborne with a nonchalant levicorpus that slammed him headfirst into a decorative suit of armour. The suit saluted him politely as it collapsed.

Wade:
“YES! The Sarcastic Levitation Dunk! Snape delivers with his signature passive-aggressive flair. Extra style points for ironic detachment.”

The ghosts of Hogwarts materialized in the rafters, waving tiny pennants.

Nearly headless Nick:
“Ten points to Slytherin for that one!”

But it wasn’t over.

Dumbledore stepped back, voice still perfectly serene.
“Minerva. Severus. Shall we apply the coordinated technique?”

McGonagall nodded primly. “As rehearsed.”

Snape sighed. “Very well.”

Three glowing circles appeared under their feet.

Wade leapt onto a floating commentary platform conjured just for him, spinning like a game show host.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE ENTERED THE TRI-WIZARD SMACKDOWN PHASE!”

The professors moved in synchronized precision. McGonagall hexed the floor into a tilting ramp. Harry slid helplessly down it like a screaming pinball.

Wade:
“THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF RESPONSIBILITY!”

As Harry slid, Dumbledore conjured a platform of swirling magical runes that catapulted him skyward in a flawless spiral.

Wade:
“THE PHILOSOPHER'S FLING!”

Snape waited at the apex, perfectly positioned, and with a single wand flick, sent Harry spinning downward like a spiralling human corkscrew.

Wade:
“THE POTIONS PLUNGE!”

Harry crashed into a conjured inflatable safety cushion with a wheeze.

“...I’m fine...”

The cushion immediately popped beneath him.

Wade gasped dramatically.

“A betrayal! The cushion had integrity failure! Are we seeing a deeper metaphor for the Hogwarts educational system? Probably!”

Just as Harry crawled to his knees—

BAM!

Filch appeared out of nowhere with a mop and bucket, slamming Harry back to the ground.

“Bloody mess, this is.”

Wade pointed. “UNSCHEDULED INTERFERENCE FROM THE JANITORIAL DIVISION! MY GOD, THE COMMITMENT TO CLEANLINESS IS VIOLENT!”

Peeves zoomed overhead, tossing enchanted pies into the chaos while singing.

Peeves:
“Oh what fun, to smash the Chosen One—
With pastry spells and cream-filled shells!”

BANG!

A custard pie exploded on Harry’s face as he barely lifted his head.

Harry croaked, “...I DIDN’T PUT MY NAME IN IT...”

Wade lowered his mic, voice reverent.
“And there it is, folks. The boy still clings to his innocence, even as his bones realign like a particularly determined Jenga tower.”

The floating scoreboard above the Great Hall updated:

Hogwarts Faculty: 27 hits
Harry Potter: Mild protest

Wade adjusted his bowtie.
“Tonight’s moral? Justice is swift, due process is optional, and Hogwarts still doesn’t have an HR department.”

He blew kisses at the audience as the faculty circled Harry for round two.

“And tune in next time, dear viewers, for our next event: The Order of the Phoenix Presents: Dueling Club Deathmatch! Same trauma time, same trauma channel!”

Fade to black.

Chapter Text

Hi this is one of the last announcements about the rewrite. I have now finished the first arc (The first 4 chapters). They are all updated and ready to read if you desire so. Also I am writing this announcement without editing so there might be some grammatical errors or I might sound like a unrefined baboon. You are warned. So what changed ? Should you re read the chapters?
Short answer: If you only care about the story in general and not the details then you do not have to re read them. It still is the same story generally speaking.
Long answer: I have changed the tone quite a bit. Harry's personality is a bit more fleshed out now. I also added some backstory to some characters and edited some stuff that I decided to change. You might have seen my first rewrite of the chapter 1 or 2. I have re written them another time so this is their second re write. For the chapter 3 I have re written the chapter from ground up. In general terms it has the same outline but the it is really different from the original. For the chapter 4 I have edited the dream sequence, added a real fight scene between Nightmare and Harry. Kinda killed Nightmare and fixed lots of the writing errors you guys told me about. Also if any of you prefer to write their feedback on the rewrites I would really appreciate if you could give them to this chapters comment area so that I can have them all in one place. This was just an update to say I have not abandoned this project. I am still writing. I even started to write another fanfic in which Harry is raised by none other than skulduggery pleasant and Valkyrie Cain. I am kinda using it to take some breathers while editing this ones chapters. It will be published when I finish this one. SO yes. Thanks for reading the update. Like I said I am still here. There will be only one other update about the rewrites which will be done when I have finished the second arc (5-10). See you on the next update. Also these updates will be deleted when I finish the rewrites and continue with the story.

-MoonManIsland