Chapter 2: The Temple’s Trials
Harry wished he had an answer. For once, he wished he had power, real power, the kind that could smash through walls and break magical wards. But he was just Harry Potter, the Fraud Who Lived, standing in an impossible temple with five terrified people.
“We survive,” he said finally. “Whatever this place wants, we give it just enough to stay alive, and we find a way out.”
“And if there is no way out?” Dennis asked.
Harry looked at the glowing commandment, at the statue with its terrible patient gaze, at the temple that shouldn’t exist.
“Then we make one,” he said quietly.
“Try the mirrors,” McLaggen said, his voice tight. He was already pulling his out, a small circular device that should have connected them to BHA headquarters.
The mirrors stayed dark. Terry tried his next, shaking it like that would help. Nothing. Orla’s wouldn’t even turn on.
“Emergency portkeys,” Romilda said. She activated hers, pressing the enchanted coin hard enough that her knuckles went white. The magic fizzled and died. “This is impossible. These are Ministry-grade. They’re supposed to work through anything short of Azkaban’s wards.”
Harry felt the pressure building in the air again. The commandment still hung there, glowing words that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat. His scar ached. He’d almost forgotten what that felt like, that burning sensation that had plagued his childhood.
“We need to leave,” Dennis said. His enthusiasm from earlier had evaporated completely. “Right now. Before something worse happens.”
“There’s no door,” Josh said. He was running his hands over the wall where they’d entered, searching for any seam or crack. “It’s just solid stone.”
McLaggen rounded on Harry. “This is your fault. Your cursed fame. Everyone knows weird shit happens around you.”
“That’s not how magic works.”
“Isn’t it? How many normal people get trapped in ancient temples that shouldn’t exist?” McLaggen’s wand was still in his hand, and for a moment Harry thought he might actually attack. “This is just like Cardiff. Just like every other assignment you’ve ruined.”
“Cardiff wasn’t my fault and you know it.”
“Do I? Because it seems like disaster follows you everywhere.”
The statue’s eyes flared red. The sudden change cut through McLaggen’s senseless tirade like a knife. Everyone froze, staring at the distant figure with its glowing gaze.
The pressure in the air intensified. Harry’s ears popped. The black flames guttered and dimmed, leaving them in a twilight that made everything look wrong.
“What’s it doing?” Orla whispered.
The statue didn’t move but Harry felt something watching them now. Really watching, with an intelligence that made his skin crawl. The runes carved into the pillars began to glow with the same red light.
Romilda stepped forward. “This is ridiculous. It’s just a statue in some abandoned dungeon. It can’t actually hurt us.”
“Romilda, don’t,” Terry said.
She ignored him, staring at the hovering words. “I’m a witch. I bow to no one, especially not some carved rock.” She raised her wand and pointed it at the commandment. “Finite Incantatem.”
The spell splashed against the glowing words and dissipated.
The statue’s eyes suddenly blazed brighter.
Stone erupted from the floor. Spears of it, shooting up so fast Harry barely registered them moving. They punched through Romilda from below, a dozen sharpened points that lifted her off her feet.
She made a wet choking sound. Blood ran down the stone spears. Her wand clattered to the floor.
For a moment, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Romilda hung there, suspended on the spears like a grotesque puppet, her eyes wide with shock and pain.
Then Terry screamed.
He ran for the wall, throwing blasting hexes at the stone where the door had been. The spells hit with thunderous cracks but left barely a scratch.
“Open! Open you fucking door!” He was sobbing now, hammering at the wall with his fists when his wand arm gave out. “Let us out!”
Josh joined him, adding his magic to Terry’s. More blasting hexes, cutting curses, even a few desperate transfiguration attempts. The wall remained solid.
Overhead, something groaned.
Harry looked up. The ceiling was moving. Massive stone blocks, each one easily the size of a car, were sliding free from their moorings.
“Move!” he shouted.
Terry and Josh didn’t listen. They kept firing at the wall, their spells growing wilder and more desperate.
The first block fell and crushed Josh flat. The sound was horrible, wet and crunching. The second and third blocks followed, and Terry disappeared under tons of stone.
Dennis vomited. The sound echoed through the temple, obscene in the sudden silence.
McLaggen grabbed Harry’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. “Bow. Now.”
Harry was already moving. He dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to the cold stone floor. Dennis collapsed beside him, his whole body shaking. McLaggen went down last, his breathing harsh and rapid.
The pressure eased. The statue’s eyes faded from red back to that dim purple glow. The black flames returned to their normal brightness.
Harry risked lifting his head. The stone spears were retracting back into the floor, leaving Romilda’s body to crumple. The ceiling blocks had stopped falling. Everything was still again, as if the temple was satisfied.
Three dead in less than a minute. Just for refusing to bow.
“What is this place?” Dennis whispered. His face had gone gray.
Harry didn’t answer. He was staring at the glowing commandment, at those words that had cost three lives. This wasn’t a dungeon. Dungeons had monsters and traps but they were fundamentally predictable. You went in, fought, collected loot, left. This was something else entirely.
This was a test. And the price of failure was death.
McLaggen stood slowly, his wand held in a white knuckled grip. “We’re moving forward. Staying here with the bodies will drive us insane.”
“Forward where?” Dennis asked. “There’s no way out.”
“There’s always a way out of dungeons. We just have to find it.” McLaggen’s voice had taken on a manic edge. “This is a high rank dungeon, maybe even S-Rank. The BHA will pay millions for the first clear. We just have to survive long enough to claim it.”
Harry stared at him. “Three people just died.”
“And they died because they were stupid. We’re smarter. We follow the rules, we stay alive, we get rich.” McLaggen pointed toward the far end of the temple, past the statue. “There’s an archway behind it. That’s our exit.”
He started walking. Dennis looked at Harry with desperate eyes.
“We don’t have a choice,” Harry said quietly. “We can’t go back.”
They followed McLaggen, giving the statue a wide berth. Up close it was even more unsettling. The carved face seemed to track their movement. The chalice in its hands was detailed enough that Harry could see individual drops of frozen liquid.
The archway led to a corridor lined with murals. The artwork was ancient but still vivid, preserved by magic. Harry found himself slowing despite the urgency, drawn to the images.
The first mural showed wizards kneeling before four hooded figures. The figures were enormous, towering over their supplicants, and their robes were decorated with symbols that made Harry’s eyes water when he tried to focus on them.
“What are those?” Dennis asked.
“Monarchs,” McLaggen said. He was studying the mural with a strange expression. “That’s what the old texts called them. Beings of pure magic who ruled before recorded history. Most scholars think they’re myths.”
“They look real enough here.”
The second mural depicted war. Wizards in silver armor fought against creatures of shadow. The battle sprawled across the wall, hundreds of tiny figures engaged in combat. Above it all, the four Monarchs watched from their thrones.
The third mural showed Hogwarts. Harry recognized the castle immediately, though it looked different from the version he knew. Four wizards stood before it, their faces clear and distinct. Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.
They were sealing something. Their wands were raised, magic pouring from them in visible streams, and beneath the castle’s foundations something writhed. Something with too many limbs and eyes that burned.
“The founders imprisoned a Monarch,” Harry said. The realization hit him like cold water. “Under Hogwarts.”
“That’s impossible,” Dennis said. “We’d know. The professors would have told us.”
“Would they? How much of the old history did they actually teach us?” Harry looked at McLaggen. “You said you studied the Monarchs.”
“Academic interest. Most of what we know comes from fragments. The Monarchs supposedly ruled the magical world thousands of years ago. They were worshipped as gods. Then something happened, a rebellion maybe, and they were overthrown or destroyed. That’s the theory anyway.”
“Doesn’t look destroyed to me.” Harry gestured at the mural. “Looks sealed. And if one was under Hogwarts...”
“Then this temple could be connected to another one,” McLaggen finished. His face had gone pale. “We need to move faster.”
The corridor ended at another chamber. This one was smaller, maybe twenty meters across, with a golden altar in the center. A chalice sat on the altar, identical to the one the statue had held. The metal gleamed in the sourceless light.
Words appeared in the air above the chalice, the same glowing runes as before.
COMMANDMENT THE SECOND: PROVE YOUR FAITH. DRINK OF THE DIVINE’S BLESSING.
“Absolutely not,” Dennis said immediately. “Did you see what happened to Romilda? I’m not drinking anything in this place.”
McLaggen circled the altar slowly. “It could be a test. Maybe it’s not poison. Maybe it’s actually a blessing like it says.”
“Or maybe it’s a horrible death in a cup.”
“If we don’t drink, the temple might kill us like it killed the others.”
Dennis desperately looked at Harry. “What do you think?”
Harry stared intently at the chalice. The liquid inside was dark, almost black, and it didn’t reflect light properly. “I think this whole place is designed to kill us no matter what we choose. If we drink, we die. If we don’t drink, we die. The only question is which death is faster.”
“Very helpful, Potter.”
“I’m just being realistic.”
McLaggen’s expression hardened. He grabbed Dennis by the arm and dragged him toward the altar. Dennis yelped and tried to pull away, but McLaggen was stronger and desperate.
“What are you doing?” Harry stepped forward, his wand rising.
“Making sure we survive.” McLaggen forced Dennis against the altar. “You’re going to drink first. If nothing happens, we know it’s safe.”
“No! Harry, help!”
Harry pointed his wand at McLaggen. “Let him go.”
“Or what? You’ll curse me? Your stunners are so weak I could probably walk through them.” McLaggen’s own wand came up, still gripping Dennis with his other hand. “This is survival, Potter. Someone has to test it. He’s the rookie. He has to prove himself.”
“He’s nineteen years old.”
“And I’m twenty-three. Age is irrelevant here.” McLaggen shoved Dennis harder against the altar. “Drink or I’ll force it down your throat.”
Dennis was crying now, his face twisted with terror. He looked at Harry with pleading eyes.
Harry knew he should do something. Fire a spell, tackle McLaggen, anything. But the truth was McLaggen was right about one thing. Harry’s magic was weak. A stunner wouldn’t stop him. A shield charm wouldn’t protect Dennis. Harry was useless, just like always.
But that didn’t mean he’d just let McLaggen do as he wished.
His eyes defiant, Harry raised his wand and fired as powerful a cutting curse as he could, his aim straight at McLaggen’s wand arm. McLaggen saw the incoming curse and with a snarl, he swatted it away before casting a banishing hex that shattered Harry’s hastily cast shield and drove the air from his lungs. Harry doubled over, falling to his knees, his wand clattering to the floor.
Dennis’s expression crumpled. McLaggen spat in Harry’s direction as he grabbed the chalice and pressed it to Dennis’s lips. The younger wizard struggled but it was pointless. McLaggen was too strong, too determined. He tilted the chalice and poured.
“No…” Harry gasped, doubling over as another jolt of pain went through him.
Dennis choked as the liquid went down. His eyes went wide. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then he started screaming.
Black veins erupted across his skin, spreading from his mouth like cracks in glass. They raced up his face, down his neck, disappearing under his collar. Dennis collapsed to his knees, still screaming, his hands clawing at his throat.
McLaggen backed away fast, his eyes wide.
The veins covered Dennis completely now. His skin turned gray, then darker, like stone or old meat. His eyes filmed over with white, and the screaming stopped.
Nobody moved for a long moment. Slowly, Dennis stood up. But the movement was wrong, all jerky and mechanical. His head turned toward them with movements that bent too far. When he opened his mouth, black sludge dripped out.
“Run,” McLaggen whispered in fear.
Dennis lunged. Harry barely dodged, throwing himself sideways as those gray hands swiped at him. McLaggen was already sprinting for the exit, not looking back.
Harry scrambled to his feet. Dennis was between him and the door. The thing that had been Dennis, anyway. It moved like a puppet with tangled strings, fast but uncoordinated.
“Dennis, I know you’re in there. Fight it.”
There was no response. Just that horrible jerky movement as it came at him again.
Harry fired a stunner. The red bolt hit Dennis square in the chest and splashed harmlessly across his gray skin. A cutting curse left a shallow gash that bled black sludge instead of blood.
Dennis lunged unnaturally and grabbed Harry’s jacket, lifting him off his feet. His strength was inhuman. Harry looked into those filmed over eyes and saw nothing of his friend looking back.
He jammed his wand under Dennis’s chin. “Incendio.”
Fire, weak but still hot, erupted from the wand tip. Dennis dropped him immediately, staggering backward with flames spreading across his face and chest. The gray skin blackened and cracked. The smell was horrific, nothing like burning flesh should smell. It was something chemical and wrong.
Harry hit the ground hard. His magic was already depleted from that one spell. His core ached, that familiar sensation of scraping the bottom of an empty barrel.
Dennis lurched toward him again, still burning. Harry rolled away and fired another stunner that did nothing. A blasting hex that barely staggered the creature.
He was out of options. His magic was nearly gone. Dennis kept coming, flames and all, those gray hands reaching for him.
Desperate for something, Harry grabbed the chalice from the altar and threw it. The golden cup bounced off Dennis’s head uselessly. But some of the black liquid splashed across the creature’s face.
Dennis froze. The gray skin began to smoke and bubble where the liquid touched. He opened his mouth in a silent scream, and more of that black sludge poured out. The skin started to slough off in chunks, revealing nothing underneath. Just empty space, like Dennis had been a costume draped over air.
The creature collapsed. Within seconds, there was nothing left but a stain on the floor and the smell of chemicals.
Harry stayed on the ground, breathing hard. His wand hand shook. The chamber was silent except for his harsh breathing.
Dennis Creevey was dead. The kid who’d looked up to him, who’d sent enthusiastic messages about assignments, who’d just wanted to be a hero like the stories said Harry was. Dead because McLaggen had forced him to drink poison, and Harry hadn’t been strong enough to stop it.
The golden chalice lay on its side near the altar, the last drops of black liquid pooling beneath it. The glowing commandment faded from the air.
A new archway opened in the far wall.
Harry wanted to stay there. Wanted to curl up and give up. But that wasn’t an option. The temple would kill him if he stopped moving. It had made that abundantly clear.
He forced himself to stand. Every muscle ached. His magic felt like sandpaper in his veins. But he walked toward the archway, because the only direction was forward.
The corridor beyond was longer than the first. The murals continued, showing more scenes of the Monarchs and their worshippers. In one image, wizards offered sacrifices at an altar. In another, the Monarchs bestowed gifts of magic upon kneeling figures. Everything was worship and obedience and submission.
Harry’s scar burned steadily now. Something about this place resonated with it, made that old wound feel fresh.
He found McLaggen in the next chamber.
Or what was left of him.
The chamber was huge, a hall filled with massive stone statues of warriors in ancient armor. McLaggen’s body lay in the center, torn apart. Not cut or blasted. Torn, like something with great strength had simply pulled him into pieces.
Blood and gore was everywhere. Harry approached slowly, his wand raised, expecting something to attack. But the chamber was still. The statues didn’t move.
McLaggen’s face, or whatever was left of it, was frozen in a scream. His wand lay a few meters away, splintered into pieces. Whatever had killed him had been fast and brutal.
Harry knelt beside the body, fighting nausea. He’d hated McLaggen. The man had been cruel and cowardly and had directly caused Dennis’s death. But nobody deserved this.
Suddenly, something scraped against stone.
Harry spun around, his eyes wide and his heart thudding loudly in his chest. One of the statues was moving. The stone warrior’s head turned slowly, its ancient joints grinding. Its eyes lit up with red light.
Then another statue moved. And another. Within seconds, all twelve statues in the hall were animating, their stone bodies moving with impossible fluidity.
Harry ran.
Stone feet thundered behind him. The statues were fast despite their size. Harry ducked through an archway and kept going, his lungs burning. His magic was too depleted to fight, not that he was strong enough even at full capacity. Running was his only option.
The corridor branched. Harry took the left path without thinking, just trying to put distance between himself and the stone warriors. He could hear them behind him, steady and relentless.
A memory surfaced. Sirius training him in their flat, Harry maybe twelve years old and frustrated because he couldn’t master the shield charm properly.
“You’re not powerful, Harry,” Sirius had said. His godfather had been sober that day, one of his good days. “You’ll never be able to overpower your opponents. So you need to be smarter. Use the environment. Make them beat themselves.”
“How?”
“Think about it. A powerful wizard expects to win through raw magic. They don’t think about mundane solutions. If you can make them overcommit, use their strength against them, you might survive long enough to find an opening.”
Harry slid to a stop. Ahead, the corridor opened into another large chamber. Behind, the stone warriors were closing in. He had maybe ten seconds.
The chamber had pillars. Dozens of them, holding up a vaulted ceiling. The architecture was elegant but old. Probably fragile in the right places.
Harry ran to the nearest pillar and examined it. The base was carved with reliefs, weakening the structural integrity. If he could collapse one pillar, it might trigger a chain reaction.
The first statue entered the chamber. Then two more. They fanned out, surrounding him.
Harry pointed his wand at the nearest pillar’s base. “Bombarda.”
The spell was weak but placed precisely. Stone cracked. The pillar shuddered but held.
The statues charged. Harry dove behind another pillar and fired again. “Bombarda. Bombarda.”
His magic was scraping bottom. Each spell felt like tearing something vital inside his chest. But the cracks in the pillar were spreading.
A stone fist smashed into the pillar he was hiding behind. The whole structure shook. Harry rolled away and fired at the damaged pillar again.
It gave way with a grinding crash. The top half fell, smashing into the next pillar. That one cracked and tipped, hitting a third.
The chain reaction spread and pillars fell like dominoes, bringing chunks of ceiling down with them. The stone warriors tried to retreat but they were too slow. Tons of carved stone crashed down, burying them.
Harry pressed himself into a corner and covered his head. Dust and debris filled the air. The noise was deafening.
Then there was nothing but silence.
Harry coughed, waving away dust as he blearily opened his eyes. The chamber was a ruin. Broken pillars and ceiling chunks covered everything. Some of the statues were completely buried. Others were smashed to pieces.
But one was still moving.
It dragged itself from the rubble, its legs crushed but its arms still functional. The red glow in its eyes remained steady. It pulled itself toward Harry with single minded determination.
Harry tried to cast but nothing came. His magic was completely gone. The well was dry.
The statue kept coming. Ten meters. Five. Its stone hand reached for him.
Harry grabbed a broken piece of pillar, maybe the size of his forearm, and swung it like a club. The stone chip bounced off the statue’s head with a pathetic clack. The warrior didn’t even slow down.
Its hand closed around Harry’s ankle.
Pain shot up his leg as the stone fingers squeezed. He felt his bones grinding together. Harry screamed and kicked at the statue’s face with his free foot. Again and again, putting every ounce of strength into it.
Something cracked. The statue’s face developed a fracture. Harry kicked again and the crack spread. One more kick and the head shattered, red light dying instantly.
The hand released, and Harry collapsed, gasping. His ankle was broken or at least badly damaged. Every breath hurt. His magic was gone, his body was failing, and he was trapped in an ancient temple designed to kill him.
Sirius would be disappointed. All those years of training, all those lessons about survival and never giving up, and Harry was going to die in some forgotten dungeon where nobody would ever find his body.
But there was still another archway. Always another archway, leading deeper into the temple.
Harry forced himself to stand. His ankle screamed in protest but somehow held his weight. He limped forward because stopping meant dying and he wasn’t ready to die yet.
The next corridor was mercifully short. It opened into a final chamber that made Harry’s breath catch.
This room was enormous, easily a hundred meters across. The ceiling soared overhead, lost in darkness. And in the center sat a throne.
It was carved from black obsidian, smooth and gleaming in the dim light. The throne was sized for something much larger than human, with a high back carved with more of those impossible symbols. It sat empty on a raised dais.
The floor around the throne was littered with bones. Human bones, picked clean and scattered. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, forming a carpet of death.
And standing between Harry and the throne were three massive stone guardians.
These weren’t like the warriors from before. These were something else entirely. Each one stood at least four meters tall, their proportions all wrong, too broad and too heavily armored. Their faces were blank stone masks.
Words appeared in the air between Harry and the guardians.
COMMANDMENT THE THIRD: FACE DEATH WITH COURAGE, AND BE REBORN.
Harry started laughing. He couldn’t help it. The sound echoed through the chamber for well over a minute, bouncing off walls and ceiling. It was the laugh of someone who’d completely lost it.
“Of course,” he said to nobody. “Of course it’s three fucking guardians. Why would it be anything else?”
The guardians began to move. Slow at first, their massive forms turning toward him. Then faster, building momentum as they charged.
Harry raised his wand even though there was no magic left. Even though his body was broken and exhausted. Even though he knew with absolute certainty that he was going to die.
But Sirius had taught him to survive. His mother had died to save him. His father had fought until the end. The least Harry could do was meet death standing up.
The first guardian swung a massive stone fist. Harry tried to dodge but his broken ankle gave out. The fist connected with his ribs and he heard several of them crack. He flew backward, hitting a pillar hard enough to see stars.
Blood filled his mouth. Harry spat it out and somehow stood again. The guardians were already there.
The second one kicked him. Harry felt his left arm break, the bone snapping like dry wood. He bounced across the floor, leaving a trail of blood.
Stand up. He had to stand up.
Harry got his good leg under him and pushed. The world swam. Everything hurt. But somehow, he was standing again.
The third guardian grabbed him by the throat and lifted. Harry’s vision started to darken as his airway closed. He kicked weakly at the stone arm, accomplishing nothing.
Through the fading vision, Harry saw the throne. Just sitting there, empty and waiting. For some reason, that made him angry. This whole place, these stupid tests, the deaths of everyone in this place. All of it to guard an empty chair.
The guardian threw him. Harry hit the ground and rolled, leaving more blood trails in his wake. His body wasn’t responding properly now. Everything felt distant and cold.
He was dying. He could feel it, that final darkness creeping in at the edges.
But the throne was right there. Maybe three meters away.
Harry started crawling. He couldn’t stand anymore but he could drag himself forward. One arm over the other, pulling his broken body across blood slicked stone.
The guardians followed, slowly now. They knew he was finished. There was no rush.
Two meters. Harry’s vision was narrowing to a tunnel. His thoughts were fragmenting, memories bleeding together. Sirius laughing. His mother’s voice from his dreams. The feeling of magic in his veins before everything broke.
One meter. His hand reached out, his fingers stretching toward the throne’s base.
The guardians loomed over him. One raised its foot to crush his spine.
Slowly, painfully, Harry’s fingers touched the obsidian.
Light exploded through the chamber. Blinding white light that burned away the darkness. Harry felt it more than saw it, a sensation of pure energy that made his shattered core sing.
The pressure in the air changed. The guardians froze mid attack.
And a voice spoke. It was neither male nor female, old and young, one voice and a thousand. It resonated through Harry’s bones and made his scar burn white hot.
“At last. One worthy of the Shadow Monarch’s legacy.”
Harry tried to speak but only managed a gurgle. Blood continued to pour from his mouth.
Blue light coalesced in front of his eyes. A panel, floating in the air, covered in text that glowed with soft light.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
The Player has been selected.
Do you wish to become a Player? [YES] / [NO]
Warning: Refusal means death.
Harry stared at the words. His mind felt fuzzy, thoughts slipping away like smoke. What was this? Some kind of magical contract? A trap?
Another message appeared.
Warning: User life signs critical. Death imminent in approximately 47 seconds.
The guardians remained frozen but Harry could see them straining against whatever held them. Whatever this System was, it wouldn’t stop them forever.
Forty seconds. His vision was going dark again.
What did he have to lose? He was already dying. If this killed him, so what? And if it didn’t...
Maybe he could finally be strong enough. Strong enough to survive. Strong enough to matter.
Harry thought YES with every fiber of his failing consciousness.
The blue panel flashed.
[ACCEPTED]
Initiating Player Integration...
Warning: Subject has sustained critical injuries. Activating Emergency Restoration Protocol.
The pain hit first. Not new pain but every injury lighting up at once, nerves screaming as they were forced to reconnect and rebuild. Harry tried to scream but his throat was still crushed.
Then the healing began.
It felt like being torn apart and put back together. Bones grinding back into place, flesh knitting closed, blood vessels reconnecting. Harry’s broken ankle straightened with audible cracks. His shattered ribs popped back into position one by one. The internal bleeding stopped.
His crushed throat opened. Harry gasped, dragging in air that burned like fire and felt like heaven.
The healing continued. Faster now, spreading through his entire body. Cuts sealed. Bruises faded. Even old injuries from years of low rank dungeon assignments began to repair themselves.
And his magic core...
Oh god, his magic core.
Harry felt it changing. The cracks that had defined his entire life, that had limited him to E-Rank since childhood, began to close. Not heal exactly but fill in with something new. Something that pulsed and churned like liquid light.
More messages scrolled past on the obscure panel but Harry couldn’t focus on them. The sensation was overwhelming. Power flooded through him, more magic than he’d ever felt. It built and built until he thought he might burst.
Then it stabilized. Settled into a steady thrum that resonated through his entire being.
Harry opened his eyes. The world looked different. Sharper. He could see the individual particles of dust floating in the air. He could feel the flow of magic through the temple’s walls. He could sense the power trapped in the three guardians standing frozen above him.
He stood. Easily, without pain. His body felt perfect, whole in a way it never had before.
The guardians were still frozen but something was changing. The spell or power holding them was weakening. Within seconds they’d be free.
Harry looked at them and smiled. For the first time in his life, he felt no fear. No inadequacy. No shame.
The guardians broke free from their paralysis. But contrary to what he expected, they did not move to attack.
They didn’t even move.
Instead, they began to sink. Slowly at first, then faster, their massive stone bodies lowering to one knee. Their heads bowed toward Harry, their blank masks tilted down in submission.
The red light in their eyes faded to nothing. They went dormant, frozen in their kneeling positions like statues that had never moved at all. Whatever they'd been programmed to do, whatever test they'd represented, Harry had passed it.
Silence fell over the throne room. Harry stood before the kneeling guardians, breathing easy, his wand still in hand. Power thrummed through him like a second heartbeat.
The blue panel appeared again.
[CONGRATULATIONS]
You have completed the Tutorial.
Player Status:
Level: 1
Class: None Selected
Title: Shadow Monarch’s Heir
Welcome to the System.
Harry stared at the words. Then he started laughing again, but this time it was different. Not the laugh of someone broken and desperate. This one was the laugh of someone who’d just been given a second chance.
The empty throne pulsed with dark light. More text appeared, explaining things Harry barely understood. Skills and stats and quests. An entire interface of power and possibility.
For twenty-five years, Harry Potter had been weak. The Boy Who Lived, barely living. The fraud with a famous name and no talent to back it up.
But that Harry was dead. Left behind on the floor of this throne room along with his blood and broken bones.
The Harry who stood here now was something new. Something more.
Five people had entered this temple. Harry Potter would walk out alone.
But he wasn’t the same Harry Potter who’d walked in.