Your Fate Is Chaos

As centaurs, they were born able to read the paths of the stars, sense the pulse of nature, and glimpse the threads of fate.

In their perception, most wizards were like jarring noise in nature's harmonious symphony.

They were filled with traces of magic acquired through study, stiff and unnatural, completely out of place in their surroundings.

But this boy before them...

He was completely different.

Firenze couldn't sense even the slightest trace of deliberate magic emanating from him.

He simply stood there quietly, yet seemed perfectly at one with the entire forest, the earth beneath his feet, and the moonlight overhead.

His presence didn't feel like that of an "intruder." He felt more like a part of the forest itself.

Like an ancient tree that had grown here for a thousand years, a rock that had witnessed the passage of ages, or a gentle breeze that had wandered through the woods since time immemorial.

What shocked Firenze even more was that when he instinctively tried to find the constellation tied to the boy's fate by reading the paths of the stars, all he saw was... chaos.

No, it wasn't ordinary chaos that simply couldn't be made out.

It was something more vast, more primordial—a "nothingness" beyond the bounds of understanding.

It was as though, the instant the countless stars and billions of threads of fate touched the boy's existence, they lost their original meaning, swallowed and encompassed by a power more ancient and supreme.

It was a sensation their centaur kind had never recorded in any of their tomes.

Something that came from nature, yet also transcended it.

"The light of Mars is drenched in blood tonight," Bane said gravely to Firenze, still speaking in their language of celestial prophecy. He had evidently sensed Lin Yuan's peculiarity too, but his wariness ran deeper. "Evil is walking in the forest."

Firenze was just about to ask Lin Yuan where he had come from when a scream of utter terror, sharp enough to tear the soul, cut him off.

The scream came from Malfoy.

Just moments ago, while Lin Yuan and the centaurs were engaged in their cryptic conversation, Malfoy had been bored and resentful. He had walked a dozen or so steps ahead on his own, lantern in hand, hoping to prove he was more useful than they were by finding the unicorn first.

Then he saw the horrific sight that would wake him from nightmares for the next month.

"Ahhh! Help!"

Lin Yuan and the centaurs immediately turned toward the sound.

In a small clearing just ahead, moonlight spilled down like liquid silver.

A unicorn, beautiful as something out of a myth, lay sprawled on the trampled, muddy grass.

Its coat, once whiter than fresh snow, was now dull, and its body still twitched feebly.

Most horrifying of all, silver blood like melted pearls kept welling from the wound in its neck, pooling on the ground in a gleaming, eerie puddle.

A humanoid figure wrapped in a heavy black cloak, its face impossible to make out, was hunched over the unicorn's body like a starving vulture.

It had its face buried in the unicorn's wound, making a greedy, bone-chilling sucking sound.

"Monster! There's a monster!"

Malfoy's reason completely deserted him.

He let out a scream more pathetic than a sob, dropped his lantern, and scrambled away on all fours.

Fang was even faster than he was. Tail between his legs, he vanished in an instant like a gray shadow, racing back the way they had come.

At the sight, Bane's handsome face twisted with fury and utter disgust.

"Desecration! This is a shameless desecration of the forest's purest soul!" he roared, whipping his head around. His black mane swept through the air in a furious arc.

Unwilling to look at the filthy scene any longer, and unwilling to get involved in wizard affairs, he turned and bounded away, disappearing into the dense woods.

The black figure had clearly been disturbed by Malfoy's scream.

Reluctantly, it lifted its head from the unicorn's body, apparently enraged that its "feast" had been interrupted.

It turned around. Its eyes, hidden in the shadows beneath its hood, fixed on the remaining targets—Lin Yuan and Firenze. Then, like a wisp of weightless black smoke, it hurried toward them!

At almost the same moment, hurried footsteps sounded from the woods on the other side.

Harry and Hermione had evidently heard Malfoy's scream too, and were rushing toward them as fast as they could.

"What happened? Malfoy!" Harry ran in front, shouting as he went, his wand clutched tightly in his hand.

Then he charged into the eerie clearing and saw the ominous black figure hurtling toward them.

In the next instant, Harry's world was swallowed by endless pain and green light.

"Ahhh!!!!!"

A piercing scream rang out, born not of fear but of the purest agony.

The lightning-shaped scar on his forehead felt as if it had been branded with a red-hot poker. It instantly flared with heat, and a pain that seemed to tear his very soul apart erupted from it, ripping through his entire skull!

Everything before Harry's eyes turned bloodred. Countless chaotic, evil images, steeped in hatred, flashed wildly through his mind.

He seemed to be back in that night, seeing a blinding flash of green, hearing a woman's desperate scream, and a cold, malicious, high-pitched laugh that hissed like a snake...

His vision blurred. His knees gave way, and the wand slipped from his hand and hit the ground. He crumpled to his knees in agony.

The black figure seemed to be spurred on by Harry's pain, growing even more excited!

Hermione was so terrified that she couldn't make a sound. She could only watch the horrific scene unfold, frozen and unable to move.

Firenze reared up at that moment, scraping the ground with his forehooves and letting out an angry whinny as he prepared to charge forward and protect the innocent student.

But one person moved faster than all of them.

Lin Yuan, who had been standing quietly in place, finally moved.

He didn't draw his wand, recite an incantation, or even assume a defensive stance.

He simply stepped forward, unhurriedly.

With precise timing, he placed himself between the black figure and Harry, who was kneeling on the ground.

He shielded Harry with his back.

The black figure abruptly stopped.

Its "gaze," hidden beneath the shadows of its hood, locked onto Lin Yuan.

An even more intense surge of emotions burst from it, violent and uncertain.

In Quirrell's mind, a sharp, icy voice hissed like a snake and roared wildly:

It's him! It's him! That boy from the East! In Hogsmeade... he humiliated me! He saw through me!

Voldemort's disembodied soul recognized Lin Yuan at once.

The mysterious Eastern student who had looked at him outside Borgin and Burkes with an almost dissecting gaze, making him feel as though every one of his disguises had been stripped away!

Humiliation, fury, and fear of the unknown instantly overwhelmed his hunger for unicorn blood.

Kill him, Quirrell! Now! Kill him this instant!!