Department of Mysteries

Just as Snape announced "Begin" in his signature low voice in the underground classroom at Hogwarts, and Lyria's fingertips began to gather their first wisp of frost, Cassian Thorne stood by one wall of a laboratory behind one of the countless doors in the circular hall of the Department of Mysteries, deep beneath the Ministry of Magic in London, hundreds of kilometers away.

There were no windows here, no clocks. Even the air carried the oppressive heaviness of layer upon layer of seals. Time itself seemed to have been placed under a Stasis Charm. Twelve identical black doors stood silently along the walls, and it was impossible to tell whether they were even real.

Only one of them gave off a faint blue glow—the exit to the Spatial and Node Research Office beside the Time Hall. It was said that door could not be opened casually, or it might cause temporal disturbances.

Cassian—the young man who had appeared on the Hogwarts Express that day—stood with his brows tightly furrowed, his fingers rapidly moving across a parchment map glowing with silver light.

He looked under thirty. His gray hair was trimmed impeccably, and he wore a monocle set with a miniature astrolabe over his left eye. Complex rune trails continuously surfaced across its lens—his unique Eye of Insight, capable of rendering invisible currents of magic into trajectories like the movements of stars.

"Still not right..." he muttered, his voice unusually clear in the empty room, even carrying a faint echo.

Three days earlier, abnormal magical fluctuations had appeared at three ancient Magic Nodes in Europe—the Arctic Circle within the Scandinavian Mountains, the Dinaric Alps in Albania on the Balkan Peninsula, and Hogwarts in the Scottish Highlands.

The fluctuations were neither the sharp sting of Dark Magic nor the slow dissipation of natural decay. They felt more like... an awakened echo, as though a bell that had slept for a thousand years had been lightly struck, its lingering resonance refusing to fade from deep within the earth.

More unsettling still, after every fluctuation, an extremely faint "tremor" came from the direction of Hogwarts, as if the entire castle were a sleeping dragon being gently roused by some force.

"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus—do not disturb the sleeping dragon," Cassian softly recited Hogwarts's motto, a bitter smile touching his lips. He too had graduated from Ravenclaw, but only today did he vaguely sense that this ancient maxim might not merely have been decorative rhetoric, but a warning.

His assignment on the first day of term had also been a routine inspection prompted by the recent anomalies: the Ministry of Magic had the authority to inspect the Hogwarts Express with prior notice.

He had stood on Platform 9¾, his gaze sweeping over every new student like a hawk's, but he had found neither contraband nor traces of Dark Magic. Although he had encountered the man in black following a student, intelligence he had received beforehand indicated that the man was from House Rosier and had come to take Elizabeth back. After all, some pure-blood wizards in Germany hoped their descendants would attend Durmstrang.

On the surface, nothing had seemed abnormal. But his instincts told him that the greatest issue lay with those children.

Julien Black, whose eyes were green like new spring leaves, whose manner was too steady for an eleven-year-old, and whose magic rolled around him like the tide;

Lyria, wrapped tightly in her cloak, surrounded by a stillness like the cold mist of Northern Europe—especially that long object she had been carrying. He had been suspicious at the time, so why had he not opened it to look?

And then there was the quiet Rosier girl. Though the man in black might only have wanted to drag her home, he had heard that her family had recently been moving antiques and funds around Eastern Europe with unusual frequency, their actions secretive yet urgent.

Magical talent varied enormously and took countless strange forms. There were Seers, Parseltongue speakers, Metamorphmagi, and those who could naturally draw close to animals or plants.

His own talent was seeing order within chaos. No matter how tangled the clues were, he could unravel the truth all the way to its end. Combined with combat skills comparable to an Auror's, it had earned him an exceptional recruitment into the operations division of the Department of Mysteries after graduation, making him the youngest analyst in the Spatial and Node Research Office.

Then, just moments ago, an encrypted briefing had reached Cassian: Lyria, a new student from Northern Europe, had presented a black stone tablet to Headmaster Dumbledore on the day of her enrollment. The tablet's material was unknown, it bore lost runes, and it had briefly caused a disturbance in the magical field around Hogsmeade.

"She handed it directly to Dumbledore?" Cassian repeated quietly, unconsciously rubbing the astrolabe monocle over his left eye. That meant the tablet was now beneath the layers of protection in the Headmaster's office—and the Department of Mysteries had no authority to inquire into it. Dumbledore's status had long surpassed the Ministry's jurisdiction.

But he noticed a crucial detail: ever since the tablet had entered Hogwarts, the local magical fluctuations had significantly intensified. At the same time, the node in the Dinaric Alps of distant Albania had become active in tandem, as if responding to some summons. Meanwhile, the Arctic Circle node—originally the strongest, and Lyria's homeland—had noticeably weakened, as though it had completed its mission and quietly withdrawn.

Cassian swept his right hand through the air, and a screen of light woven from magic appeared before him. He called up a residual magical image of the tablet—an image intercepted from Hogwarts by one of his little informants:

A jet-black stone shard roughly the length of an arm, shaped like an ancient sword. Spiral patterns wound across its surface like star paths, while a dim crystal the size of a grain of rice was embedded at its center. When probing magic approached it, it neither repelled nor absorbed it. Instead, it... guided it—slowly channeling the energy inward along the patterns, like water flowing into an underground river, like stars returning to their proper places.

"This is no ordinary ancient relic," Cassian said in a low, certain voice. "This tablet... is both a key and a beacon. It is an Earth Vein Resonance Anchor. Could it also be connected to the lost sacred relic of the Moon Shadow Council?"

He recalled a dust-covered file in the archives: in 1979, an investigative team had discovered a mural in the ruins of Carpathian Castle. It depicted three stone monuments standing beneath the aurora, atop a griffin's nest, and on the crest of a dragon's spine. Not long afterward, the entire team had vanished under mysterious circumstances, and the records had been classified as "untraceable."

Now, all three locations matched.

With that thought, Cassian swiftly took out a sound recorder the size of a whistle, infused it with magic, and began dictating:

(Top Secret): European Magic Node activity is high. Although Hogwarts is not a traditional Magic Node, recent anomalies indicate that its location may correspond to a forgotten "node," possibly even a dominant one. The stone tablet carried by the new student is highly likely to be the activation key. As the item has been transferred to Headmaster Dumbledore, I recommend no intervention for the time being, but continued monitoring of European node activity is required. Additionally: the tablet's runes bear a high resemblance to the ruins of the "Moon Shadow Council," which vanished in 1979. This matter may involve the reactivation of ancient magical geography and carries an extremely high potential risk. Please monitor closely.

—C. Thorne, Spatial and Node Research Office

He sealed the recorder with a drop of melted mithril and summoned a silver-gray magical raven. The raven took the message in its beak, beat its wings, and flew into the dark corridor, vanishing in the direction of the Department of Mysteries director's office.

Cassian removed his monocle and rubbed his brow wearily. Then he suddenly remembered an offhand remark attached to the end of the briefing: "Lyria used a nonstandard frost-processing method in Potions class, which has already drawn Professor Snape's attention."

Cassian smiled. His little informant was truly diligent. It seemed he would owe Amelia, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, another favor.

Come to think of it, he still had to call that director Aunt. That fair but iron-willed official was not nearly as easy to fool as her niece.

Meanwhile, in Hogwarts's highest tower, the Headmaster's office was warm and tranquil.

Fawkes the phoenix perched upon a golden branch, silently watching the black stone tablet lying on the desk.

The tablet's surface was dark as night. Only the crystal at its center, unnoticed in a corner, gave an almost imperceptible—flash, as if answering a call from deep within some mountain range thousands of miles away.