Near Austria, Nurmengard—the vast, desolate prison standing all alone—had once spent year after year shrouded in darkness and mist, but today, the light bursting from those tiny black windows made the atmosphere here even stranger.
Now only a single magical lamp remained in the whole corridor, hanging on the wall inside the cell. Through the wisps of black smoke still drifting in the air, the entire prison looked ruined and dilapidated—the spell-reinforced walls had not only been stripped layer by layer and thinned by Dumbledore, but were now covered in cracks under the effects of the Charms, like a spiderweb. Broken wall bricks and brick dust lay scattered all over the floor, making one fear that the Tower might collapse at any moment.
The corridor floor was scored with long wounds left by magical force, stretching from one wall up onto the ceiling. Some melted stone slabs had turned into lava and were beginning to drip down. Behind Voldemort, the corridor ravaged by blue fire and lightning lay empty, leaving behind scorched black burns, yet the bare passage still billowed with searing smoke.
The Death Eaters had long since collectively used Finite Incantatem to extinguish the blue flames Grindelwald had used to seal the door and attack. But held back by the battle of top-tier power they had just witnessed, they gripped their wands and gathered at the stairway leading to the corridor, none daring to approach—because the Death Eaters had already understood from the fate of those bold companions who had tried to show loyalty to the Dark Lord and paid for it that even getting close would bring no help at all to their master, who had just displayed terrifying might in a one-against-two fight. It would only waste their own lives.
The Dark Lord clearly allowed his