Corvus stood before the throne and watched the hooded figure in silence.
The thing had called itself Death without using the words. He thought about the story of three brothers and the legend called The Master of Death.
He almost laughed.
A lie wrapped in drama was still a lie.
Corvus looked the figure over again. A hooded robe hid most of it, but the hands were pale as bone, and it carried itself with such complete stillness that movement felt like something it allowed rather than needed.
He wanted to know what he was dealing with. Hence, he reached with Replication.
Immortality
Necromancy
Dimensional Mastery
Spatial Mastery
Sacred Blood
Psychic Mastery
Spellcraft
Mana Manipulation
Corvus's focus sharpened. That was all, that was less than what he had hoped for from a living Architect.
This one had been shaped by its function. It was a specialist. A guard, maybe, kept to guard a planet turned to farm. It was simply a gatekeeper.
His attention settled on Dimensional Mastery, and he replicated it.
He halted the absorption before the memories could flood him. Now was not the time to stand motionless in front of an Architect while sorting through its life.
The figure on the throne tilted its hood by a fraction. Perhaps it had felt the change in him.
Corvus rolled one shoulder and let the motion pass as indifference.
"I have roamed this world for a while." He drew the cloak, the stone, and the elder wand out in plain view. "There is a myth following your artefacts. It says that when all three are gathered, you bestow power on the one who carries them."
The figure returned to its throne. The black drape of its body settled over the seat, and the room seemed to dim around it.
"The lesser beings know nothing." The words came without force, and that made them worse. "I left a portal to this realm. Anyone crossing it will end up here."
A pale hand moved, dismissive and exact.
"And I will harvest their soul. Only if they come with my artefacts can they return."
The cloak left his hand first, lifting into the still air as if an unseen current had caught it. The stone followed. The wand rose last. All three floated before their maker, held there by ordinary telekinesis.
The Architect pointed to the cloak.
"This hides the bearer from sight and lesser spells."
Its hand shifted.
"The stone lets them speak with the departed, but only the souls they knew in life, and only if those souls have not yet been processed."
Then the elder wand.
"This steals pieces of the soul from those killed through it and grows stronger."
Corvus's eyes narrowed. So that was the truth of it. They were simple tools.
The Architect's voice stayed level. "I gave them to the priests of old. Their population were less than what it is now."
Its hand closed.
The three Hallows turned to dust.
One moment, they existed. The next, black and silver particles drifted through dead air and vanished before they touched the floor.
"With the stream of souls, there is no purpose for such artefacts anymore."
Corvus stood very still.
There was no point in reaching. The consequence had already landed. The Hallows were gone. A significant loss for him.
As if reading his feelings, the Architect nodded.
A black box appeared between them. The surface swallowed the room's weak light and gave nothing back. It floated across the distance and stopped before Corvus.
"Here." The Architect folded its hands afterwards, as if the conversation had already lost its interest. "It holds blood of mine and others. Consume and grow stronger."
Corvus took the box. It was colder than metal.
The Architect leaned back against its throne. "Do not forget, young one. We fed them to harvest them. Like every other Architect did here and on many other worlds. Do not let them convince you otherwise. It will lead you to stray as Abraham, who betrayed us for cattle."
That line interested Corvus more than the warning.
Abraham the Mage again.
The figure's head inclined slightly. "I do wonder whose offspring you are. It is cruel to leave one of us among primitives."
A pause followed. Then a small lift of one hand.
"Stay here or return to play with them. Whatever you do, do not disturb the order of this planet."
It put both hands together and went still.
The audience was over.
Corvus looked at the black box once, then tucked it away. He did not bow or thank it. He turned and floated away.
The realm the Architect named Purgatory was only slightly larger than Azkaban. It was both a workshop and a slaughterhouse, fused into one. From the throne hall, corridors stretched into chambers built with purpose rather than vanity. The same stone, streaks of black glass, strange metal, and a dim, low light defined the space.
Corvus moved through it without hurry. He found the main array in a large chamber.
The room was large enough to swallow the Great Hall. It was filled with one extremely complex runic circle. Rings within rings of runes. Channels cut into the floor. Raised pylons at the outer edge. Every part of it carried old power and constant use.
He crouched at one of the channels and pressed a palm against the carved line under the black glass.
The answer rose through the stone. Souls of living beings were getting processed through the array.
Not all of them, though. A thin portion flowed down, back into the world's core, enough to satisfy the will of the planet and keep the great engine quiet. The rest was diverted. Pulled here and processed.
The Architect had not lied about that. It was a harvester.
Feed the world enough that it does not resist. Keep the remainder.
Corvus straightened and looked over the array again. The scale of it was gigantic in its efficiency. Just an automated farm arranged to harvest constantly. He started to study the arrays. There were many runes from a variety of cultures. Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Sumerian, Nordic and many others. The Runes were not the creation of Magicals, Corvus understood at that moment. What the magicals studied and used were the remnants of the Architects. They were the software to channel magic into a function. He spent hours studying each rune and its role in the array.
In another room, he found storage, again within a large array. His smirk was genuine.
Spatial and Dimensional runic arrays created a subspace to store the souls until they were sent to be processed.
A corridor led him to a room used as a warehouse. Mountains of philosopher's stones lay behind crystal barriers. Thousands of them. The sight made him stop for half a beat.
The amount made the process undeniable. This was the output of the Purgatory.
He moved on.
He took the black box from the Architect from his inventory. It sat in his hand again, a short while later. He opened it and found what he already expected.
Vials, dozens of them. The space inside the box was enchanted to be enlarged.
In them, there was a thick liquid, dark and heavy, with the same oppressive feeling as the ones he had taken from the chamber in Brazil.
Architect blood, if the thing had spoken true. Corvus shut the lid and let out a slow breath.
He wanted to absorb what he had already replicated before consuming anything. He needed the memories from Dimensional Mastery first.
He turned toward the corridor that would take him back to the place where he had entered. From there, he used Dimensional Passage and returned to Earth.
He teleported back to his chambers and had only taken two steps. A loud crack sounded through the room, then something hit his legs with enough force to make him shift his stance.
Tibby slammed into him like an artillery round with ears.
The elf's arms locked around Corvus's leg with absolute conviction.
"Master!"
The word came out thin, frantic, and furious all at once.
The doors to his chambers on the frigate were opened a moment later.
Elizaveta came through first, pale hair loose, eyes wide in a way Corvus had only seen a handful of times. Arcturus was a step behind her, face set like cut stone. Vinda came with the speed of someone who had not wasted even one breath between alarm and action.
All three of them stopped.
Not because of Tibby.
Because of him.
Corvus remembered then that he had not corrected his height after returning.
He stood in the room in his original height. Too large for the ceiling to feel comfortable. Too broad for the chamber's proportions. Conjured robes sat across a frame that no longer even pretended to belong to an ordinary man.
Tibby was still attached to his legs and trembling with relief.
No one spoke for a heartbeat.
Elizaveta reached him first.
She crossed the room with hard steps and stopped close enough that her breath touched the front of his robe. Her eyes travelled up. And up.
Then they fixed on his face.
She did not ask where he had been. She did not ask what had happened.
Her hands caught his waist, as far around as she could manage, and held.
"Do not do that again."
The words came low and steady. Furious only because the fear had not yet finished leaving her body.
Corvus put a hand against the back of her head and let his thumb brush over her hair. "I had not planned to."
Arcturus closed the distance next, slower and colder in his control. His eyes measured Corvus from head to toe and then returned to his face.
"You vanished."
Corvus inclined his head once. "For a while."
That answer did not improve the old man's expression.
Vinda looked as though she was deciding whether to strike him, embrace him, or start dismantling reality itself until she found whatever had taken him.
In the end, she folded her arms.
"We traced your signature to the Death Room, to the Veil, to be exact. The ritual masters got no farther than that. The time turned search found nothing at all." Her gaze sharpened. "Would you like to explain why Tibby stopped feeling you entirely?"
Tibby made an angry little noise against Corvus's shin, which seemed to confirm the charge.
Corvus bent, pried the elf off his legs with care, and set him aside. Tibby immediately seized the hem of his robe instead.
"I was busy elsewhere, Aunt Vinda," Corvus said.
Arcturus's jaw set harder. Vinda's face lost the last trace of softness. Elizaveta's fingers dug into his waist.
Corvus looked from one to the next.
"And I came back."
Arcturus gave him a flat stare. "As a giant."
Corvus glanced down at himself, then back up. "A temporary inconvenience."
Vinda's laugh held no humour. "You leave the world as we know it, vanish beyond every search, and call this," she gestured to his frame. "A temporary inconvenience."
Corvus moved to the desk without haste. The black box had already gone into a fold of space before any of them could ask what he had brought back. He enlarged the chair, sat and rested one forearm on the wood.
"Yes."
Arcturus did not sit. "What did you find?"
Corvus met his gaze and gave him exactly what he was willing to part with. "Enough to justify the risk."
Elizaveta let go of him only when she was sure he would not disappear again in front of her. She stayed beside the chair instead, one hand resting on his shoulder as if she was not yet prepared to let go.
Arcturus studied him for a long moment. He was old enough to know what that tone meant. Corvus was not refusing out of panic or confusion. He was drawing a line.
"Master not leave again."
Corvus patted his elf. "I will leave again, Tibby. And I will come back."
That, more than anything else, eased the room.
Arcturus finally took the chair opposite him. Vinda remained standing for another heartbeat before following suit. Elizaveta sat on the arm of Corvus's chair rather than taking a seat.
It seemed he would have to postpone the absorption until the three of them understood he had never been in real danger.