Deep in his consciousness, the core continued.
Now it was waiting. For his response.
He stood inside his own mindscape, watching Orion's four and a half stars burn.
Betelgeuse shone brightest. Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka followed. Bellatrix flickered faintly.
As if it, too, were waiting. Waiting for him to think something through.
Regulus reviewed what had been laid before him.
Every piece of his magic had been shown a more efficient alternative. But the core had never claimed that alternative was right. It had only displayed its existence.
He thought.
Executing the world's rules sounded closer to the fundamental nature of things than creating on his own.
But if all he did was execute rules, where was he in that?
The Decomposition Curse was his because of the process: perceiving, understanding, converting, creating. All drawn from the Mandrake. That was his path, his choice, his mark.
If he became a mere executor, the spell would no longer belong to him. It would belong to the world.
He could accept the world's gifts becoming part of him. He couldn't accept his creations becoming the world's property.
As for the Patronus, that was where his emotional life began. The union of feeling and reason. The compass heading of his magical journey, a road he'd already committed to walking to its end.
Giving it up was out of the question.
Becoming the Patronus sounded powerful, certainly. But for him, it couldn't even qualify as an option.
And spatial magic?
He asked himself: what was wrong with imitation?
All magic started there. Ancient wizards observed natural phenomena and created fire charms, lightning spells, water conjurations. Modern wizards inherited those foundations and built an entire system through continuous borrowing and refinement.
Imitation was a starting point. Not a destination.
He'd imitated house-elves, yes. But he hadn't stopped at imitation.
He'd converted their principle into a spell wizards could cast, making something only house-elves could do accessible to his kind.
Less imitation than transformation.
And what was wrong with inheritance?
Centuries of Black family accumulation existed so he could stand on top of it and see further.
He'd used the Space Anchor Charm, but he'd also developed spell-based Warping, combining legacy with his own creation to achieve what his predecessors never had.
That was transcendence.
And what was wrong with assembly?
The core had called his spell-Warp combination assembly rather than fusion. Maybe that was true, for now.
But what fit together could be used. What could be used could be improved. What could be improved could be fused.
The road was long, and he'd barely set foot on it.
Besides, he remembered Professor McGonagall.
Her spatial transfiguration. Stretching, flipping, warping the structure of space itself. No incantation. A tap of her wand.
Was that fusion?
Or had she internalized her spells so deeply they no longer needed voicing?
He didn't know. But he knew that road was open to him too.
Maybe one day, when he'd traveled further, when assembly became fusion, when space was no longer something he manipulated but something that coexisted with him...
His spatial magic would take a shape all its own.
As for the Star guided meditation. The core had said imitating stars was inferior to becoming the abyss.
Of everything it had offered, this argument was the most compelling. And the most dangerous.
Stars did burn out. The abyss didn't. The abyss needed only to not exist, and it could consume everything that did.
But Regulus looked at Orion's four and a half stars in his mindscape. At their cool, steady light. At the trajectories they traced.
They would burn out, yes. In billions of years.
And he was twelve.
What's the rush?
He opened his eyes within the mindscape. Orion's four and a half stars shone brighter than before.
Bellatrix still flickered, but the rhythm was changing. A question in its pulse: Have you figured it out?
He didn't answer directly. Instead, he turned back to the core.
Still there. Still shifting. But this time, he could perceive its nature more clearly.
It was only showing him that another road existed. Telling him it was there, that he could walk it, that it could even guide him along.
But it wouldn't force him. Whether he chose it was his own affair.
Regulus gave a small nod. To himself.
He'd thought it through. He didn't need that road. But he was grateful it had been shown to him.
He looked at the core and spoke within his mind.
"You're right. My path is inefficient. It has a ceiling. So what? I'm twelve years old. I have a hundred years ahead of me. Maybe centuries. Ceilings exist to be broken, not accepted."
The core gave no response. It only continued shifting.
"And how do you know," he continued, "that my road won't one day run ahead of yours?"
His final answer echoed through the mindscape: "My magic is mine precisely because it contains my reasoning, my insights, my choices. Even my mistakes and inefficiencies. Strip those away, and whatever power remains has nothing to do with me."
The instant those words resonated through his mindscape, Orion's four and a half stars blazed.
Confirmation.
Of who he was.
Of what he wanted.
Of what could not be shaken.
Bellatrix ignited.
Blue-white light flooded the mindscape, gentle and bright without being blinding.
It burned steady. Unwavering.
Regulus looked at it, and a word surfaced in his mind.
Protection.
Not protection of external things. Not protection of others. Protection of the boundary that made him who he was. Protection of the independent will called Regulus.
A thread of emotion wound through him.
Bellatrix. You finally lit.
From the first time he'd sensed its presence in the Star guided, through attempt after failed attempt to ignite it fully.
Until today. In the depths beneath the sea, in the cognitive tide of that ancient thing, it had finally caught fire.
Orion's five stars were complete. No gap remained.
Betelgeuse burned at the farthest point. The three belt stars linked the center. Five stars, each with its own role, each answering the others.
Betelgeuse's explosive power now had a boundary to guard it. The belt's order now had a stable foundation. And Bellatrix's protection was no longer rootless abstraction.
The moment Bellatrix ignited, the core rippled. A subtle reaction.
As if to say: Noted.
Then it went quiet. It no longer reached for anything in his consciousness.
Regulus knew he'd passed.
He'd accomplished what this journey required. He'd confirmed his road.
His road might be slower, less efficient, but every step on it was his own.
Bellatrix still burned. Blue-white, gentle and steady.
He withdrew entirely from the core's influence and stood there, watching it, his mind turning over a cascade of questions.
What was it? Where did it come from? How long had it existed? What civilization did it belong to?
Besides Grindelwald, who else had encountered it?
Or had Grindelwald only known of its existence without ever making true contact?
If someone accepted the path it offered, how powerful would they become?
Would anyone, in pursuit of that power, surrender who they were?
To become an efficient magical executor... was that magic's destination, or magic's great error?
No answers came. The core wouldn't provide them. It only existed. It only displayed.
Regulus thought it felt sealed away. Perhaps it didn't belong to this era, or perhaps it was the embodiment of a magical philosophy.
It held no malice, no benevolence. It was a system of understanding, wholly different from anything the wizarding world practiced.
Powerful, self-contained and seductive. It offered a direct road to a higher order of strength.
Regulus shook his head.
This journey had lit Bellatrix.
He could feel his spirit and will growing in tandem, and the growth was rooted, grounded, not poured in from outside.
No obvious physical changes yet, but those would come.
Beyond that, he'd gained nothing. No new strength, no new weakness, no new abilities, no loss of old ones.
The Decomposition Curse was still the Decomposition Curse. The Patronus was still the Patronus. Space Warp was still Space Warp.
The core had given him nothing and taken nothing.
He'd seen his own road, seen another road, and seen the difference between them.
That was enough.
But regarding spatial magic, he did have some new ideas.
Now that Bellatrix had ignited, his grasp of protection ran deeper. Would that new understanding affect how he thought about spatial magic?
Could space itself become a form of protection?
If he could fold space into a barrier, wouldn't that be stronger than any Protego?
If he could anchor space itself into something immovable, couldn't that protect him, and others too?
No answers yet. But it was a direction worth exploring.
He pulled his thoughts back and turned around. Freya still stood a short distance behind him.