Hogwarts, Headmaster's Office.
"Albus, are you certain you want to let him face the 'Fivefold Ordeal' alone?" Professor Flitwick wrung his small hands anxiously. "This is, after all, Rowena's ultimate trial left for her truest heir. In a thousand years, no one has… Moreover, those who fail are left trapped within the tower."
"Filius, trust your student."
"What we see are only echoes of the past. He… may yet glimpse the future."
…
Lucian's consciousness had barely recovered from the disorientation of spatial transit when his ears were assaulted by a deafening roar capable of shattering eardrums.
He found himself standing on an endless spiral colonnade. Above, below, left, right—nothing but bottomless darkness. Only billions upon billions of books wheeled through the infinite space like frightened flocks of birds—diving, soaring, shrieking.
Every volume was screaming.
Some bellowed incorrect Dark curses. Others argued contradictory historical dates. Still others wailed false truths in piercing falsetto.
Countless glowing runes fell like a blizzard, forcing their way into Lucian's eyes and ears.
"Truth is often drowned by noise."
Rowena Ravenclaw's voice echoed through the hall—only to be instantly shredded by the book-storm.
"In infinite information, fill the single blank."
Lucian did not cover his ears. That would have been futile.
An ordinary wizard would already be frantically snatching at books, trying to sift Rowena's hint from the endless falsehoods, exhausting their mind in the process.
But he merely lowered his eyelids slightly.
In an instant, the cacophonous world drained of color.
The shrieking books, the frenzied runes—all reduced to gray static. Mere background interference to be filtered.
He was searching for the point.
The eye of any typhoon is always calm. No matter how violent the magical turbulence in this library, it must revolve around one absolutely still axis.
In his vision, amid the gray maelstrom, a vacuum appeared.
Nothingness. No light, no books—only a pocket of silence wrapped in chaos.
Lucian stepped forward.
A gilt-edged Secrets After Merlin grazed his cheek, roaring seductive lies. A Formula for Immortality slammed against him, demanding attention.
He ignored them all—walking straight through the priceless forgeries toward that seemingly empty corner.
Then he reached into the void.
The moment his fingers closed, he felt leather.
An invisible book was dragged from the air into visibility.
Lucian opened the cover.
The pages were blank.
The instant the book spread wide, the flying library fell silent—as though its throat had been seized. The mad volumes wheeled back to their shelves like exhausted birds returning to roost.
The world returned to stillness.
Only the book remained in his hands—the single blank space amid infinite information.
The ground trembled. The spiral colonnade disintegrated, carrying him downward to the next trial.
…
When his feet touched solid ground again,
a vast domed stone chamber opened before him.
At its center floated a magnificent brass orrery. Dozens of golden metal spheres representing celestial bodies traced complex orbits—yet the machine was clearly broken.
"Repair it."
The voice returned.
"Let the stars turn once more."
Lucian approached the orrery.
Every component was flawless. Every gear matched the blueprint. Yet together they refused to move.
Why?
He traced the magical flow backward until his gaze locked on the thick central axle.
That shaft represented Earth. Every celestial orbit had been forcibly designed to revolve around it.
"Geocentrism."
Lucian gave a soft, derisive laugh.
A truth of a thousand years ago—now a fallacy.
As long as this symbol of absolute authority remained, no amount of repair could make the machine function. Its foundational axiom was wrong.
This was a test of courage: would you dare topple the altar of the ancients?
Lucian raised his wand, aimed at the brass axle that symbolized unshakable foundation.
"Reducto."
No hesitation.
A blinding blue flash erupted. The central shaft shattered with a thunderclap, reduced to glittering dust. Without its support, every celestial sphere plummeted.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
With a gentle flick, Lucian's immense mental force seized them all.
In his vision, the tangled magical lines finally untangled. Following the laws of universal gravitation, he guided the golden Sun sphere to the center, then drew the planets into their proper elliptical paths.
The first body locked into orbit.
Then the second. Then the third.
No further correction was needed. Once the order was corrected, motion became instinct.
The orrery sang—a low, harmonious hum. Stars glided smoothly along new trajectories, casting brilliant constellations across the dome.
"Wisdom is not mere repair. It is re-forging."
The final gate opened slowly. Rowena's afterimage inclined her head from beyond the threshold.
"You were not bound by the truths of my era."
…
The final layer.
No traps. No monsters. Only pure white.
A minimalist circular hall.
At its center stood a waist-high stone plinth.
Upon it rested a diadem.
Ravenclaw's diadem—or its perfect, rule-bound phantom.
As Lucian drew near, the crown did not glow.
Instead, a voice spoke directly inside his mind.
Gentle. Learned. Like a mother's murmur.
It began to answer.
Before he could even ask, it poured forth solutions to every question in his heart: the cause of ancient magic's severance, eighteen methods to dismantle a Horcrux, even the ultimate evolutionary path of the gray vortex within him…
Knowledge flooded in like sweet rain.
The ecstasy of omniscience was enough to make one forget to breathe. Don the crown, and there would be no more riddles, no more unknowns. All truth in the world would kneel at his feet.
Lucian's hand reached for the diadem.
One touch, and he would ascend to godhood.
Yet in that final instant, he stopped.
The gray vortex within his eyes spun violently backward. Heart-phase vision tore open a rent in the beautiful illusion.
If he claimed omniscience now, the rest of his life would become nothing but a dull spoiler.
Moreover—was this omniscience truly his own, or the price of merging with the world itself?
Had Rowena already united with the Truth of Heaven?
"Do you not wish to know everything?" Rowena's afterimage appeared on the opposite side of the plinth, gaze filled with sorrow.
Lucian withdrew his hand.
"Mortals have limits."
He regarded the tempting crown the way one might regard a spoiled cake.
"Omniscience is the same as nothingness. If I already know the ending of the story, then turning the pages loses all meaning."
He turned away—back to the crown so many had dreamed of—and walked toward the exit.
"I only need what I know, and what I can deduce. The rest… is the joy of discovery."
Behind him, the diadem gave one unwilling hum—then dissolved into countless motes of light.
This was the very quality Rowena Ravenclaw had most wished to teach her daughter Helena, yet failed to impart before her death:
Restraint.