Nurmengard.
He looked far older than he did in historical photographs. His long, silvery-white hair hung in messy tangles over his shoulders, and his once-sharp blue eyes were now cloudy and dim.
Yet, his posture remained perfectly straight, as if the thing that had been imprisoned for decades wasn't him, but the tower itself.
"Dumbledore, you chose the wrong chess piece..."
"Mr. Grindelwald, do not hesitate any longer." A witch dressed entirely in black robes stood in the shadows of the room.
Her black felt hat was pulled low. Pinned to the brim was a silver badge. Had Elizabeth been there, she would have instantly recognized it as the crest of the Rosier family: a withered rose branch entwined with stars.
"Two of the Source Steles are at Hogwarts, and I possess the third. We are the ones with the greatest hope of opening the Stargate. As for the bloodline, I have already instructed my granddaughter to get close to that Black boy."
"The Spring of Evernight in Scandinavia, the Accursed Mountains of Albania, the Sleeping Dragon's Lair in the Scottish Highlands. The three Steles... You have worked hard all these years, Ophelia."
His voice sounded like sandpaper grinding against ancient tree bark, yet that simple word of comfort caused tears to stream down the old woman's face.
"But I have grown old, Ophelia."
"No, as long as we can..."
The old man raised a hand, cutting the witch off. "I did not agree with Dumbledore's choices back then, but I never wanted to be his enemy. You know me. I only ever wanted a greater future for wizardkind."
"And now, I have lost the drive to move forward..."
"No, you..." The old witch's voice choked with emotion.
"Ophelia, do you know why I have remained in Nurmengard all these years?"
"Of course I do! No one could truly imprison you! You stayed to protect this world!"
"Protect? Hah, how ironic. I ended up walking the same path as Dumbledore, simply because our world has too many bleeding wounds. Places like Azkaban, like Nurmengard, like the French Riviera..."
---
The French Riviera, France.
At half-past six in the morning, the sunlight began to bleed over the horizon. It wasn't the blazing gold it would become later in the day; it was an incredibly pale, almost transparent pinkish-purple.
The sea, too, looked as though it had just woken up. It wasn't azure, but a paler, thinner blue, looking as if it had been washed clean by the morning dew.
The waves rolled onto the beach with a hint of shyness, rushing up, then retreating, leaving a thin, trembling white line on the sand that gently brushed against a young foot.
Julien pulled his left foot back, rubbed it against his right calf, and lazily stretched his arms.
Since returning to Bordeaux, he hadn't spent his holidays fiercely grinding to improve his skills like other transmigrators in novels. Instead, he had spent the first month doing nothing but sleeping in the biggest, softest sofa, eating when he woke up, and going right back to sleep when he was full.
Eventually, even Alphard couldn't stand watching him anymore. When his grandmother Elodie had to travel to Nice for business, Alphard insisted she take Julien to the French Riviera to stretch his legs.
Though his grandmother had married into the Black family, she was still the eldest daughter of the Moreau family, and thus had many family matters to attend to. Because of this, Julien spent most of his time continuing the exact same lifestyle he had enjoyed for the past month, just in a different location.
He spent his days either lounging on the beach or wandering aimlessly through the beautiful city of Nice.
Just like now. Julien found himself on a narrow street, the Mediterranean sun already baking the cobblestones hot.
His grandmother was negotiating business in a nearby gallery. Having just filled his stomach with French-style mussels, he was wandering eastward, letting his feet take him wherever they pleased.
Suddenly, a burly man dressed in black walking among the tourists caught his eye. The man was walking briskly, and the vicious scar slashing across his left cheek looked incredibly familiar to Julien.
Wolfgang!
Hadn't he been arrested by Cassian from the British Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries? What was he doing here?
Julien lightened his footsteps and quietly trailed after him.
They passed through a patch of woods seemingly forgotten by tourists, and the sea breeze suddenly turned biting cold.
Julien's wand vibrated in his sleeve, and Murphy's voice echoed faintly from within the Magical Resonance Library: "Warning. Spatial folds detected ahead..."
Then, he saw the cove.
It was a semi-circular beach of white sand, flanked on both sides by ochre-red cliffs.
A partially collapsed, dome-shaped stone building extended from the beach out into the sea, eventually disappearing beneath the azure waves.
The building was made of white stone, and constellation-like reliefs glinted on its surface in the sunlight.
Suddenly, Julien remembered the map Elizabeth had given him. Next to the mark on the French Riviera was a small annotation: Nice - Starfall Cove.
A door—the exact same color as the cliffs on either side—stood half-submerged in the seawater. Its surface was also covered in carvings of stars. Above the lintel were several incomprehensible runes.
"Starfall Cove?" Julien murmured the name.
For some inexplicable reason, he took off his shoes and socks and waded into the water.
The freezing seawater swallowed his ankles, then his knees. By the time he finally stood before the door, the water was up to his chest.
The moment his right hand touched the stone door, the runes above it flared to life, and a ghostly blue light seemed to spill from the crack between the doors.
Julien felt another searing pain on the inside of his right wrist as the eagle-headed hound totem surfaced beneath his skin. At that exact moment, the ghostly blue light erupting from the door crack violently expanded, swallowing him whole.
Julien opened his eyes.
He was floating in a space filled with... air. No, it wasn't air. He could taste the salt of the sea, yet he could breathe perfectly fine.
He was surrounded by a pale blue light of unknown origin. He was standing on the street of a city—not a ruin, but a complete, intact city, as if frozen in time.
The buildings were constructed of semi-transparent white stone. Domes, archways, and spiraling towers were all bathed in the ghostly blue halo.
But the most striking thing was the city's location.
He looked up: the undulating surface of the sea rippled far above him, filtering the sunlight into shattered, golden fragments. Schools of fish swam between the spires of the buildings, and an octopus clung lazily to a clock tower in the distance.
This city was entirely underwater.
"The reflection of Starfall Cove."
A woman's voice drifted from behind him. Julien spun around, his wand instantly sliding into his hand.
It was a ghost. The ghost of a witch.
Her semi-transparent body radiated a ghostly blue light. She wore an ancient style of wizarding robes, and her face bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Rosier, though she looked much older and more weathered by time.
Her eyes were a rare, icy grey. Even in death, they retained a sharp, piercing intellect.
"Are you a Rosier?" Julien asked tentatively.
"Evan Rosier," the ghost gave a slight nod, a bitter smile touching the corners of her mouth. "You are far sharper than I imagined, child of the House of Black. Or perhaps I should call you... the descendant of Pyxis?"
"You know me?"
"I know your bloodline."
Bloodline again?
The ghost named Evan drifted closer, her semi-transparent fingers gently brushing against Julien's right wrist.
The moment they made contact, the eagle-headed hound totem glowed with a silver light that intertwined with her ghostly blue aura. "Pyxis Black. My dearest friend."
Her voice dropped, carrying an exhaustion that seemed to span millennia. "We discovered this place together. We studied the secrets of the three Source Steles together. And then... we made different choices."
Julien's heart began to race. "What choices?"
"She chose the exit. And I chose the entrance."
"What?"
Evan turned and pointed toward the tallest tower in the center of the city.
At the very top of the tower, a black stone tablet hovered within a deep blue light, the star patterns on its surface worn almost completely smooth.
"The door through which other worlds enter ours."
"Door?"
The ghost looked directly into Julien's eyes. "Our world is not the only one. Beyond those other worlds lie other... entities."
"I can feel them," the ghost closed her eyes, as if truly sensing something. "Some of them desire communication. Some desire conquest. And some..."
She paused, her ghostly blue body trembling slightly. "Some are simply hungry."