ELEVENZONE
The world was fraying at the edges, the sky over Hogwarts a bruised, sickly violet that spoke of an ending long prophesied. Albus stood in the center of the Great Hall, his boots crunching on stone dust and the scattered remnants of a life he once recognized.
The air hummed with the sickening vibration of the Nexus Stone, a rhythmic, pulsing thrum that felt like the heartbeat of a dying god. Maltherion was no longer a shadow; he was an inevitability, a god-king carved from the bones of ancient dynasties, his power a crushing weight that turned the very oxygen to ash.
The halls were silent, stripped of the vibrant chatter of students. Even the portraits, those once-loquacious guardians, were blank, their paint flaking away like dead skin. Albus gripped the Arunyaka bow, his knuckles white, the wood biting into his palm with a cold, sentient hunger.
Beside him, the others-the ones who remembered what it was to be free-stood as ghosts in their own home. They were the last line, a fraying tapestry of ambition and blood, waiting for a signal that might never come.
Above them, the ceiling cracked, obsidian fissures spreading through the enchanted sky. Every ticking second was a nail in the coffin of their reality. He closed his eyes, shielding his mind from the creeping despair that emanated from the dark throne now occupying the North Tower. Somewhere out there, the truth of the world lay buried in ruins, unreachable and fading.
He didn't know if they would survive the next hour, let alone the war. The Scepters remained cold, dormant relics, and the shadow was lengthening, eager to swallow the last spark of light. Albus exhaled, a ragged, hitching sound, and opened his eyes. The hunt for the end of the world had begun.