The labyrinths beneath Bodrum Castle, which just hours ago had been one of the safest places in the Turkish Wizarding World, now resembled a battlefield. The dense smell of ozone, burnt flesh, and centuries-old dust in the air burned the throat. While healers tended to the groaning, wounded Aurors, magical crime scene investigation teams tried to collect magical residues with golden dust floating in the air. Right in the middle of the wreckage, in front of the melted pure silver door, stood Darius Widdershins. The hems of his long, dark Auror trench coat brushed against the rubble on the floor, and with his eyes focused into the vault, he slowly and rhythmically twirled the wand in his hand in the air. The pale blue light radiating from the tip of his wand illuminated the invisible traces left in the air by the dark magic cast that night. Meltem, who had gracefully leapt over a stone and come up right behind him, whistled as she looked at the glass shards sliding beneath her boots. "It wasn't broken," Meltem said, pointing to the melted hinges of the vault and the millennial runes that had turned into a pile of black slag. "Whoever did this didn't force the Ministry's strongest seals open. They just melted straight through. Like a bomb detonated from the inside." Darius lowered his wand. The blue light faded, but the heavy, gloomy aura around the vault could still be felt. Narrowing his eyes, he examined the red stains left on the melted silver. "Not a bomb," Darius said, his voice echoing off the cold walls of the labyrinth. "An ancient curse. The runes of the vault weren't broken by magic, but by blood and will. These traces... belong to the oldest dark magic tongues of the Arabian Peninsula. Only a few people can control a darkness of this level." Meltem frowned. "Abu Nazir? We thought he never left his lair in the Middle East. Why would he come to Bodrum? What was inside the vault?" Before Darius could answer, there was a commotion at the entrance of the labyrinth. A communications Auror, covered in dust and soot, was running towards them, out of breath. The man's face was as white as chalk. "Widdershins! Meltem!" the man called out, gripping his knees to catch his breath when he reached them. "It's not just here... Minister Haldun..." Darius's gaze hardened. "What happened to the Minister?" "Found dead in his home," the Auror said, gulping. "Avada Kedavra. None of the protective shields were triggered. It happened at the exact same second as the attack here." Meltem clenched her fists. "A simultaneous strike. They didn't just come for a robbery, they wanted to paralyze the whole system." Darius walked into the vault, toward the empty pedestal where the glass case had been shattered into pieces. He lifted one of the broken glass fragments from the floor with his wand. A single word faintly glowed on the glass: Port.
"Paralyzing the system was only the first step," Darius whispered. He felt they were on the verge of a grave, dangerous truth. "They killed the Minister and threw us into chaos so we wouldn't immediately go after what they really took. Nazir took the Port Parchment." Meltem's eyes widened. "Wasn't that parchment just a legend? The map of the gateways that hold the boundaries between mortals and our world..." "Apparently, it's much more than a legend," Darius said, tucking his wand inside his robes. "If Nazir learns the locations of those gateways, he could turn Bodrum into an open battlefield overnight." Just then, a bright, silver beam of light filtered down from the dark ceiling of the labyrinth. The light took shape in the air, forming a silver seagull. It was a Patronus. The bird flapped its wings, stopping right in front of Darius and Meltem, and broadcast the panicked voice of the Ministry Central Watchman into the room: "Attention all active Aurors! 1st Degree Secrecy Breach on Bodrum Bar Street. There are civilian casualties. A mortal... I repeat, a non-magical, is spewing flames around with a wand in his hand. He's out of control. Immediate backup is required for response units!" When the silver seagull dissipated and vanished, Darius and Meltem looked at each other. The same impossible thought crossed both their minds: A mortal could not use a wand. Wands were nothing more than ordinary pieces of wood in the hands of someone without magical power. "It looks like," Meltem said, pulling up the zipper of her jacket, that familiar warrior glint appearing in her eyes, "Nazir didn't just open the doors. He's started distributing weapons inside, too." Darius nodded. "The rebellion is beginning. We're going to Bar Street, right now." They both spun on the spot simultaneously and, with a loud crack, disapparated from the ruins beneath Bodrum Castle, blending into the night. The neon lights of Bodrum Bar Street had taken on a sickly hue like never before that night. When Darius and Meltem disapparated under an old stone archway at the entrance of the narrow street, the first thing that hit their faces was the thick smell of burnt alcohol and melting plastic. Further down the street, the electronic music rhythms spilling from the clubs had been replaced by broken glass, panicked screams, and consecutive exploding fireballs. People were crushing each other trying to escape the narrow street, running for their lives toward the marina. When the two Aurors pushed through the crowd and reached the center of the chaos, they were momentarily struck with horror at the sight before them. The man was ordinary; he wore a shabby t-shirt and shorts. However, the magic flowing from the dark-colored wand he held in his right hand was virtually consuming his body from the inside out. The veins on his neck and arms had bulged pitch-black, his pupils had disappeared, replaced by a sickly purple—a reflection of the savage energy he was siphoning from the wand. A non-magical body lacked a core to filter pure magical energy. The wand was operating by burning the man's life force, turning him into an animal driven mad by pain.
"Incendio!" the man screamed, tearing his throat. The flame erupting from the wand resembled a napalm explosion rather than controlled wizard fire. The flames licked the sign of a threestory wooden bar on the right side of the street, setting the building ablaze. "We can't take him alive!" Meltem shouted over the roar of the flames. "The wand has locked onto his nervous system. The magic is burning him from the inside!" "Distract him first!" Darius commanded, drawing his wand and slipping into the shadows. "We need to lure him away from the civilians!" Meltem darted forward with the agility of a panther. Entering directly into the man's line of sight, she vaulted over a burning barrel and hurled one of the small, silver shock discs in her hand. When the disc struck the man's shoulder and detonated, he merely growled as if he felt no pain and immediately turned his wand on Meltem. "Confringo!" The explosion was so violent that if Meltem hadn't spun mid-air and thrown herself to the ground behind a stone wall at the last second, she would have been torn to pieces. Stones scattering like shrapnel gouged deep craters into the street's walls. As the man advanced with savage steps toward the corner where Meltem was hiding, the tip of the wand had begun to turn a blinding red. His breathing was raspy, his steps erratic, but the power radiating from the wand was lethal. His face twitched asymmetrically; an uncontrolled force could be seen trying to tear its way out of his body. Darius emerged from the dark corner behind the man. There was neither pity nor hesitation in his eyes. The thing before him was no longer a human, but a living magical bomb with its pin pulled. When the red energy at the tip of the man's wand reached that final threshold that would blow up the entire street, Darius made his decision. "Expulso!" Darius's wand ripped through the air, firing a blue shockwave. The spell hit the man squarely in the kneecap, shattering the bone. As the man lost his balance and crumpled forward onto his knees, the trajectory of the wand in his hand angled upward. That massive, accumulated energy erupted toward the sky as a colossal pillar of fire, illuminating the clouds. Seizing the opportunity, Meltem shot out from behind the wall she was hiding behind like an arrow. In the second she ran and got behind the man, she locked her arms around his neck. As the man tried to throw Meltem off with his sickly strength, Darius had already closed the distance with cold-blooded steps. Darius pressed the tip of his wand to the exact center of the kneeling and thrashing man's chest, right at heart level. Their eyes met. In the man's bruised purple eyes, there was only pure pain and an endless void. Darius's voice, despite the crackling of the flames around them, was ice-cold and sharp: "Diffindo."
The invisible, flawlessly sharp spell pierced through the man's ribcage, shredding his heart in a single strike. The man's body suddenly spasmed. The fingers holding the wand went slack, and the piece of wood clattered onto the cobblestones. Meltem was out of breath as she gently lowered the lifeless body to the ground. The moment the man hit the ground, the blackness in his veins faded within seconds; all that was left was a battered, normal human body smelling of burning. The sounds of emergency sirens approaching from afar began to be heard at the end of the street. Darius looked at the wand, which now looked like an ordinary piece of wood lying next to the man's lifeless body. The dark rune that was Nazir's seal glowed faintly on the wand's shaft. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Meltem came to Darius's side and looked at the corpse on the ground. "This is only the beginning," she whispered. "If Nazir finds other mortals using that parchment and puts these in their hands..." Darius finished her sentence as he leaned down and carefully tucked the wand inside his robes. "...Bodrum's streets will drown in their own blood. We have to find him. Now." 23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZFfKVwErMh
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