After the dome shattered, Fiendfyre’s light surged through the gap and scorched the sky hundreds of meters above Lestrange Manor.

The entire estate looked like a cracked-open volcanic crater, its orange-red glow staining the surrounding treetops a deep copper.

The conjured beasts emerged from the collapsing roof. The serpent coiled around the half-ruined west tower, fire pulsing between its scales. The dragon spread its wings and swept along the north side’s last remaining wall, stone melting and sagging wherever the wingtips passed, whole sections gone in seconds. The chimera lumbered from the wreckage on six legs, crushing the columns underfoot, each step accompanied by the dull crack of splitting earth.

The guests were long gone.

The fighting earlier had been loud enough, but at least it had stayed inside the banquet hall. Walls up, roof intact, sound carrying but debris staying close. Now the dome had fallen, the walls were down, and fire-beasts were climbing out of the building. Two centuries of structural-reinforcement charms failed layer by layer under those temperatures, magical wards stripped away like tissue paper.

Even someone who had never encountered Fiendfyre, never read about it, could piece together what was happening now.

The scent of annihilation itself.

Fiendfyre wasn’t fire, strictly speaking. Fire was merely its expression. At its core, it was a cursed creation imbued with the drive to destroy. Once it slipped its leash, it developed its own consciousness, or at least instinct. Devour and spread. Burn everything until nothing remained, or until it consumed itself.

A few of the bolder guests glanced back from the gates at the manor’s entrance. Then they ran faster.

Most of the banquet hall’s dome had crumbled away, exposing the night sky.

Regulus stood at the center. Bellatrix lay in the rubble at his feet.

Fiendfyre churned around him. He maintained the thinnest thread of connection. The flames didn’t touch him, and they didn’t touch Bellatrix.

He looked into the darkness.

The serpent’s tail swept toward that direction, made it halfway, and recoiled, curling its body toward the opposite side.

All three beasts crowded together, huddled in the farthest corner of the manor, busying themselves with what remained of the building materials.

Burning with great dedication. Not looking back.

The Fiendfyre is afraid.

The thought arrived instantly. His basic connection to it remained. He’d abandoned any attempt at control long ago, but the perception still held. Unbound Fiendfyre had autonomous tendencies, driven by pure destruction. It burned everything, devoured everything, including the caster. Nothing made it voluntarily retreat.

But now it was retreating.

Its willingness to enter that direction had been overwritten from outside. Something had pressed down on its will and told it: not that way.

Only one condition could produce that result. The other party’s magic dwarfed his own. The other party’s will could suppress Fiendfyre.

A figure materialized from the darkness, ruins underfoot, moonlight and firelight falling across him simultaneously.

Regulus needed only a glance to take in the entire face.

It still held a human outline. The features were all present, each in the right place, but they had begun to drift.

Waxy skin covered every surface, and beneath it the paths of blood vessels were faintly visible. The nose had flattened to little more than two narrow slits, the nostrils barely moving when he breathed. His lips were impossibly thin, a dark purple that blurred into the surrounding skin. The eyes were dark red, each iris bisected by a narrow vertical pupil that contracted slowly in the firelight.

One glance was enough. More would be rude.

Voldemort, at this stage, had already begun remaking himself. The exterior was shedding its human form.

Regulus noticed another detail. The man made no sound when he walked.

The ground was nothing but rubble and fractured flagstone. Footsteps should have produced noise. They didn’t. Sound was swallowed, or rather, it died automatically in his vicinity. Something enveloped him, absorbing every superfluous vibration.

Then there was magical perception.

Regulus’s magical sense was instinct, always active, long since fused with his sight. To see was to perceive. Wherever his gaze landed, magical awareness covered the same ground.

In France, he’d deliberately extended his perception to probe Flamel and been called out for it. He’d learned the lesson: against wizards of that caliber, you don’t actively probe. But passive perception integrated with vision was acceptable. I’m looking. What I see, I sense. That’s not an intrusion. It’s existing.

He watched Voldemort approach. Vision returned feedback. Magical perception returned nothing.

The space was empty.

What his senses had picked up earlier were changes in the surrounding environment, traces left after magic had passed through, the residual echo of something displaced. But the magic itself, he had never touched it. Not once.

Now the man stood before him. Even the traces were gone. Nothing remained but clean, absolute blankness.

Vision said a person was there. The magical awareness layered over that vision reported a void. No signal of any kind from that direction.

But outside magical perception, something else was responding.

His body answered. Deep in his bones, a signal stirred, as though the deepest structures of his body were reacting to an external presence. Blood quickened beneath the skin while his heartbeat stayed unchanged. Those two things shouldn’t happen simultaneously, yet they did.

His limbs felt normal. Only the bones, starting from the spine and radiating along the ribs, carried a sustained tremor. Faint, but unmistakable.

Like standing beside an enormous low-frequency source. No audible sound, but the bones were listening on his behalf.

His soul was telling him: something is there. Perception can’t reach it, but it’s there.

This was the first time Regulus had experienced a presence at this magnitude. Dumbledore could certainly produce the same effect, but he hadn’t.

All of this cycled through his mind in under a second. He gathered every thread of thought and turned to what mattered.

Can’t run. Don’t need to run.

Voldemort stood right in front of him. Apparition would be suicide.

Fawkes’s tail feather is available, but things hadn’t reached that point.

Besides, if Voldemort truly intended to kill him over Bellatrix or anything else, a single Killing Curse would suffice. No need to walk over. No need to reveal himself. He could have ended it remotely from inside the manor.

But he’d walked over.

Orion and the others were outside. Until the final moment, leaving wasn’t an option.

And then a second thought: Why would I run? What did I do?

He’d beaten Bellatrix. A family dispute. At most, a conflict between the Blacks and the Lestranges. Bellatrix had cast an Unforgivable first. He was in the right. Nothing to fear.

This had been the plan from the start. Every angle considered before the first spell was thrown. This exact scenario was what they’d prepared for.

As for fighting, that wasn’t an option either. Someday, perhaps. Not now. Absolutely not now.

So he’d handle it.

Voldemort had come here. He must have a purpose.