Muggle Spain and Portugal kept one of the oldest borders in Europe, so old it had outlived dynasties, churches, crowns, and the kind of pride that pretended it did not need a reason. Portugal declared itself in 1139. Spain, on the Muggle side, arrived as a unified kingdom in 1492. Three centuries of difference on parchment.
The split came later, not by choice, and not by a neat line on a map. It came the way most divisions came in history. A foreign army arrived, and it arrived with its own witches and wizards.
Corvus had heard the public version in a hundred variations. Golden age, exchange of cultures and coexistence. He had read the private version in the archives of families that survived by burning their own farms before someone else could do it for them.
The Moors did not stain only the mundane world. They pushed into the magical one as well. Their soldiers did what invaders did. Their magicials were the real monsters. Following a mandate to enslave, to kill and rape. Villages burned. Ward stones cracked. Children vanished. The war turned uglier by the day, because the invaders understood a simple truth. If you slaughter the village, the castle will negotiate.
In 1492, the Moors were kicked out, and the Muggle kingdom of Spain declared itself as a single crown. The magical community did not snap back into unity with the flags. So the Muggle world drew the border. The magical world drew another.
None of that was the reason for Corvus enjoying the view of the shores of Bilbao.
He left his frigate off there, under wards that made the sea forget it had ever carried a ship. He folded distance and stepped through it as if the world had been made with doors for him alone. Magical Madrid received him as if the building itself had been holding its breath. The Ministry officers did not scramble. They did not dare. They stood where protocol said they should stand, robes pressed, hands visible, eyes steady. Their magic flickered behind their ribs in that careful, guarded way of people who lived under a larger umbrella and knew it. The main reason was the Bastion guards, whose eyes were radiating happiness and worship as they looked at Corvus.
Corvus nodded to the Black Bastion and greeted the Minister along with the heads of the departments. His request was both simple and impossibly complex: he sought contact with the House of Diablo. The difficulty lay in the nature of House Diablo itself. Like the ancient dynasties and houses such as the Blacks, the Nachts, the Volkovs, and the Amons, it had little regard for ministries or the confederations, standing apart in its age and power.
A senior official with iron in his posture offered the formal courtesies, then placed the real matter on the table with a measured voice. The House of Diablo had been notified. The Ministry would be honoured to host him while they wait for an answer from House Diablo.
A manor was offered with wards, servants, and silence. A place to wait. Corvus weighed it for a moment. Waiting was a waste. Yet refusing hospitality without reason was an insult, and he was a gentle wizard.
The decision was made for him when a loud crack cut through the air at his left. A house elf appeared, it wore dark linen and a small silver brooch shaped like a keyhole. Its head stayed bowed, but its eyes cut up in a brief assessment of the room, then returned to the floor.
It held out a sealed message with both hands.
The Ministry officers stiffened. The apparition itself had been an intrusion. The delivery was a statement.
Corvus took the parchment without haste. The seal was old wax and older intent. A stylised horned face pressed into it, not crude or cartoonish. It was a unique design. The wax held the faint scent of sulphur and cedar.
He broke it with a thumb.
The handwriting ran in a disciplined italic, confident and archaic at once.
Lord Corvus Black,
House Diablo extends a cordial invitation to Castle Diablo within the Sant Llorenç del Munt i l'Obac forest. Your presence will be received with honour befitting your station.
A portkey, made to look like a courtesy. The keyword sat at the bottom.
Invitatio Diaboli.
He turned back to the Ministry. A short nod served as thanks. The officers did not attempt a farewell speech. They did not attempt anything at all, beyond remembering to breathe.
Corvus refolded the message along its original creases and let the edge of his mind touch the portkey's trigger and pulled it without speaking the phrase. It tried to grip and pull, and he allowed it.
Courtesy had its uses. Colour spun around him. He landed without stumbling.
Dense forest swallowed sound. Pines and oak crowded together, thick enough to blot out the sky. The air smelled of damp earth and resin and the faint metallic tang of old magic. Birds called once and then went quiet.
Ahead, a castle rose from the trees as if it had been set down by a giant who did not care for subtlety.
Thick stone walls, narrow slits of windows, a keep that climbed like a clenched fist, buttresses that looked more like braces than decoration. The battlements held iron lanterns instead of torches. The stone itself carried old soot marks, as if it had seen siege fires and had never been properly cleaned.
The demonic details came in the second glance.
Gargoyle-like creatures sat along the roofline, not the playful sort cathedral builders liked. These were horned, gaunt, and carved with too much anatomical knowledge. The arch over the gate carried a line of runes cut into the stone, disguised as a mason's flourish, yet the mana around them moved like a current forced through a narrow channel.
The gates stood open.
A group waited before them, arranged with intent. Household staff at the flanks. Guards in old-style mail enchanted to look like steel but move like silk. A few witches and wizards in dark robes with the posture of people who had learned to stand still in the presence of dangerous men.
At the centre stood a man who made the forest feel slightly smaller.
He was tall, around seven and a half feet, broad through the shoulders, built like a duellist who had decided to become a bodybuilder. Dark hair fell back in a neat sweep, and his eyes were black enough to look like polished obsidian. His face held youth, but it was the youth of a painting.
Corvus approached without hesitation. A quiet pressure in the air moved with him. The man stepped forward with arms open in a gesture that invited rather than demanded.
"Corvus Black." The name came out as if it had been practised, and perhaps it had. "The mind behind the new order. Welcome to my domain."
Corvus met the smile with one of his own, polite enough for a ballroom, sharp enough for a knife drawer.
"Gonzalo Diablo." He let the title hang without adding flattery. "A pleasure to meet a man whose name resurfaces every century from the thirteenth onward. Yet you do not look a day over thirty. You must share your diet with me."
Gonzalo's eyes flicked over Corvus's height without envy, only curiosity. "As soon as you share your method and the new guards of yours, young lord." He gestured inward. "Come. I have prepared a great feast."
Corvus stepped through the gate. The castle swallowed him.
Inside, the corridors held the chill of stone that never truly warmed. The floor was worn flagstone, uneven in the honest way of old places. Iron sconces held pale blue witch light. The air smelled of beeswax, smoke, and herbs that had been burned in rituals rather than kitchens.
Magical details sat where a Muggle eye would miss them.
Runes hid under the lip of the stair steps. Wards ran in fine lines along the join of wall and ceiling, disguised as decorative trim. A portrait watched Corvus pass and did not blink until he was beyond it.
Gonzalo led with the ease of a man walking his own memories.
"Before the Moors came," he began, voice pitched for a corridor rather than a hall, "Iberia was quiet on our side. Not peaceful, of course, but quiet. Feuds stayed within families. Blood stayed within lines."
He slowed at a stretch of wall where the stone had been covered by murals.
The paintings were not pretty. They were not meant to be.
A village in flame. Roofs collapsing. People running with bundles. A woman on her knees beside a child with a throat open. A line of soldiers in foreign armour, curved blades in their hands, faces hard and satisfied. Above them, robed figures worked magic. One held a ward stone in his palm like a trophy. Another lifted his wand and drew a line of fire through a doorway where people had tried to hide.
Corvus's gaze stayed on the details. The painter had taken time with the blood. The blood was not artistic. It was recorded history.
"They targeted villages," Gonzalo continued. "Not our manors. Not our strongholds. Villages. They understood what panic did to a wizarding community. They understood that if your bread ovens burn, your wards fail. If your children vanish, your elders break."
He moved on. Another mural.
Beheaded civilians lined up along a road. Heads stacked in a crude pyramid. Moor soldiers stood around them, laughing. Behind them, a wizard in a dark robe carved a symbol into the ground with the tip of his wand.
"Their wizards were worse than their soldiers," Gonzalo said. A faint chill entered his tone. "Soldiers kill because they are told. Wizards, on the other hand, used the civilians in rituals."
Corvus watched Gonzalo's fingers tighten, then relax. An old memory surfacing.
"And when your people fought back?" Corvus let the question come out mild, as if he were asking about the weather.
Gonzalo's smile returned, thin at the edges. "We learnt to stop playing gently and hit where it hurts. They do have civilians as well. Not here in Iberia, but what is distance for us?"
He guided Corvus onward.
The castle did not pretend to be a modern manor in an old shell. It stayed twelfth century, and it did it deliberately. Doors were heavy oak. Hinges were iron. Tapestries were thick and rough. The only softness came from magic that made the place habitable without changing its character.
They reached the dining hall.
It was long, high-ceilinged, with beams blackened with age. A hearth big enough to roast an ox crackled at one end. The tables were laid as if for a court. Silver, not enchanted to glitter for show, but polished because someone believed neglect was vulgar.
A feast waited.
Roasted meats and fish. Bread still warm. Bowls of olives and citrus. Steaming dishes spiced in a way that belonged to Spain before the modern world decided everything must taste the same. Wine decanted into crystal that held faint runes along the rim, likely to prevent poison without announcing the fact.
Gonzalo took the head seat. He occupied it like a man who had earned it and did not care if anyone agreed.
He gestured to the far end, the other seat of honour.
The distance between them was deliberate. It created room for servants to move, for guards to stand, for respect to breathe.
Gonzalo lifted his cup.
The hall quieted.
"House Diablo receives you," Gonzalo began, voice carrying without effort. "Not as a petitioner, not as a visitor passing through, but as a power that has already changed the direction of our world. You have built alliances where others shouted. You have brought order where others bled the land. You have made the old institutions kneel, and you did it without pretending you were not doing it."
He let the words settle.
"You come with a name that carries weight. Black. Rosier. And with deeds that carry more. Mater Magica Aeterna stands because you allowed it to stand. GAIA moves because you set the pace. The new breed follows because you gave them purpose."
Gonzalo's cup angled slightly toward Corvus. "For that, and for the honour of your presence under my roof, House Diablo offers respect."
Servants shifted. A few of the household witches lowered their eyes. A guard's hand tightened on a spear shaft.
Corvus accepted the toast with a lift of his own cup.
Behind the gesture, his magic moved.
He used replication. He let a thread of mana brush Gonzalo's presence, the way a finger might test the edge of a blade. The response came back immediately.
Not human, not entirely and not surprising, not at all.
Demonic Blood
Black Magic - Diamond
Dark Magic - Diamond
Spatial Magic - Diamond
Death Magic - Diamond
Soul Magic - Platinum
Rituals - Platinum
Magical Theory - Platinum
Charms - Platinum
Enchanting - Gold
Transformation - Gold
Temporal Magic - Gold
Psychic Magic - Gold
Life Magic - Silver
Alchemy - Silver
Healing - Purple
Corvus kept his expression steady.
Demonic blood.
Gonzalo had done more than flirt with portals. He had taken something back through it and made it part of himself.
Corvus dropped the replication, then reached with psychic magic. Diablo's was Gold. He has Psychic Mastery. While Gonzalo continued speaking, voice warm, cadence aristocratic, each phrase wrapped in courtesy.
Corvus listened with one ear. The rest of him read something else.
Images arrived first.
A circle in a cellar, old as bones, drawn in blood and salt. A family watching, eager and terrified. The air was torn open into something that did not belong. Heat, stink, laughter that scraped the mind.
Then bodies.
A cousin was pulled forward by a force that did not care for screams. A sister reaching out, fingers stretching, then disappearing into a slit of darkness. A father trying to close the circle by brute force, only to be flung across the room like a rag.
Gonzalo standing there, younger, eyes bright, refusing to run.
A portal closing shut.
Silence.
The next attempt.
A different circle. More runes. More confidence. More arrogance.
The portal opening again, not the same, never the same. Something clawed at the edge of the world. A voice spoke in a language that hurt to hear.
More people lost.
Not only family. Servants. Guests. An enemy was dragged into it as punishment, only for the punishment to swallow others as well.
Four successful openings to hellish dimensions over centuries. Disasters attached to each success.
Gonzalo's mind held the tally with the numbness of someone who had stopped being shocked by death a long time ago.
Then the book.
A heavy volume wrapped in dark hide, clasped with metal that looked like iron until you saw it swallow light. The title did not sit in ink. It sat in the mind as if the book whispered it.
Grimoire of Black Annis. She was also known as Black Anges.
A woman in the memory, not fully seen, always angled away, as if the mind itself refused to hold her straight on. She was one of the elders, labelled as the demon by frightened mouths, not because the word was accurate, but because people needed a category when faced with a thing that ate children.
Corvus felt the shape of Gonzalo's plan the way one feels the shape of a knife under cloth. At least Diablo was not a cannibal. He was dismissing some of the rituals. Not even captured Moors were fed to those.
Corvus's mouth curved into a faint smile as Gonzalo's toast concluded.
He raised his cup, the perfect guest.
Inside his head, he filed the name away with the calm of a man who had already started to copy the book from Gonzalo's mind. Before the dawn of tomorrow, it would be in his hands.
And if Black Annis' book truly taught gates, then Gonzalo Diablo was not the danger.
He was merely the lantern that would lead Corvus to the next door.