By morning, Corvus had what he came for.
A perfect copy of the Grimoire of Black Annis rested in his hands. He found the original in Diablo's study. The leather felt wrong under his fingers, too warm for the hour, too eager to be touched. It had a strange feel to it. After analysing it, he could understand why Diablo never stopped trying to open the dimensional gates. He also found some portkeys in the same place as the Grimoire. So the Immortals were in contact. He examined them and smiled. Gonzalo made his job of finding these people much easier.
Two days passed like that.
Meals served, conversation happened when it had a point, then stopped without either man trying to win the silence. Gonzalo was pleasant company, in the way a blade could be pleasant when it was well balanced. He did not fawn, did not posture, did not test Corvus for sport. He listened, weighed, then spoke as if wasting words was a moral failing.
One evening, Gonzalo spoke about how fickle and marvellous our minds were. By exposing yourself to the filthy and twisted, the mind starts to catalogue it as normal. That is how it wins.
On the third morning, Corvus left after breakfast.
"Your hospitality has been well received, Lord Diablo, Corvus said. "If your house requires anything from mine, do not hesitate."
Gonzalo escorted him to the ward line. Corvus appreciated the gesture. Corvus's gaze swept the trees, the air between trunks, the faint shimmer where the domain ended.
Space folded.
Corvus did not apparate, did not use flame travel or a portkey. He simply chose a point and moved there.
His study aboard the frigate greeted him. Maps lay where he left them. Instruments sat aligned. Nothing had shifted by a finger's width while he was away.
A quiet satisfaction settled in his chest. He reached outward with his mind. The Nestborn on deck nodded and saluted as the command was received by them.
Move the vessel towards Greece.
Corvus set the copy of the grimoire on his desk. The first pages were blunt in intent.
Instructions written by a creature that did not understand shame. Notes that treated a human body like a pantry. Ritual sketches that were not diagrams so much as appetites drawn into ink. Names of the victims were recorded as if they were measurements. While Annis 'redacted' other participants. "How strange," thought Corvus. Monsters sharing that habit was disturbing. A section that described the difference in taste between fear and hope with the cold certainty of experience. The rituals in the Grimoire can be described as sick, and he could not find any benefit in them.
Corvus turned a page.
The writing itself shifted, not changing into different letters, but insisting on attention and action. A book like this was not meant to be read casually. It was corrupted, different from the Codex; Annis was more similar to humans in her twisted and self-centred nature. She was the epitome of what might happen to a narcissistic being after it gained everything. Annis was on a planet where she considered herself supreme. Where nothing could have judged her. The result was perversion and madness.
Other than meeting Diablo, this was a waste of time for Corvus; he just hoped other Immortals would yield better results.
Black Annis, the name was not a myth. Not a folk story made to scare children into bed. She was a predator.
Nereus had been clinical. A sculptor carving living beings into tools and toys, then smoothing away their emotions so they would not scream too loudly in his mind.
The Egyptian elders had been organised. They built systems, servants and hierarchies. The animal-headed creations walked with purpose, and the cages were placed with ritual logic.
Black Annis read like a hunger given facility. Corvus turned another page and paused.
A line described how to keep a victim alive longer, not for interrogation or for extraction of blood or magic, but to preserve flavour. The handwriting had sharpened on those words, almost excited.
Corvus shut the book for a moment. There was only disgust in his eyes. If in the future he found what Black Annis' species was, he would teach them the meaning of genocide. He destroyed the copy. It was the ravings of a lunatic. Whatever useful data it included, he already got from Diablo's mind.
Now that he has gained knowledge of multiple elders, he was starting to understand them better.
"The elders were never one people, one race." He murmured. The words landed like an iron bar. "Some were civilised. Some were not. Some merely wore the manners."
--
Far away, in the Diablo castle, Gonzalo returned to his private study and closed the door with a quiet click.
He did not light the lamps first. He did not sit. He crossed the room in a straight line and stopped at the wall of old tomes. His fingers found a seam that did not belong. Without knowing the exact spot and the spatial coordinate, it was impossible to find it.
A press, a shift and the stone slid.
A drawer eased out from beneath the shelf with the restrained sound of an old mechanism that had been maintained by someone who knew what neglect cost.
Inside sat objects that looked harmless until you understood what they were.
A black book, bound in leather that seemed to drink the room's light. A blue ribbon, faded, tied in a loop that did not loosen. A jade figurine no larger than a child's fist, carved into the shape of a meditating man. A Japanese tantō, hilt wrapped in pale cord, blade edge hidden but present in the air like a held breath. A broken skull, bleached and cracked cleanly, as if the fracture had been made with intent.
Gonzalo's gaze stopped on the skull.
His mouth tightened.
"Herpo," he breathed, and the name carried contempt. Some people, immortal or not was deserving of the epithets they were given. He sighed as he did not understand why it was he who found the sick grimoire of Annis while Herpo had found something else. He reached the same conclusion. It was possible that whatever artefact Herpo the Foul found was worse than Aniis' madness.
He did not touch the skull. He took the ribbon.
A portkey was meant to feel like a charm. This one felt like an agreement between people who did not trust each other enough to visit without an exit.
Gonzalo stepped away from the shelves, ribbon in his fist, and lowered his voice as if the castle might listen.
"Flamel."
Space folded.
Humid air hit him first. Salt and sun and the lazy crash of waves against rock. The villa stood ahead, white stone and layered wards laid like invisible sheets. The wards made the air feel thicker at the boundary, not hostile, simply firm.
Gonzalo stopped at the line. He did not step through. Time passed in clean minutes, and the door opened.
Prenelle appeared first, wand already raised, arm steady, expression carved into polite menace. Nicholas stood beside her with his wand drawn as well, posture controlled, the faintest fraction softer.
Nicholas lowered his wand, not fully away, just enough to signal talk without surrender.
"Gonzalo," Nicholas greeted, voice warm in a way that never reached his eyes. "To what do we owe this visit?"
Prenelle remained behind him by half a step. Her wand stayed aimed at Gonzalo's throat, calm and certain.
Gonzalo tasted irritation and swallowed it.
"Tell me, Nicholas," Gonzalo began, tone soft, which was always a sign he was restraining himself. "What possessed you to think you had trained that thing and then pretend it is merely talented?"
Nicholas's brow tightened.
"A talented pupil? My last one was Corvus Black, I think you already heard about him." Nicholas corrected, and the correction was sharp. "Was he ambitious? Yes. Was he disciplined? Definitely. Was he talented and smart enough to learn everything I throw at him? Absolutely. Yet, he was nothing more than that."
Gonzalo's jaw flexed.
"He is not a wizard, you old fool," Gonzalo replied. "I doubt he is totally human. I felt fear, Nicholas. Genuine fear."
Nicholas's eyes narrowed.
Prenelle's wand rose by a breath.
"Whatever artefact you have, Diablo," Prenelle intervened. "Is not helping you with your mental faculties."
Nicholas's expression held. Gonzalo's lips curled.
"My mental faculties are better than yours, Flamel." He turned back to Nicholas, "His learning skill is not what unsettles me," he replied. "It is the way his presence sits. Controlled beyond what he should have at his age. His magic does not behave like ours. He is different!"
Nicholas studied him in silence.
Prenelle stepped forward, the tip of her wand still on Gonzalo.
"Oh, did you notice as well?" Prenelle asked, voice cool, almost curious. "How different his soul is? Or were you distracted by your own obsession again? Were you able to 'catch' another being? Last time it took you over five years to return to normal."
Gonzalo did not bite.
His gaze stayed on Nicholas.
"I noticed enough to bring this to your door," Gonzalo said. "I am not here to trade insults. I am here because if we keep ignoring that thing, or pretend our old rules apply to him as well, we will be the ones paying for it."
Nicholas's mouth flattened.
"You fear him," Nicholas observed.
Gonzalo's eyes narrowed.
"I respect the possibility," he replied. "There is a difference."
Prenelle's smile turned thin.
"A kinslayer preaching caution," she murmured. "That is almost amusing."
Gonzalo's hand tightened around the ribbon.
He kept his voice level.
"Mock me if it helps you sleep better, witch," Gonzalo replied. "But answer one point. Did you not feel it when he stood in your home? That sense that he was not merely a wizard with a sharp mind, but something that had stepped sideways from what we understand?"
Nicholas did not answer immediately. His gaze flicked, briefly, to Prenelle.
Prenelle's wand did not drop. Distrust remained the only true law between immortals.
"We suspect he has an artefact." That was all she added. Gonzalo nodded.
Gonzalo let the silence stretch, then exhaled.
"I will not step into your wards," he said. "I am only telling you that the man you think you trained may not be what he claims to be, and what comes next will not wait for our permission."
Nicholas's expression hardened. Prenelle's eyes stayed sharp.
What Gonzalo Diablo and the Flamels could not know, standing there with old grudges in their mouths, was that Corvus, who had come to them for alchemy, had gone elsewhere to learn and take what truly mattered.
He had changed. Not in title or in politics.
In species.