The next few days revolved around one thing. Corvus stopped giving them to anyone else.
He still appeared when needed. Read the important reports, signed the necessary letters and watched over the Nests, the Bastion, Spire, GAIA, and the wider machine he had built. None of that required his full attention anymore. The structure was large enough to move under its own weight.
So he turned inward.
The box of Juracán's blood was already lighter when he returned to it in Grimmauld Place. Each crystal vial had the same oppressive stillness, as if the blood inside did not like sitting trapped in glass and would have preferred a storm to a container.
He preferred the opposite. Storms were only useful when they obeyed. His days were spent in the ritual room.
The chamber had already paid for his caution. A shattered bowl sat in the corner as a reminder. One pillar still carried a black mark where his hand had slipped, and lightning had answered the error too quickly for ordinary material to survive it. New grounding arrays had been carved into the floor after the second dose. Fresh ward anchors sat in the walls. He was not interested in losing the room because some dead Architect had left a violent inheritance.
He stood barefoot on the centre circle and uncorked another vial.
The blood went down in one swallow.
The effect arrived before the glass left his fingers. Heat surged through him, white blue arcs crawled along his forearms and ribs, snapped across his shoulders, and leapt from one hand to the other before he dragged them back under control by force.
He kept his breathing steady. Juracán's gift answered agitation with more storm. Every spike in irritation, hunger, annoyance, or impatience widened the arcs, sharpened their bite, and increased the chance of damage to whatever stood nearest.
He started to practice his dominance over it. The next arc stopped half an inch from the ironwood table to his left, shivered in the air like it was uncertain whether to become a strike, and then folded back into his arm.
He learned to stop the lightning from leaving his body first. Next, he could let it move over him in controlled sheets without burning cloth or flesh and in the following days, the power had started to settle into the wider shape of Elemental Mastery.
Juracán's blood not only strengthened lightning. That remained its sharpest expression, but the increase spread outward. Air moved more easily when he commanded it. Water changed pressure and direction faster. Flame bent sooner. Stone answered with less resistance. The increase was not even across every branch, but it was broad enough to matter.
The lightning still led. He had always preferred attacks that left little room for argument.
When the week ended and Replication became available again, he stood alone in his study, folded space with Dimensional Mastery, and opened the route to Purgatory.
The passage accepted him.
The pressure felt different this time. The first crossing had been theft and surprise. The second carried a measure of recognition, which he did not trust nor welcome.
The throne hall received him in the same cold, patient silence as before.
Thanatos had not moved.
The Architect sat in the same posture as when Corvus had last left him, hands together and his hood lowered.
When he appreached only the head shifted a fraction.
"I can feel Juracán's power in you, young one." The voice carried with the same restrained certainty as before. "Did he leave you an inheritance of his own blood?"
Corvus was already close enough; he reached with his Replication and took Necromancy cleanly.
Corvus gave him a measured answer. "I am not sure. There was a box in the chamber where I woke up, and in it were some vials similar to what you gave me. I have not met any Architect before you."
Thanatos shook his head in what might have been a grimace, though the face beneath the hood remained mostly hidden.
"There are reasons Architects do not procreate within." One pale hand shifted against the arm of the throne. "We create hybrids with the mortals of the planets and feed them our blood. I can feel Mictlantecuhtli in you, and he did not sire you from the mortals."
The pause that followed held weight.
"This will be addressed when they return to collect."
Corvus kept his face still, but return was the only word in that sentence that mattered.
"And when will they return?"
"A millennium later, young one."
The answer came easily, which meant Thanatos did not see him as an outsider.
"The mortals will destroy themselves by that time. We have seen this many times. Once they begin to develop technology, they run toward their own ruin."
Corvus let the words settle while his mind moved.
The memories of his prior life had long since been processed along with the replications of brighter minds than the one he had been born with. He did not think like a policeman from another world nor like an heir to an ancient house. He thought like a collector of minds, powers and structures. Technology was not harmless as it developed, and machines got smarter, humanity got weaker, and the dependency grew proportionally.
The trajectory was obvious.
Thanatos continued in the same tone. "We tried to combine the two before. It lasted longer, but the ending remained the same. Life is a fickle mistress, and mortals struggle to increase their miserable spans. It always ends in the same conjunction."
His head lifted by a degree.
"Synthetic life forms. Life forms with no soul have no meaning and no value to us. Therefore, we reset those worlds."
The hood angled toward him more directly.
"You will join the next, young one."
Corvus did not answer at once. This was simply how Architects viewed worlds. Farms, experiments, staging grounds, harvest sites. If one ceased to produce the correct output, it was reset.
Thanatos raised one finger.
"In the meantime, do not increase your power anymore. Elders do not like it. They will hunt you through the worlds if you become a threat to them."
Corvus inclined his head just enough to be courteous and not one fraction more. "Thank you."
Thanatos returned to stillness at once, as though the exchange had already exhausted its value.
Corvus remained in Purgatory for a while longer after that.
He walked the halls, passed through chambers and examined the arrays of the setup again.
Then he returned.
The absorption of Thanatos's Necromancy began the moment he stepped into his chambers back in Grimmauld Place.
The branch disappointed him.
Not because it lacked value, it did not. Thanatos's Necromancy was deep and exact, but it leaned toward Soul Magic so heavily that the wider art he might once have imagined under the name was barely present. There was no grand manipulation of corpses or even the crude dominion over dead flesh.
It was mostly Soul Magic, not the broader expansion he had hoped to find. Once that was settled, he did not waste time. His next stop had already been chosen.
The small underwater settlement where the Nereids still ruled their little kingdom waited behind the same barrier. He folded space, crossed the distance, and reappeared next to the barrier. He did not enter; his aim was not to examine anymore.
He floated just outside it and raised a hand.
The array took shape under his control. Runes etched themselves into the seabed. The circle surrounded the barrier, completed itself, then locked.
The nearby merfolk saw him and gathered to watch.
Corvus activated the array immediately.
The barrier shuddered, then everything inside it began to fail.
The Nereids rushed out of the central temple.
Grace vanished from them with ugly speed. Their forms started to dry, turning to husks, then to dust. Their worshippers followed in the same breath. Bodies thinned, darkened, and then turned to dust in clouds that swirled through the trapped water like smoke refusing direction.
The merfolk outside the barrier watched in open horror while their kin inside ceased to exist.
They froze in their place, not knowing if the person would turn to them next. One opened its mouth in a scream Corvus could not hear through the water and distance, though the shape of it was plain enough.
Within minutes, the secluded kingdom was gone.
Only residue remained.
Corvus drew the result inward, measured it, and felt the answer settle with immediate disappointment.
Even with the Nereids included, the increase in power was not what he had been hoping for. Useful, yes. Yet a single vial of Architect blood had given him more than twice what all those lives under the barrier had just yielded.
He looked down through the water one last time. This had not been the original plan.
At most, he had intended to take some of the Nereids. Enough to test and learn. Enough to make use of what they were and move on.
Thanatos had changed that.
A thousand years was a long time for a mortal. It was nothing to an immortal. And once the return of the Architects moved from theory into schedule, the luxury of half measures had gone with it.
He stood above the ruined kingdom and let the new hierarchy settle into proper shape in his thoughts.
Architects did not procreate among themselves because power was hoarded upward. The upper tiers remained pure by their own standards. Blood was given downward, in measured doses, to hybrids built with mortals. A serving class created by essence and dependence.
Half-blood, the word fit too well not to use.
A servant caste made stronger only so long as it remained useful.
Corvus had no interest whatsoever in serving ancient things that treated worlds like orchards.
His older plan changed at once.
He had once thought of this world as a place he might keep as his own centre and return to whenever he pleased. That was shelved now. Better to find another and set roots there instead. Better to move before the owners returned and decided their property had grown ambitions.
Time was not an issue for him.
With a thought, he returned to Grimmauld Place.
The study received him in familiar silence. The Brazilian box sat where he had left it, and there were still more than ten vials of Juracán's blood inside.
Corvus stood over it for a while and rested one hand against the lid.
His next visit to Purgatory would need more care. Would Thanatos confront him over the increase?
He opened the box, lifted another vial into the light, and looked through the dark liquid without blinking.
He had already set his sights on the Architect.