The Chamber was too quiet.
Not empty—never empty—but listening.
Grindelwald and Dumbledore had already completed the first containment ring, ancient runes shimmering gold and silver around the stone platform as the girls' floating stretchers lowered into place.
Talora glowed. Shya froze. Their breaths synced—slow, vast, unfathomable.
Grindelwald circled them, wand steady, eyes razor-sharp.
"Begin secondary stabilization," he murmured.
Dumbledore nodded, flicked his wand, and the outer walls groaned—stone rearranging itself, serpentine carvings shifting like scales waking from a long sleep.
Then
piercing cry cut through the chamber.
Fawkes descended like a comet—wings blazing white-gold,light spilling over the Chamber floor in waves.
The world trembled.
Not like an earthquake.
Not like thunder.
Like a heartbeat—too large for the sky, too deep for the earth, too old for magic as wizards understood it.
It burst outward the moment Fawkes landed beside Talora in the Chamber.
Light flared.
Shadow cracked.
And for one breathless, impossible moment, the Chamber of Secrets felt like it might split down the center and birth a second universe.
Runes Emerging on the Walls, as though they were carved in.
The Chamber dimmed.
Forty runic circles glowed.
The shockwave rippled through the castle—
then the grounds—
then the wards—
then far beyond Hogwarts.
Every enchanted object in Britain flickered.
Old creatures howled in their dens.
Distant mountains shook frost from their peaks.
It was the second time that winter.
The first had been subtle—barely a whisper, back before Christmas, when the girls had first begun to slip into something ancient.
But this?
This was not subtle.
This was the world reacting to containment failing.
This was the world recognizing that something vast had stirred.
This was the world bracing.
Dumbledore felt sweat on his palms.
Cassian collapsed into Dumbledore's arms.
Roman's breath hitched—
and a heartbeat later, he too sank to the floor, gently caught by Grindelwald, lowered carefully beside Talora's stretcher.
The familiars twitched in their unconscious states, reacting to tidal waves of magic they could not yet control.
Grindelwald's voice was low and sharp:
"This was only the first stabilization. We were barely holding them with a phoenix, a gwyllgi, and a cadejo."
Dumbledore's throat tightened.
"Yes."
Grindelwald turned, cloak snapping.
Two girls breathed.
Two universes whispered in their sleep.
The tremor had barely faded when Grindelwald moved to the far wall of the Chamber—
the wall that had cracked open like a sleeping beast waking under the girls' power.
Ancient runes glowed faintly where the basilisk's great carcass had once rested.
Not English.
Not Latin.
Not anything human.
Dumbledore followed slowly, breath uneven.
Grindelwald brushed frost from one panel with his sleeve, revealing two rings of symbols—each ring made of twenty sigils: one glowing gold-white, the other black-silver.
He inhaled sharply.
"Albus… these are not decorations."
"What are they?"
"Accounts," Grindelwald murmured. "Or warnings."
He traced a sun-shaped sigil in the first ring. It flared warmly.
"Twenty for Life. Light. Creation."
Then he touched a crescent void on the second ring.
"Twenty for Death. Darkness. Destruction."
Dumbledore's throat tightened.
"Forty creatures?"
"No," Grindelwald corrected. "Forty essences. Forty primordial natures. Offered willingly, or the Chamber cannot anchor the girls when they wake."
The air thickened with dread.
A beat passed.
Then Dumbledore forced the words out:
"And we must… gather them."
Grindelwald's mouth curved—grim, resigned.
"You will take the side of Light."
Dumbledore nodded.
"And you," he said quietly, "must handle the side of Darkness."
Grindelwald rested a hand against the cold runes, shadows bending toward him like loyal dogs.
"It seems," he murmured, "that even the universe remembers our divisions."
Dumbledore exhaled.
"Gather the creatures," he murmured. "Whatever it takes."
Grindelwald looked at Shya and Talora—
at Life, at Death, at the cosmic cycle made flesh.
His voice was low, awed, afraid.
"The world has never asked so much of magic."
He turned toward the stairs.
"And magic has never asked so much of us."
"That shock will have been felt by those old enough to remember when magic was wild. We cannot ignore it now."
Dumbledore's pulse jumped.
Because he knew exactly who Grindelwald meant.
The second shock had been stronger.
Far stronger.
Old enough to wake the dead, if the dead had ever known magic.
Dumbledore whispered:
"…Nicolas."
Grindelwald didn't turn.
"He felt it."
There was no doubt.
Dumbledore Apparated directly outside the old Parisian townhouse with a crack of displaced air—not from carelessness, but because the world itself was unsteady.
Candles along the street flickered sideways in the same direction:
toward Hogwarts.
Dumbledore knocked once.
The door opened before his knuckles touched wood.
Nicolas Flamel stood there—thin as parchment, eyes burning silver, his long life written in the tired lines around his mouth.
He didn't smile.
He didn't greet him.
He only whispered:
"Albus… what have you done?"
Dumbledore's heart cracked.
"I did nothing," he whispered back.
"It is the children."
Flamel's breath left him all at once.
"The second shock," he murmured. "The one just now—it was far stronger than the ripple before Christmas. I thought the leyline was tearing loose."
"It nearly did."
Flamel stepped aside shakily.
"Come in. Quickly."
The warmth of the hearth didn't reach the room.
Flamel stood with both hands pressed to the mantle, staring into the flames.
"How long?" he asked.
"Since the basilisk," Dumbledore said quietly.
"Since they collapsed the stillpoint."
Flamel shut his eyes.
"Two little girls…"
Dumbledore sat heavily.
"They are becoming forces that were never meant to incarnate."
Flamel didn't gasp.
He didn't panic.
He just nodded—a man confirming the diagnosis he never wanted to name.
"I felt their powers fighting " he murmured. "Two equal and opposite forces. Life and Death are not meant to awaken simultaneously."
"No."
"And Creation and Destruction? The universe learned long ago to keep them apart."
"Yes."
A long silence.
Then Flamel asked the question he had dreaded:
"What do you need of me?"
Dumbledore inhaled shakily.
"Creatures."
Flamel turned.
Dumbledore met his eyes.
"Creatures older than wandlore. Older than wizardkind. We need essence donations—willing ones."
Flamel blinked once.
Then again.
And very slowly… nodded.
"I know where some hide," he whispered. "Where some sleep. Where some still wander."
Dumbledore exhaled.
"That is why I came."
Flamel moved toward a shelf lined with maps older than colonization, older than the Statute of Secrecy.
He spoke quietly.
"Kirin pass through Tibet only when the balance of life is disturbed.
The Elder Dryads moved after the last wildfire—they're in the Black Forest.
Zilant sleeps beneath the ruined fort at Kazan.
A Roc nest surfaced last summer in the Empty Quarter."
Dumbledore bowed his head.
"Thank you."
Flamel didn't smile.
"You will take care, Albus," he said softly. "These creatures do not bow to wizards. They bow only to cosmic purpose."
Dumbledore nodded.
"I know."
"And the other side? The death-creatures?"
"Grindelwald will find them."
Flamel stiffened visibly.
"He is suited to that," he admitted grudgingly.
"Though I dislike every implication."
Dumbledore rose.
"They are children," he said softly. "We must help them survive what they are becoming."
Flamel's voice broke for the first time.
"Then go, old friend. Before the world trembles a third time."
Outside, the night shook faintly—
not a tremor, not a crisis…
Just the echo of two god-forces breathing in their sleep.