Allen stepped out of the library, the heavy weight of the black-bound book tucked securely under his arm. His first destination was obvious. To study something as volatile as soul magic, he needed more than just a quiet corner; he needed a fortress of solitude that could adapt to his mental state.
The Room of Requirement was his sanctuary. As he paced three times past the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy being pummeled by trolls on the eighth floor, his mind was a focused laser: I need a place of absolute stillness, a haven for forbidden study.
When the polished oak door materialized, Allen stepped through and was immediately greeted by the scent of damp moss and blooming jasmine. The room had outdone itself. It hadn't just provided a library; it had conjured a lush, subterranean forest under a simulated twilight sky. Giant, ancient trees served as the literal pillars of the room, their branches weaving together to form a canopy that blocked out any sense of the castle above.
Allen wandered deeper into the greenery. The "bookshelves" were carved directly into the living bark of the trees, their surfaces shimmering with a faint, bioluminescent sap. Out of curiosity, he reached out and pulled a slender volume from a lower branch. The title, embossed in tacky gold, read: Merlin Loves Me: A Tale of Camelot's Secret Desires.
He flipped it open, only to find a passage describing Merlin's "sturdy wand" in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with spellcasting. "Good grief," Allen muttered, slamming it shut. "The Room of Requirement clearly has a sense of humor, or some student was having a very specific crisis in here once."
He moved to a different grove, where the air felt cooler. He pulled another book from a shelf made of dark, petrified wood. Cold Steel. Unlike the previous romance, this appeared to be an anthology of wartime poetry from the era of the Global Wizarding War. One stanza caught his eye:
"Heaven is a cage built from our collective grief,While Hell is the paradise we lost to a thief.The three shadows fell, but they did not die in vain,Wait for me, old friend, beyond the reach of pain."
The lines felt heavy, burdened with a history that even Hogwarts' textbooks tended to gloss over. Allen replaced the book gently. He wasn't here for poetry or pulp fiction. He needed answers.
He found a small clearing deeper in the forest library. A log-plank floor had been laid over the soft grass, furnished with a high-backed leather armchair that looked comfortable enough to live in. A massive reading desk of dark walnut sat nearby, illuminated by a floating crystal orb that pulsed with a soft, warm light. To the side, an antique bronze gramophone—its horn shaped like a massive morning glory—sat ready, though Allen preferred the silence of the woods for now.
"It's missing a good Darjeeling," Allen mused, settling into the chair. "I'll have to remember to raid the kitchens next time."
He laid The Secrets of the Soul on the desk. Even in the gentle light, the book looked ominous. The silver filigree seemed to coil like snakes. As Allen reached out to flip the cover, the silence of the room was suddenly ripped apart.
A scream—raw, high-pitched, and filled with such pure agony that it felt like a physical blow—erupted from the pages. It wasn't just a sound; it was a psychic assault.
" Silencio! "
Allen's wand was in his hand before he had even consciously registered the movement. The spell hit the book with a dull thump, and the screaming died instantly, though the vibration of the sound lingered in the air like a bad taste. In his haste, his arm had swept a decorative inkwell off the desk, shattering it.
" Reparo. Tergeo. "
With two flickers of his wand, the shards knitted back together and the spilled ink vanished from his sleeve. Allen took a deep breath, his heart hammering. He realized now why Dumbledore had cleared the most dangerous texts from the library. This book was alive, in a sense—it didn't want to be read by the unworthy, or perhaps it just wanted to ensure its reader was as miserable as its contents.
Undeterred, Allen cast a non-verbal Muffliato around his own ears and a complex ward over the desk. He wouldn't be caught off guard again. He opened the book slowly.
The sections on Horcruxes—the most practical applications of soul fragmentation—had been systematically torn out, leaving jagged, yellowed edges. Dumbledore's handiwork, no doubt. However, the theoretical groundwork remained. Allen spent hours poring over the cursive script, which seemed to shift and writhe if he looked at it for too long.
The book explored concepts like "The Secondary Soul"—the idea that every wizard has a hidden reserve of spiritual energy—and "The Salvation of the Soul," which, ironically, read more like a Muggle philosophy textbook than a manual for dark wizards. Much of it echoed the idealist philosophies of the 19th-century Muggle world, suggesting that the physical world was merely a shadow cast by the soul's true form.
The author had a habit of injecting grim, poetic commentary after every major theory. One particular poem followed a chapter on the "Immortality of Hate":
"Wine is a liar, masking the face of the foe,But Death is the actor, the star of the show.Immortality dances on the edge of the blade,While the lives of the weak begin to fade.Justice is a myth that the hateful despise,For darkness is the veil that blinds even the wise."
Allen leaned back, rubbing his temples. The book wasn't just informative; it was seductive. There was a rhythmic, hypnotic quality to the writing that made him want to keep reading, to dig deeper, to understand the "boundless darkness" the author alluded to. It was a subtle form of mental corruption—a suggestive spell woven into the very ink.
His stomach gave a loud, unceremonious growl, breaking the spell. He checked his watch and realized with a start that he had missed dinner. Curfew was approaching fast.
"Dangerous indeed," Allen whispered. He felt a strange, lingering attachment to the book, a reluctance to close it. Recognizing this as the book's hypnotic influence, he forced himself to snap it shut. He pulled a few snacks he'd stored in his system inventory—a bit of dried meat and a cold thermos of tea—and ate quickly before tossing the volume into the void of his system storage.
He made it back to the Ravenclaw dorms just as the shadows were lengthening. Edward was already sprawled across his bed, snoring lightly, blissfully unaware of his roommate's foray into the occult.
Allen showered, the hot water washing away the phantom scent of moss and old parchment, and climbed into bed. He expected to fall into a deep sleep, but the night had other plans.
The nightmare began the moment his eyes closed.
He saw them clearly: Muggles whose faces had been erased by magic, their bodies twisted into impossible shapes. Magical creatures—unicorns and centaurs—chained to altars of obsidian, their eyes weeping silver tears as they begged for an end. And the screams... the book's scream had returned, multiplied by a thousand voices. It was a cacophony of the damned, a visual and auditory history of every soul ever broken by the spells he had just read about.
Allen knew he was dreaming. His mental discipline was high enough to maintain a shred of lucidity, but he couldn't break the shackles of the nightmare. He was sinking into a sea of cold, black ink.
Then, a line from the book echoed in the void of his mind, but it sounded different now—clearer: "If you cannot embrace the light of the stars, then dive with me into the boundless dark!"
At that moment, a sensation like a burst of glacial water flowed from the center of his mind down to his heart. The "System" flickered in his vision—a sharp, mechanical alarm that acted as a spiritual anchor. The shackles of the dream shattered like glass. The dark sea evaporated.
Allen sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for air, drenched in a cold sweat.
The system's interface glowed softly in the dark room. He felt a profound sense of gratitude for the cold, unfeeling logic of the mechanical assistant. It was the only thing that had pulled him back from the brink of a psychic collapse. The book hadn't just been a text; it was a trap.
"Did everyone who read it face this?" Allen wondered, his mind racing.
He suspected the book responded to the intent of the reader. Someone like Dumbledore would have the moral fortitude and the sheer magical power to resist the corruption. But for someone seeking power—or someone like Allen, who was trying to understand the soul to manipulate it—the book fought back.
His thoughts drifted to the history of the wizarding world. He thought of Grindelwald, whose old newspapers he had scavenged from the Harris family archives. Grindelwald had foreseen a world where wizards could no longer hide.
Allen looked at the moonlight streaming through the window. Grindelwald had been born too early. He had tried to use force in an era of wands and swords. But Allen lived in a world on the cusp of a digital revolution. Once the internet truly matured, the International Statute of Secrecy would become a joke. High-definition cameras, global satellites, and instant communication would make the "hidden" world of magic impossible to maintain.
If the soul was the source of a wizard's power, then the future wouldn't be won with spells alone. It would be won by those who understood how to protect the soul from the encroaching darkness of a world that was about to get much, much smaller.
He lay back down, but he didn't close his eyes for a long time. He had the book. He had the system. And now, he had a very healthy fear of what lay beneath the surface of the magic he so desperately wanted to master.