The clearing hummed with residual magic, the air thick with the acrid scent of ozone and scorched earth.
Leon stood at the edge of the flattened glade, his black walnut wand held in a relaxed, low guard.
Over the past two years, his growth had defied every expectation.
At fifteen, he towered well above average, reaching a solid 180 centimeters (5’11”).
His frame had broadened significantly, filled out with lean, athletic muscle forged through relentless physical conditioning and field combat.
His tailored dark Grapthorn leather coat clung to a broad chest and powerful shoulders, giving him an imposing silhouette that belied his age.
A few yards across from him, Vanya adjusted her stance, her hazel eyes glittering with predatory anticipation.
Her neck-length chestnut hair with its golden ombré swayed lightly as she shifted her weight, her wand held like a duelist’s rapier.
Without a word, she struck first.
A streak of sickly purple light whipped from her wand tip—a vicious, tissue-rotting curse native to Eastern European dark magic.
Her fighting style was lethal, cunning, and completely uninhibited by the laws of international wizarding authorities.
Leon’s response was instant.
His mind mapped the trajectory in a fraction of a millisecond.
With minimal movement, he snapped his thick wand upward.
“Protego!”
A translucent, shimmering barrier materialized at a sharp forty-five-degree angle.
Rather than taking the full force of the curse, the shield deflected the purple jet harmlessly into a nearby granite boulder, which dissolved into a smoking, pitted ruin.
Before the deflected spell even hit the stone, Leon was already countering.
He fired a trio of compressed Stupefy blasts—thin, needle-like crimson beams traveling at twice the speed of an ordinary casting.
They flew in an interleaved triangular pattern designed to cut off her evasion angles.
Vanya gasped, forced to throw herself sideways, her leather coat dragging through the dust.
She rolled gracefully and came up casting.
“Reducto!” she hissed, followed instantly by a torrent of jagged, pitch-black curses that hissed like agitated serpents.
Leon didn’t flinch.
His reaction times were sub-second, driven by the absolute clarity of his mental perception.
He didn’t waste energy on grand, dramatic gestures.
He stepped half an inch to the left, letting a dark curse graze past his coat, deflected a second with a flick of a localized Avis shield—transfiguring a flock of sparrows to intercept the dark magic mid-air—and answered with a concentrated Diffindo aimed directly at her footing.
The ground beneath Vanya broke into jagged stone shards.
“Frustrating little creature!” Vanya barked, her voice a mix of genuine annoyance and dark amusement.
Leon’s calculated, hyper-efficient dueling style was a nightmare to face.
He didn’t use dark magic—he disliked its volatile side effects and the subtle degradation it inflicted on wand control—but his execution of standard combat charms was flawless.
His spell trajectories were tighter, his timing tighter still.
Every defensive shield he raised was angled perfectly to redirect momentum rather than absorb it.
However, raw experience and ruthless power possessed a weight of their own.
Recognizing that she couldn’t out-precision him in a clean exchange, Vanya shifted tactics.
She unleashed her full, dark repertoire, abandoning rhythm entirely.
She cast four spells in a blinding two-second sequence: a blinding flash of golden light, an incendiary curse that ignited the surrounding air, a ground-sweeping shockwave, and a volley of dark piercing hexes hidden behind the flames.
The sheer volume and oppressive heat shattered Leon’s rhythm.
His mind calculated every vector, but his body reached its physical limit of execution.
He raised a heavy, reinforced Protego Horribilis variant to arrest the fire and dark hexes, but the sheer impact knocked him off balance.
Before he could reset his stance, Vanya surged through the smoke, her wand slashing downward in a brutal, sweeping arc.
A concussive shockwave slammed into Leon’s chest.
The force threw him back several yards.
He hit the dry earth, skidding across the dirt before coming to a stop.
Silence descended over the scorched glade.
Leon groaned, rolling over and pushing himself up into a sitting position.
He rubbed his ribs, wincing slightly as he caught his breath.
“I have a distinct feeling,” Leon muttered, his voice raspy, “that you’ve been practicing.”
Vanya stepped through the thinning haze, stowing her wand in her sleeve.
She offered him a rare, crooked smile.
“Not bad,” she purred, looking down at him.
“Not bad at all my little bird.”
Leon didn’t react to the moniker.
She had been calling him her little bird for years, it was part of their usual toxic camaraderie.
She extended a gloved hand toward him.
Leon took it, letting her haul him up onto his feet.
“You’re getting faster with those compressed charm arcs,” she noted, her tone surprisingly warm as she dusted off a patch of dirt from his shoulder.
“A year ago, I would have broken your shield in three casts.”
“Next time,” Leon replied, straightening his coat and giving her a cool, confident look, “I won’t give you the range to build that much momentum.”
Vanya laughed softly—a dangerous, melodious sound—and suddenly swept her leg out, kicking his heel out from under him.
Leon’s instincts fired, and he tried to twist out of the fall, but because she was still firmly holding his hand, his evasion failed completely.
He crashed back onto the dirt with a dull thud.
Vanya hovered over him, looking down with a wicked, sadistic smirk, her hazel eyes dancing with malice.
“You’ll have to beat me first, little bird.”
Before Leon could retort, a heavy crunch of gravel announced an arrival.
Bram, a burly, scarred Wyrm-Breaker trapper with a thick beard and a notched axe at his belt, rounded the corner of the rock face.
“Break it up, you two,” Bram grunted, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Garrik wants us assembled. It’s time.”
The playful tension evaporated instantly.
Vanya released Leon’s hand and stepped back, her expression shifting back to her usual sharp, professional demeanor.
Leon pushed himself up off the ground, brushing the red dust from his trousers without a word.
They were not in their usual Scandinavian hiding spots, nor were they in the isolated pine forests of the North.
They were currently in the heart of Spain, deep within the surreal, jagged red cliffs and ancient gold-mining ruins of Las Médulas.
The sprawling, cavernous landscape—sculpted centuries ago—was vast, desolate, and heavily ward-protected.
Here, hidden beneath massive, multi-layered anti-Muggle and anti-Apparition wards, lay a temporary mega-camp.
It was the Syndicate Assembly—a rare, monumental summit convened only once every few years where the largest criminal poaching cartels in the world gathered to negotiate territories, settle blood feuds, and fix black-market prices for rare creature materials.
Over two hundred elite poachers, smugglers, dark artifact dealers, and mercenary captains filled the red canyon.
Flags and banners of various ruthless factions fluttered in the dry Spanish breeze.
As one of the premier, most feared syndicates operating across Europe, the Wyrm-Breakers held a position of supreme authority.
Garrik Vane had brought a select delegation of ten elite members—including Vanya, Leon, and others—to represent their strength.
Leon adjusted his coat, his eyes sharpening as he looked toward the center of the canyon.
“Let’s go,” Leon said quietly.
“We shouldn’t keep Garrik waiting.”