Leon mounted his new Cleansweep Seven—a fresh, pristine replacement for the broom he had lost to the depths of the Atlantic—and kicked off into the air.
Beside him, Vanya and Finn rose in unison, their brooms cutting through the mist like silent birds of prey.
Barely a minute had passed since Klara and her four trackers had launched into the sky to hunt down the escaped fugitives.
“Keep low, stay under the treeline until we spot them!” Leon called out, his voice sharp and low over the rushing wind.
“Klara won’t expect an attack from behind. We hit them hard and fast.”
Vanya’s hazel eyes gleamed in the twilight, her dark leather trench-coat billowing like shadow wings.
A cold, predatory smile touched her lips.
“I’ve been wanting to slice that arrogant Finnish bitch’s throat for months.”
“Just leave some for me!” Finn shouted from his left, his hand wrapped tight around his wand, his red hair wild in the gale.
“I’m not letting those bastards touch anyone else again!”
Leon leaned forward on the handle of the Cleansweep Seven, maximizing his speed.
His mind mapped the terrain below—the dense clusters of oak and pine, the clearing three miles east, the natural choke points.
Klara’s team was tracking three wounded unicorns and six exhausted, barefoot wizards.
They would be moving fast, but in a predictable way.
Two minutes into the flight, the flash of spellfire burst through the gloom ahead.
Red and green jets of light cut through the dense foliage.
Below, the screams of spellwork and the frantic, echoing whinnies of panicked unicorns rattled the canopy.
“They’ve caught them—just starting!” Leon called out, angling his broom straight into a steep dive.
“Now!”
They burst out of the tree canopy like stooping hawks.
They burst out of the tree canopy like stooping hawks.
Below in a leaf-strewn glade, Klara and her four trackers were encircling the fugitives.
Liliana stood unarmed at the front of her small, battered group, her silver hair unraveled and flying wildly as she threw herself in front of the young, trembling unicorn, using her own body as a shield.
Beside her, two other magnificent unicorns snorted steam, their glowing horns lowered in desperation.
The battle had only just begun; no one had fallen yet, but Klara’s men were closing the net, laughing as they cast heavy binding curses.
“Klara!” one of the trackers shouted, pointing upward a fraction of a second too late.
“Behind us—!”
Leon didn’t utter a word.
His wand was already moving with geometrical perfection.
“Reducto!”
A beam of compressed crimson force detonated between two of Klara’s trackers before their brooms even touched the ground.
The shockwave threw both men into the thickets, their wands flying into the darkness.
Simultaneously, Vanya plummeted from the sky like a falling star, her dual-bladed dagger drawn in her left hand and her wand in her right.
She landed gracefully on a tracker’s shoulders, driving her blade straight through his neck seam before he could even register her presence, rolling off his falling body with lethal fluidity.
Finn dropped in right behind her, his wand snapping out twice in rapid succession.
“Stupefy! Expelliarmus!” The fourth tracker was lifted off his feet by a solid burst of force, his head cracking brutally against a boulder.
In less than ten seconds, four of Klara’s men were neutralized.
Klara whipped around, her ice-blue eyes widening in sheer disbelief as she saw Leon touch down on the frozen ground, his dark dragon-hide coat snapping in the cold breeze.
“Leon?!” Klara spat, her face twisting into a mask of pure rage.
Her silver braid swung violently as she raised her wand.
“You little traitorous scum—Vane knew it! He knew you were soft!”
“Garrik is a madman drowning in blood,” Leon said calmly, taking a measured step forward.
His blue eyes were cold, devoid of heat or hesitation.
“And you, Klara, are just collateral damage.”
“I’ll flay you alive!” Klara shrieked.
She slashed her wand downward, launching a vicious, dark-purple cutting curse aimed straight at Leon’s throat.
Leon didn’t even blink.
His mind calculated the arc of the spell instantly.
A slight tilt of his wrist raised a razor-thin Protego, deflecting the dark curse upward into the branches above, where it sheared a massive pine limb in half.
Before Klara could reset her stance, Leon closed the distance with explosive speed.
“Expelliarmus!”
The disarming charm struck Klara’s wrist with the force of a hammer.
Her wand exploded from her fingers, spiraling into the snow.
In her fury, Klara reached for a hidden hunting knife at her hip, her face contorted in a wild, animalistic snarl—
Leon’s wand was already pressed firmly beneath her chin.
“Diffindo.”
A quiet, sharp whistling sound echoed in the clearing.
A clean, precise line severed Klara’s throat.
Her eyes went wide, the fury in them instantly freezing into empty shock as she collapsed backward onto the frost-covered leaves, her body stilling as the silence of the forest claimed her.
Leon lowered his wand, taking a slow, steady breath.
Beside him, Vanya wiped her daggers on a piece of fallen cloth, while Finn stood guard at the perimeter, his eyes scanning the dark trees.
In the center of the glade, the six surviving sanctuary keepers huddled together in terror, their eyes wide as they stared at the young lieutenant who had just slaughtered their pursuers.
Liliana stepped forward, her silver hair catching the faint moonlight through the trees.
Her hands were trembling, her chest heaving beneath her torn linen shirt.
She looked at the bodies of the poachers, then looked up at Leon, her emerald eyes brimming with unshed tears and profound bewilderment.
“You… you came…” she whispered, her voice cracking.
“Why?”
Leon walked over to her, his posture relaxing slightly as he stowed his wand in his sleeve holster.
“Because I told you I would protect you if I could,” he said softly, stopping just a pace away.
“You’re safe now, Liliana.”
Tears spilled over her lashes, tracing hot paths down her dirt-streaked cheeks.
“The others…”
“I couldn’t save them,” Leon said honestly, his tone grounded and authentic.
“And I cannot fight the entire camp alone right now. You must run. Right now. Take your people and the unicorns and head west, across the border into Germany. Do not stop until you are miles away from this forest.”
He reached into his inner pocket, pulled out a small piece of heavy parchment, and pressed it into her trembling, gloved hands.
“That is an address in London,” Leon instructed, his gaze holding hers.
“It leads to a secure drop point. If you survive, if you ever need a sanctuary or wish to find me… send a message there in one week’s time. I will meet you.”
Liliana stared at the parchment, then looked up at him.
The fear, confusion, and grief in her eyes melted into a wave of overwhelming, raw gratitude.
She realized, with absolute certainty, that among all the monsters who had torn her world apart, this strange, brilliant boy was the only truth she had left.
Without a word, Liliana stepped into his space.
She grabbed the lapels of his leather coat, pulled herself up on her tiptoes, and pressed her lips firmly against his.
It was a brief kiss.
When she pulled back, her face was flushed, her green eyes shining brightly in the dark.
“Thank you, Leon,” she whispered fiercely.
She turned swiftly to her people, uttering a command in her native tongue.
The six survivors mounted the three unicorns, Liliana swinging herself onto the back of the magnificent lead stallion.
With a final, lingering look over her shoulder at Leon, she kicked the stallion’s flanks, and the small herd vanished into the shadows of the Białowieża forest like ghosts.
Finn let out a long breath, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Bloody hell… another one?”
Vanya walked up beside Leon, her hazel eyes fixed on the direction Liliana had disappeared.
She purred softly, though her fingers tightened around her wand.
“A sweet one… careful, moje drahá, or I might get jealous.”
“We don’t have time for jealousy,” Leon said smoothly, turning back toward their brooms.
“Garrik isn’t stupid. He must have already realized we disappeared. We need to get back before he locks down the main camp.”
They mounted their brooms and rocketed back into the sky, cutting through the freezing air back toward the Wyrm-Breakers’ headquarters.
When they reached the ridge overlooking the central encampment ten minutes later, the sight below made them freeze on their brooms.
The main camp was engulfed in an eerie, unnatural blood-red glow.
Garrik Vane had not waited for Klara’s report.
Seeing that Leon, Vanya, and Finn were all missing, his mounting paranoia had shattered whatever sanity he had left.
In the center of the camp, surrounded by giant wooden totems carved with jagged runes, Garrik had dragged out the eight remaining captured unicorns and all one hundred human captives—the villagers and travelers snatched over the past weeks.
The captives were bound and kneeling in a massive circle, their faces pale with terror, while the unicorns were chained to iron stakes driven deep into the earth.
Black, pulsing veins covered Garrik’s entire face and neck, stretching up from beneath his shirt like writhing dark worms.
The sharkskin codex floated in mid-air before him, its pages turning of their own accord under a canopy of dark, crackling magic.
“He’s started it,” Finn breathed, horror creeping into his Irish accent.
“The mad gobshite is actually doing the grand sacrifice…”
“Look at the runic circle,” Leon muttered, his sharp eyes instantly decoding the magical flow.
“It’s incomplete. He’s rushing the blood-anchors because he knows we turned on him. If he activates it now without balancing it correctly, the magic will implode—”
Before Leon could finish his analysis, the night sky directly above the forest split open.
BOOM!
A deafening, thunderous crack echoed through the mountains as dozens of high-level Disillusionment Charms broke simultaneously.
Out of the clouds poured a massive airborne fleet of wizards.
They did not wear the mismatched, rugged furs of poachers.
They wore heavy, navy-blue armored robes embroidered with the silver crest of the International Confederation of Wizards (ICW).
Leading the assault at the very front of the formation, flying on a battered broom with terrifying precision despite his wooden leg, was a grizzled, scarred man whose single electric-blue magical eye spun wildly in its socket.
Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody.
“BY ORDER OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF WIZARDS!” Moody’s voice bellowed across the valley, amplified by a massive Sonorus.
“SURRENDER YOUR WANDS AND CEASE YOUR RITUALS, OR BE ELIMINATED!”
Nearly a hundred elite Aurors and international strike-wizards from Scandinavia, Poland, and Britain descended upon the clearing like a thunderstorm.
They had been tracking the cartel’s trail of missing humans for weeks, and tonight, they had come with absolute, overwhelming force.
“AURORS!” a Wyrm-Breaker lookout shrieked down in the camp.
WE’RE TRAPPED!”
Chaos erupted instantly.
The forty hardened Wyrm-Breaker poachers and their twenty hired mercenaries did not surrender.
These were men and women wanted in a dozen countries, murderers and beast-slayers who knew the Ministry would give them a lifetime in Azkaban.
“KILL THEM ALL!” Silas Vance roared, his calm demeanor vanishing as he raised his wand and unleashed a massive column of fiend-fire toward the descending Aurors.
The clearing exploded into the largest, most violent magical battle Leon had ever witnessed.
Jets of blinding light—crimson, emerald, violet, and gold—crisscrossed the sky like a web of deadly lightning.
The air roared with the concussive blasts of Reducto spells tearing through wooden huts and stone pillars.
Aurors dropped from the sky, casting synchronized shield charms that deflected barrages of dark curses back into the poachers’ lines.
Mercenaries unleashed bottled acid and creature venoms, turning the frozen mud into a sizzling, toxic wasteland.
“STUPEFY MAXIMA!” Moody yelled, landing heavily on a rocky outcrop.
His wand whirled in a deadly circle, blowing three mercenaries off their feet with a single, devastating shockwave.
“DON’T LET THEM COMPLETE THE RITUAL! CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”
From the ridge, Finn gaped at the apocalyptic sight.
“Sweet Mother of Merlin… there must be a hundred of ’em!”
“They brought an army,” Vanya whispered, her eyes reflecting the dazzling explosions of spellfire below.
“The Wyrm-Breakers are finished.”
In the center of the mayhem, completely unheeding of the spells crashing around him, Garrik Vane stood before the floating sharkskin codex.
His eyes were bloodshot, glowing with a sickening, corrupt purple light as he watched his men cut down by Moody’s Aurors.
Panic and utter madness seized the cartel leader.
With an army of law enforcement tearing his camp apart, he realized his empire was crumbling in real time.
“No… NO!” Garrik screamed, his voice raw, echoing over the sound of dying men and exploding spells.
“I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED! THE POWER IS MINE!”
Disregarding all safety protocols, ignoring the missing blood-anchors and the unstable runic geometry, Garrik plunged his bare, bleeding hands directly into the central basin of the ritual formation.
“SANGUIS ET ANIMA, ACCIPE SACRIFICIUM! ” he howled into the tempest.
The incomplete runic circle flared into a blinding, suffocating crimson light, and the earth beneath Białowieża began to violently tremble.