The world spun violently around him as shattered stone, walls, and dark sky blurred together into chaos.
Wind roared past Harry’s ears while the lake rushed upward beneath him far too quickly.
Twenty meters, maybe more.
His mind dissolved briefly into pure panic.
He was going to die.
If the fall did not kill him, Edith would.
Or the spirits gathering below.
Or whatever lurked beneath the black waters of the cursed lake waiting to drag down anything unfortunate enough to fall inside it.
Harry opened his mouth and shouted.
“DOBBY!”
Nothing happened.
No sharp crack of apparition.
No frantic house-elf appearing out of nowhere to save him.
Only freezing wind, darkness, and the sickening sensation of the ground rushing closer with every passing second.
For one horrible heartbeat, Harry understood that either something had happened to Dobby or the isle itself prevented outside magic from reaching within its borders.
Which meant he was alone.
Truly alone.
Nobody was coming.
Nobody would save him.
And suddenly Harry Potter was not the Boy-Who-Lived, not the famous child from the newspapers, not some destined hero from a prophecy.
He was just a terrified twelve-year-old boy falling to his death in the middle of a cursed lake.
Fear swallowed him completely but somewhere beneath that terror, something inside him broke loose.
No.
The word slammed through his mind with violent force.
No.
He refused.
He would not die here.
He would not die forgotten beneath some cursed ruin in the middle of nowhere.
He had survived Voldemort.
The Dursleys.
A basilisk.
He had survived everything.
HE WOULD NOT DIE HERE.
Something exploded outward from inside him.
Power.
A power that felt both wrong and right all at once.
It felt old, ancient even, and very much terrifying.
The fall stopped instantly.
Harry jerked violently in midair hard enough to make his stomach lurch.
For one disorienting moment he simply hovered several feet above the ground while black feathers drifted silently around him through the freezing night air.
Harry stared blankly.
The world looked… different.
Clearer.
Even beneath the darkness covering the isle, he could see with impossible clarity.
Every crack in the ruined stones.
Every ripple disturbing the lake.
Every movement among the distant trees stood perfectly visible as though the night itself no longer applied to him.
His glasses were gone; he realized it immediately, yet his vision had never been better in his entire life.
Then he felt something move behind him.
Harry twisted instinctively and saw them: wings.
Two enormous black wings unfurled from his back, feathers dark as obsidian beneath the moonlight, spreading wide enough to eclipse the ruins behind him. The source of this chapter is novelping dot com.
His breath caught in his throat, and his attention drifted to his hair after seeing white among the black.
Harry saw white hair fall across his forehead.
Not fully white, at first, only pale streaks spreading through the black, like frost crawling across dark earth.
Then, before Harry’s stunned eyes, the color continued changing rapidly until every strand turned completely white beneath the cold silver glow of the moon.
A notification appeared before his eyes.
[Dormant Trait Awakened: Angelic Lineage]
[Angel Mode Unlocked: First Wing Awakening]
[First Wing Awakening]
Description:
The blood remembers.
Effects:
All Stats x2
Enhanced Mana Output
Enhanced Regeneration
Holy Light Affinity Acquired
Enhanced Sensory Perception
Warning:
Mana consumption dramatically increased.
Extended usage may result in severe exhaustion or death.
Harry barely had time to process any of it because Edith attacked again.
The wraith hurled herself from the tower in a storm of darkness and screaming hatred, moving far faster than before as silver-black shadows twisted violently around her distorted form—
And Harry dodged.
His body moved before his mind fully understood what was happening, wings snapping outward as he shifted through the air with impossible speed.
Edith tore past where he had been an instant earlier, her claws ripping through empty darkness instead.
Harry froze for half a heartbeat in stunned disbelief.
He felt… different.
Stronger.
Way stronger.
Power flooded through his body so intensely that it bordered on overwhelming.
It burned through his veins like liquid fire, vast and old and terrifyingly alive.
The fear still remained, hammering wildly inside his chest, but now something else existed beneath it, something bright.
Edith shrieked and lunged at him again.
Harry reacted entirely on instinct, and light exploded from his outstretched hand.
Not wand magic, not anything he had ever learned at Hogwarts.
Golden-white radiance erupted into existence around his palm before condensing into several luminous spears that streaked through the night like falling stars.
The projectiles slammed directly into the wraith.
Edith screamed in pain as holy light tore through portions of her shadowed body, burning away darkness wherever it touched.
Fragments of silver-black mist scattered through the air as the wraith recoiled violently, shrieking hard enough to shake the air itself.
Harry’s eyes widened.
It worked.
The realization barely had time to register before Edith surged toward him once more and the fight truly began.
The sky above the cursed isle erupted into chaos.
Edith moved through the darkness like hatred and fury given form, her distorted body tearing across the night with terrifying speed while centuries of rage echoed through every attack.
Harry met her head-on, black wings slicing through the freezing air as golden-white radiance blazed from his hands like liquid sunlight.
The collision between holy light and spectral darkness illuminated the entire lake below them.
But raw power did not make Harry skilled.
Edith had existed for centuries, and Harry was just twelve.
Several times her claws came within inches of his throat before he barely twisted away in time.
Once she caught him across the shoulder, claws ripping through flesh hard enough to send blinding agony through his entire arm.
Harry cried out as his body spun sideways through the air.
The wound burned unnaturally cold.
Edith lunged again immediately, screaming loud enough to shake the ruined tower behind them, but Harry retaliated instinctively.
Blades of condensed light formed around him in brilliant arcs before launching outward, forcing the wraith backward as explosions of golden fire illuminated the lake beneath them. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Chains of radiant energy followed seconds later, wrapping around Edith’s body briefly before she tore through them in a storm of shadows and fury.
The surrounding spirits fled entirely from the battle.
Harry could sense them scattering through the forest and ruins below like terrified animals escaping a wildfire.
And through the chaos, Harry realized something important: he could hurt her.
The holy light burned Edith, weakened her, forced her unstable form apart whenever a blast landed cleanly.
But actually striking something as fast and unnatural as a wraith proved horribly difficult.
Edith reformed again and again around the wounds he inflicted, shadows knitting back together while rage devoured whatever fragments of humanity still remained inside her.
Every scream sounded less human than the last.
Meanwhile Harry’s mana vanished at an alarming rate.
The warning from the system had not exaggerated.
Already his body felt strained beneath the transformation.
His muscles burned violently, his breathing grew uneven, and the radiant power surging through him was becoming harder and harder to control.
If this continued much longer, the transformation itself might kill him before Edith managed to.
Harry gritted his teeth as another violent wave of exhaustion crashed through him.
He needed to end this.
Now.
Edith lunged again in blind fury, shadows screaming around her distorted form as she rushed toward him with enough force to tear through stone.
This time Harry did not retreat.
He baited the attack intentionally, waiting until the very last possible moment before twisting sideways through the air.
Edith’s claws missed his throat by inches—
And Harry grabbed her arm.
Holy light detonated between them as he forced every bit of energy and mana he had left into one final attack.
The night exploded gold-white as radiance erupted outward in a blinding shockwave that illuminated the entire isle, flooding the ruins, forest, and black waters below with divine light bright enough to rival the moon itself.
Edith screamed in agony.
The sound tore through the air as her body began to come apart beneath Harry’s grip.
Cracks of burning light spread across her shadowed form while silver darkness fragmented violently into countless drifting pieces consumed by holy radiance.
For one brief instant, Harry thought he saw her again.
Not the wraith, not the monster but Edith.
Edith Ashford, a terrified young woman reaching toward someone who never came back for her.
Then the light swallowed everything.
Edith shattered apart entirely into fragments of silver-black mist that scattered into the night before dissolving completely into the air as silence crashed across the isle.
The screaming stopped.
The wind died.
Even the lake below became perfectly still.
Harry hovered unsteadily above the ruins, breathing hard while fading sparks of golden light drifted around him through the darkness.
He had won.
But the curse still remained, and Edith herself almost certainly still existed somewhere within the isle.
Wraiths were not destroyed so easily.
Dispelling her physical form would not break the curse binding her to this place, nor erase centuries of suffering and hatred in a single battle.
Eventually, she would reform.
Eventually, she would return.
But for tonight…
Harry had survived.
The realization lasted approximately three seconds before complete exhaustion hit him like a collapsing building.
The holy light faded from his body while the white in his hair receded rapidly back into black.
At the same time the world around him blurred horribly, whether from exhaustion or the sudden return of his terrible eyesight Harry honestly could not tell anymore.
His body suddenly felt unbearably heavy.
The wings vanished and Harry swayed dangerously in midair for one brief, terrifying moment before consciousness abandoned him completely.
And Harry Potter fell unconscious into the ruins below.