Goyle’s hand froze.
It wasn’t by his own choice.
His brain was still issuing the command to grab the trunk, but his body refused to obey.
His five fingers hung rigid in midair, as if locked in place by a Full Body-Bind Curse.
Yet Aaron hadn’t drawn his wand, nor had he uttered any incantation.
A look of confusion washed over Goyle’s face.
He didn’t understand why he had stopped.
His mouth worked, trying to say something, but no sound came from his throat.
Cold sweat began to seep down his back.
Malfoy noticed Goyle’s strange behavior.
“Goyle?” He frowned.
“What are you dawdling for?”
Goyle didn’t answer.
His face flushed red, then paled, before settling into an unhealthy, ashen gray.
Beads of sweat rolled down his temples, dripping onto the collar of his school robes.
Malfoy’s frown deepened.
He took half a step forward, sidestepping Goyle to face Aaron directly.
“What did you do to him?” Malfoy’s voice rose, his right hand already slipping into his robe pocket where his wand lay.
Aaron looked at him.
His expression was flat.
There was no aggression in his eyes, no anger, no killing intent.
Just complete, flat indifference.
Yet it was precisely this flat look that made Malfoy’s heart skip a beat.
He had seen many kinds of eyes.
The cold harshness of his father, Lucius Malfoy, during negotiations; the chilly displeasure of his mother, Narcissa, when she was annoyed; the shrewdness and hypocrisy of the old pure-blood wizards probing one another at family banquets.
But he had never seen eyes like these.
The way those grey-blue eyes looked at him…
it wasn’t how you looked at a human being.
It was more like…
looking at an ant that had crawled onto a tabletop.
Not disgust, not contempt.
Merely noting a completely insignificant existence.
This feeling was harder for Malfoy to bear than any insult or threat.
In his eleven years of life, no one had ever looked at him this way.
The heir of the Malfoy family was always the center of attention, flattered and coddled by everyone.
“You,” Malfoy said, drawing his wand from his pocket.
The hawthorn wood gleamed faintly in the dim light.
“You’d better explain yourself, or else.”
Aaron spoke.
His voice was quiet and calm, as if stating an indisputable fact.
“Put your wand away.”
Four words.
No magical infusion, no trace of casting.
Yet Malfoy’s wrist jerked.
It wasn’t a tremble born of fear.
It was closer to a…
physiological response.
As though an ancient part of his body, far older than his intellect, had received a signal.
And that signal commanded: *Obey.*
Malfoy gritted his teeth.
He did not put his wand away.
The pride of a pure-blood family would not allow him to back down before some nameless half-blood.
“Who do you think you are?” Malfoy’s voice trembled slightly, though he forced a mocking tone.
“I don’t care.”
Aaron cut him off.
His tone remained flat.
But this time, a trace of something incredibly subtle leaked into his words.
It wasn’t magic, nor was it divine power; Aaron had simply loosened his suppression of his divinity by a fraction.
Infinitesimal.
Perhaps only one-thousandth of it.
But that one-thousandth was more than enough.
Malfoy saw a vision.
Not with his eyes, but projected directly into his mind.
An endless void.
No up, no down, no left, no right.
He floated alone in this abyss, like a speck of dust suspended in an infinite darkness.
And right in the center of this void stood a pair of eyes.
Grey-blue.
Looking at him.
Those eyes held no expression, but their very existence impressed a single fact upon him:
Before those eyes, he was nothing.
Not “insignificant.”
Just *nothing*.
The vision lasted less than half a second.
But Malfoy’s knees buckled.
In that half-second, his entire being experienced a complete collapse.
His pride, his bloodline, his family, his name—every cornerstone carefully built up since childhood to construct the person of “Draco Malfoy” crumbled to dust before those eyes.
He didn’t drop straight to his knees.
But only because Crabbe was behind him, blocking his path of retreat.
His wand slipped from his grasp.
The hawthorn wood clattered against the hardwood floor of the compartment.
Malfoy stared at the wand on the floor, all color draining from his face within three seconds.
He opened his mouth.
He couldn’t speak.
Crabbe peeked out from behind Malfoy.
He didn’t face Aaron’s gaze directly, but a mere glance from the corner of his eye was enough to make the hairs on his thick neck stand on end.
Goyle was still holding his hand out toward the trunk.
But his entire body was shaking.
From his fingers to his arms, and up to his shoulders, he trembled as if standing in a blizzard at thirty degrees below zero.
In this dim compartment, facing an eleven-year-old boy sitting on a faded velvet seat, the three of them experienced the first taste of true, absolute terror in their lives.
Not the fear of being scolded by their fathers.
Not the nervousness of being disciplined by Professor McGonagall.
It was an instinctive dread welling up from the depths of their souls—unexplainable by reason, urging them to turn and run for their lives.
Aaron reeled back that one-thousandth of his divinity.
The atmospheric pressure in the compartment returned to normal.
But the boys did not recover.
Aaron looked at them and spoke his second sentence.
His voice was calm, gentle, devoid of any emotion.
“Close the door. And do not disturb me again.”
Eight words.
This time, he released nothing.
It was purely spoken.
But to the three eleven-year-old boys who had just had their souls crushed, those words were an absolute decree.
Malfoy bent down to pick up his wand.
His hands were shaking so badly it took him two attempts to retrieve it.
Then he retreated from the compartment.
His steps were clumsy and faltering, keeping his front facing Aaron, never daring to turn his back.
Crabbe and Goyle followed, backing out as well.
There was a wet patch on Goyle’s trousers, though whether it was sweat or something else was unclear.
Malfoy reached out and grabbed the handle of the compartment door.
He stole one last glance at Aaron.
Then quickly averted his eyes.
The door slid shut.
The frantic, scrambling sounds of three pairs of feet echoed down the corridor, growing more distant and faint before vanishing toward the front of the train.
Silence reclaimed the compartment.
Aaron leaned back into his seat.
He paid no mind to what had just happened.
The young master of the Malfoy family might be someone of note in pure-blood circles, but in Aaron’s worldview, there was no fundamental difference between him and Tommy, the orphan who used to steal bread at the orphanage.
The rules of the mortal world did not apply to him.
Closing his eyes, he sank back into his Divine Kingdom.
Naga tilted her head and looked at him.
“My Lord, what happened outside?”
“Nothing.”
“Naga smelled fear.”
“Someone took a wrong turn.”
The Horned Snake flicked its tongue, asking no further questions.
Outside the window, the sky grew darker.
A continuous forest dominated the landscape, with occasional streams glinting through the trees.
The train plunged into a tunnel, plunging the compartment into brief darkness.
Aaron’s consciousness receded from the Divine Kingdom.
He raised his wrist and glanced at it.
In the darkness, the patterns of his divinity on the inside of his wrist glowed with an extremely faint, grey-blue light, like a slow-moving vein of light flowing beneath his skin.
After merging with the Resonator, the external manifestation of his divinity had become more pronounced.
He could usually hide it under long sleeves, but if someone examined him closely, they might notice something.
He would have to be careful once they reached Hogwarts.
The train emerged from the tunnel.
Outside, night had fallen completely.
Starlight shone in the distance.
As the train began to slow down, a raspy voice echoed from the speakers overhead.
“The Hogwarts Express is about to arrive at its final destination. Please change into your school robes and leave your luggage on the train. You will disembark in an orderly fashion once we arrive.”
Aaron stood up and pulled his black wizarding robes from his trunk.
It was time to get off.
The train ground to a halt with a screech of brakes.
Aaron was the last to step off the train, standing on the pitch-black platform.
The air smelled of pine trees and damp earth, with a faint, brackish hint of lake water.
It was entirely different from London.
The platform was already packed with students.
The older years went in a different direction, chattering as they headed toward several horseless carriages.
The first-years gathered at the other end of the platform, looking around with a mix of bewilderment and excitement.
A massive lantern swung above the crowd.
“First-years! First-years, over here!”
A booming voice roared from behind the lantern.
Aaron followed the sound and saw a massive figure standing in the center of the crowd, towering three heads taller than everyone else.
Rubeus Hagrid.
A half-giant.
Hogwarts’ Keeper of Keys and Grounds.
Hagrid wore an enormous moleskin coat, a wild, tangled black beard covering most of his face.
He held the lantern in one hand and waved the first-years over with the other.