Holding his black walnut wand, Aaron tapped the surface of the gear with its tip.
The gear vibrated with a low hum as its runes flared to life.
The metal piece began to spin rapidly, and then shattered.
As it broke apart, a voice flooded directly into Aaron’s mind.
“Mr. Crane… forgive my boldness.”
Griphook’s voice.
Unlike the obsequious deference he had displayed at Gringotts, the voice in this recording trembled noticeably.
It wasn’t the trembling of reverent awe, but of sheer terror.
“I am Griphook, Chief Administrator of the Seventh Underground Level at Gringotts. According to Wizarding Bank secrecy regulations, I should not be contacting any client privately… but there are certain matters I must inform you of, otherwise my conscience will not know peace.”
The voice paused for two seconds, as if building up courage.
“The Crane family vault, Vault Seven Hundred Thirteen. When you visited last time, you only entered the outer hall to withdraw Gold Galleons. But that vault possesses an inner chamber. When your parents established the vault, they sealed something away in its deepest recesses.”
“Gringotts regulations dictate that items sealed by a client can only be retrieved by the client or their blood heir; goblins have no right to meddle. For the past seven years, we have abided by this rule and never opened the inner chamber door.”
“However, three months ago, abnormalities began to manifest inside the inner chamber.”
Griphook’s voice grew increasingly tense.
“That object… it began emitting fluctuations. It was very faint at first, detectable only by the duty goblin closest to the door, but it grew stronger and stronger. By last month, the goblins across the entire seventh level were affected.”
“Insomnia, nightmares… three young goblins even experienced auditory hallucinations. They claimed that in the dead of night, they could hear a heartbeat coming from behind the vault door.”
“Mr. Crane, the vault doors at Gringotts are forged from dragon-blood alloy, a foot and a half thick, overlaid with seventeen layers of goblin locking charms. Protection of this caliber can block almost all known magical fluctuations.”
“Yet that thing’s fluctuations penetrated right through.”
The voice paused once more.
“I checked the documents signed by your parents when they opened the vault. Records indicate that your father, Edmund Crane, and your mother, Evelyn Crane, deposited that object into the inner chamber in 1978. The deposit registry listed only three words: ‘Inheritance: Forbidden’.”
“That same year, in the document’s remarks column, there was a handwritten note from your father: ‘If my wife and I should suffer an untimely death, this object may only be opened by the hand of our blood heir. Should any other person or goblin attempt to touch this item, Gringotts shall bear no responsibility for the consequences.'”
“Mr. Crane, three years later—in 1981—your parents passed away.”
“The official cause of death on record was a ‘magical experiment accident’.”
“However, I managed to locate an unreleased autopsy report from the Ministry of Magic.”
Griphook’s voice suddenly dropped to a whisper.
“The report stated that your parents’ cause of death was not an explosion, not a fire, nor any known dark magic. Their bodies appeared completely unharmed from the outside, but all magic power within them… was drained completely dry.”
“Drained to the absolute bottom.”
“Like two sponges squeezed bone-dry of water.”
“The examining Healer wrote a sentence at the end of the report: ‘The residual traces of power inside the deceased cannot be categorized under any known system of magical power. It is recommended to transfer this to the Department of Mysteries for further analysis.’ However, this report was subsequently sealed by the Ministry of Magic under the pretext of ‘National Security Level Secrecy.'”
By now, the voice was little more than a whisper.
“Mr. Crane, your parents did not die of an accident. They were killed by the backlash of a power that… transcends magic itself, all to seal that thing away.”
“And now, that object is awakening.”
“I beg you to come to Gringotts in person as soon as possible to receive or deal with the relic in the inner chamber. We can no longer endure these fluctuations for much longer. Last week, a guard dragon near Vault Seven Hundred Thirteen went mad, crashing through three iron grates before it was brought under control.”
“This is a personal request from Griphook, unrelated to Gringotts official stance. If you are willing to come, please arrive at the main hall of Gringotts within three days and state ‘Vault Seven Hundred Thirteen Inner Chamber’.”
“May your journey be safe.”
The voice vanished.
The fragments of the gear crumbled into a fine metallic dust in Aaron’s palm, which dispersed across the floorboards with a gentle draft.
Aaron sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his palm for a long time.
*A power that transcends magic itself.*
Hearing this phrase in Griphook’s description created a subtle resonance with Aaron’s own situation.
Divinity, faith, the Divine Kingdom—these were entirely different systems from wands and incantations.
Had his parents sealed away an object possessing a similar kind of power?
What did this imply?
It implied that his parents knew of the existence of power “transcending magic itself,” and might have even come into direct contact with it.
Perhaps…
Aaron’s eyes lingered on the inside of his wrist.
Beneath his skin, an extremely fine network of lines was faintly visible, resembling blood vessels yet distinct, gleaming with a luster somewhere between gold and white.
This was an external manifestation of divinity.
He had possessed it from the very first day he woke up in this world.
If his parents had once dealt with a power that “transcended magic itself”…
Then his innate possession of divinity might not be some random benefit of transmigration.
It might be hereditary.
Or…
something far more complex.
Aaron took a deep breath, pushing all speculation down for the time being.
Without enough information, guessing was pointless.
The only place that could provide answers was the inner chamber of Vault Seven Hundred Thirteen at Gringotts.
He had to make a trip there.
And he had to go without McGonagall, Dumbledore, or anyone from the Ministry of Magic knowing.
Fortunately, he had Invisibility.
Aaron stood up, walked to the wardrobe, pulled out the wizard robes he had bought in Diagon Alley, and slipped them on over his gray cloth shirt.
Then he tucked the black walnut wand into the wand holster inside his sleeve.
Equipment complete.
He pushed open the window, made sure no one was around on either side, and leaped down onto the grass below.
London’s morning was dismal and gray, the streets already filling up with pedestrians.
Aaron walked to the nearest main road, stood by the curb, and raised his right hand.
A loud *BANG* echoed through the air.
A triple-decker purple bus squeezed out from the gap between two buildings, slamming on its brakes to stop right in front of Aaron, nearly taking out a roadside fire hydrant in the process.
The Knight Bus.
The doors swung open, and a young wizard in a purple uniform covered in acne hopped off.
“Welcome to the Knight Bus! I’m your conductor, Stan Shunpike. Where will you be—”
He looked down, paused upon seeing a kid barely ten years old.
“You traveling alone?”
“Diagon Alley,” Aaron said, handing over eleven Silver Sickles.
“Make it quick.”
“Right you are! Mind your step!”
Aaron stepped onto the bus and took a seat on one of the swaying brass bed frames.
The Knight Bus wove through the streets of London at speeds that defied every law of physics, lamp posts and mailboxes leaping out of its path to make way.
Holding onto the bed frame, Aaron sank his consciousness into the Divine Kingdom.
Naga the Horned Snake was coiled on a rock by the pond, its golden slit pupils fixed intently on a certain direction within the Divine Kingdom.
What was it looking at?
Aaron shared Naga’s senses. New chapters come out on g.com first.
Snakes perceived the world in a way completely different from humans.
They used their flicking tongues to capture scent molecules in the air, pit organs to sense heat sources, and the scales across their bodies to feel ground vibrations.
In Naga’s perception, the Divine Kingdom was a world constructed of “scents” and “temperatures.” Every insect was a faint heat signature, while the Demiguise was a warm, silvery source of light.
And beyond the borders of the Divine Kingdom…
Naga’s tongue flicked rapidly.
It had sensed something.
It was very far away—far beyond the boundaries of the Divine Kingdom—yet that aura had penetrated the barriers of the realm and drifted into Naga’s sensory range.
An aura extremely similar to Naga’s own, yet thousands of times more potent.
A snake.
An immensely colossal snake.
Naga’s voice echoed in the Divine Kingdom, its hissed Parseltongue trembling violently:
“Master… I smell… a shared origin…”
Aaron narrowed his eyes slightly.
A shared origin.
A magical creature sharing an origin with a Horned Snake, yet thousands of times larger.
In the entire wizarding world, only one creature fit that description.
A Basilisk.
The Knight Bus slammed to a sudden halt in front of the entrance to Diagon Alley, nearly pitching Aaron off the bed.
He hopped off the bus and stood before the Leaky Cauldron, looking at its weathered wooden door.
Where was the Basilisk’s aura coming from?
Deep underground at Gringotts?
No.
While there were dragons in the depths of Gringotts, there were no records of a Basilisk.
Then there was only one possibility.
Aaron’s gaze pierced through the Leaky Cauldron, through Diagon Alley, through layer upon layer of buildings and wards, looking far toward a certain direction in the north.
Hogwarts.
There existed a Chamber of Secrets built by Salazar Slytherin.
And inside that chamber slept a Basilisk that had lived for over a thousand years.
Now, Aaron already held the key to opening that door.
Parseltongue.
Withdrawing his gaze, he pushed open the door to the Leaky Cauldron, activated Invisibility, and passed silently through the noisy pub, heading straight toward the white marble building at the far end of Diagon Alley.
Gringotts.
His footsteps left invisible imprints upon the stone steps.
The relic in the vault’s inner chamber awaited him, and the summons of the Basilisk lay ahead.
Yet he was in no hurry.
A god possessed ample time; everything could be taken step by step.
First, retrieve what belonged to him.
And then…
off to Hogwarts to claim an entire storehouse of believers.