Location: Hogwarts, Sublevel Passage Beneath the Greenhouses
Time: September 28, 1:04 AM
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Lyra didn't remember walking this far.
The air was damp. The walls pulsed with magic she hadn't studied yet. She could hear the earth humming above her — like roots and spells were tangled together. She hadn't meant to leave the dormitory again, but she'd awoken with her feet already on the floor, her hands warm, her sleeve glowing.
The Wandbound mark burned faintly over her wrist.
She'd followed it down the stairs.
Past the greenhouses.
Into a corridor Hogwarts shouldn't have had — one that curved in a spiral and narrowed the deeper she went, like a tunnel inside a memory.
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At the bend of the passage, she heard someone else breathing.
A tall boy — pale, Slytherin robes, wand drawn.
He didn't startle when he saw her. Just stared for a long, unreadable moment.
"You're Lyra Straithe," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"You're following me," she answered.
Also not a question.
"Technically," said a third voice from behind them, "you're both standing at the entrance to a place none of us should be able to reach."
Lyra and Elias turned.
Dara Patil stepped from the shadows, eyes narrowed, holding a shard of crystal in her hand like it was a compass. It pulsed brighter when it faced them both.
"You're the two threads I've been tracking," she said.
"And this place is where they meet."
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No one moved for a moment.
The castle held its breath.
Then — as if responding to all three of them at once — the wall behind Elias shimmered into light.
Stone peeled back like liquid.
And before them stood a doorway made of silver filigree, pulsing with spiral etchings. In its center: the Circle's mark — a broken wand wrapped in thorns.
The same symbol now glowed on all three of their wrists.
Dara looked from her shard, to the door, to them.
Lyra spoke first. "What is this place?"
Elias answered, voice low. "I think… it's called the Hall of Echoing Light."
"How do you know that?" Dara asked.
He hesitated. "Because my family's been hiding it for generations."
"And the Circle just warned me never to let either of you near it."
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Lyra stared at him. "Then why are you here?"
Elias didn't blink. "Because I want to know what they're so afraid of."
Dara held out her shard. It began to spin — slow, deliberate, humming with resonance. It recognized the doorway. It wanted them inside.
She met Lyra's eyes. "We go together."
Lyra nodded.
Elias placed his hand on the door.
And the world turned inside out.