Chapter 1: Ash Fall
The concrete was cold and gritty against her cheek.
Hel came to with a gasp, her body seizing as memory flooded back—the stone archway, the swirling mist, hands shoving her through, the betrayed shouts of “Savior” curdling into “Sacrifice” as she fell. Forever. She’d expected nothingness. Instead, there was this: the reek of stale water, rotting wood, and the metallic tang of rust.
She pushed herself up, every muscle protesting. Her vision swam, then cleared. She was in a vast, derelict space. Moonlight cut through broken windows high above, painting stripes of silver on a floor littered with debris. Graffiti bled down the walls in frenzied, fading colors. Somewhere, water dripped with a slow, maddening rhythm.
She was alone. And she was changed.
She could feel it humming under her skin—a wild, hot current that was nothing like the structured magic of her wand. It felt… elemental. Primal. She flexed her fingers and watched, detached, as tiny licks of blue flame danced across her knuckles before winking out. She didn’t startle. She just stared. It felt right.
A low groan echoed from the shadows to her left.
Hel was on her feet in a silent instant, her body falling into a defensive crouch without conscious thought. She was five feet tall in boots, but she felt the coiled power in her lithe frame, a new balance, a new gravity. The wild tumble of her black curls shifted as she turned her head, those startling green eyes piercing the gloom.
A man was slumped against a rotting crate, his head in his hands. Tall, even sitting. Broad shoulders strained the fabric of his torn, old-fashioned robes. Dark hair fell around his fingers.
She knew those robes. That posture. The very air of him screamed danger.
Rabastan Lestrange lifted his head.
His face was all sharp, aristocratic lines, but his eyes… they were the cold gray of a winter sea. They locked onto her. Recognition flickered, followed by pure, unadulterated shock. It was the first honest expression she’d ever seen on a Death Eater’s face.
“Potter?” His voice was a rasp, rough from disuse or the Veil. He blinked, as if she were a mirage. “You’re… alive.”
“No thanks to you lot,” she said, her own voice quieter than she intended. It held no fear. Just a vast, weary frost. She didn’t move. “Or mine.”
He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he slowly uncurled himself, rising to his full, imposing height. He towered over her, a full foot and more of solid muscle. He should have been terrifying. A part of her noted the threat, cataloged it. But a newer, fiercer part watched him rise and felt only a challenging itch in her blood.
“Where are we?” he demanded, his gaze leaving her to scan the decrepit warehouse. He took a step, and the floorboard shrieked in protest.
“Not King’s Cross,” she muttered, taking her own step back, maintaining distance. Her senses were screaming, taking in everything—the dust motes in the moonlight, the scuttling of something small in the far corner, the steady, strong beat of his heart. She could hear his heart. What fresh hell was this?
“Magic feels different,” he said, more to himself than to her. He stretched out a hand, palm up. A swirl of orange-red flame, darker and thicker than hers, bloomed above his skin. It cast fierce shadows across the harsh planes of his face. “Wilder.”
“Don’t,” Hel warned, though she didn’t know what she was warning against. The fire? Him?
He closed his fist, snuffing the flame. His eyes came back to her, studying her with an intensity that felt physical. “You feel it too. The change. In you.” It wasn’t a question.
She didn’t answer. Let him wonder.
A sudden, violent crash echoed from deep within the warehouse, followed by the sounds of shifting weight and a low, guttural snarl. Not human.
Rabastan was beside her in two swift strides, his movement preternaturally fast. She hadn’t even seen him cross the space. He gripped her upper arm, his fingers like iron bands. “Quiet.”
She yanked her arm back, baring her teeth. “Don’t touch me.”
He ignored her, his head tilted, listening. “There are things here,” he murmured, his gray eyes narrowing. “Things that are not wizard. Not beast. Something else.”
The snarl came again, closer. It was followed by a wet, dragging sound. A new scent washed over the damp rot—musky, feral, and hungry.
Instincts older than spells took over. Hel felt a ripple go through her, a vibration in her very bones. The world sharpened, colors bleeding to shades of gray and glowing heat. Smells exploded into a complex map of information. The urge to drop to all fours was overwhelming.
A shape detached itself from the deeper darkness. It was lupine, but wrong—too large, its proportions distorted, strings of saliva dripping from jaws that seemed too full of teeth. Its eyes glowed a sickly yellow.
Rabastan didn’t hesitate. A roar tore from his throat, a sound of pure animal fury that shook the dust from the rafters. Hel saw his hands curl, his nails darkening, lengthening into brutal black claws. His canines looked sharper when he snarled.
The wolf-thing charged.
Rabastan met it in a blur of motion. He didn’t use wandless spells, didn’t try to transfigure it. He fought with tooth and claw and raw, brutal strength, a dance of ferocity that was terrifying and beautiful. He was faster. Heavier. His fist, wreathed in sudden flame, slammed into the creature’s ribs. The smell of burnt fur and seared flesh filled the air.
Hel didn’t freeze. The part of her that was a soldier, the part that was now something more, assessed. As the creature recoiled from Rabastan, lashing out with a taloned paw, she moved.
She didn’t think of the spell. She thought of heat, of consumption, of a wall. Blue fire erupted from her outstretched palms, not in a jet, but in a roaring wave that swept across the space between her and the beast. It wasn’t controlled. It was an inferno of pure feeling—her fear, her anger, her betrayal, given form.
The creature screamed, a human-like sound of agony, as the unnatural flames clung to its pelt. It flailed, crashing into a stack of crates that exploded into splinters.
Rabastan finished it. He moved behind it, a shadow with burning eyes, and with a vicious, clean motion, severed its head with his claws.
Silence fell, heavier than before, broken only by the crackle of dying blue flames and Rabastan’s steady, heavy breaths.
He turned to look at her. His clothes were singed, splattered with dark ichor. His gray eyes were no longer cold. They burned with a reflected heat, studying the fading blue fire on her hands, then lifting to her face.
“Hellfire, Potter?” he asked, a strange, almost appreciative note in his voice.
“Just fire,” she said, willing the last of the flames to die. She felt drained, but also… alive. Truly alive for the first time since the battle.
He took a step toward her, cautiously now, like one would approach a strange, powerful animal. He was still the enemy. He was still Rabastan Lestrange, Death Eater, torturer, devotee of the very evil she’d spent her life fighting.
But he was also here. In this unknown place. Changed, as she was.
“The others,” he said slowly. “My brother. The Dark Lord’s other followers. They were thrown through as well. If we live, they live.”
Hel’s heart, which had been hammering from the fight, turned to ice in her chest. More of them. Loose in a world without Aurors, without the Ministry, without any rules they recognized.
“We’re not on the same side,” she stated, the words flat.
“Aren’t we?” He gestured to the smoldering carcass of the wolf-thing. “This world has its own monsters. It has no magic we understand. It has no place for us.” His eyes held hers, relentless. “You are the only familiar thing here, Potter. And I am the only one who knows what you are.”
He meant a witch. He meant the Savior. But he didn’t know the half of what she was now. The fey blood singing, the leopard itching to be let out, the strange hunger unfurling in her gut that had nothing to do with food.
She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly aware of how very small she was in the vast, decaying space. Alone. He was offering something—not alliance, not trust, but a temporary, desperate acknowledgement of shared catastrophe.
“I won’t follow you,” she said.
A ghost of something touched his cruel mouth. Not a smile. A promise. “I know.”
He looked toward a shattered doorway where the first pale hint of dawn was beginning to bleed into the darkness. “We need shelter. Information. We need to understand the rules of this game.”
He started walking toward the light, not checking to see if she followed. He knew she would. For now.
Hel watched his retreating back, the proud, dangerous set of his shoulders. Every instinct told her to run the other way, to vanish into this new world and leave all its ghosts behind.
But the drip of water echoed like a heartbeat, and the scent of blood and fire hung in the air. She was so very tired of being alone.
She took a first, reluctant step, then another, her soft boots making no sound on the filthy concrete. She followed the tiger into the dawn.