The stillness wasn't silence.
It was power.
A raw, ancient sort of power that filled the Chamber like breath held too long. Arthur stood, sword humming with frost, shoulders squared, knees bent. His breath misted the air. Each exhale was calm. Controlled.
The Basilisk hissed again, blood trailing from its shattered fang, coils coiled tighter than a hangman's noose. But the hiss no longer made Arthur flinch. He didn't blink. He didn't look away.
He had become the storm he once feared.
Frost bloomed under his boots. His magic didn't flare—it settled, layered, precise. Cold snapped in the air like tension on a drawn bow. Not a fire to consume, but an ice to preserve, punish, protect.
Predator met predator.
The Basilisk lunged—its full body lashing like a battering ram.
Arthur moved.
He sidestepped, letting the massive weight of the creature slam into the stone where he had just stood. The crash shook the chamber. Dust rose. Shards of broken stone and ancient scales scattered. Arthur didn't blink.
He ran.
Fast.
He sprinted along the beast's body, one foot on scale, the other on frost-slick stone. The sword trailed ice with every swing, the air snapping as he moved. With a swift, arcing strike, he carved deep into the Basilisk's hide—just above the first rib.
The serpent screamed—a sound that made the walls groan.
Arthur flipped off its back as it twisted, narrowly avoiding a crushing snap of its tail. The tail hit a column instead, pulverizing it to rubble.
Still, Arthur didn't stop.
He moved again.
Under. Around. Up. The battle was motion. Not brawn. Precision.
The Basilisk tried to pin him—coiling tighter, adjusting to his size. But Arthur was faster. Smarter. And something older was guiding him.
The sword sang.
He used a shattered stone to spring higher, leaping off it and driving the blade through one of the Basilisk's ribs. It roared, body bucking upward. The force sent Arthur flying—but he twisted in the air, landing in a skid, ice flaring beneath him.
Come on, Arthur.
Flow. Don't fight it. Listen.
The air around him dropped sharply in temperature.
The sword flared—white and blue frost crawling up his arm, painting intricate, natural patterns across his sleeve. Still, he felt no pain. Only focus. The cold was not the enemy.
It was home.
The Basilisk charged.
Arthur pivoted, ducked beneath its strike, and slashed low—this time at the beast's throat. Not deep enough. But enough to open another wound. A jagged, steaming gash that frothed with cold mist.
The creature shrieked, thrashed–
And slammed Arthur hard into the wall.
Pain exploded in his back, stars sparking in his vision. He dropped the sword. For a breath—just one—he gasped, dazed.
But then the sword called.
Not in words. In instinct.
His hand jerked toward it—not grabbing, commanding.
And the blade answered.
It lifted on its own, sliding across the icy floor in a swirl of snow. It spun into his grasp as he pushed himself up.
Cryomancy? Cassian had some explaining to do?
The Chamber dimmed.
Arthur rose to his feet again, slower now, blood on his lip, eyes half-lidded—but unbroken.
The Basilisk paused.
For the first time…
It hesitated.
He could feel its mind brushing against his.
Not violent.
Not hateful.
"Please…"
"You have to stop me… before I forget myself again."
The voice wasn't in words—it was emotion. Burden. A beast twisted beyond its own nature.
And suddenly, Arthur understood.
The Basilisk was not merely Riddle's weapon.
It was a prisoner.
A soul chained in bone and scale.
And now…
It was asking to be freed.
Arthur's gaze softened.
Then sharpened.
He whispered, "I'm sorry."
And leapt.
He drove the sword with both hands.
Not through the mouth. Not the eye.
Straight through the chest.
The blade struck—ice blooming from the point of contact like lightning frozen in time. The serpent convulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then went still.
A final breath exhaled.
And with it—a kind of peace.
The creature collapsed.
The ground trembled.
And silence fell.
But it didn't last.
A slow, deliberate clap echoed behind him.
Arthur turned.
Tom Riddle stood just beyond the basilisk's corpse, arms folded, eyes glinting with cold fury.
"How touching," he said, voice like velvet over glass.
"You killed it. Slytherin's greatest pet. His guardian. His symbol. And you weep for it."
Arthur didn't answer.
Riddle stepped forward. "No final words? No heroic speech? Come now, Reeves. You just destroyed centuries of Slytherin power. Don't you feel victorious?"
Still nothing.
Just the sound of Arthur lifting the sword again.
Frost gathered around his shoulders like a cloak.
Riddle bared his teeth.
"Then let's finish this."
∆∆∆∆∆
The frost did not fade.
Even with the Basilisk lying dead, even with the air still once more, the cold did not fade.
Arthur stood over the serpent's corpse, hand still clenched around the hilt of the sword—his wand no longer, now something else. Something final. The blade still shimmered faintly, steam rising from where its frost met the blood pooling beneath the beast's body.
His breath was slow.
Too slow.
His heart should've been pounding. His arms shaking. His legs buckling under the pain, the exhaustion, the fear. That's what a normal boy would feel.
But Arthur felt…
Nothing.
No relief. No victory. No grief.
Just stillness.
He turned slightly, just enough to see his reflection in the icy water pooled near the base of the broken statue.
His eyes.
They weren't his.
There was no warmth in them—no light. Just pale silver-blue, flecked with white. Like frost had found its way behind the iris, curled in, and settled.
He didn't recognize the boy staring back.
I should feel something.
But the truth settled like snow on his shoulders:
He didn't want to.
He closed his eyes.
The sword. The frost. The silence.
And the voice inside—whispers from his worst nights—rose again.
"You always were like this."
"This isn't new. You just stopped pretending."
"You never needed fire. You needed control."
It wasn't the cryomancy that made him this way.
It only clarified him.
Sharpened him like a knife held to whetstone.
The cold didn't corrupt.
It revealed.
He thought the rage, the chaos of last year—the trapdoor, the Stone, the night he met Voldemort for the first time—had been his darkest point.
But he was wrong.
That night, when he'd felt something weird and unnameable beneath Hogwarts, something inside him had already started to crack. And in that moment of fear and fury, the frost had first bloomed.
He just didn't remember it.
Not fully.
Until now.
The sword hissed.
Or maybe it was his breath.
He wasn't sure.
But the blade wanted more. It pulsed with hunger—not for death, but for closure. For purpose. For control.
And Arthur…
He didn't pull away.
He embraced it.
∆∆∆∆∆
A low groan echoed down the chamber's corridor. Shuffling footsteps followed. Something dragged. Something clattered.
Arthur didn't flinch.
He knew that sound.
Even before the figure emerged from the shadows.
Gilderoy Lockhart stumbled into the basilisk's tomb like a forgotten afterthought. His robe was torn down one side, splattered with dust and drying blood. One of his shoes was missing. His wand hung limply in his hand, a child clutching driftwood in a storm.
Even Riddle paused.
Eyes narrowing. "...Huh?"
Lockhart blinked around, wild-eyed. "Where—where am I? Is this—a tomb? What's happened—?" He turned in a slow, disoriented circle. "Arthur? Arthur, is that—? My boy, what is this place?!"
Arthur didn't speak.
Didn't blink.
He just looked at him.
The final piece.
The pawn.
The sacrifice.
And gods, he was glad he brought the man.
When Arthur first climbed down, he'd left the tunnel door cracked behind him—just enough. A whisper of invitation. Not for help. Not for rescue.
For collateral.
He had brought Lockhart along for a reason.
Not because he trusted him.
But because he didn't.
The man was a fraud. A memory thief. A selfish, cowardly thing that stumbled through other people's legends like a moth through firelight.
Which made him perfect
Empty.
Expendable.
Replaceable.
And Riddle didn't know it yet, but Arthur had just handed him the wrong vessel.
The decoy.
Arthur's hand tightened around the frost-forged sword.
He stepped between Riddle and Elena—her unconscious body curled protectively beside Ginny's. Both still breathing. Both drained. The siphon was doing its work.
But it wasn't complete.
Riddle raised his hand. The siphon stirred again—tendrils of violet mist snaking toward the girls. It so odd that he could see it.
Arthur's voice, low and frigid, cut through it:
"No."
He angled the sword.
A shimmer of runes pulsed along the blade's edge.
And the siphon turned.
Veered.
Diverted.
Toward Lockhart.
Arthur plunged the blade's point into the stone between them—not into Lockhart—just close enough.
The frost flared.
White lightning snaked across the chamber floor.
Riddle's mouth fell open.
"You... redirected it," he said.
Not furious.
Stunned.
"You gave me him?"
Lockhart screamed, but the sound was distant—muffled behind the ice. The siphon wrapped around him like ghostly chains, drawing his life-force out in great, luminous pulses. But he wasn't dying.
He was becoming.
A shell. A husk. A cage.
Arthur said nothing.
Because he understood now.
There was no righteous choice.
This isn't mercy. This is what he always knew.
I was never a guardian of light. I'm a keeper of balance—by any means.
The siphon hissed through the chamber like a dying storm—arcs of violet light coiling toward Lockhart, wrapping around him in slow, hungry spirals. He convulsed once. Twice. Then went still, eyes wide, mouth agape in a silent scream.
Riddle's form had begun to flicker again, tendrils of soul and shadow coalescing at the center of the altar.
But Arthur didn't wait to see it take shape.
He turned his back.
And walked away.
Step by step, he crossed the stone floor—each footfall crisp against the frost-veined surface, trailing cold like footprints in winter snow.
He stopped before the basilisk's head.
Its eyes—blind, both ruined—still shimmered faintly with that eerie, ancient glow. Its tongue had gone limp. Icy cracks webbed across its snout, fangs broken, breath extinguished.
A relic of fury and forgotten kingdoms.
Arthur lowered himself beside it with the slow grace of someone not burdened by pain—but by weight.
He rested a hand against its scales.
Cool. Coarse. Familiar.
His other hand gripped the sword only long enough to let it slide down beside him with a clean chink—the blade resting against the stone, gleaming with sleeping frost.
Like a king laying down his scepter before the final war.
He exhaled.
"Why did you hesitate?" he asked the creature, though it no longer heard him. "You had me."
The basilisk didn't answer.
Of course it didn't.
It never had to. Not really.
Because Arthur felt the answer in the stillness.
It had known him.
Somehow.
And he'd known it.
He leaned in closer, forehead resting against its cold skull, as if to share in its final memory. Or maybe to give it peace. Or maybe—
Because monsters understood each other.
Because he'd become one.
∆∆∆∆∆∆∆
He heard it before he saw it—flesh knitting, shadows stirring, bone grinding back into place like chalk against steel. Riddle wasn't whole yet, but he was close. The siphon had worked. The girls—Elena and Ginny—was still breathing. So was Lockhart, barely conscious, slumped like discarded parchment on the chamber floor. The transfer had left him hollow, mind frayed, soul siphoned dry.
Arthur moved.
Each muscle screamed. Torn skin tugged against dried blood. The sword—his sword—was heavy at his side, but it felt right. Like it belonged to him.
He looked at the basilisk.
Not to claim a trophy.
To mourn.
He moved closer the serpent's massive, noble head. Its lifeless eye stared at nothing. His hand touched its cool scales, almost reverently.
It had tried to kill him.
But it hadn't hated him.
And that made all the difference.
He rested his forehead against the beast's snout, like a warrior honoring a fallen rival. A connection flared somewhere inside him—beast to beast. It had begged for death. He had granted it.
His sword hummed quietly beside him.
The cold didn't sting anymore.
It centered him.
Then—
A sound.
Behind.
He rose, slowly. Turned. And saw Riddle standing now, not quite whole but forming fast—hair darkening, skin sealing, magic gathering in coils of smoky mist around him. He was becoming human.
Even Tom looked... confused. He glanced at Lockhart's slumped body.
"You... You used him?"
Arthur said nothing at first. Just walked forward again, barefoot, bleeding, frost forming in his wake. A prince of ice and quiet fury.
"I'm glad I brought him," he said simply. "Left the door open for him. I knew he'd follow."
Tom blinked. "You planned this?"
Arthur's expression didn't change. "Not everything has to be planned to be inevitable."
Then he stopped a pace from Riddle.
"I might be cold, Voldemort," Arthur said, voice calm, "and I'm not a murderer. Not yet."
He raised the sword.
"As you…" A breath. "...are about to turn me into one."
He drove the blade in.
Not with rage.
Not with fear.
With control.
And as the metal sank through spectral flesh and bone, Arthur felt something stir inside him. Not a scream of protest. Not guilt.
Pleasure.
He liked the feel of it. The resistance of the body. The gurgled gasp. The widening of Tom Riddle's eyes. The heat of the blood.
It was like drinking cold water after thirst. Like stillness in chaos. The part of him that had begun to awaken—the part cryomancy fed on—thrived in this moment.
He felt powerful.
He felt... right.
Riddle gasped, crumpling to his knees.
Arthur didn't even look at the wound.
He turned, sword trailing crimson, and walked toward the diary—the cursed black heart still pulsing with tethered soul.
He lifted it.
It trembled in his hand, sensing its doom.
Tom groaned, still able to speak, still trying to pull himself toward Arthur. "You… don't know… what I'll become…"
Arthur didn't look back.
He simply said, "That's why I'm giving you time."
A beat passed.
Then he looked over his shoulder—ice-blue eyes meeting the monster's.
"Come find me in two years, Tom. Your real self."
He raised the sword, cold light gleaming along the silver.
"That should be enough time for you to get your affairs in order."
And with a motion smooth as snowmelt over steel—
He stabbed the diary.
It screamed.
The chamber groaned.
And Arthur didn't flinch.
∆∆∆∆∆∆
Silence fell.
Not the silence of peace, but the kind that comes after something ancient has been severed. Magic still clung faintly to the walls, like mist reluctant to vanish.
Arthur just stood there for a moment, shoulders heaving. His sword—no, his wand—rested loosely in his fingers, no longer gleaming with frost. The cryomancy had dissipated like a breath in cold air.
He looked down. A puddle near his foot shimmered, catching the torchlight.
And in it—his reflection.
Blue eyes.
Not the frosted silver they'd been minutes ago.
Black hair, not the storm-grey shade that had crowned his darker self not the silver that was during the battle.
He exhaled. Deep. Shaky. Alive.
"Elena?"
The word wasn't loud, but it carried.
A soft gasp.
Then a cough.
She stirred.
Arthur's heart leapt before he could catch it. He limped toward her, pain flaring with every step, but he didn't stop. He couldn't.
Elena sat up slowly, dazed, her eyes fluttering open. "Arthur? What... what happened? The last thing I remember was Ginny, and then—"
He knelt beside her, gently placing a finger on her lips.
"Let's get out of here first," he said quietly, eyes flicking toward Ginny's still form.
He turned to pick up the sword—but it was no longer a sword. Just his wand. Whole. Calm. Familiar. The transformation was over.
Looking around, the traces of cryomancy—the ice trails, the frost, even the stillness—had all faded. Like a memory sealed in dream.
Arthur caught his reflection once more in the puddle and frowned. He looked like himself again. But what did that mean, really?
Behind him, Elena got to her feet. She was still weak, swaying slightly, but she followed him without question.
And there it was again—that feeling.
Something about her presence smoothed the jagged edges inside him. Even when he didn't want to be calm, she made him feel warm. Even when he liked the cold.
Being with her must've reverted him.
They walked slowly.
Then Elena glanced over her shoulder. "What about the rest?"
Arthur paused, turning.
Ginny lay still, breathing softly.
Lockhart…
He wasn't just unconscious. He was empty. Mouth slightly open, eyes rolled up behind closed lids. His mind had been bled too hard, too fast.
"He's... alive," Arthur said. "But I don't know how much of him is left."
She looked at him, eyes narrowing slightly.
"And Tom?"
"Gone," Arthur replied, quietly. "No soul left to cling to. Not this time."
They turned to go.
But even as his steps echoed through the chamber, Arthur felt it inside him—that darkness hadn't left.
It had retreated.
Because of her.
But it was still there, coiled, quiet, waiting.
I might be back to normal, he thought, glancing sidelong at her. But it doesn't mean I'm still nice.
He clenched his wand a little tighter, more aware now of the line he'd crossed.
"They'll get help," he said aloud. "Once we're out of here."
And with that, they climbed—up the slick, stone path toward daylight.