Harry Potter: The art of divination

The wind howled gently over the jagged peaks of the Wuling Mountains, brushing across pine-covered cliffs and winding stone steps. At the summit crowned by drifting mist and silence stood a shrine carved into the very bones of the mountain. Modest in scale, its architecture bore the elegant austerity of Japanese design: curved eaves, ink-brushed seals above the lintels, and prayer flags that fluttered like ghosts in the thin air.

This was not a holy place for gods, but for guardians.

Kazuki Kurogane, Headmaster of Mahoutokoro, ascended the last stone step and paused beneath the torii gate. His robes, heavy with spell-thread, rustled faintly. The silver clasp at his throat shaped like an origami crane glimmered in the high-altitude light.

Below him sprawled the base camp: a carefully organized labyrinth of tents, barrier totems, rune-carved lanterns, and magically reinforced pavilions. Witches and wizards moved with practiced urgency—commanders from Thailand conferred over battlefield scrolls, Korean geomancers traced ley line convergence with astral chalk, Mongolian sky-riders sat beside their feathered steeds preparing talons and saddles. There were Tibetan monks in golden robes humming deep, harmonic wards into the stone.

And there were others, too—magical creatures, native and allied. A hulking baku lay beside the diviner's tent, its curled trunk occasionally twitching in dreams. A Qilin walked the eastern ridge, its glowing hooves never touching the earth. In the shadowed edge of the woods, eyes watched—silent, golden, unblinking. Spirit foxes. Guardians summoned by old rites.

Kazuki passed among them quietly.

He said little, but his presence was felt. Heads turned in silent acknowledgment. His gaze swept across the defenses, lingering on the reinforced barriers at the perimeter—wards layered in esoteric patterns, each one painstakingly harmonized with the ley web of the mountain.

He ascended the final slope toward the shrine.

It sat unassumingly atop the summit—no larger than a small dojo. Those unfamiliar might think it symbolic. A formality.

They would be wrong.

Kazuki stepped through the threshold. The wards parted like breath on glass. As soon as his foot crossed into the shrine—

—the world expanded.

From the outside, it was a single room. Within, the space widened impossibly. A vast inner sanctum stretched out before him, illuminated by hanging lanterns and floating kanji that shimmered like constellations. Pillars of dark, enchanted cedar rose into a starless dome overhead. There was no sign of the anchor. That was by design.

It lay far below, sealed beneath hundreds of meters of enchanted stone, suspended in a magical pocket well outside conventional space. Only a handful of individuals even knew how to reach it.

The defenses were not only physical.

Kazuki made his way across the polished floor, the echo of his footsteps swallowed by heavy silence. On the far side of the sanctum, a door opened into a meeting chamber carved into the heart of the mountain. Inside, a dozen figures turned as he entered.

They were commanders, scholars, and mystics representatives from all across Asia. Seated on meditation cushions or standing with arms folded, they looked to him not with impatience, but gravity. This war had taught them all how to wait.

Kazuki gave a respectful bow of his head, then spoke in calm, even tones.

"I bring word from Morpheus. He will be arriving shortly."

Murmurs passed between them some surprised, others wary.

Even here, among the oldest schools and orders of magic, his name stirred tension. But they had seen the veil split. They had seen what came through it.

They would listen.

The meeting was about to begin.

***

The mist along the Wuling ridges was thinner now. The sun cut pale knives through it, scattering silver light across pine needles and polished stone.

Morpheus Everglade emerged from the veil with a soft rustle of wind and cloak. No fanfare announced him. No guards escorted him. He stepped from thin air just beyond the perimeter ward and began his ascent in silence.

His dark robes trailed behind him, embroidered with black-on-black runes that shifted with movement. He carried no wand. The air around him shimmered faintly with the suggestion of cloaked power—a slow, gravitational pull that turned heads even when he passed without a word.

The base camp, seen through his eyes, was less a testament to cooperation and more an exercise in containment.

Too many people.

Too many vulnerabilities.

Eyes followed him some openly, some cautiously. A Thai commander stiffened, a pair of Tibetan monks lowered their chants as he passed. The baku that had lain dozing beside the diviner's tent lifted its heavy head and let out a low, unsettled huff. Even the Qilin a creature born of virtue turned away as he walked the ridge below it, its glowing hooves dimming slightly.

Morpheus did not return their glances. He noticed the subtle shifts, of course registering wariness, reverence, distrust, and in some, awe but they slid off his expressionless face like rain off slate.

He did not come for kinship.

Only results.

Where Kazuki had seen disciplined readiness, Morpheus saw brittle unity, patchwork loyalties, and the lingering scent of fear in the ward lines. It was not that they were unprepared it was that they were untested in ways that mattered now. Against this new enemy, spellbooks and school pride meant nothing.

His boots met the mountain steps with precise rhythm. He moved unhurriedly up the slope, through the same narrow shrine gate, past the same fluttering flags.

And then—

—he entered the shrine.

The space expanded around him, just as it had for Kazuki. But the room responded to him differently. The kanji in the lanternlight dimmed slightly, colors cooling to shades of steel and blue. The enchanted air hung heavier. The magic in the walls seemed to pause, as if noting his presence before continuing their slow, eternal motion.

He ignored it some would think the wards were judging him but they would be wrong. The shrine was reacting to feeling his magic after years of absence. 

Past the pillars, through the sanctum, he made his way toward the meeting chamber. Only once did he glance downward, toward the invisible anchor far below.

It was still intact.

For now.

When he stepped through the final doorway, the room quieted. Half a dozen heads turned, voices died on the cusp of words. Some in the circle of representatives stood instinctively, then remembered themselves and sat back down.

Kazuki Kurogane gave him a slight nod. "Morpheus. Thank you for coming."

Morpheus inclined his head and took his place beside a wizened Vietnamese wardmistress. He folded his hands in his lap and said nothing.

Kazuki's gaze lingered. Then he asked, calmly:

"Is it finally our turn?"

"Will they come for this anchor next?"

A beat of silence passed.

Morpheus's voice was quiet, but resolute. "That is my belief." He looked around the room. "But they won't come the same way. Not after what happened at the pyramid."

"Then how?" a younger Chinese enchanter asked, brows furrowed. "Surely not another siege?"

Morpheus's gaze didn't shift. "They'll move with subtlety. Deceit. They may already be watching." He paused. "I do not believe they will attack all at once, or with brute force. Their faith in overwhelming power has been… shaken."

Kazuki folded his arms. "So we prepare for traps."

Morpheus nodded once. "And for lies. The creatures lost more than a spear at the pyramid. They lost certainty. That makes them dangerous in new ways."

The room was silent, the weight of his words settling over them like mist.

Outside the shrine, the wind shifted again, curling around the old stones, whispering of war yet to come.