CHAPTER 195: MYSTERIOUS FORMATION

Sylas, flying southward, knew nothing of the schemes unfolding in Orthanc.

He soared over the Gap of Rohan, the wind whipping through his robes, until the vast, snow-capped line of the White Mountains stretched before him like a wall across the southern horizon.

These mountains ran east to west, dividing Rohan to the north from Gondor to the south. And hidden within their heart lay his destination, the Road of the Dead. The path began at Dwimorberg, the Haunted Mountain, where the accursed entrance awaited.

Sylas steered his broom toward the northern face of the range, descending onto a cliff that crowned the southern end of the Vale of Harrow. A perilous stairway carved into the stone spiraled upward from the valley floor, climbing in dizzying turns.

At each bend stood colossal statues, figures hewn in the shape of men, squatting with legs crossed, arms folded across their chests. Time had worn their faces into blank hollows, their eye sockets gaping like dark caverns, exuding a chill that seeped into the bones.

At last he reached the cliff-top. There a windswept meadow spread out, an ancient pathway cutting through its center, lined on both sides by jagged standing stones.

The place was bleak and solemn, no temple walls, no roof, only the open sky above and the looming stones. It was a natural shrine, an altar to powers long forgotten.

This was the Black Shrine, the threshold to the Road of the Dead.

Its origins were lost to time. Some whispered it had been raised before even the Númenóreans set foot in Middle-earth, perhaps even during the age when Morgoth held sway over the world. Elrond once confided to Sylas that he suspected it was a place of sacrifice, where the conquered peoples of old once offered tribute to Morgoth himself. When the Dark Enemy was cast into the Void, the shrine fell silent, left to crumble into ruin.

Sylas landed lightly upon the grass of the altar. His eyes roamed the weathered stones. A thought stirred. Could this place hold a sign-in point as well?

The system’s voice answered at once:

[Hogwarts Sign-in System: Location confirmed, White Mountains, Black Shrine. Would you like to sign in?]

"Yes," Sylas said without hesitation.

[Sign-in successful! Congratulations, you have obtained Ancient Sacrificial Magics!]

Before him appeared a heavy tome. Its cracked black cover was adorned with a grim image, a naked man bound upon a cross. For a heartbeat Sylas thought it a church relic from his former world, not a wizard’s book.

Curiosity overcame him. He opened the tome.

Shock deepened with every page.

Inside lay spells of terrible sacrifice: Voldemort’s ritual of resurrection, for instance, bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy. It was all written here.

Other rites demanded bloodier costs, slaughtering animals to heal wounds, or offering human lives in exchange for wealth, power, or luck.

One passage chilled him most of all: a "sacrifice of love," in which a willing soul surrendered life itself to shield a beloved with protection stronger than steel.

At once Lily Evans came to mind. She had invoked such magic, laying down her life for her son. That sacrifice had turned aside the Killing Curse, tearing Voldemort from his body and leaving the Dark Lord a broken spirit. That same act had marked Harry as the boy who lived, and it was why Voldemort’s downfall was written in prophecy.

Thanks to the Crown of Wisdom resting in his satchel, Sylas absorbed every line of the book swiftly, the knowledge locking into his sharpened mind.

When at last he closed the tome, his expression was thoughtful. These were no ordinary curses. They were brutal, demanding life, soul, and magic in equal measure, darker even than anything found in Secrets of the Darkest Arts.

And yet, temptation whispered. The power promised was staggering. He wondered grimly if he might test them on orcs or wargs someday, to see if the sacrifices yielded true results.

Shaking off the thought, Sylas mounted his broom and prepared to depart.

Then, glancing down, he froze.

The standing stones and statues below were not scattered at random. From above, he could see their precise arrangement, lines and arcs converging into a vast, deliberate pattern.

His breath caught. It was a sacrificial formation, one he had just studied in the book.

At first there was nothing, no stir of magic, no ripple of power. That was why Sylas hesitated.

Curiosity, however, got the better of him. He descended once more, wand in hand, and knelt beside one of the weathered statues. He pressed his wand to the stone, probing for a reaction. Nothing.

"Did I guess wrong?" he muttered, frowning.

But he did not give up. His eyes narrowed on the base of the statue, half-buried beneath centuries of soil. With a flick of his wand, the earth churned and shifted, spilling away in great clumps.

As the dirt rolled back, Sylas’s surprise grew. The figure visible aboveground was only the tip. Beneath lay the statue’s full body, still fused to a massive stone base. By the time the earth had sloughed away, he was standing in a pit three meters deep.

And there, at the bottom, his eyes caught the gleam of something darker. A slab, black, smooth as obsidian, etched with grooves that wound in strange and sinister patterns.

Sylas’s pulse quickened.

Raising his wand, he whispered a spell and struck the earth. The entire hilltop shuddered. The grass and soil blanketing the shrine rippled like water, then burst outward in a landslide, tumbling down the cliffs. When the shaking ceased, the crown of the hill was lowered by several meters, its living green carpet scoured away to reveal the truth.

A black floor stretched beneath him, vast and ancient. It was carved from stone and cut with narrow channels, like veins branching across a body. The standing stones and looming statues aligned perfectly with the network, forming the nodes of an immense design.

A formation.

Sylas swept his wand in a wide arc, conjuring a roaring wind. Dust, soil, and weeds were torn away, leaving the carved surface stark and clear. The pattern was fractured in places, worn by the centuries. He drew his wand and traced a spell of mending. Lines rejoined. Cracks sealed. The network of grooves flared whole again.

When the full design emerged, Sylas’s blood ran cold. He could not yet name its purpose, but the aura of it reeked of darkness. Elrond’s warning came back to him: the shrine might once have belonged to Morgoth.

And though Morgoth had been cast into the Void, Sylas knew better than to tamper with anything tied to the Dark Enemy. Even in ruin, the echoes of such power could be perilous.

He carefully sketched the completed pattern onto parchment. Better Elrond or Galadriel see this, he thought grimly. Not I.

He was just about to destroy the formation when a crow hurtled out of the sky. It slammed into the stone and lay twitching, its wings broken, black feathers scattered.

Sylas froze.

Then came the sound. A shrill chorus of cries. He turned his head skyward;

A storm of crows, a vast murder, descended shrieking from the clouds. One after another they hurled themselves into the ground like maddened arrows, breaking, bleeding, falling dead at his feet.

Blood spread quickly, unnaturally, seeping into the grooves of the black stone as though the slab itself were thirsty. The channels filled, glowing faintly red, the blood racing outward across the shrine like rivers seeking their sea.

The formation stirred.

A pulse of magic shivered through the air, vile and oppressive. The stone statues trembled; in their hollow sockets faint pinpricks of light glimmered, cold and hateful, as though unseen eyes had just opened.

This sudden change made Sylas very uneasy.

Without hesitation, Sylas raised his wand and unleashed a destructive spell.

"Bombarda!"

A blinding surge of magic roared forth, crashing against the black stone floor and the looming statues with the force of a falling mountain. The very air shook from the blast.

But instead of shattering, the formation drank in the spell like water poured onto parched earth. The destructive force vanished into the channels of the stone, and the grooves blazed crimson.

The formation quickened.

The sky above the Black Shrine darkened as if a storm had gathered in an instant, thunder growling in the distance. The statues loomed taller in the gloom, their hollow sockets glimmering with cold, hateful light.

’Magic only feeds it.’

He gritted his teeth, made his choice, and shouted:

"Brisingr!"

In a burst of light and fire, the enchanted blade appeared in his grip. Its edge blazed with the venom of the basilisk, the radiance of Eärendil’s light, and the airy power of Vilya bound within its runes.

With both hands, he drove the sword into the heart of the black stone floor.

The impact resounded like a hammer upon an anvil. Flames spread outward, and the searing light clashed against the bloody grooves of the formation. The ground hissed and smoked as two powers warred, the corrupted magic of the shrine and the pure, devastating energy of the sword.

The formation shuddered, its rhythm faltering as though its gears had seized.

Seizing the moment, Sylas thrust his other hand into his space bag and drew forth Aeglos.

"Pierce through the darkness!" he cried.

The divine spear sank into the black stone like a hot blade through ice. At once, a surge of destructive power erupted outward. Cracks spiderwebbed from the point of impact, racing across the shrine in every direction. The ancient lines of the formation split apart, breaking the flow of power.

The air itself screamed.

With a final echoing crack, the black stone floor collapsed in great slabs. The carved patterns ruptured, and the crimson glow guttered out.

The oppressive pressure lifted. The dark clouds unraveled and drifted away. Sunlight spilled once more across the cliff, golden and clean.

Sylas exhaled, chest heaving. ’Too close... if I’d been a moment late, who knows what horror might have answered this call?’

He wrenched Aeglos free, then pulled the sword from the fractured earth. Without pausing, he set to work destroying the remnants. He scoured the grooves until they were no more, shattered the standing stones, and toppled the statues.

Only when the site was a ruin beyond recovery did Sylas finally rest.

Mounting his broom, he cast one last wary glance at the shattered shrine before turning south.