Chapter 2 – The Map Between Worlds

Celene was nine when she realized that knowledge wasn't enough—not unless it could move with you.

Her magical laptop, the Arc-Lexicon, had become her greatest companion. She fed it endless data: texts in Latin, curse patterns from the 14th century, even structural blueprints of magical buildings. But it was still large, still stationary. In a house as vast and layered as the Fawley Villa, she needed more than a workstation.

She needed something she could carry.

So, over the course of a winter month, Celene built something new—smaller, sleeker, about the size of a Muggle smartphone. It was carved from obsidian, etched with fine runes only visible under moonlight. Powered by both alchemical cores and her own enchantments, the device pulsed faintly in her palm. She named it V.I.S. – Vigilant Inner Sensorium.

The program inside was uniquely hers: it combined magical detection spells with architectural mapping, similar in concept to the legendary Marauder's Map—though limited to her home. She could see rooms, moving dots representing her parents, Tibbin, Nessa, and even the soot-sprite that lived behind the south fireplace. She was, for the first time, aware of the full scope of her world.

And that's how she found the locked corridor.

A room she had never entered. It flickered on the VIS's display like a phantom—only visible when she stood at a certain angle in the northern hall. When she reached it in person, the hallway wall felt solid… until she pressed her palm against the stone and whispered, "Reveal."

The stones folded inward like paper.

The room beyond was dark and long-forgotten. Dust floated in still air. Shelves had collapsed, scrolls crumbled to flakes, and yet… in the center of the room sat a small stone pedestal. Upon it, half-buried in velvet and time, lay a fractured medallion. Only a quarter remained—worn gold with blackened edges, and a strange rune carved into its surface that shimmered when she breathed near it.

She reached out to touch it—

A gust of magic burst from her fingers, sharp and blinding. It sent a crack up the pedestal and knocked a nearby chair clear across the room. The lights in the corridor behind her flickered violently.

Her hands trembled.

That had never happened before. Magic had always come when she called it, not… when it wanted out.

Later that night, Nessa found her curled beneath the bay window, the fragment clasped tightly in her lap.

"Are you hurt, Miss Celene?" the house-elf asked quietly, kneeling with a steaming cup of sage tea.

"I don't know what that was," Celene whispered.

Nessa's large eyes flicked to the corner of the room—where books had fallen from their shelves—and then to the object in Celene's hand. "Sometimes," she said gently, "magic grows faster than we do."

Celene didn't answer. She couldn't stop staring at the rune. It pulsed faintly, like it remembered something.

The following evening, she returned to the corridor.

That's when she saw the bird.

A silver-feathered raven sat perched above the doorway, eyes like polished quartz. It did not caw, nor did it blink. It simply watched.

Celene took a slow step forward.

"You're not from here," she murmured.

The bird cocked its head. And then, to her utter shock, it spoke—not in English, but in a smooth, forgotten dialect of Old Welsh she had only read about in one buried book.

She didn't understand the full sentence, only fragments: "blood… gate… once more…"

When she blinked, the raven was gone. No sound. No wind.

Only the medallion in her hand, warmer now.

And the feeling that something had begun.