A/N - Hey guys, sorry for not updating for a while. I was wrapping up my exams.
Enjoy ...
The room was more cave than chamber, more tomb than lair.
Lit only by a series of hovering orbs that glowed dull orange, the stone chamber pulsed with shadow. Chains hung from the ceiling—some broken, some dripping with slow, silvery liquid that hissed as it touched the floor. Runes crawled along the walls like slow-burning veins, etched in blood, bone ash, and something far older. In the center, a lone table stood crooked under the weight of scrolls, diagrams, and half-finished enchantments scratched in three different scripts.
The hooded man sat at the edge, hunched like a vulture over his prey. His robes were frayed at the sleeves, cuffs stained with ancient ink and something darker. One of his gloves had runes stitched directly into the leather. The other hand was bare—pale, spotted with burn scars, and twitching gently as it dragged a charcoal stick across parchment.
He wasn't writing words. He was charting fractures—fault lines in magic, possible timelines, failed versions of Arthur Reeves.
"Too early," he muttered. "No. Too unstable. Not yet. Needs another break. A deeper crack."
He flipped a page violently, revealing a sketch—Arthur in Thunderbird uniform, silver streaks in his hair, frost blooming at his fingertips.
Then—
a soft, melodic humming.
It came before the door opened—tuneless but sweet, like a lullaby being whispered through a child's teeth.
The metal door creaked slowly inward, revealing a slender figure cloaked in midnight blue. She entered without sound, save for the faint jingling of something around her neck—glass vials, perhaps. Or charms.
Her boots were soaked with rain. Her robe shimmered with residual glamour, like a mirror rippling in reverse. Her hood was low, but strands of silver-white hair slipped from its edge, framing a jaw that looked far too soft for the horror she carried in her hands—a small satchel dripping red.
"You're early," the man said without turning.
The girl's voice was clear, high, and cold—like a violin plucked too tightly. "He dreams of me again."
The man paused mid-sketch, eye twitching.
Her feet padded softly toward the table. She set the satchel down with a wet thunk. "I could feel it. He's fraying. I like it when he frays."
The man's voice hardened. "You've interfered too many times."
"I only watched," she said, cocking her head. "Watched him panic. Watched him scream. His soul smells sweeter when it's terrified." A small giggle. "He's beautiful when he breaks."
The man finally turned. His face remained in shadow, but his breath was frost-bitten.
"He is a tool."
"No." Her tone shifted—too soft, too dreamy. "He's my love."
A pause.
Then: "Arthur Reeves," she whispered. "My future, my ruin, my prize."
The man stared. "You forget yourself. You are not his equal."
Her expression—what little could be seen—didn't change. But her magic shifted.
"You're right," she murmured. "He is so much more."
A beat of silence passed.
Then she twirled, slow and graceful, letting her cloak fan around her like wings. "His blood is humming again. The frost is speaking to him. Calling. That's your fault."
"No," he corrected sharply. "That's the Fivefold waking."
Her twirling stopped.
She turned back, all playfulness gone.
"But he is not ready," the man went on. "The traits are converging too quickly. The Varnhound forced it. His Beasttongue is crying beneath his skin."
The girl's fingers fluttered near her mouth, thoughtful. "Do you think... if I touch him, the rest will surface?"
"You'll do no such thing."
She pouted. "You're cruel."
"And you're impulsive."
She circled the table now, running her hand across the edges. Her palm left little flowers wherever it passed. "We need the Reeves blood," she said. "All of it. Still warm. Still singing."
"We will get it," he growled. "But we must finish the vessel first. The pain must be right. The trigger must be personal."
She stopped across from him, eyes glittering beneath her hood.
"It already is," she whispered. "He doesn't even know... but he was always mine. Before Ilvermorny. Before frost and fire and family. They just borrowed him."
A long silence fell.
The man turned back to his parchment, voice low.
"You're projecting."
She tilted her head, smiling softly. "And you're underestimating."
He said nothing. Only gestured toward a far wall. Runes shimmered to life, revealing a large metal tank. Something inside shifted—big, serpentine, and twitching with restrained magic.
"The vessel is nearly stable," he said. "But we need more pain. More heat. Let him fall again. Let him freeze. Let him break something precious."
Her silver-ringed fingers pressed gently against her lips, like she was holding in a laugh—or a prayer. "So we push him again?"
"No. We observe." The man stood slowly.
The girl giggled once more. "I hope he bleeds prettily."
The glyphs on the tank flared. The beast inside thrashed.
---
Arthur woke with a sharp breath.
The room was dark, save for the flickering glow of the stars streaming in through the windows. That did little to settle the cold sweat prickling his skin. His uniform—still half on—clung uncomfortably.
He sat up slowly.
No dreams.
No memories.
Just a feeling.
A heavy one. Like eyes pressing into his spine.
He scanned the room. Empty.
Only the rustle of banners on the wall and the distant murmur of enchanted lanterns along the corridors. But something was wrong.
His bond with Alpha—it was... thin.
Like a frayed thread stretched across too wide a void. Not broken. Not whole. Just trembling.
Arthur rubbed his arms, his veins itching faintly beneath the skin. He turned toward the window.
Outside, the forest slept.
But something within it didn't.
A flicker.
A spark of green.
There and gone again between the trees.
Arthur narrowed his eyes, a whisper floating in the back of his mind—like breath on cold glass.
"it's like second year all over again. Except, I'm the main character."
He blinked, and it vanished.
He didn't move for a long time after that.
∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆
"Do you know what Project Silverfang was, Headmistress?"
Ignatius Crowe sat calmly across from Wren in her private study, the firelight casting sharp edges on his angular face. His fingers were steepled, and a worn folder lay between them—its seal broken, edges crisp with age. Wren's expression remained unreadable, but her eyes never left him.
"I'm listening," she said coolly.
He slid the file forward. "It was more than classified. It was buried."
She opened the folder slowly. Old photographs—black and white—fluttered into view. Some were diagrams. Others showed creatures. Half-formed. Wrong.
Fangs where there shouldn't be. Bones growing through flesh. Some bore glowing sigils on their foreheads. Some had human eyes.
"Mutations," Wren murmured. "Illegally bound."
Ignatius nodded. "Cassian Reeves led it."
Her eyes snapped up.
"He was young. Brilliant. And dangerously obsessed with… evolution. With forcing magical creatures to bond with specific bloodlines."
He tapped one image—an enormous beast with ridged plating and tusks, curled in agony inside a containment circle.
"He believed the Reeves blood carried a 'convergence point'—a genetic gateway that could stabilize forced magical symbiosis. He wanted to create soldiers, Headmistress. Creatures that would answer only to Reeves descendants."
Wren's lips thinned. "That doesn't sound like the Cassian I know."
"People change," Ignatius said smoothly. "Some… adapt. Some bury what they did."
Wren scanned more documents. A manifest of destroyed subjects. Incident reports. Lab notes—many signed only with an ornate R.
"And why come forward now?" she asked, voice low.
Ignatius leaned forward, lowering his voice as if sharing a sacred sin.
"Because I fear it's resurfacing."
Wren raised an eyebrow.
"The Varnhounds," he said. "You think this is someone outside our world. I don't. I think... the program was never really shut down. I think someone is activating the old triggers."
He slid the final photo across.
A prototype. Labeled "VARN TYPE-3."
Its eye glowed green.
Wren's face paled.
"You're saying—"
"Yes," Ignatius whispered. "The thing that attacked Arthur Reeves… wasn't summoned. It was called. By blood."
...
[Moments later]
The file sat untouched.
Wren stood at her window, arms folded, gaze far beyond the storm-lit trees of Ilvermorny's forest edge.
Snow hadn't fallen yet, but the cold had arrived early. It pressed against the glass like memory.
Cassian Reeves.
He'd once been a student here. A boy of razor intellect and bruised dignity, always leading half a step before two brighter stars—Philip and Selene. The three Reeves siblings had been untouchable. Brilliant. Loyal. Symphonic, even. Where Cassian was calculated and sharp, Selene was wild and intuitive. And Philip…
Philip was lightning.
When he laughed, walls seemed to brighten. When he spoke, even the portraits shut up to listen. And when he dueled—he didn't fight. He danced.
Back then, Wren had only just begun teaching Charms and Defensive Spellwork. Younger than most professors, barely older than some students. But she'd watched those three blaze through Ilvermorny like a comet split three ways.
She remembered how tightly they clung to one another.
Until the day Philip left.
At their father's command, no less. Called to Hogwarts, of all places. Wren remembered Cassian's face that day. Not anger. Not even confusion.
Just silence.
A silent fracture.
They never said why. Philip never told her. Selene never forgave it. And Cassian… he folded inward.
Even after graduation, Wren followed their stories. Philip joined the Aurors. Then the Order. Then… Voldemort.
Gone. Like so many others.
Selene? Disappeared.
No letters. No trace. Not a whisper of her in the years that followed. It was as if grief had split them across time zones and oceans.
And Cassian remained.
But not whole.
When Wren summoned him years later to help rework the curricula, he'd arrived already half a ghost. Older. Worn. But still brilliant.
Still himself.
He never spoke of Philip. Or Selene. Or what became of their family estate in Glenhaven. But he worked. Hard. Devoted himself to his work. Always had time for the misunderstood.
Always protected the ones like Arthur.
And now… this.
These files.
This story.
Monstrous experiments? Twisted creatures? A program to weaponize Reeves blood?
She turned away from the glass, staring at the folder on her desk like it might bite.
No. It didn't fit. Cassian could be cold. Secretive. Wounded. But he wouldn't twist lives into weapons. Not even to protect Arthur.
Not unless—
She paused.
Unless he thought it was the only way to keep Arthur alive.
The thought cracked something in her chest.
Her gaze swept to the flickering lanterns. The shadows in the corners. The growing storm in the trees.
"If this is a lie," she whispered aloud, "why does it feel so close to the truth?"
Outside, a hawk cut across the moon.
And somewhere far below, deep in the belly of the school, something else stirred—something old, and angry, and awakening.
∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆
The storm hadn't reached them yet, but the air was heavy—thick like old paper left too long in silence.
Cassian Reeves sat alone in his office, the soft scratch of parchment beneath his fingers the only sound. The dim firelight painted flickers across the walls, illuminating stacks of magical reports, congressional letters, and a file folder so weathered, it looked like it belonged to another century.
The Muncain attack. The first Varnhound sighting in over a decade.
And now Ilvermorny.
He flipped the pages slowly—genetic readings, magical flux charts, ethereal blueprints of the creature's circulatory aether. The second report detailed Arthur's magical signature during the breach: erratic but hyper-reactive. Fractured, yet teeming with latent code. Not just magic—bloodcode. The same wavelength as the creature.
Cassian's jaw tightened.
Genetic mutations.
He loathed those words. Always had. To him, they were nothing but vanity—man's desperate need to play creator. What he saw in these reports… weren't random mutations. They were manufactured signatures, spliced together by hands that knew what they were doing.
And worse, it was familiar.
He recognized this pattern.
He'd seen it before.
A case long buried. A file he'd once chased across three continents.
Project Silverfang.
Back then, it was dismissed as fringe lunacy. A small rogue syndicate believed magical creatures weren't to be understood—they were to be repurposed. Remade. Used. Turned into weapons.
Cassian had nearly caught them.
Once.
He'd chased their leader to a ravine in Eastern Ireland—alone, stupid, overconfident. A duel followed. Violent. Fast. And for the first time in his life—he lost.
The leader never revealed their face. Always hooded. Even mid-duel, they wore a sticking charm to hold their cowl in place, like they feared the truth of who they were even more than death.
But the aura... the fighting style... the tone of voice...
It felt familiar.
Like shaking hands with a ghost.
He still remembered what the figure said after their wand forced him to his knees:
Reeves. You lot think you can act high and mighty because of your blood. Your... inheritance. No more. Remember my words, Reeves. This is just the prologue."
The prologue, he had said.
So what was this, then? The main act?
Cassian exhaled sharply, rising from his chair. He stared out the window as a wind stirred the treetops below, thoughts colliding.
If these new Varnhounds followed the same structure, the same genetic spikes… if Arthur's magic interacted with them...
Then this wasn't about random creature attacks.
It was about Arthur.
Arthur Reeves. The Singular Heir. The only living branch of Philip's bloodline. The boy born with all five gifts with evident manifestation of two.
The key.
Their target.
Or worse—their ignition point.
"They need him to break." The realization came cold and fast. "To fracture. To trigger. And then they'll come for him."
Cassian turned back toward the desk. No more waiting. No more silence. He pulled the old case file forward and reached for his wand.
"I'm reopening this," he said aloud. "Project Silverfang is active. Again."
Then he paused—just for a moment—his eyes drifting to the window.
If he had made the connection, then surely he had too.
Which meant—
There would be a mole in the Congress.
He didn't even flinch when the door creaked open behind him.
Three MACUSA agents stood there, wands drawn but pointed downward, as if reluctant.
The lead agent—a woman in a sharp cloak, face unreadable—stepped forward and read from a small silver scroll.
"Cassian Reeves. You have been charged with the illegal engineering of magical creatures through genetic manipulation. The Silverfang Dossier names you as architect. You are hereby ordered to surrender for detainment and questioning."
Cassian didn't turn. He didn't need to.
He simply smiled, sad and slow, the kind of smile worn by men who've seen too much to be surprised anymore.
He's back, Cassian thought.
And then, just under his breath:
"I can't help you anymore, Arthur. The rest is up to you kids now."
With no resistance, he stepped forward and walked into the shadowed hallway beyond.
The door shut behind him.