The interior of the pyramid was a ruin of half-lit corridors and broken arcane veins. A once-glorious temple of light and precision, now cracked open to the desert winds and haunted by the pulse of the wounded anchor. The magical core, normally sealed in layers of protection and secrecy, now floated freely in the open air of the main chamber. It pulsed with soft, flickering light, rhythmic like a heartbeat. Its surface was scorched and fissured, glowing with fractured magic trying desperately to hold.
Tenzin approached the anchor slowly, his expression tightening as he felt the sheer weight of its magic. A presence pressed against his soul like the gravity of a black hole ancient, vast, and barely restrained.
"So this is the anchor…" he murmured.
Beside him, Albus Dumbledore's brow furrowed in quiet awe. "Its power… I've never felt anything like it."
"Yes," Morpheus said, his voice rough with fatigue but still sharp. He stood a few paces away, arms crossed over his tattered robes. "This is the only thing keeping them from a full-scale invasion. One of the last veils between their world and ours."
Across the room, war leaders and survivors gathered in a tense circle. A section of the floor had been cleared near the base of the anchor. Ahmed knelt beside Bjorn, whose massive frame was slumped against a fractured pillar. The warrior was wrapped in bloodied cloth, his left arm gone just above the elbow.
"I'm keeping him stabilized," Ahmed said without looking up. "But the damage is deep. We'll need specialized magic to restore the limb if he even wants it."
"I want my axe," Bjorn growled through clenched teeth. "I'll wield it in my teeth if I have to."
The goblin engineer was scribbling symbols in a notebook, muttering to himself while glancing at the anchor's exposed core. "If this structure fails again, not even the gods will survive the fallout. It's like balancing a mountain on a needle."
A centaur stood sentinel behind them, his bow slung over his back, his eyes scanning the broken ceiling above. The entire room seemed to groan beneath the pressure of what had transpired and what was to come.
Tenzin turned to Morpheus. "The pyramid is exposed. Do you think they'll strike again?"
"Yes," Morpheus replied without hesitation. "And soon. Thor's explosion changed the terrain, broke our outer defenses. The anchor is vulnerable, and they know it. They'll come with full force, gods, monsters, armies. It won't matter how many they have to sacrifice."
He looked toward the cracked ceiling, as if he could already feel the next assault in the air.
"They'll destroy the pyramid," Morpheus continued. "And they'll destroy the anchor. There's no way around it."
Albus took a quiet step forward. "Then what are our options?"
The room went still.
Herpo's voice answered from the shadows. "We have two."
He stepped forward, his basilisk form now returned to human, his robes tattered, eyes still sharp. "One: we hold out. Delay them as long as possible. Thousands will die our best warriors, our last reserves. The anchor will fall eventually, and we'll be too broken to fight afterward."
No one spoke.
"Two," Herpo said, "we set a trap."
At that, even the goblin looked up.
Tenzin arched a brow. "What kind of trap?"
Herpo turned his head slightly, Morpheus was no longer standing among them.
The dark sorcerer had walked away in silence, crossing to a chamber alcove beneath the broken archways. He sat cross-legged on the scorched stone and closed his eyes, breath slow, sinking into trance.
"Divination," Herpo said. "He needs time to see the pattern. The veil is weak now he might glimpse their next move. But we can't wait too long."
He looked to the others, eyes flicking between them.
"The trap would center around wards and runes, we would need to build a massive illusion, a illusion so realistic it looks like our armies are still here. When they come to strike the anchor will detonate taking the army with them."
"Sacrifice the pyramid?" Ahmed asked, his voice low.
"The structure's already ruined," the goblin said grimly. "It might be the only way."
"But in doing so the anchor would be destroyed which would allow for them to send their strongest 'gods' would it not? It would cause a temporary win but potentially lose us the war." Tenzin remarked grimly
Silence fell again.
Outside, the wind howled through the cracks.
***
Morpheus sat and focused his mind, he knew what he was about to do was going to cause him great mental exhaustion.
His eyes, most don't know what they were. A rare family trait is what he assumed as Morpheus himself, doesn't know exactly what they are, too.
After all he was the first to receive them and most likely would be the last. The clear, mirror-like eyes of his seemed cool, but it was torture for him.
Every glance he had to hold himself back from diving into what he was looking at.
Now, he gave in.
First, he cast his sight into the path of relocation.
'What if they moved the anchor?'
He followed the threads—watched battalions lifting it with enchantments, saw it swaddled in containment fields, magics woven from every culture still fighting. But the instant it was lifted, the lattice that held it began to fracture. The core started bleeding energy.
The veil above the desert cracked like thin ice. Not just a window but a yawning, sucking rift.
Demons didn't crawl through they surged.
The world screamed.
Morpheus recoiled. That timeline was death.
He shifted the vision.
'What if they did set the trap? Let the gods come, flood the chamber, and spring every ward at once collapsing the pyramid and shattering the anchor with it?'
He watched it play out—Herpo leading them into battle, explosives both magical and ancient Muggle placed at pressure points. The pyramid became a tomb.
The trap was perfect.
It worked.
The anchor shattered.
The explosion wasn't just light and flame. It was magic unchained. A sun being born from its corpse.
The army of the gods was annihilated ripped apart mid-charge.
But as the anchor died, so did the last tether on the veil.
Morpheus followed the thread further. A week. Then five days. Then three.
The sky burned. The sun darkened. The stronger gods Odin himself, Michael, even one of the Primordial Thrones descended. Not cloaked. Not restrained.
Unbound.
Humanity's screams filled the horizon. Magic bent around them like air around fire.
The trap had only made the wound larger. It was not a solution.
Morpheus' fingers trembled. His breath hitched.
He moved again.
'What if they sealed part of it? Repaired the pyramid. Warded half the structure. Rebalanced the flow.'
It bought time. A week. Then ten days. But the pressure mounted. Each temporary solution only delayed the inevitable. The veil was weakening faster than they could heal the wound.
He tried another. And another.
'What if they buried it beneath the earth?'
The anchor corrupted. Underground, cut off from stabilizing ley lines, it became wild turned on its own creators.
'What if they split its energy among decoys?'
The veil fractured. The gods found the real one eventually. Their victory was slower, but more brutal.
Again. And again.
Every future came with a cost he could not stomach.
He began to sweat. Blood beaded at the corner of his eye.
He saw future after future. Some with him dead. Some with the world in fire. Some where humans survived, but twisted into slaves of the divine.
He was drowning in outcomes. In the agony of too many paths, none of them right.
A voice someone calling his name faintly, far away tried to reach him.
But Morpheus didn't break the trance.
He stayed kneeling, still, eyes open, tears now running down his cheek not of sorrow, but of pain. Not one solution satisfied him. Not one thread felt like hope.
Only failure repeated in new masks.
And yet…
Somewhere, hidden far down a narrow, splinter-thin thread of probability, he glimpsed something he hadn't seen in the others:
A stillness.
A silence at the end of war.
It was faint. Fragile. A ghost of a possibility.
But it was there.
His eyes narrowed, and he gritted his teeth against the overwhelming noise of futures crashing into each other.
That was the thread he would chase.
He opened his eyes.
The room had gone quiet, all eyes on him.
Blood trailed from both nostrils now. His hair was damp with sweat. His breathing was ragged.
And his eyes oh they burned like an inferno