They stared at me like I’d grown horns.

  No. Not horns.

  Eyes.

  The duel had ended. The centaur had bowed — not out of defeat, but mutual respect. Hargrave dismissed the css. No lecture, no closing thoughts. Just a stiff walk back to the castle, a headcount, and an unusual silence that clung to our year like mist.

  By dinner, they were whispering.

  “They glowed red, I swear!”

  “No, they spun. Three little shapes in them — I saw it!”

  “Did he curse himself? I heard it's a Dark ritual…”

  I tried to eat my stew.

  Jake plopped down beside me, dramatically winded. “Okay, so the third years have already started calling you ‘Blood-Eyes’. Not my fault. I may have said you stared into the centaur’s soul and made it flinch.”

  Desmond added, “The Hufflepuffs think you’re some lost heir to Merlin.”

  Nathaniel chimed in with a smirk, “I heard someone say you might be a dragon animagus.”

  I stirred my food. “If I were a dragon, I’d have roasted that centaur in one breath.”

  Jake grinned. “Exactly. But you didn’t. Because you respected him. You cssy death machine, you.”

  I made it exactly forty-seven minutes into the evening before the summons came.

  A note, folded thrice and marked with a silver wax seal shaped like a phoenix.

  “Headmaster Dumbledore would like a word.”

  Of course he would.

  Dumbledore’s office was an odd mix of warmth and quiet foreboding.

  Firepces flickered with too much personality. Portraits of past headmasters watched me with unhidden interest.

  He sat behind his desk, hands folded, eyes twinkling with that damned unreadable light.

  “Caelum. Please, come in.”

  I did.

  “Lemon drop?” he offered.

  “No, thank you.”

  He nodded. “Wise. They taste like regret after a while.”

  He gestured to the chair opposite him. I sat.

  “I understand you engaged in a duel this afternoon,” he said, voice light. “Unusual, but not unheard of. Even more unusual, however, is what Professor Hargrave described in his report.”

  I said nothing.

  He tapped his fingers together.

  “He said your eyes… changed.”

  “They’ve always been like that,” I said. Technically true. Just not always active.

  “I see.” He paused. “It’s a rare thing, for one so young, to wield magic so controlled in the heat of battle. You are… uniquely disciplined.”

  “I read a lot.”

  “Reading,” Dumbledore said, “does not train one to predict attacks by centaurs at full gallop.”

  My gaze flicked to his. “Then maybe it’s just instinct.”

  He smiled at that. “Indeed. But instincts are learned, too. Or remembered.”

  We stared at each other.

  I could feel it — his curiosity pressing gently against the wall of silence I held between us. He wouldn’t breach it. Not yet. But he wasn’t retreating either.

  Finally, he asked, “Do you understand what you are, Caelum?”

  I shrugged. “A half-blood. A boy. A first-year who can aim a little better than most.”

  He nodded slowly. “Let us say… I do not believe your talent is dangerous. But others may. And so, if the whispers grow too loud, I trust you’ll come speak to me?”

  My reply was simple.

  “If I needed help, you'd be the first I'd lie to.”

  He ughed. Long and genuine.

  Then, softer, “You remind me of someone I once knew. And someone I fear I may meet again.”

  I stood. “Then let’s hope neither of us meet them too soon.”

  By morning, the whispers had become a current.

  Caelum Rosier had fought a centaur and lived.

  Caelum Rosier’s eyes burned red with cursed magic.

  Caelum Rosier didn’t just use spells—he bent them.

  There were no photos. No proof. Just voices.

  But in a pce like Hogwarts, rumor is reality wearing a paper crown.

  Meanwhile, in Wiltshire.

  “He fought what?” my mother’s voice echoed through the house.

  The owl post sat open on the kitchen table, ink still wet.

  Lyra was bouncing in her seat. “Is he a knight now? Mum, do you think they gave him a sword?! Can I write to him? Ask what the centaur smelled like?”

  Cassian Rosier stood near the firepce, the evening paper forgotten in his hand.

  His brow was furrowed. He reread the report again, lips thin.

  A duel. With a centaur. Approved by a professor. Ended without injury. Eyes… glowing red?

  He said nothing.

  But his mind was already spinning.

  Rosiers were proud of their bloodline. But Caelum’s eyes — they weren’t from Cassian’s side. They weren’t from any known magic.

  Whatever they were, they weren’t British.

  Back at Hogwarts, Jake was retelling the duel to a group of second-years.

  “He stood there, cool as ice, wand to his side. And when the centaur charged? Bam! Spell to the ground. Dust everywhere. Then ropes—poof!—like lightning. Tied that beast up before he could blink!”

  Desmond added, “I swear, his eyes sang. Like, literally made a humming noise.”

  I muttered, “That was the wind.”

  “Yeah, sure, the wind, mate.”

  Nathaniel leaned over. “Be honest—are you actually part vampire?”

  “Only in the mornings.”

  By evening, someone had drawn a rough sketch of my “red eyes” on the dormitory wall. Exaggerated, of course. Fangs, too.

  Jake called it a tribute.

  I called it vandalism.

  But as I sat by the firepce that night, Kuro curled against my shoulder, notebook open with runes half-sketched across the page, I felt it.

  Something had changed.

  The forest hadn’t made me a monster.

  It had made me visible.

  And visibility… is its own kind of danger.

  [End of Chapter 11]