AN: Sorry for the short chapter barely had the time to write today.
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Fudge didn't know how long he'd been standing there—slack-jawed, drenched in cold sweat, his knees locked and aching. The same thought played in his mind like a broken record, again and again:
That could have been me.
The memory of Thane catching the Killing Curse with his bare hand, of watching that assassin being buried beneath a forest of stone blades, was seared into his thoughts like a brand.
"S-sir, w-what are we supposed to do?" an Auror finally asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. His wand-hand trembled, and his eyes were wide with a dawning sense of horror. "A-are we… are we still arresting him?"
Fudge snapped out of his frozen trance, whirling on the young man with wild, bloodshot eyes. "Are you blind or just plain mad?!" he spat. "Do you think anyone here has the power to arrest that?!"
The Auror visibly shrank back, blanching. "I-I didn't mean anything by it…"
"Damn right you didn't!" Fudge hissed, his face flushed a blotchy red as his panic overtook his anger. "Now keep your bloody mouth shut and pray he didn't hear you!"
The Auror nodded rapidly, retreating a step as if to make himself smaller.
Fudge spun back around, heart pounding, scanning the field. It took him a moment to spot Thane. The silver-scaled figure now stood calmly at the center of the chaos, his expression unreadable as he crouched beside the half-entombed corpse of the assassin.
Inspecting the body, Thane half-expected the Sworn to lurch back to life with one final act of defiance. The man had been relentless—unyielding even when every bone in his body should have failed him. But now, with a stone spike driven clean through the heart and his limbs twisted at unnatural angles, even the unfeeling assassin could not defy death.
Still, something was wrong.
Thane narrowed his eyes. Despite the stillness of the corpse, he could feel it—an echo. A faint magical presence pulsing just beneath the surface like the last beat of a dying drum. It wasn't residual energy from the battle or leftover enchantments woven into the body. No, this was precise. Controlled. A point-source of power nestled deep within the Sworn's chest, just beneath the sternum.
He frowned.
A final trap? A postmortem curse? It was entirely possible that the Sworn had embedded a failsafe inside himself—an enchantment meant to fulfill the contract even in death. But curiosity itched at Thane's thoughts more deeply than caution did. Whatever this was, it wasn't ordinary. It wasn't simple.
And he needed to know.
With a breath to center himself, Thane braced his stance and wreathed his hand in a sheath of protective mana. A moment later, he plunged it into the corpse with surgical precision. The sensation was unpleasant—flesh giving way with a soft, wet crunch—but Thane paid it no mind.
His fingers brushed against something smooth and cold—metal, but not quite. Not shaped by conventional means.
A heartbeat later, he pulled it free.
It was a crystal orb, no larger than a golf ball. Perfectly spherical, and pulsating with a soft, internal glow that shimmered like moonlight through mist. Arcane runes spiraled across its surface in a language Thane had never seen before, shifting and rearranging every few seconds as if rewriting themselves to adapt to his gaze.
However, while Thane didn't know precisely what he held, his mind—ever the engine of speculation and synthesis—was already filling in the gaps. Ancient runes spiraled across the crystal's surface, and though unfamiliar, they carried echoes of languages Elara had once drilled into him under starlight and candle flame. From their structure and resonance, he could already identify rudimentary functions embedded in the crystal: contain, capture, preserve.
But it was the fourth—and far more haunting—connection that made Thane pause, holding the orb like something sacred and profane all at once.
'Theoretically, it's possible,' Thane mused, eyes narrowed as the runes flickered like a heartbeat. 'In fact, I most likely would have devised something similar myself given enough time... but to see it here, in use, refined—it's staggering.'
The term rose unbidden in his mind like a whispered revelation, a Simulacrum an artificial soul.
And with it, everything snapped into place. The Sworn's emotionless affect. His mechanical precision. The absence of hesitation, not just as a trained killer—but as something not entirely alive. He had been a vessel, not a man. An echo, devoid of true presence. A sentient puppet given just enough of an impression of the originator's soul to function.
Thane's gaze drifted back to the body.
'That would explain his limited awareness... and his uncanny devotion to the oath. Probably a set of complex instructions that allowed the simulacrum to function independently.' Thane's thoughts deepened with growing reverence—and unease. 'But then there's the question of the body. Was it crafted? Grown? A reanimated corpse repurposed? Or... was the crystal implanted postmortem?'
He crouched lower, examining the Sworn's chest again—scorched, broken, but intact in key ways.
'No surgical scars. Nothing to suggest conventional implantation. The binding must have happened early. Or... was this always the vessel's purpose? A grown body, conditioned from the beginning to carry an echo of a soul as its nucleus.'
Thane sighed through his nose. "Had I known," he muttered aloud, "I would have kept the damage to a minimum... preserved the integrity of the construct for study."
He turned the orb over in his fingers once more, watching the runes realign.
"There's only one reason I can think of that someone would develop magic like this," Thane murmured, his voice low with dawning realization. He held the simulacrum up to the light, watching the runes pulse faintly within the crystal like a heartbeat searching for a body.
"The simulacrum isn't the goal—it's a stepping stone. An incomplete version of something far more ambitious. They don't want a lifeless echo... no, they're either trying to create a perfect, independent being, or a replica so flawless it is the original in every way that matters."
He turned the orb slowly between his fingers, eyes narrowing. "Mastering either process would break the final boundary of mortal magic—true immortality. Not just extending life, but transferring it. Casting the soul into a new vessel each time the old one withers and dies."
Thane's expression darkened, thoughtful.
"The real question isn't whether they can do it. It's how close they are to finishing it."
And Thane knew that the creator of Simulacrum hadn't accomplished their goal because he realized what the crystal orb truly was, an invitation. Thane imagined he must have triggered some kind of response from the Simulacrum that allowed him to discover the crystal orb. Because the creator knew that Thane wouldn't be able to turn down such a tempting offer, 'Now all I have to do is figure out how you'll lead me back to your master.'
Standing up Thane looked over his shoulder at the distant crowd of aurors that had not moved an inch since he had concluded his fight, 'Well at least that will no longer be an issue. This worked out surprisingly well in my favor.'