Time moved differently after the soul's sacrifice.
For most inmates, the years blurred into a slow decay of sanity — faces forgotten, voices turned to echoes. But for Eli Archer, now more than Eli, time was a forge. Each second burned, pressed, and shaped him like metal against divine flame.
The first year after the merging, he spoke not a single word.
He listened — to the whispers of the Dementors, to the stones of the fortress, to the pulse of ancient magic in the marrow of the earth. Azkaban was not just a prison. It was built on cursed leylines — places of broken magic. That was why Dementors thrived here. That was why he could learn.
Eli, reborn, turned Azkaban into a silent classroom.
He tested magic in his mind, learning the subtle mechanics of willcasting — magic without wand, without incantation, with pure intent.
He practiced soul-walking, allowing parts of himself to drift unseen into other wings of the prison, into the minds of broken inmates, into dreams.
He strengthened his memory sanctum — not just protecting his mind, but constructing archives of spell theory and reality manipulation. He even began recording his own spellforms, inscribed into the dreamstone walls of his mental fortress.
One year passed.
Then two.
Then five.
And still, the Ministry said nothing. Dumbledore remained silent. Iris Potter had long stopped writing letters to the court begging for answers. The world above had moved on.
But Eli hadn't.
By the eighth year, he had carved a system of runes onto his cell wall — a pattern invisible to the eye, etched into the soul-fabric of the stone. It was a prison key, but not one that unlocked bars — it unlocked barriers within the self. It tuned him to the frequencies of the world beyond Azkaban.
He heard the shifting of politics.
He felt the breaking of ancient wards in distant lands.
He saw Harry Potter — grown now, proud and fiery — training with his father.
He felt Iris's sorrow, buried deep behind her public smiles, her guilt still quietly flickering.
He felt Sirius Black's shame, buried beneath years of denial and righteous rage.
And he felt… opportunity.
But he never acted.
Not yet.
The foreign soul had taught him patience. And the time for vengeance, for revelation, was not upon him.
Not yet.
By the tenth year, Eli no longer resembled the boy who entered the prison.
His body was pale but honed, adapted to cold, to hunger, to stillness.
His mind was a fortress of layered spellweaves, illusions, defenses, and star-scripted runes.
And his soul…
His soul was no longer singular.
It was multifaceted, like a prism — capable of splitting identity, of hiding versions of himself in layers so deep that even a Legilimens would be lost in the reflections.
The guards still mocked him sometimes, called him "Dead Boy" or "Silent Raven."
They didn't see the magic pulsing beneath his fingertips.
The Dementors avoided him now completely — no longer hunters, but prey.
And then one night, as rain hammered the sea outside, and thunder cracked the sky in fury, Eli sat calmly in his cell… and laughed.
A quiet, broken laugh — full of warmth.
Because he had finally finished the last rune. The last layer of the seal. The final piece of his internal reconstruction.
He had done what no wizard in history had ever done in a cell designed to kill hope:
He had ascended.
Still flesh. Still mortal.
But something more.
Not Dark Lord. Not Chosen One. Not savior. Not villain.
Just a mind no longer bound by the limits of the world.
And now… the world would start to feel it.
Subtly, at first.
Small anomalies.
Whispers in the Ministry of strange surges in Azkaban.
Old protections cracking.
Prophecies waking.
The Raven had been caged for a decade.
Now, even the cage feared him.