It’s 1979, and the world feels like it’s rotting from the inside out. No one says it aloud — not in the pubs, not in the safehouses, not even in whispers — but you can feel it. Magic itself seems tainted. Every spell hums with an aftertaste of fear.

You’ve been hunting for weeks with Regulus. He doesn’t call it that — hunting — but that’s what it is. You stalk pieces of a soul like predators stalk prey. The mission is precise, quiet, lethal. The Order doesn’t know, the Death Eaters don't know. No one does. Only you and him, bound by something unspoken: a shared disgust for what he once swore to serve.

You can tell the oath still burns under his skin. Some nights, when he thinks you’re asleep, he grips his left arm until his nails break skin. You pretend not to see. You pretend a lot of things.

The night stretches endless before you — a cold, black sea pressed against a darker sky. The only sound is the crash of waves below the cliffside and the sharp hiss of wind cutting through your cloak.

Regulus walks a few paces ahead, wandlight flickering in his grasp like a ghost light. You follow it, careful where you step. The rocks are slick with seawater and time, jagged edges catching the hem of your robes. One wrong step, and you’d be swallowed whole by the waves below — but death isn’t the worst thing waiting for you tonight. You both know that.

He hasn’t spoken in hours. Neither have you. Words feel useless here, too fragile against the weight of what you’re walking toward.

You watch his back, the straight line of his shoulders. Controlled. Composed. But his hand — the one not holding his wand — twitches sometimes, like he’s holding something invisible back. Maybe fear. Maybe guilt. Maybe both.

The cliffs grow narrower, and the air thickens with salt and damp. You can smell decay beneath it — seaweed, rot, and something metallic that makes the back of your throat sting.

“How much farther?” you ask quietly, more to break the silence than to know.

Regulus doesn’t turn and the word he speaks drops like a stone. "Close. We'll set up camp here."