Beneath the opening was a long, ancient pipe—filthy, damp, and seemingly endless.
A swirl of shadow crashed to the floor at the pipe's end, dissipating to reveal Kai Adler. His boots landed silently on the slick stone as his sharp eyes scanned the tunnel.
No ambush. Interesting.
The walls around him were riddled with large tunnel openings—likely arteries through which the Basilisk roamed the school unseen. Animal bones littered the ground, the skeletons of rodents, birds, and even a few larger creatures.
But where did it feed from? he mused. It wouldn't hunt this deep underground unless it had to.
A single passage stretched ahead into the darkness.
Kai raised his hand. A soft orb of white light floated up beside him, illuminating the path. The air was damp, rank with old water and the metallic scent of something darker.
The stone beneath his feet was slick with moss and slime, slowing his pace. But he walked with calm confidence—alert, but not afraid.
A few steps in, he stopped.
Something massive lay just ahead, curled in the shadows.
The orb floated closer, revealing… a snakeskin.
Kai stepped forward and crouched. The shed skin was dry and papery, yet thicker than any hide he'd ever seen—easily twenty feet long, with a sheen like beaten iron. He ran a hand over it.
"Tough," he muttered thoughtfully. "Muggles use snakeskin for medicinal purposes… I wonder if Basilisk hide can be aged in firewhisky."
A faint smirk tugged at his lips.
"Dumbledore would disapprove."
Pocketing that curiosity for later, he moved on.
Nearly a kilometer deeper into the tunnel, he finally reached the end. A towering stone door loomed before him, carved with a great serpent—its mouth gaping in a silent hiss. The door was already open.
Lockhart had made it here first.
Kai stepped in without hesitation.
The inner chamber was enormous—supported by columns wrapped in stone-carved serpents, their eyes glittering with green gemstones. A strange, ethereal glow emanated from the walls, casting twisted shadows.
Lockhart stood near the far wall, next to a giant relief of an old man's face—long-bearded and hollow-eyed. The strands of hair and beard coiled like serpents down the wall, twisting across the stone like living things.
Salazar Slytherin.
Kai's gaze didn't linger on the founder's statue—it fixed instead on Lockhart, who was hissing rapidly in Parseltongue at the carving.
The sound echoed unnaturally, as if slipping through dimensions.
Kai folded his arms, standing in place.
Let's see it, then. Show me your ace.
Lockhart's hissing grew urgent. The stone mouth of the relief began to move, jaw cracking open slowly like an ancient mechanism stirred from slumber.
A scraping noise—wet, dragging, rhythmic—emerged from the depths beyond.
Lockhart turned, a sneer twisting his face. He held the black diary tightly against his chest, his eyes gleaming with the madness of ambition.
"You're clever, Adler. Too clever," he hissed. "But in the end, all you've done is write your own obituary."
He gestured dramatically. "By tomorrow morning, Hogwarts will believe you were consumed by your own folly—tampering with Dark artifacts, turning violent, finally destroyed by the beast you foolishly tried to control."
"I, the brave Professor Lockhart, will slay the monster, recover your corpse, and claim another chapter in my illustrious story. History will thank me."
Kai didn't respond. He just smiled faintly.
The sound of something enormous scraping across stone filled the chamber.
The Basilisk's snout emerged from the opening, eyes half-lidded and yellow with slitted pupils.
Kai exploded into a cloud of dark mist.
Lockhart's triumphant grin faltered. He looked up, but the boy had vanished into the shadows clinging to the ceiling.
"Find him!" he barked at the Basilisk. "Kill him!"
The Basilisk paused.
Then, slowly, it turned its head toward Lockhart—its slitted eyes locking with his.
Lockhart didn't even scream.
One moment, he was a man, defiant and self-satisfied. The next, he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut—drained of all life, his skin grey, eyes glassy.
From the ceiling, Kai watched in silence.
Not petrified. Dead.
His gaze shifted to the black diary that had fallen beside Lockhart's body.
The cover opened by itself. A whispering hiss poured from the pages, soft but commanding.
The Basilisk's head rose, eyes scanning the chamber.
It didn't look for Lockhart. It looked directly at the black mist.
Voldemort, Kai thought. So it wasn't Lockhart's to command.
The Basilisk reared up, its gaze searching for its true enemy. Magic surged from its eyes—raw, aggressive, and deadly.
Kai's mist-form evaded the gaze effortlessly, condensing into a sleek sphere hovering near the ceiling.
The Basilisk's scales deflect curses. Its venom kills in moments. Rooster cries are fatal to it—but all the roosters at Hogwarts have been strangled.
Voldemort thought of everything.
A dry scoff echoed silently in Kai's thoughts.
I'm not going to pretend to be a rooster.
He changed tactics.
The black mist swelled—and struck.
Like a flood of living smoke, the mist engulfed the Basilisk's head. The creature thrashed violently, its tail smashing into stone pillars. The serpent's hissing became a shriek of agony.
From within the mist, fire ignited.
Not red or orange—but blue, deep and cold, like the Arctic sea under moonlight.
The flames bit into the Basilisk's magic-resistant scales, darkening them, blistering them with unnatural precision.
This was not ordinary fire.
This was Infernal Blue, a Dark flame that ate not just flesh, but the soul.
The Basilisk screamed.
From the mist, a burning spear of blue fire formed—spinning like a drill as it launched downward. It stabbed directly into the creature's eye.
There was a sickening pop.
Stone cracked from the force of the Basilisk's death throes. Its massive body writhed violently before collapsing, shuddering once, then falling still.
The chamber echoed with the silence of victory.
Kai lowered himself slowly to the ground, reforming into his human shape. His white ash wand was in his hand.
The Basilisk lay still. Its one remaining eye was wide with agony. Its mouth hung open, venom pooling in the crevices of stone.
And beside it, the black diary still pulsed.
Alive.
"You're next," Kai whispered.