Chapter Text
The Veil was not the gateway to the realm of dead. It was worse; something infinitely worse.
It was desolation. Nothingness one moment, madness next and 𝘶𝘯𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 itself thereafter.
Then came the Void brimming with things unnamed — fell things, unmade things, things human mind rejected to protect its fragile reality.
For a time that felt like eons, Sirius Black existed in the desolation. It was a realm of grey, shifting sands and a sky where dead stars collided in silence — swallowing black suns and destruction of galaxies so great, his mind refused their interpretation. He clawed at his face, wanting to gauge out his eyes but unable to do so. He cried tears of blood — black blood trailed down his face like kohl. Up was down and down was up; he walked through sky of dead and newborn stars, trailing stardust in his wake while waves of the great abyssal depth threatened to drown him. There were things there—unnamed, limb-heavy entities that drifted through the fog, feeding on the echoes of names. Insanity crawled in his shadows like an Ouroboros that devoured its own tail but it did not touch him. His mind was unfortunately and unnaturally lucid for the first time since Azkaban. There was only a touch of Black Madness cradling him as it had since his childhood.
This was not a blessing. It was a curse. For human mind was not meant to witness things 𝘣𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘥 without breaking; without rupturing at its seams.
"𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥," Sirius thought hysterically. "I should be dead, or mad. Dead and mad."
He wanted to live. He wanted to die. He was never afraid to die; Death has always been his old friend. It had never scared him. This... this did. He wanted to escape it. He wanted to be devoured by the Void and its nameless, fell, dead things and forget his own existence just so he could stop witnessing it. He wanted the mercy of Death.
The was no mercy for Sirius Black.
His mind turned inward — dug deep in into his shattered Occluded mind and clung to one image: a face. His only will to live for so long which had forced him to weather the darkness of North Sea.
𝘐𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘦.
Ianthe.
His goddaughter.
A girl with fire for hair and a lightning-bolt scar and eyes like the Killing Curse, who had looked at him with a desperate, orphaned hope and love... so much love. She had held his own broken devotion, fever bright in his eyes and clung onto him like he was her only rafter in the storm of life.
Now Sirius wrapped himself in her image. Her last look of unmoored grief tinged with disbelief as she had lunged after him before Remus caught her.
"Forgive me." Slipped out of his lips in a litany. "Forgive me, Ianthe."
Time lost it's meaning but he did not stop. Forgiveness became his walk of penance as he teetered towards the Void. Ianthe's name became his hymn that kept the madness at bay. And yet he walked.
He did not feel thirst nor hunger. He had energy to burn clean his tiredness. He was dead yet not, for he sure was not among living. He walked to run from desolation. He walked to run from his own mind. He walked past the realm's demons, dragging his past's demons behind. He walked past the 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 that screamed when he was joined by another.
A being. A deity. A demon. Sirius could not tell. Stars burned themselves into supernova and left black holes in their path as if the being denied them life.
They walked with him as an old man at the edge of life, as a young man on the cusp of adulthood and as a child brimming with youth. A man and a woman. A girl and a crone and all the walks of life that came in between them. The journey of life and the time that came beyond.
Death.
"Death," Sirius croaked out and paused. "Death," he said again with a bit relief, "please."
He did not know what he begged for.
"Sirius, son of the Blacks, Stewards of the Void," Death said. They did not speak. They wove meaning into reality that resonated with his soul. "My precious companion."
Padfoot tore itself out of Sirius' shadows. Huge and changed and free at last. Its glowing ember eyes peeked deep into him before it resumed the walk alongside them.
"What... " Sirius trailed off.
"The rendering demands a price, son of Black. The sacrifice of the Last Peverell has torn a hole through reality. Her prophesied enemy flees from me. Balance is skewed." Death's face flickered through faces rapidly before settling on Ianthe's. It winked out just as fast before Sirius could could reach out. Alphard's voice rebounded as Arcturus' grey eyes stared through him.
"The price is the memory of end," They whispered. "And the burden of living. Will you pay your toll?"
Sirius would pay whatever price Death demanded—a sliver of his soul, a permanent cold in his bones—just to see her live.
“The price is the memory of the end,” they repeated. “And the burden of living. Balance must prevail. Go. Live again. Pay the price."
.
.
.
𝟭𝟮 𝗚𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗮𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 —𝟭𝟵𝟳𝟲
Sirius woke to the smell of ozone and his own burning flesh.
The transition was violent. One moment he was drifting in cosmic indifference next to the End of All Things ; the next, he was strapped to a chair in the drawing room of his childhood nightmare. The Cruciatus had just ceased, leaving his nerves screaming like frayed wires. He tasted iron as he bit through his tongue. Bellatrix cackled, high on his torment.
Sirius blinked. His vision swam as rivulets of blood trickled down his nose. The torture was extensive.
"Will you be a Black, or will you be something to bury in the Black crypts?" Walburga’s voice was a jagged glass edge.
Sirius blinked, blood stinging his eyes.
"𝘈𝘩, 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵."