Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 460 Dolokhov and Bella

The Dolokhov family's old house is a two-story building made of gray stone on a barren slope at the eastern foot of the Pennine Mountains.

The outer walls were covered with dead ivy, and the family crest on the iron gate had been eroded by wind and rain to the point that only a blurry outline remained.

Dolokhov Apparated and landed in the manor's foyer with a soft thud, the sound still wet.

His knees nearly hit the marble floor; he braced himself against the wall, panting heavily.

Blood trickled down his sleeves and trouser legs, dripping onto the light-colored stone slab and leaving a small dark red stain.

Hurried footsteps came from the direction of the kitchen, and an old man with a dirty tea towel ran out, carrying a copper kettle, and saw the scene in the hallway.

The owner was covered in blood, half of his face was mangled beyond recognition, and blood was everywhere.

The copper kettle fell from his hand and crashed to the ground with a clang, spilling hot water all over the floor.

"Master! Master—you!"

Dolokhov's voice was hoarse: "Get away."

He walked down the corridor, dragging his right leg, leaving a bloody footprint with each step; he held onto the wall, leaving a bloody handprint with each step.

The little elf paused for a moment, then hurriedly retreated into the depths of the corridor, muttering to itself.

In the portraits on both sides of the corridor, the ancestors of the Dolokhov family peek out from the frames to look at him. An old man in a 17th-century robe opened his mouth as if to say something, but was glared at and shut up by him.

At the end of the corridor was a full-length mirror, set in a blackened silver frame. On the wall next to it hung a pair of crossed wand models and a faded tapestry of the Slytherin house crest.

Dolokhov stopped in front of the mirror and looked at his own face for the first time.

The left half can no longer be considered a face.

The cheekbone was severely injured, and the originally high cheekbone contour was sunken, with the skin around the edges turning purplish-black.

The outer edge of the eye socket was injured. The eyeball was still there, but the area around the eye socket was severely swollen, with blood seeping out from under the eyelid. The iris was covered with blood vessels, and the pupil was dilated and did not respond to light.

The corner of his mouth was torn all the way to his ear, with the skin and flesh rolled outwards; the injury looked very serious.

Blood gushed from the tear, the bridge of the nose was injured and tilted to the right, and the nostril collapsed.

From his chin to his collar, it was covered in hard, dark red scabs.

He had several severe wounds on his thighs and arms, left on the rubble of Skipton when he was dismembered.

The wound was jagged, and blood was still seeping out, flowing down the forearm to the back of the hand, and then dripping from the fingertips.

The person in the mirror stared at him, and he stared back, remaining silent for a moment.

Then, using his still-functioning right hand, he reached for the medicine cabinet next to the sink. The cabinet door opened, revealing neatly stacked medicine bottles with handwritten labels, most of the ink faded.

Dark magic healing potions, blood tonics, bone healing agents, and pain relievers.

The old house may not have much else, but it has plenty of this stuff. Every generation of Dolokhov has people who die from black magic, but many more are pulled back from the brink of death by these things.

First, I administered the painkiller. The spicy liquid flowed down my throat, burning my stomach. The excruciating pain on one side of my face subsided from a shrill scream to a muffled buzzing.

Then came the bone healing agent, which was the hardest to endure. He tilted his head back and gulped down a large mouthful, his Adam's apple bobbing twice.

The shattered skull and eye sockets began to slowly return to their original positions under the skin, the bone fragments rubbing against each other, the sound transmitted from inside the skull into the ear, making a crunching sound.

He braced his hands on the edge of the cabinet, his arm muscles tense, his forehead pressed against the cabinet door, his jaw clenched, and the veins in his temples throbbing.

A thin layer of sweat seeped from my upper body, flowing into the wound and causing a slight stinging pain. My breathing became a little heavier, but other than that, I didn't have any other reaction.

One minute, two minutes, and the bone was back in place.

He was taught from a young age that a pure-blooded nobleman should not groan in front of anyone, even if all that is in front of him is a mirror and the row of dead ancestors on the wall.

The word "weakness" doesn't exist in the Dolokhov family; weakness is the privilege of the loser.

After the bones were put back in place, a blood-replenishing agent was administered.

The feeling of exhaustion from being drained from my body slowly subsided, and my magic power was slowly recovering. I could feel the core of my magic power pulsating steadily again deep in my chest cavity.

He took a breath, opened the cabinet, straightened up, and touched his left cheek with his right hand.

There are still slight signs of collapse at the Huan bone location. The bone healing agent needs time to fully heal. The bruising around the eye socket has turned from dark purple to dark red, and the blood vessels are slowly being absorbed by the tissue.

The tear at the corner of his mouth had healed, but the scar remained, extending from the corner of his mouth to his earlobe, the new skin bearing an unnatural pink hue.

My left eye's vision went from complete darkness to blurry, and I could see light and shadow, but the details were still blurry.

The wounds were sealed with a healing spell and coated with white safflower essence. The newly formed skin was so thin that the dark red blood vessels underneath could be seen.

After cleaning himself of the bloodstains, the elf brought him a clean, dark robe, which he put on, fastening each button neatly.

Smooth out the cuffs, turn up the collar, and insert the wand into the special inner leather sheath.

The old robe and the bloodstains on the ground were taken away and burned by the elves, and the bloody footprints in the corridor were wiped clean.

He glanced at the mirror again.

The face was repaired, but the scars remained. The outline of the left side of the face intertwined with the scars, making the already distorted face even more ferocious.

That new pink scar that stretched from the corner of his mouth to his ear would turn white, and then become the most conspicuous scar among the many scars on his face.

I can't be rude to my host, but given how badly I'm injured, this is the only way.

The study was lined with dark oak bookshelves, the curtains were drawn, and a small fire burned in the fireplace.

Dolohoff sat behind his desk, a silver badge on the table and his wand beside him.

The mission itself was just a routine operation: guard the outpost, wait for Lukwood to make contact, and control the pursuing Pwitt brothers—not kill them, but keep them trapped.

Then the white-haired wizard appeared, charged up for two minutes, blasted the front of the castle away, and with the final blow, a face-to-face punch, a noble salute.

Thinking of that aristocratic etiquette, the scar on the left side of my face started to itch again.

He put his mind at ease.

The explosion was indeed extremely powerful, but ultimately, the magic required two minutes of preparation time. Give him two minutes, and he could create something with the same destructive power.

He knew of at least three ways to blow up a five-story building using dark magic; the methods were different, but the results were similar.

Needless to say, those rounds of matches were just going through the motions, with both sides giving each other an out, and neither taking it seriously.

But in the final moment, he was pressed against the face at the same instant he activated Apparition.

From the moment the thought initiates the teleportation to the moment the spatial compression begins, the time window is less than half a second.

Within that half-second, the white-haired wizard made his judgment, activated Apparition, locked onto the landing point, threw a punch, infused it with magic, and hit the target—all within his reaction time.

He was fifty years old and had been fighting for thirty years, only to have his Apparition interrupted by a young man in his early twenties at the last possible moment.

The mission failure itself did not need to alarm the master. The outpost was lost and there were casualties, but everyone was alive. An abandoned castle that had been bombed was not a strategic location to begin with.

This level of operational failure is quite common within the Death Eaters; they just write a briefing and submit it, and that's it.

But the Phoenix Order now has a young fighter of equal caliber to him, so information must be passed up the chain of command.

Youth is the key. Being young means you are still growing. What will someone who can do all this in their early twenties be like in ten years?

Dolohoff picked up his wand, pressed the tip against the surface of the badge, and silently uttered a phrase. A faint green light appeared on the edge of the badge, flashed twice, and then went out.

The signal has been sent; now it's time to wait.

He mentally rehearsed his words: the stronghold was attacked by an unknown wizard, using explosive magic, white hair and vertical pupils, young, interrupting Apparition.

But after the rehearsal, it felt unnecessary, as the owner would probably just watch it directly.

He could not find his master directly.

The master's whereabouts were never fully disclosed to anyone, not even early core members like him, who could only communicate through designated channels.

And the current communication channels—

His right eye narrowed slightly, and the pink scar at the corner of his mouth twitched.

The badge vibrated, the green light flashed again, and a coordinate and a door key activation signal appeared.

Coastal County Durham, south of Sunderland.

The door key left him at the end of a stone pier, where the slippery crevices were filled with seashell fragments that creaked under his boots.

The pier was short, with several rotting fishing boat wrecks tied at the end, their gunwales covered with dried seaweed that swayed gently in the sea breeze.

Inside the pier was a burned-out fishing village. The wooden houses on the stone foundations were reduced to charred frames, with broken beams sticking out in the moonlight, and the remaining walls showing honeycomb-like pits.

The air was filled with the smell of damp, burnt firewood and the earthy odor of freshly turned soil.

After walking a few steps from the dock into the village, I saw haphazardly placed pits in the open space.

Three or four, rectangular, arranged neatly, with freshly dug wet mud piled around the pits, which were empty.

There were about twenty Muggle corpses lying on the open ground nearby, dressed in different clothes. Some were wearing fishermen's leather aprons, some were wearing faded floral dresses, and two old men were barefoot and wearing striped bathrobes.

There was no pain on his face, as if he had fallen asleep and never woken up again; the killing curse was swift and decisive.

One of the bodies was getting up, its movements stiff, its joints cracking and twisting, its arms bent in a twisted way, then it stood up straight, its hands hanging down, its empty eye sockets facing the sea.

The newly created Yin Corpse has not yet received instructions and is currently in a standby state.

Dolokhov's gaze swept over the undead; he had seen far more spectacular ones.

During the incident at Little Hangleton, an entire village was massacred, and corpses littered the church lawn.

He was there that time too, in charge of perimeter security, watching the master walk out of the church, followed by a whole row of newly risen corpses.

This time it was quieter.

He continued walking forward.

I've seen this kind of thing many times, but every time I see an entire village wiped out by the Death Curse, something still stirs within me.

The power of a person to take dozens of lives in one night, like trimming a lamp wick, is itself worthy of awe.

His specialty is inflicting torture on living people, driving his opponents to the brink of collapse under extreme pain.

On another level, what the master did was to use death itself as raw material.

He worshipped this power and willingly knelt before it.

Bella stood on the low stone wall at the edge of the open space, with her back to the sea.

He was wrapped tightly in a black robe, and his hair was longer than when we last met, reaching his waist. It was being swept to one side by the sea breeze. He stood quietly, his hand holding the magic wand hanging at his side with the tip pointing downwards.

When she saw Dolokhov approaching, she turned her face towards him.

Dolokhov paused for a moment.

The eyes were still those dark eyes, but what was inside them had changed; the familiar manic smile was gone from the corners of his mouth, and his lips were tightly pursed.

His eyes were still fervent, his pupils unnaturally bright, as if they were constantly burning, but they had burned for so long that they had turned into a kind of quiet, morbid calm.

Bella used to be fiery, flamboyant, crazy, and would scream as she pounced on anything her master pointed to.

The fire is now suppressed underground, with magma churning beneath the rocks and only wisps of hot smoke rising from the surface.

She looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the scar on the left side of his face for a moment. Her lips twitched, but she didn't make a sound.

The scar was still fresh; the pink, newly formed skin hadn't fully healed, and it was clear that the person had just been beaten.

Dolokhov Antonin, an old man who never gave her a second glance, was injured.

"Antoning." Her voice was softer and slower than before, with unnatural pauses between syllables, coming out from her throat, gentle yet with a sharp chill.

His mouth was saying his name, but his eyes, which had been burning for too long, were looking elsewhere; his voice and gaze were misaligned.

Dolokhov kept a few steps away from her.

The owner's handiwork.

The last time I saw Bella, she was a crazy woman who might scream and pounce on me at any moment. Now she seems to have been cleansed from the inside out by something.

It has definitely been modified, but he couldn't tell exactly what was done.

There are many ways to modify the soul, the body, magic, and will, and each leaves a different mark.

But the outcome is clear: it's even more dangerous now.

A mad Bella is controllable; her madness follows a pattern, and her screams have a cause.

Bella is quiet and sickly. He doesn't know what will trigger her, nor what will happen after it happens.

His instinct was to create distance, not wanting to spend another second with this woman.

His expression remained unchanged as he nodded slightly, his voice low and deep: "Where is the master?"

Bella tilted her head and glanced towards the dock: "Follow me."

She jumped down from the stone wall and turned to walk towards the dock.

Dolokhov followed behind, keeping a few steps' distance.

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