"A wizard completely erased from history."A spark of genuine interest colored Douglas's voice. "Now that's more intriguing than finding a famous one."
"Exactly what I thought!" Bill's voice rose with excitement. "I'd hit a wall. A whole month with nothing. Then one night, staring at that fake fairytale book, it hit me—if you wanted to hide a wizard's story from the wizarding world, where's the best place to put it?"
He didn't wait for an answer."Right in the middle of Muggle history! Toss it into their dusty archives. No one would sift through a pile of Muggle records looking for traces of a powerful wizard."
"So you dove into the Cairo Museum basement?""And the Library of Alexandria." Bill shook his head, a fond grimace for the memory. "You have no idea how dry Muggle archaeological records are. I nearly convinced myself I was chasing a phantom. A hallucination sparked by a forgery."
Douglas kept flipping through the notebook, his eyes landing on a page dedicated to keywords."'Morning dew. Resin. Blue lotus. Celestial patterns. The closed-eye of Horus…'" he murmured, reading from the page. "You pulled apart every clue from the stories."
"Treated them like a code. I was convinced those recurring natural elements were his magical foci." Bill's words sped up, reaching the good part. "Then I found a copy of a Muggle report—The Dahshur Archaeological Digest."
"There was a map from an 1898 French expedition. Just west of the Bent Pyramid, a dune formation. Its outline matched the seven-star cluster in the book's illustration perfectly. And next to it, a penciled note in Arabic: ???."
"The Melting Moon," Douglas translated softly."Right. An old Bedouin term for a total lunar eclipse." Bill's tone was almost singing now. "That was the moment. I knew the fake book was pointing to a real place."
Douglas raised an eyebrow.Bill slowed the Rover. Desert wind rushed through the half-open window, tugging at his long hair. "The book was just the key. It made me notice the fragments official history ignored. A name: Ankh-Ka. The Shadow-Domain Priest."
He began piecing together the story from papyrus scraps and oral tales."He's a ghost. Not in any official inscription.They say he was the Pharaoh's Silencer. Handled the… spiritual disturbances unfit for the official record.No complex incantations. Just the raw stuff: Nile silt, morning dew, crocodile tears, resin."
"Sounds more like a druid skilled in herbology than an Egyptian priest," Douglas remarked."That's what hooked me," Bill said. "The legends say he had seven urns, sealed with desert wraiths. Used them to navigate sandstorms, purify tainted wells. He even had a 'Silence Salve' that could mute the footsteps of an entire army."
The Rover came to a gentle stop on a flat stretch of sand. Bill killed the engine.Instantly, the desert reclaimed its ancient silence. Only the wind's low whisper remained.
"The wildest tale is The Stowaway of the Field of Reeds." Bill turned, his expression dead serious."It says he infiltrated Osiris's realm to bring a woman back. Made a deal with Anubis."
"What was the trade?""His shadow."Bill's voice dropped, conspiratorial, as if the desert itself might be listening. "He used his own shadow as collateral for her soul's temporary return. So Ankh-Ka's tomb… no carvings, no paintings of his shadow exist."
"Trading a shadow for a soul. Seems like a bargain." Douglas rubbed his chin.Bill grinned. He could always count on Douglas for the most mercenary angle. "So today's surprise is a visit to the home of the Priest Without a Shadow?" Douglas shook the notebook.
"Bingo."Bill pulled a piece of obsidian from the glove compartment. It was polished into a small, black mirror. Next to it, a tiny glass vial held a few drops of murky fluid."Ankh-Ka's tomb entrance is a natural wind-carved rock marked with the closed-eye of Horus. Legend says it only opens on a full moon. You need to touch the symbol's left eye with obsidian anointed in crocodile tears."
He held up his prizes, his face alight with the specific, feverish confidence of a curse-breaker on the verge of cracking a millennia-old puzzle."And the tears… I've got them."
Douglas looked at him, then out the window.The sun was sinking, painting the sky in a gradient of brilliant blue, warm orange, and deep violet.In the eastern sky, a perfect, luminous full moon hung silently, casting its cold, mysterious light.
"So you timed this. Even got the full moon scheduled, you clever bastard." Douglas settled back into his seat, a faint smirk on his lips. "Alright. I'll admit it. This beats mummified cats."
"Ready, Doug?" Excitement danced in Bill's eyes. "Let's go meet the first wizard in history who successfully got himself deleted from the official record."
Bill restarted the Land Rover. This time, he drove slower. He barely looked at the road, instead glancing up frequently, aligning their path with a specific star's angle as if it were the only true guide.
The moonlight painted the sea of sand in cold silver frost.The Rover's engine died again. Its residual heat vanished into the dry, cold air. Only the wind remained—that eternal, monotonous whisper.
"We're here."Bill's voice was unnaturally clear in the quiet cabin.
They stepped out. The desert night swallowed them whole.The sand underfoot was soft, chillingly cold. The moon was painfully bright, stretching their shadows long and thin behind them.
"Welcome to the Whispering Dunes of Dahshur."Bill spread his arms as if embracing the desolation.
Douglas scanned the horizon. In the distance, the Bent and Red Pyramids loomed like silent, slumbering beasts.The wind swept over the endless dunes, producing a strange, constant hisssss. Not loud, but pervasive. It wormed into their ears. It felt like countless lost souls were pressed against them, whispering secrets in a forgotten tongue. The sound churned the air. It churned their own heartbeats.
"Revelio," Douglas breathed the word.Magic shimmered outward like a wave. The air around them rippled. The maddening whisper faded by ninety percent. Their vision cleared.
"Knew bringing you was the right call!" Bill clapped his hands, thrilled. "Last time, that noise nearly got me sucked into quicksand! This place is cursed. Muggle teams, wizards… stay too long, you get disoriented. Proper exploration is impossible."
"That's the problem with a place like this," Douglas said, his words slightly scattered by the wind. "It's too obvious. If there was ever a secret here, Muggle archaeologists or our lot would have turned it inside out long ago."
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