Cassian and Bathsheda entered his room. He didn't even take off his coat, just started pacing like he'd swallowed a rock sideways.
"It is coming," he muttered, face blotchy and breathing sharp and deep.
She shut the door with her foot. "Stop acting like you're giving birth. It's just an ancient variant."
He turned, deadpan. "Wow. Rude. You have no idea what birthing an ancient variant feels like. Might as well punch me in the soul."
She ignored him and sat on the edge of the bed. He stomped two more laps around the room before collapsing sideways across her lap.
She sighed, dragging her fingers through his hair. "You're more dramatic than Ash."
"I'm more magnificent than Ash," he mumbled into her robes.
Then his eyes widened.
His breath caught.
Bathsheda frowned. "Cass?"
But he was already elsewhere.
***
Glass. Big panes of it, stacked floor-to-ceiling like someone had turned a whole bloody skyscraper into a lantern. A wizard stood in front. Slim, sharp, robe ironed within an inch of its life. The man's hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place.
The room behind him buzzed with magic. Carved teak shelves, iron charms embedded into the corners, the scent of agarwood and oil-heavy incense burning, filling the space.
His hand rested on the back of a carved chest. Inside the chest was a box, glowing faint red, its wards pulsing against the lid.
Four others stood before him. Two were masked. One wasn't even fully human anymore, silver eyes, fingers blackened to the joints. The fourth leaned against the far wall, smoking something that wasn't quite legal in any country that cared about lungs.
The tattooed man turned slightly, eyes gleaming with the kind of calm that got people killed.
"We found the manuscript."
That got a twitch from the others.
"Verified?" the smoker rasped.
He nodded. "Pulled from an old tomb northeast of Guilin. Locked behind five layers of Divine blood-bonded seals. Took six blood rites to get past the last one."
"What's it say?" the silver-eyed one asked.
"Not aloud. Not here." His fingers tapped the back of the chair. "But it's real. The thing it describes, it's not myth. It breathes. Locked deep. Forgotten. And when we break the last barrier, it will rise. And it will serve."
"And with it, we will unmake the light."
"Ji will come," one of them muttered.
The man's face twitched, lips pulled tight, jaw clenched. Like the name Ji had tracked mud across his favourite carpet.
"I'll handle him," he said with a scoff. "He can't call another Keeper unless I cross a line. That's how they play. Draw the borders, pretend they're civilised. Not unless blood spills. And even then, they're leashed. Can't do more than shield the civilians. The Covenant made sure of that. Neutrality, they called it."
"But Covenant isn't as tight as The Keepers of the Balance," the silver-eyed one muttered, but still worried.
"So what?" the tattooed man asked, turning to the man.
"The Keepers act compliant because they know we don't care as much as they do, and that if they break the unspoken agreements, we might go wild and destroy anything that stands in our way. But that doesn't mean they'll simply let us do whatever we want."
"No. But they won't dare test us if we keep it clean." The man smiled faintly. "If we don't give them a reason, they won't interfere."
That got a nod from the others.
He moved to the glass, looking out. The city below glimmered through the haze.
"I won't touch the schools. I won't touch his students. That gives him no cause."
"And the site?" the masked one asked.
The tattooed man clenched his fist. "It's in the ancient lands. No Dark Lord dares step foot there for many years. No wonder. Old Masters can act freely in that soil."
He let out an ugly laugh, teeth flashing. "I should've guessed something nasty was buried under that place. Makes more sense. All those wrinkled fossils moving in for the scenery. I thought they liked the weather and olives."
Smoke curled past the shoulder of the man in the back. He flicked ash against the wall.
"You think you can sell this to the Covenant?" he muttered. "Half of them don't even like standing in the same room. You call them together and they'll spend more time checking each other's hands than the plan. They won't move unless it's more power or ancient rituals. If this thing's real, and that's still a fucking 'if,' we either free it and it burns the sky, or we all die trying to poke it. That's the scale. Your name spreads fear in the area, Feng Shui Marauder, but not outside of it."
The tattooed man stared the smoker down. The smoker dropped his gaze and took another drag, not daring to look at the man.
"I said I'll handle them," the tattooed man said.
The others didn't argue anymore.
One of the masked ones passed him a scroll sealed in green wax.
The tattooed man unrolled it slowly. The parchment inside was old, creased in ways that suggested it had been folded more times than it should've survived. Three dragons, inked in stark black, curled along the top margin. Beneath them, a tight weave of runes looped and coiled, interspersed with small diagrams that looked almost like breath paths.
The tattooed man, Marauder, tapped a sigil in the corner. It flared faintly.
"This'll help," he said, rolling it back up. "This will let us slip right through."
The phoenix tattoo on his neck caught the light as he turned, half-hidden under his collar.
"I made a deal," the man went on. "Someone in Fenghuang's still loyal to me."
He tilted his head, "Ji's going to be occupied very soon."
***
Cassian gasped as he came to, staring straight into Bathsheda's face. Her braid had slipped over her shoulder, tip brushing his chin.
"What happened?" she asked.
"No ancient variants," he croaked, pushing himself up on his elbows. "What the hell?"
Bathsheda narrowed her eyes. "Is it because I'm in the room?"
He tilted his head, thinking. Could it really be that?
She'd found out about his little secret not long ago, well, not little, but small enough to fit in one mind if you skipped the screaming. That he wasn't this world's original Cassian. That the one lying here had walked out of a very different life, in a world where Harry Potter came in hardback. That the more he taught magic, the stronger he got, because mastery came from teaching. That ancient variants weren't learned, they were pulled from history like splinters.
She took it in stride, mostly. Called him a twat. Then made him tea.
And yes, this was the first time he'd seen a vision with someone else in the room.
That had to be it, right?
No. The moment he thought it, he binned it.
He pushed himself off her lap and sat hunched over the edge of the bed.
He'd been teaching Ignivolatus for years, ever since the Wraithamort first showed its smoky, ugly face in the forest four years ago. The little hop-flame spell had been a student favourite ever since. Easy to learn, hard to forget, and just dangerous enough to keep them on their toes.
He'd awakened Fire Orbis a couple years back thanks to that, nothing grand, just a slow-burn spell that licked outwards in a clean circle. Farmers used it for clearing land. Mild memory, nothing cursed in the vision. Still, it came in handy. Especially once he clocked that the Tournament would be throwing Elementals at a bunch of underfed teenagers in the First Task. Couldn't exactly walk Cedric into his office and hand him a cheat sheet. So he taught it to everyone. The whole bloody school. Every house, every year that could lift a wand without sneezing out sparks. Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, Uagadou, Fenghuang, they got it too. He didn't play favourites. They were guests. That counted for something.
Teaching all five schools meant his mastery shot up faster than with any spell he'd ever taught. Even if the guest schools had fewer students, they were all seventh years. Seasoned and strong in their own right. And most importantly, none of them had seen the spell before. Every bit of it they learned came from him. The technique, the theory, the tweaks, they all walked out of his classes with new information learned directly from a single source. Him.
It should've added up to something. He'd assumed, wrongly, apparently, that what he was getting now was another ancient variant. First one ever from an ancient variant.
But that wasn't it.
For one, it wasn't ancient.
And more importantly, Feng Shui Marauder?
Cassian dragged a hand through his hair. His palm came away damp. "Brilliant," he muttered. "Absolutely brilliant."
Two years ago, he'd walked into Flitwick's office. Lockhart was lounging there with a smug grin, swearing up and down he'd killed the bastard after a heroic duel. Spun the whole thing pure pulp fiction.. Backflips, re-arranged furniture and bodies. Said he watched the man dissolve into ash, took a piece of skin with his famous tattoo as a trophy.
Cassian didn't buy it even then. Mostly because Lockhart couldn't conjure a proper silencing charm without spraining something.
But that meant Marauder wasn't ancient, right? He had to have been alive within the last decade, if not still.
He scrubbed a hand down his face. "How in the hell..."
Bathsheda handed him the mug that'd been sitting forgotten on the bedside table. The tea had gone cold, again.
Ji, the manuscript, the ritual anchors, Dark Lords, The Keepers of the Balance, the Covenant. Someone in Fenghuang loyal to Marauder? That narrowed the field down to maybe six bastards with more secrets than bones.
And the site, of course it was tied to the old lands. Olives and seaside views.
Could that really be it?
Cassian stared down into the cold tea cupped in his hands. A bit of leaf stuck to the rim.
Did the temple surface because Feng Shui Marauder did something?
(Check Here)
Quite a few readers asked for images of Amara, Mingyu, and the others, so I generated some with AI. Here they are. (Check Here)
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