Night fell like ink, enveloping Memphis.
The Temple's bells had long since stopped ringing. The courtyard was empty and silent, except for the wind brushing past the stone pillars and producing a low, mournful wail. The solemnity and order of the day had been replaced by an almost decaying stillness.
The Black-Robed Woman cast one final glance at the pulsating Embryo before turning away. Her robes swept across the stone steps... Quietus. The hem of her garments dragged softly over the tiled floor, producing a faint rustling sound.
As she turned, the gold runes embroidered along her robes flickered under the torchlight, bright one moment and dim the next, like fireflies trapped within cloth.
"She should also be able to sense the Embryo's malice, but not as clearly as I can. My Animagus form has a godlike vision."
Ian perched on a beam about thirty feet above the ground. From this height, he could take in the entirety of the Inner Temple while remaining unnoticed by the busy priests below.
Not long after she left, a middle-aged man wearing a dark blue priest robe quietly entered the underground chamber. He carried an obsidian slab carved with runes and murmured ancient concealment spells under his breath.
As the incantation concluded, the obsidian slab released a circle of dim blue radiance that enveloped the entire magic array. The pulsating embryo gradually blurred within the light, as though wrapped in an invisible veil.
Then...
The Scepter Priest entered swiftly, accompanied by four young priests dressed in white linen robes. Each carried a bronze bowl filled with black powder. Ian's raven eyes narrowed slightly. The powder emitted a strange aura resembling burnt bone ash mixed with the sharp metallic scent of an unknown metal.
"Begin."
Golden patterns flickered across its surface, as though protesting.
The eldest priest began chanting spells, his voice deep and muffled like thunder rising from underground. As he continued to chant, the four young priests scattered black powder over the embryo. The instant the powder touched the membrane, the light throughout the inner temple warped briefly.
Ian felt a slight dizziness in his vision.
It was as if someone had gently plucked a string inside his avian mind.
When his vision cleared, the embryo on the altar had vanished. In its place stood a small, ordinary statue of the sun god Ra, crudely crafted, like a counterfeit bought casually from a marketplace.
The chamber returned to silence, leaving only cold stone walls and extinguished braziers. No one could tell that anything had occurred here. Clearly, the priests had concealed everything with magic.
It was an exceptionally sophisticated form of magic. Even Ian's Animagus form had been affected, though he could still sense that it had sunk into the earth below.
The Scepter Priest wiped sweat from his forehead and turned to the others.
"Strengthen the guards at the seventh underground vault. Especially the new priest from Thebes. I don't trust the look in his eyes."
"High Priest, are we really placing the Cocoon of Rebirth underground?" A young priest asked hesitantly. "Last time we kept it below, it almost..."
"Silence!"
The Scepter Priest slammed his scepter against the ground. The sun disk at its head emitted a harsh, vibrating sound.
"Do you want all of Memphis to know what we are doing?"
The young priest immediately fell silent in fear.
The five men quickly cleaned the area around the altar. Even the blood caught in the cracks between the stones was wiped away with a pungent potion. Within moments, the Inner Temple regained its solemn, sacred appearance, as if the bizarre ritual had never occurred.
The priests collected the stone slab, left the chamber, and closed the heavy stone door behind them.
The temple sank into silence once more.
Everything that had just happened, the Embryo's fluctuations of will, the priests' argument, and the sacrifice of life seemed like an illusion.
No one noticed the raven perched above the eaves, watching everything in silence.
"Disaster... what kind of disaster?"
The "disaster" mentioned by the Scepter Priest was clearly no ordinary war or plague. Anything that compelled the entire temple to perform a human sacrifice and create a false god must be a catastrophe capable of overturning an entire divine pantheon.
"And the Sun God Ra...has he truly fallen?"
Ian found the thought difficult to accept.
"The common people don't know that the Sun God may have fallen? No...perhaps even the gods themselves don't know?"
Ian watched the priests' departing figures, his beak opening and closing unconsciously.
The Scepter Priest's final warning troubled him greatly.
Everything was becoming increasingly strange.
The raven tilted its head slightly as Ian fell into deep thought. If the sun god Ra had truly fallen, the entire Egyptian pantheon should already be in chaos. Ra was the supreme deity within that pantheon, the master of light and the eternal ruler who sailed the solar barque across the heavens each day. His existence maintained the order of life and death itself. Even Anubis of the Underworld operated within his system.
If Ra were dead, how could Anubis remain calmly stationed beyond the River Styx? How could he have the leisure to chat and laugh with Ra, discussing the oars of the Styx and the trials of dueling?
The jackal-headed god of death appeared completely normal. He had even found time to spar with Ian.
Logically speaking, if Ra, the main god of the pantheon, had encountered trouble, the underworld should have been the first to feel its effects.
Perhaps the Sun God Ra was not dead, but rather missing? "Asleep"? Or imprisoned?
That still wouldn't make sense.
Even so, Anubis should have sensed something.
"Unless..."
Ian's black feathers rose slightly.
"Unless Anubis doesn't know either."
The thought sent a chill through him. What kind of existence could make the leader of the Ennead disappear without a trace while keeping the other gods in the same divine system completely unaware?
Ian frowned deeply.
Outside the temple, the bells of evening prayer rang out, their long echoes rippling between the stone pillars.
Moonlight filtered through the high-stained windows and cast an image of Ra's victory over Apep in the War of the Gods upon the floor. Ian watched the priests gradually return to their posts. Their white robes were immaculate in the pale light, and their expressions were flawlessly devout. If he hadn't witnessed it himself, he never would've believed that such a terrifying secret lay beneath this sacred sanctuary.
"How utterly perplexing," the raven murmured as it beat its wings and flew toward the eaves of an unoccupied side hall. "But I came to this era to gather materials, not to solve mysteries."
His objective on this journey was to find an authentic fragment of the Eye of Ra. Everything he had just seen was shocking, but to someone from another time, it was ultimately inconsequential.
What he needed was the fragment, not the truth.
Time passed quickly.
After completing their evening duties, the priests retired for the night. When the final footsteps faded into the distant corridor, Ian glided down from the eaves. The moment he touched the ground, his form twisted and stretched like smoke, feathers transforming into black robes and a beak receding into a sharp, high-bridged nose.
Standing beneath the moonlight, Ian brushed his robes lightly before taking a small silver pocket watch out of his coat.
It was a device he had crafted himself: a Divinity Detector.
The hands on the dial trembled faintly but pointed to nowhere in particular.
"It looks like the fragment isn't in the underground chamber or the main hall." He murmured softly. "Then I'll have to search for it myself."
Ian cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, an advanced form of illusion magic that made his body and presence merge completely with the surroundings, rendering him imperceptible. With his current level of mastery, only beings with divine perception could possibly notice him.
His body gradually faded into transparency, occasionally refracting faint rainbow glimmers at certain angles. Keeping close to the walls, Ian moved silently, his ears catching every subtle sound.
Morning activities within the temple had already begun. From afar came the orderly chants of the night-duty priests, though they posed no real concern.
They rarely left that room anyway. In this era, few thieves had the death wish to trespass in a temple. Its interior was protected by numerous dangerous defensive magics.
Even highly powerful wizards would struggle to evade its detection systems.
Of course, this did not include someone like Ian, a legendary wizard.
Ian continued searching.
The air carried a blended fragrance of myrrh and cinnamon.
The main hall towered in grandeur. Its domed ceiling bore a mural of Ra steering the solar barque across the heavens; gold dust shimmered beneath the moonlight. At the center stood a solemn, divine statue holding a scepter and an ankh.
Ian walked forward slowly, his gaze sweeping across the altar, incense burners, and offering tables. Each object emitted faint divine fluctuations, but none was the fragment of the Eye of Ra he sought.
He crouched down to examine a hidden compartment beneath the statue's pedestal and found only a papyrus scroll filled with prayers.
"This is almost excessively proper," Ian sighed.
He continued deeper inside.
The first place he infiltrated was the nearest Hallow Room. The small chamber's walls were lined with wooden racks embedded in the stone. These racks neatly displayed various ritual instruments, including gilded scarab statues, turquoise-inlaid scepters, and bronze mirrors engraved with hieroglyphs.
A faint glow lit the tip of Ian's wand.
"Reveal your true form!"
There was no response.
Though the objects contained faint blessing magic, none of them were connected to the power of the Sun God. He paid special attention to a sapphire ornament shaped like an eye.
Unfortunately, it was nothing more than an ordinary decoration.
The Books and Records Room was located in the eastern wing of the temple and housed thousands of papyrus scrolls. Ian knew that genuine divine artifacts were sometimes documented in ancient texts.
Six tall bronze shelves were packed with rolled papyri, categorized by year and type. Ian quickly skimmed through records from the past three months, mostly ritual schedules, offering inventories, and copies of divine oracles.
At the bottom of the final shelf, he discovered a secret scroll bound with a black cord.
However, after untying it, Ian felt immediate disappointment; it contained nothing more than tedious records concerning the training of new priests.
He continued flipping through scroll after scroll, his fingertips brushing across the text as he attempted to sense any hidden magic within them, perhaps spells designed to conceal stored objects.
"Hymn to Ra"... nothing.
"Solar Barque Navigation Chart"... nothing.
"Temple Ritual Procedures"... nothing.
"Records of Anubis's Judgments"... wait.
Ian discovered a passage that had been deliberately smeared out within a scroll whose edges were badly damaged:
"...On the seventh day, Ra did not rise; the firmament split... the Gatekeepers sealed... the god sleeps within..."
The text ended abruptly, causing Ian's pupils to contract slightly.
Ra did not ascend?
The sky split?
The god sleeps?
This differed somewhat from the claim of a "fall."
It sounded more like a sealing or a slumber.
Ian was surprised to realize that he had uncovered another piece of information. Yet, he still had not found the shard he truly sought.
"That shouldn't be possible..."
Ian rubbed his temple. A genuine Fragment of the Eye of Ra should radiate intense sun magic power, just as he had learned in the Hogwarts library in the future.
And yet...
The magical fluctuations throughout the entire temple were unnaturally calm, as though something were suppressing them deliberately.
Passing through a corridor lined with portraits of past high priests, Ian arrived at the spice storage room. The scent was so strong that it almost seemed visible; sacks of frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon were piled high against the walls.
The moment he stepped inside, he sneezed and quickly cast a filtering charm on himself.
While inspecting the third sack of spices, his wand suddenly grew warm.
Hidden at the bottom was a small silver box. Inside were several golden crystals, extremely rare, discontinued alchemical materials.
"Crystallized Sun Salt!"
Ian's eyes lit up. This substance only forms around objects that have been exposed to the power of the Sun God for a long time.
But the crystals had turned cloudy gray, as if contaminated.
Following this lead, Ian continued searching and arrived at the priests' changing room. More than a dozen white robes hung neatly from bronze hooks, each carrying a faint cedar fragrance.
Ian noticed that the innermost robe had faint golden stains on its sleeve cuffs and felt unusually warm to the touch. When he turned back the lining, he discovered a hidden pocket containing a fragment of blue glass.
At first glance, it looked like an ordinary decorative piece.
But when Ian touched it with his wand, spiderweb-like golden patterns suddenly appeared within the glass.
"It's a counterfeit, just a more advanced one than the one the old man had. Why are they making so many fakes?"
Ian set the fragment down in disappointment. It was just an ordinary crystal enhanced with advanced imitation charms. While it could mimic certain properties of the true Divine Eye, it lacked the most essential element: the primordial essence of the Sun God.
After all, the true Eye of Ra was formed from the Sun God Ra's own eye.
Minutes and seconds passed. Ian had already inspected most of the temple's western wing, including the sacred scarab breeding chamber, the ritual instrument vault, and the calendrical calculation room.
Everything was disappointingly normal.
Several times, he nearly collided with passing priests.
Fortunately, the Disillusionment Charm proved reliable enough.
After several hours of searching, Ian still had nothing to show for it.
Sighing, he arrived at the infirmary in the eastern wing. The room was empty except for shelves filled with herbs and medicinal salves. In one corner stood a bronze basin with a suspicious black residue on its bottom.
Ian had just leaned closer to inspect it when footsteps sounded outside the door.
He quickly hid behind a statue of Isis.
Two priests entered, supporting a pale-faced companion between them.
"It happened again?" The older priest asked, his voice betraying his exhaustion.
"It was right at the cellar entrance..." The younger priest said, trembling. "He said he saw countless eyes..."
"Silence! Go fetch the holy oil! Quickly!"
While they were distracted, Ian quietly slipped out, his heart beating faster.
"The cellar."
The Scepter Priest had mentioned that place indeed.
He had to find its entrance. Perhaps it contained the Embryo and the Temple's true treasure.
"But where exactly is the cellar?"
The magical world was just that strange. The Embryo appeared to merely sink underground, but it was actually placed in a secret chamber that could not exist in a normal architectural structure.
Hogwarts possessed many such rooms in later ages.
The Room of Requirement was a similar case.
Over the next two hours, Ian explored nearly every corner of the temple, even venturing into the high priest's private prayer chamber. There, he found a detailed floor plan of the temple.
However, the location marked as the "Seventh-Level Cellar" corresponded to nothing more than an ordinary stone wall.
There was no trace of a hidden door.
"Spatial folding?"
Ian placed his hand against the cold stone surface. His wand detected faint spatial magic fluctuations, but they were far too weak to support an entire subterranean complex.
Unless...
...unless the cellar itself was a magical construct or existed in another dimension entirely.
However, the probability of such a scenario was low.
After all, pocket worlds were exceedingly rare.
(End of Chapter)
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