The Assassin Brotherhood had passed down centuries of texts on mysticism, but witnessing it firsthand was a first for most of the modern members present. Everyone watched with absolute focus, afraid to blink and miss something.
Magic had a way of captivating people—006 was no exception, and neither were the assassins.
Bella's identity as a mage was the most effective answer to every skeptic in the Brotherhood.
Without it, a two-thousand-year-old organization wouldn't have bowed so easily. You're not a monarch. We're not your vassals. You drop in from nowhere and expect us to fall in line? The Brotherhood has always stood for freedom. The only reason Bella commanded universal obedience was the immense authority that title carried—Mage.
The group watched in tense silence. The crimson cross grew larger and larger, and a wave of dizziness swept through the room—then several white serpents erupted from nowhere, coiling around the blood-red symbol and tearing at it with furious precision.
The serpents outnumbered it, their assault relentless. The crimson cross buckled under the onslaught and was shredded to pieces.
Bella opened her eyes. "I've broken the defensive ward. The target is Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan. Rest up, gear up—we move tonight."
"Mentor, are we expecting a fight? Templars?" Shaun asked.
"...Not Templars. Some minor hostiles inside the tomb. My divination disturbed them."
That same afternoon, the NYPD received a civilian report: a gas main had ruptured at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street. Crews were working through the night to fix it, and police assistance was requested for traffic management.
City officials confirmed the report directly with the gas company.
Plenty of onlookers gathered beyond the perimeter—police officers, city workers, gas company supervisors, and above all, work crews. Nobody noticed anything was off.
The gas leak was real. The civilian call was real. Even the city officials who showed up to assess the situation were genuine. No bribes, no Apple of Eden, no supernatural influence—everything went through proper channels. While the actual gas company workers repaired the real leak, the side door of Trinity Church nearby was quietly opened by people posing as gas company crew.
The Brotherhood had planned this operation down to the last detail. The objective was to retrieve the treasure without alerting a single soul.
They took the back path behind the church and descended into the crypt.
"Whitington Lane looks like a name. It must be this one." Bella scanned the tomb markers and pointed.
The Brotherhood had no shortage of educated members—but in the grand tradition of their founding, the brawlers outnumbered the scholars by a considerable margin.
One assassin picked up a sledgehammer and swung it at the tomb door.
The door crumbled, revealing a pitch-black coffin beyond. Behind it, a long passageway stretched into darkness. Several members moved to drag the coffin clear. Bella stopped them.
"Gentlemen—weapons out. Cold steel only." She gave the instruction, then stepped back to her position at the rear, every inch the composed Mentor.
She was consciously keeping two identities separate: Daisy Johnson, the skilled fighter, and the Mentor, master of mysterious magic.
The Brotherhood's elite were ready. Heavily built assassins took the front rank, armed with battle-axes and war hammers. Behind them, others nocked crossbows and recurve bows.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The sledgehammer blow had disturbed whatever rested here. From inside the coffin came a low, rhythmic thumping.
What emerged wasn't the undead creature they'd expected—it was a sound. A buzzing, like a swarm of bees. Layered, chaotic, sourceless.
The more perceptive assassins tried to locate it and grew increasingly unsettled—as though many voices were whispering directly into their ears, yet no matter how hard they strained, nothing could be made out.
"Quiet," Bella said softly.
The sensation lifted from every assassin at once.
They glanced at each other. They had always been told that supernatural forces were mysterious and unpredictable. But this?
Without their Mentor here, they might have been wiped out in a single engagement.
"That was nothing more than centuries of accumulated negative energy released all at once. A crude trick at best." Bella cleared her throat, dispelling any illusions of infinite mystical power. "Given enough time, you would have shaken it off yourselves. You were just scaring yourselves. Ladies and gentlemen—prepare to engage."
They had strong nerves, and refocused their attention on the tomb entrance. Whitington Lane's coffin burst apart, and a withered figure draped in rotted cloth slowly crawled out.
The man with the war hammer didn't waste a second—he swung.
He had the most raw power in the group, and the training to match. The angle was perfect.
The revenant was sluggish, still half-trapped in the passageway with only its head exposed.
It tilted its head and looked at them.
Flashlight beams swept over it.
Its face was caved in and contracted, the features compressed toward the center, skin pulled flush against the skull. Whatever it had looked like in life was long gone. Its clothing had decayed to little more than hanging rags.
The revenant had barely crawled out a third of the way when the hammer connected.
THUD. The strike caved in its spine. The skull—still wrapped in desiccated brown skin—rolled across the floor twice. The jaw continued opening and closing.
The thing wasn't dead.
"What the—" The man's grip tightened on the hammer. How do you kill this?
Shaun, following Bella's earlier instructions, opened his pack and poured a vial of holy water over the skull.
The few brittle strands of hair clinging to it ignited immediately. Then the brown skin. Then the entire skull caught fire.
When the head had burned down to a pale-gray heap of ash, the body stopped moving.
Bang. Bang. Bang. The sounds came in rapid succession up and down all three tiers—tomb doors lined the walls like a hospital morgue, and they burst open one by one. Over a dozen revenants fought their way out.
"Kill them!" Shaun raised his crossbow and fired. A steel-tipped bolt punched through one revenant's eye socket, the force pinning it to the wall before it could break free. He stepped forward and doused it with a second vial.
The thirty-odd assassins who had followed Bella into the crypt were all veterans. Against supernatural entities like these, they showed no fear—their only real concern had been not knowing how to put them down for good. Now that Shaun had a supply of holy water on hand, there was nothing left to worry about.
Even 006 borrowed an axe from one of the assassins and waded in alongside them.