Chương 195: Ch185- Djinn

Cassian shook his head hard, backing away from the centre of the room.

"No, no, no. No, no! We need to leave. Right now." Coriolanus caught his arm.

"What is it?" Cassian stared at him, eyes sharp, whispering.

"We've woken something ancient. And strong. We need to leave before it realises we're still here." The Old Masters frowned, uneasy murmurs passing between them.

"Did you sense anything?" one asked. Cassian bit down on his tongue. He couldn't exactly say visions, could he? He'd already been toeing the line of sanity as far as most of them were concerned. Last thing he needed was to start ranting about things he'd seen in another man's head. He forced his voice steady.

"Please, trust me on this one. We need to go." A few of the field agents didn't move. One of the Greeks scoffed under his breath. The French team looked at one another, then down at the floor.

"We've come this far. What can possibly scare you this much?"

"I said we leave," Cassian snapped.

"You want a transcript?" Someone else muttered something about overreacting. Another said they'd only just stabilised the chamber.

"We're not turning back because someone's got a bad feeling." Bathsheda was already moving. She'd seen that look on his face once before. The others weren't as quick. One of the Egyptian curse-breakers stepped toward the pit.

"We've got readings to finish. This place's been sealed for-" The air shifted. A low groan rolled through the ground. A gust of cold hit them in the back like a door slamming shut. They spun. The tunnel they'd come through... gone. The stone behind them was smooth. Seamless. As if it had never been carved open.

"Oh, bloody brilliant." Wands came up. A few spells hit the wall, blinding flashes, sparks, smoke, and nothing. Not even a scratch. Cassian turned to the room.

"Told you." Bathsheda moved beside him, wand out.

"It's sealing us in." The old masters moved fast. Ayda began tracing runes again. Edevane barked instructions. Dumbledore's wand was already sweeping the perimeter. Someone behind Cassian let out a nervous laugh.

"We're stuck?"

"You're very perceptive," he said.

"Try not to die with that kind of insight wasted." The lights above flickered. Then the whole chamber gave a soft hum. Cassian didn't look back. He could feel it now. Watching. Waiting.

"God damn it!" Cassian barked, pacing tight circles the stone floor. Sabine looked up, wary.

"What is it?" He kicked a loose stone. It shot off, smacked one wall, bounced to another, then clattered to a stop at someone's foot.

"I can't say. I don't want to give it more power." That got him a few confused stares. The Old Masters, though, stilled. Naming a thing to feed it wasn't exactly light spellwork, it took intent, focus, and a name older than bone, but they understood the point. The others weren't so clever. He'd already turned back toward the pit at the room's centre, jaw tight, mind running faster than he could pace. The last time he'd seen this place, the man in goat-hide robes had stood inside that circle.

Right before the screaming started. He knew they didn't have much choice. You didn't play games with a Djinn, not unless you fancied ending up a story whispered over firelight. If they saw it, if everyone saw it, that would be it. The thing would start feeding, bit by bit, on their fear, their awe, their scraps of hope, and grow strong enough to make them regret ever lighting a wand down here. Cassian had two options, neither great. Either he'd go alone, or he'd put everyone down before the thing did.

The second wasn't even on the table. He wasn't a killer, no matter what kind of ruin they were standing in. That left him with the first.

"I need a word with the group leaders. Old Masters, with me. The rest of you, stand to the side, and for the love of every god with a surname, don't do anything." People hesitated, which was fair. The last half-hour hadn't inspired much trust. But when Coriolanus moved first, the others followed. The old masters gathered close, Edevane, Ayda, Dumbledore, the ones who looked old enough to have met runes personally.

"We're boxed in, no exit, and sitting on top of something extremely dangerous. We don't have much choice."

"And your solution?" The Egyptian group leader asked, folding her arms.

"I go alone," he said.

"Or with one or two, max. The rest of you stay back and keep the seals stable. I'll try to draw it off or shut it down before it notices we're worth the effort." Edevane's voice was quieter.

"You're certain this isn't something we can counter together?" He shook his head.

"Too many of us throwing magic around will only feed it. Think of it like..." he hesitated, searching for something they'd grasp, "a fire under glass. You pump in more air, it doesn't go out." That earned him a few incredulous looks. Murmurs broke out. The Turkish Leader frowned.

"You expect us to trust that assessment on faith alone? You've been... cryptic since we arrived." Cassian's patience snapped.

"I'm cryptic because saying the name gives it teeth. You want me to hand it a knife as well?" That shut a few people up, but not for long. The Greek delegate gave a short laugh.

"You're suggesting we sit here and let you take everything? You're mad." Another nodded, "Or maybe you'd rather we all back off so you can claim whatever artefact lies beneath for yourself." Cassian barked out a laugh.

"Yes, that's it. I sealed myself in a cursed chamber for a chance at bragging rights. Brilliant deduction." Another leader, a sharp-faced man from the French contingent, cut in.

"You're hiding information. You've been one step ahead since we entered this ruin. You knew where to look, how to lift the slab, what the chamber would do..."

"Because I study history, not because I fancy dying in it!" Cassian snapped.

"You think I like being right about death traps?" The argument was tipping toward chaos when the Syrian team leader suddenly gasped. His eyes went wide, and he slapped his hand against his satchel.

"Of course. Of course! I know what this is!" Cassian's stomach dropped.

"Don't." But the man was already shouting, voice echoing off the stone.

"It's a Djinn! I read an old manuscript, one of the Akkadian fragments from this region, it spoke of a prison beneath the-""Bloody hell," Cassian swore. The man's voice bounced off the stone like he thought he was announcing a royal decree. So loud that even the ones loitering at the back near the old seal heard him. The air shuddered. The walls pulsed, a soundless ripple rolling through the floor. Every torch guttered at once.

"A Djinn?" someone echoed, voice already climbing with excitement. Excitement broke over the room like someone had kicked a wasps' nest. Half the delegates surged forward at once, eyes gleaming like they'd just sniffed out gold.

"Djinn grant wishes, don't they?"

"Immortality!"

"Power!"

"If it's bound..."

"... bound to this chamber!"

"... might be negotiable!" Voices overlapped, climbing, giddy and greedy. Even the ones who had been cautious now craned forward, thoughts racing ahead of their sense. You could practically see them calculating. Eternal youth, ancient secrets, maybe even a way to twist magic itself. Only the Old Masters didn't move. They stayed right where they were, every one of them still, silent, not a trace of thrill in their faces.

Cassian and Bathsheda just stood there and watched as the rest charged toward the pit like it was going to start handing out gold leaf coupons and a ticket to godhood. Edevane stood stiff beside him.

"Idiots." Ayda just gave a slow, tired shake of his head.

"They don't understand what we've stirred." Dumbledore's gaze slid to Cassian.

"How do you know?" Cassian's jaw tensed.

"Saw it in a document. Wasn't certain at first, but..." he motioned vaguely around them, the chamber, the runes, the pit, "after seeing the room and the frozen man, yeah. I'm sure now. If I'd known for certain, I wouldn't have stepped foot in this place." The Old Masters exchanged a look. None of them were smiling. Yes, Djinn grant wishes. But only if you were clever enough to survive the cost, and very few were. They made you twist your own words, then took them in the most horrible way.

"We need to act as well," Sabine said.

"I doubt they'll be clearing the way on their own." Cassian shook his head.

"I don't want to hear their deaths." A few of them grimaced. One cursed under his breath. Dumbledore shook his head.

"We need to observe. Maybe we can learn something." Cassian muttered something that was probably impolite. Bathsheda caught his hand before he could turn it into a full argument. He didn't look at her, but his shoulders eased a notch.

"Let's observe then," he said, voice flat. They followed the others down into the pit. The air thickened the lower they went, like the place had been waiting them for eons. Runes curled along the walls, faint and twitching. The pit wasn't a pit in the end, it was a chamber, hollowed in perfect rings, like something had spun itself into the earth and refused to come back out. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. The Djinn was already standing.

Tall, wrong in the way ancient things often were. His frame was human-shaped, but the longer you looked, the less certain you were of where his shoulders ended or if his robes had ever been stitched by hand. Dark fabric trailed behind him like it was suspended in water, moving with a wind no one else could feel. His skin shimmered like polished stone under dust, gold veins faint beneath it. His face looked carved, sharp as a crescent blade and smooth as something melted and reset.

His eyes were all black, no whites, no iris. No warmth. And when he looked at them, it was like a nail tapped gently against the back of your teeth. Then his head tilted, curious and slow, and the grin unfurled. Wide and eager. Cassian froze. The Djinn hadn't said a word. But its eyes locked onto him like it had expected him. The others hadn't noticed. They were too busy gawping. A man from the Turkish delegation stepped forward, eyes glassy with awe.

"You are... real." The Djinn moved its hand like it was brushing dust from the air. Then it laughed, expression shifting uncannily.

"Welcome." It leaned forward.

"You have come seeking power," it purred, voice rising.

"You have crossed blood and seal, fire and silence... and here you are. Finally." The crowd leaned in. Eager little lambs, legs trembling with excitement. The Djinn threw its arms wide.

"You've freed me from my eternal prison!" it cried, voice rolling over the chamber like it was performing for a theatre full of lunatics.

"I owe you, oh Masters and Mistresses. Bound I may be, but one wish for each, and then..." it gave a mock-gasp, hand to its chest, "I'll be free!" It started to laugh again. Full-bodied, mad, cracking like a whip on marble. The sound hit too many notes at once, joy, mockery, hunger.

"As per the terms of my ancient, dusty, thoroughly inconvenient binding," it said, stepping down the stone rings like a priest descending a pulpit, "I shall grant them in order of your arrival. Step up! Step up! I am yours to command." And that was the moment the room split. The front half surged forward, Turkish, Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, a few of the French, eyes shining, chins high, already building wishes in their heads like toddlers let loose in a toyshop. The back half stayed dead still.

Cassian wanted to say something. Wanted to tell the idiot crowd to back off, that this wasn't a bleeding street magician in a robe. But he didn't. Not with that thing listening. The Djinn's gaze flicked too fast, too often. Like it was parsing every twitch for meaning. He kept his mouth shut. Any word, any sound, could be taken as a command. And commands, in here, were fatal. The Djinn clapped.

"Ah! First brave soul." A young Greek delegate stepped forward, face trying to look calm and very much failing. His voice came out too loud.

"I wish for my country's prosperity." The Djinn beamed.

"Such a noble wish. So rare, so pure." It waved a hand. The man dropped. Crumpled without a scream. Just folded where he stood. Gasps erupted. Someone darted forward.

"Christos?" The Djinn turned its head, sharp.

"He wished for his country's prosperity. And so..." it spread its arms again, voice full of glee, "his heart now fuels the earth beneath it. His body, ash for the fields. His bones, the iron for its swords. His soul," it twirled its fingers, "a guiding flame. Eternal. Prosperity indeed." The silence hit hard. The front line shuffled. But not far enough back. A Turkish wizard stepped up next, face blank as a brick.

"I wish for power enough to protect my bloodline." The Djinn's eyes flashed.

"Of course you do." It snapped its fingers. The man screamed. It wasn't long. A second, maybe two, but long enough for the rest to hear the sound twist. Long enough to see the flash as he was rewritten. The man still stood there. But his skin pulsed. His eyes weren't his anymore. Veins glowed beneath the surface like someone had drawn runes under his skin and filled them with fire. His mouth opened. No sound. The Djinn purred, "Power enough to protect your line, yes, but you didn't say when you wanted it.

Now you are power. Forever. A weapon sealed in flesh. Your bloodline may call upon you. Once. Hah, who will tell them how to do it? So sad. Such an unfortunate destiny!" The man's body convulsed, then froze. Statue. Artefact. Empty shell. Someone screamed behind them. Another ran. Full sprint, back the way they came. There was no way back. He hit the seamless wall with a sound that cracked the bone. The Djinn strolled across the floor, hands clasped behind its back.

"Come now," it called out, lightly, "I haven't got all day." It turned a slow circle.

"So many faces. So many ambitions. You travelled far. You carved open the old gate. You fed the seal. You woke me." Its grin stretched too wide.

"Don't waste my time." No matter how foolish they'd been, even the thickest of them started to realise what sort of thing they'd called up. The giddy excitement was gone now, replaced by a kind of slow, creeping dread. The Djinn watched it happen, smiling faintly.

"Oh, don't stop now," it said, tone almost playful.

"You wanted wishes. You wanted miracles. Don't go shy on me." A Turkish Auror shouted, "Be specific! You have to be specific!" He pushed forward before anyone could stop him.

"I wish for eternal life, but without pain, without age, without hunger, without-" The Djinn's eyes glittered.

"Without end?"

"Yes!"

"Done." The man froze mid-step. His breath hitched, stopped. His eyes rolled back. Then his body went still, frozen where he stood, skin pale as marble. The Djinn walked a slow circle around him.

"Alive. Not dead. Not breathing. Eternal. And without pain, age, or hunger. Your kind should really read finer print." The rest stopped dead in their tracks. No one moved, no one volunteered. A man near the back finally stepped forward. French, judging by the spit on his accent.

"You foul creature!" he snapped, shaking slightly but not backing down.

"I've studied Djinn and wishes my entire life." He raised a finger, pointing at the creature.

"Grant this exactly, and nothing more. Your next and immediate act is to end your own existence, cleanly, completely, and forever, in a single, indivisible instant that isn't relative, with no interval in which you or anything acting for you can think, speak, move, cast, or prepare.

By 'end your existence' I mean permanent and irreversible cessation of your consciousness, will, magic, powers, avatars, vessels, anchors, bindings, contracts, names, aspects, echoes, memories, contingencies, phylacteries, horcrux-equivalents, future-scheduled acts, time-split selves, pocket-realities, planar projections, and any other form by which you persist, act, reform, or are recalled, across all times, frames, planes, branches, and versions of this timeline.

"This death occurs only to you, harms no one and nothing else, produces no shockwave, backlash, vacancy-effect, curse, debt, geas, omen, prophecy, side-effect, or karmic accounting, and alters nothing in physics, causality, or memory except that, from this moment forward, you are gone.

"All deals, marks, bindings, lures, compulsions, and records you originated or maintain either release harmlessly or vanish without consequence, any energy that would have discharged is silently nullified rather than transferred, stored, or rerouted.

"No agent, ally, rival, system, artifact, ward, god, daemon, djinn, or mechanism may act, awaken, or be triggered because you died, and no one becomes aware of this act as an event to pursue, avenge, or exploit.

"You cannot defer, divide, simulate, outsource, reinterpret, relocate, time-smear, or conditionalise this, you cannot fulfill it by substituting sleep, banishment, stasis, imprisonment, feigned death, memory erasure, or any reversible state, you cannot satisfy it by shifting the place of your death to a time before this wish was spoken or to a realm outside my language's reach.

"If a word here admits two readings, take the plain, safest, smallest one as a reasonable contemporary human would, to complete only your death and to avoid any impact on anyone or anything else. Do it now." The silence that followed was so loud. The Djinn blinked. Then it burst out laughing. Mad, delighted, full of teeth. It clapped its hands together like it'd just watched a magician pull a dragon out of a hat.

"Oh, marvellous!" it crowed.

"Such rigour. Such paranoia. Such poetry. All that effort..." It snapped its fingers.

"Granted." The man took a breath like he'd been underwater too long. The rest, the ones still standing, let out their own, half-laughs, half-sobs, like they might've just watched the monster fold in on itself. The air changed, pressure equalised, a faint hiss like a seal breaking. Where the Djinn had stood, there was simply absence, as neat as a deleted word. For a heartbeat, nothing else happened. Exactly as specified. The Frenchman who'd made the wish blinked. Then looked around.

"Did it work?" No answer. Then, in a matter of an instant... A second presence was already in the room, occupying the same space, the same posture, the same smile, yet not the same. The cadence was different, the focus a fraction off, like a mask cut from the same pattern by a different hand. It hadn't arrived, it had been there, coexistent, causally independent, never triggered because of the death. The wording had said smallest plain reading of "you." The wish had annihilated exactly one acting instance.

The Djinn's voice, new but identical, sounded like a page turning. Pleased.

"Precise," it drawled.

"But bounded." It stood calmly at the centre again, hands folded like a smug clerk behind a cursed till.

"Let's continue."

One by one, they wished. And the Djinn twisted every single one. It was brutal at first, bone-cracking, soul-warping kind of brutal, but eventually Cassian, Bathsheda, and the Old Masters stopped flinching. Stopped reacting at all, really. Like watching a magic show where every rabbit turned out to be a corpse. Then it got worse. Quieter. Subtler. Like it was bored of the obvious gore and had decided to get creative. Soon, the chamber stank of blood, sweat, and scorched stone. Half the crowd lay broken or wrong.

The rest either froze, petrified, vitrified. One way or another were granted an eternal life. By the time the crowd had thinned, some silent, some missing, some permanently fused with whatever nightmare they'd bartered for, the Djinn turned its eyes to them. Cassian took a slow breath, stepped forward. Bathsheda caught his hand. He smiled, didn't say a word. Just that same maddening grin that meant 'I got this.' She held on half a second longer, then let go. He walked ahead alone.

The Djinn shifted where it stood, gold-veined skin flexing like heat over stone.

"Ah. You're finally here," it said.

"I saw you years ago. The little curious spy." Cassian didn't blink. The vision. The one where he'd first seen Amphora Vox. Back then, he wasn't sure if the Djinn had seen him too. Apparently, it had. Great. He didn't ask how. Didn't matter. One shot. One chance. He stepped up, heart kicking hard in his ribs, and didn't bother with a preamble.

"Turn the single, shared timeline of this world back exactly one hundred ninety hours by UTC, if that second is invalid, use the next valid one but not further than a hundred and twenty seconds, and set everything to exactly the state it held at that instant, every person, place, record, field, and particle, no omissions, additions, substitutions, or 'closest matches'. Not a facsimile, not a branch, this same timeline rewound.

Do it in one stroke, no pauses, no intermediate stasis, no detours, no hidden scaffolding, so that no one perceives the reversal at all. When the clock reaches that second, the world simply is as it was, and then moves forward exactly as it would have had I never spoken, unshaped by you or anything arising from you or this place. This act leaves no harm, no mark, no delay, no debt, no geas, no flag, no trace in any ledger or mind.

When the reset is complete, you, I, or anyone or anything retain no memory, leverage, or residue of this exchange. If any word here can be read two ways, take the plain, safest human reading and do the least required to fulfill it. Do it. Now." The Djinn's head tilted. Then it laughed. Sharp, delighted, like someone handed it a riddle and a knife.

"Oh," it said, "how neat. How very... tidy." It stepped closer, voice like honey poured over razors.

"Brat," Ayda said, with a grumble.

"You're sure that's the path you want?" Coriolanus didn't even bother lowering his voice.

"I'm all for a bit of reckless, but this isn't clever. We'll forget we were standing in front of a loaded wand." Dumbledore added from the side, holding a bony wand. Cassian gave it a second look as the old man said, "Even if the timeline resets, how will we know it worked? You'll be gambling the world on a blank memory."

"I'm not gambling," Cassian said. He shot them a glare that said, 'Shut up!' Ayda's eyes narrowed.

"You have a fallback."

"I have a theory."

"That's worse." The others all looked the same, uncertain, strained, grim. All except one. Bathsheda's eyes lit, just faintly, like a puzzle piece had just clicked into place. Her eyebrows raised in the sort of expression that usually followed an ohhh in her head. The Djinn's gaze flicked to her, then to the rest. It smiled.

"Oh dear," it drawled.

"Even your friends are wiser. And still you press forward. But let's be clear. If I grant this, you won't remember. No one will. Not even me. Nothing changes. This moment happens again. And again. Forever. Time loops. You get eaten next time. Or the time after. It doesn't end. You live this loop until your bones rot. I have eternity. Do you?" Cassian didn't move. The Djinn's grin stretched.

"You won't even know you failed. You'll smile again. March up here, all puffed up with purpose, and try again. And again. Until the weight crushes you. Doesn't that sound fun?" He just stared at the thing. The Djinn purred.

"Exactly what I hoped you'd choose. I knew you would be my ascent the moment I glimpsed you through the sands of time. When the world rewinds, you forget. But the magic remembers. You always come back. And with every return, every naive descent into my prison, I grow stronger. Time resets, magic do not." Cassian didn't twitch. Didn't flinch. Didn't blink.

"Do it." The Djinn sighed, long and theatrical.

"My, you lot are so boring when you're noble." It grinned.

"Fool." It snapped its fingers. Everything went white.

Cassian and Bathsheda landed hard. Dry wind slapped across their faces from one side, dragging dust up from the cracked earth. From the other came a cooler breeze, tugging faintly at the hem of Cassian's coat. It carried something briny, sea, maybe. Long gone. Faded enough it almost didn't smell like anything at all. Around them, the land stretched out in bleached ridges. Scrub grass clung to the dirt like it hadn't realised it was supposed to die yet.

Thorny bushes growing knee-height, all brittle limbs and sunburnt leaves. A few bone-white stones jutted from the ground like ribs. And further up the slope, the rise of a hill, oddly symmetrical for something so bare. Cassian blinked at it. The sun was still low, throwing long shadows across the ground. He rolled his shoulders, brushing grit off his sleeve. Then both of them looked at each other.

"Cass! You did it!" Bathsheda launched forward, arms around his neck before he could even blink. The two of them hit the ground in a tangled heap, rolling through warm dust and scrubby grass.

"You remember it too?" he asked, blinking up at the blue sky. She sat up, flushed, hair sticking out in six directions, and nodded.

"Yeah. I've got a second set of memories for today and the next week. Whatever we went through down there, it's still in my head." Cassian let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. Relief hit harder than he expected. When he made the wish, he'd been betting on two things. First, his mind. So far, nothing, not even a screaming, smug eldritch spirit could rewrite his memories. He wasn't sure if a Djinn could manage it, but apparently not. Good. One for the historian. Second, her.

Bathsheda's odd knack for keeping hold of alternate timelines, like a pocket stitched into reality. Someone nudged time out of joint, she woke up holding two versions of the same day. And it worked. He flopped back onto the sand.

"Alright. Brilliant. Now we just have to convince ten countries not to dig up an ancient prison chamber. Joy." She gave a short laugh, brushing grit off her robes.

"They can't even get past the slab, remember?" Cassian snorted.

"They'll try. And if they manage it, they'll all trip over each other and get eaten before the tea's brewed." Bathsheda shivered at the thought, her eyes flicking toward the site ahead of them. And just like that, it began again, the clean-up. The persuasion. The slightly awkward letters. The tight smiles. The art of not saying Djinn while still stopping a dozen overeager academics from opening a gateway to hell with a crowbar and a funding grant. Here we go again.