Chương 49: Ch46- SMELLS LIKE... LIES!

"Smells of stale incense and sandalwood. No... agarwood. Rare stuff." He frowned.

"Really rare." The guide glanced over, squinting at him.

"You have a sharp nose." Cassian gave the air another sniff.

"Not really. It is just stuck in the stone. Burn that much resin, it will outlive the roof." He turned in a slow circle, eyes dragging over the cracks, the pillars, the strange slope of the floor.

"This isn't a monastery. Taoists, Buddhists... they don't use Agarwood. It is too expensive." Bathsheda was already crouching near a half-crumbled altar, her hand was at the edge of an engraved bowl. Cassian walked further in, boots crunching softly against debris.

"This was sealed, yeah? Properly locked up?" Their escort gave a nod.

"Since the Qianlong era. Older by centuries, though. No official record before that." Cassian hummed under his breath, kneeling by a wall etched top to bottom in what looked like someone's attempt at four overlapping writing systems.

"Of course there isn't. No one writes down the embarrassing bits. Especially not 'we buried someone important in a fake temple so the ancestors wouldn't throw a fit.'" He ran a thumb over a glyph that shimmered faintly under touch.

"This is a tomb." Bathsheda straightened.

"You sure?"

"Too much perfume. Too many protective layers." He tapped the floor with his feet. The sound came back flat.

"And this pitiful echo? Chamber underneath. Big one. You don't hollow out half a mountain just to store tea and scrolls." She shifted, eyes narrowing on a slanted groove that ran between the floor slabs.

"Drainage."

"Exactly. They embalmed someone in here. And they didn't want the mess leaking out." He stood, brushing dust from his knees.

"Question is, why the theatre? The fake monastery, the excess wards, the incense? Whoever it was, they were either venerated… or very, very cursed." The guide shifted uneasily. Didn't speak. Cassian noticed.

"Something you are not saying?" The man shook his head.

"Old stories. Ghost talk. Nothing serious.""'Ghost talk' in a place built on top of a sarcophagus big enough to host a political summit doesn't feel like nothing." Bathsheda stepped to his side, gaze flicking to the runes carved into the archway.

"These aren't just wards. Some of them are spatial markers." Cassian turned, already pulling his notebook from the side of his coat.

"For what?" She pointed at a triangular series near the edge.

"Maze spells. Locked pathways. It's meant to shift." He paused, "Oh, I do love a good architectural insult to safety." Their guide, now visibly sweating despite the cold air, took a step back.

"You shouldn't go further without the approval team. There is protocol." Cassian raised both brows.

"Has protocol ever unearthed a hidden chamber without breaking into an existential crisis?" Bathsheda ignored both of them, already pressing her hand to a carved dial near the base of the wall. The stone made a clicking noise. Runes crawled across the surface like something was waking up. The guide pulled his wand and pointed squarely at them.

"Step back." Cassian raised both hands, slow and easy, like he was trying not to startle a very twitchy cat. He shifted a step away from Bathsheda, eyes on the man, not even pretending to look worried.

"You invited a master runist from the islands to trace your way through a hedge maze, but not the truth? That it?" The guide didn't answer. Jaw tight. Fingers white around the wand. Cassian tilted his head.

"That is what this is, isn't it? You want a clever finger to point at the right dial, but gods forbid anyone actually say what is under the floor." Bathsheda didn't speak. She hadn't moved since activating the wall. Her hand was still hovering near the wall. The guide's wand didn't waver.

"We follow protocol."

"Of course you do." Cassian took a step sideways, hands still raised.

"And what does protocol say about bringing in outside experts then threatening to hex them when they notice you've built your expedition tent on a bloody tomb?" If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Bathsheda finally glanced at him. The wall behind her was still humming. Runes alive. Magic moving under it, the whole place was breathing.

When Cassian took another step away from Bathsheda, she moved in the opposite direction, closer to the wall, closer to the dial still humming. The guide's eyes flicked to her, wand moving somewhere in between. Cassian didn't hesitate.

"Expelliarmus." The spell cracked through the chamber. The wand jerked out of the man's hand mid-cast, flipped and landed neat in Cassian's palm. He was teaching the spell at Hogwarts for two years now. No ancient variant popped its head up yet, but that didn't matter. Cassian had dried every inch of mastery out of it. So when the second wand snapped into his free hand it felt less like luck and more like habit. Across the chamber, Bathsheda moved too, pulling her wand. She didn't look at the man.

Just said, "Let's go out. No need to start a diplomatic scandal." Cassian nodded, pressing the man's own wand gently against his ribs.

"Let's walk. Time to break it to the other rune-masters you brought in... that we are not specialists. We are sacrifices." The guide didn't answer. Just turned and walked stiffly out, hands up, face set like stone. Humiliation had teeth, and Cassian had just kicked him square in the gums. Cassian followed, tossing the spare wand in the air once before tucking it into his belt. They pushed through the archway into the open ruins, back into the clearing where the red tent still loomed.

"Gather round, gather round," he called, loud as a bell and twice as annoying.

"Public service announcement! This bastard tried to kill us. Shocker, I know." A few heads turned. A couple of Ministry officials paused. The ones closer to the tents looked up from their clipboards. Cassian knew he was poking the lion now. But a noisy disruption was better than a clean execution behind a privacy ward. He couldn't afford the confusion of allies while enemies were prepared. The guard he disarmed stiffened.

"Shut your mouth." Cassian ignored him.

"Just to clarify for the back row... this wasn't an archaeological dig. It was a bloody trap. Fancy one. Probably funded by three departments and signed off by someone who thought 'murder' sounded sexier in Mandarin." Bathsheda was already moving, calmly veering left, towards the camp's edge where their bags were dumped earlier, likely half-rifled. Two robed witches flanked the red tent's flap. One of them raised her wand. Cassian clocked it.

"Ah, and now we are doing the part where you try to silence me before I ruin your lovely sacrificial ritual with evidence and logic." Chinese officials didn't like being caught out, not in front of their own staff and definitely not by some foreign wizard with messy hair and a loud mouth. They moved quickly, three wands up before Cassian even dropped his grin. A ring of them circled, scholars, Aurors, maybe even a few Ministry plants pretending to be researchers. All drawn wands and frowning. No one cast... yet.

They were still gauging whether to silence him with paperwork or a stunning spell. Meanwhile, the foreign delegates started drifting in from the edges, Indian, Nigerian, French, German, a Spaniard with half an eyebrow singed off, sticking together like nervous sheep. A Frenchman near the front stepped forward. Broad nose, thick glasses, robes that screamed old money.

"What is going on?" he asked. Cassian jabbed his wand into the man's back.

"This is not a monastery. I know it looks like one, bless the paint and incense, but there is a royal tomb under it. Cursed up to the rafters. We were brought in to find the way through safely, take the risk, map the route... so they can clear it and help themselves to whatever is locked inside." The Frenchman looked horrified. One of the archivists beside him looked less surprised than he should've. Cassian glanced back at the red tent.

"Tell me I am wrong. Go on. Would love to be wrong." A murmur passed through the crowd. Someone translated, someone else swore. A Japanese rune-master said something sharp to the man beside her. The Chinese officials didn't answer. They just narrowed the circle. Bathsheda came next to him. Her eyes flicked to Cassian, then the forest. The message was clear... make space, get moving. Too late. The first spell came from the left... silent, fast, meant to disarm. Cassian ducked. The air cracked above his shoulder.

"Right," he muttered.

"So we've dropped the scholarly pretence, then." Bathsheda dragged him back by the elbow before the next spell could fly. A shimmering wall snapped up around them, hard and high, the foreigners had formed a massive Protego shield, locked shoulder-to-shoulder, some still panting from the effort.

"Right then," Cassian called.

"How about we all forget there is a nice, ancient tomb under our boots and you lot drop your wands?" No one moved. A few hands tightened on grips, a few robes fluttered. Wands stayed up. He pointed at the red tent with his wand.

"International incident? Oh, it will happen. But this way, no one has to explain why three foreign researchers dropped dead in a blessed monastery." One of the Ministry witches scowled.

"Don't step over the line." Cassian snorted.

"You orchestrated a scheme that would treat dozens of international researchers and rune masters as mere fodder to force open the path. They are already writing statements. That Japanese rune-master got better shorthand than a court scribe." The Frenchman stepped into the open.

"He is correct. We were not informed this was a burial ground." One of the Chinese Aurors muttered something sharp. Cassian didn't catch it, but from the way the Spaniard's brows jumped, it wasn't a compliment. The guide he disarmed made a sharp move, reaching for his wand, any wand. Cassian shifted, flicked his wrist away from him.

"Ah-ah. Still mine," he said, flashing teeth.

"You try to hex us in a cursed ruin, you don't get your toys back." One of the Chinese officials barked something over his shoulder. Two Aurors turned and rushed away. Cassian caught one of the Chinese witches muttering sharply in Mandarin, he picked out "fetch help." His tone got colder.

"All I am asking is you stop pointing sticks and we pretend this didn't end with half your team in the obituaries." Bathsheda raised her wand higher, eyes fixed on the Auror to their left.

"Lower it." The stand-off was tense but slowly, a wand dipped. Then another. Cassian grabbed Bathsheda's wrist just as she shook her head.

"Anti-Portkey. Anti-Apparition wards." He hissed something ugly under his breath.

"Of course there are. Because why not ruin my day completely—" A sharp crack cut him off. The air folded in on itself and spat out a man. He didn't fall. He didn't wobble. He just appeared... like the world had decided he'd always been standing there.