With the locals finally on side, more or less, Cassian and Bathsheda packed up and moved back toward the pyramid. Proper inspection time.
The jungle heat wasn't as bad now. Probably one of the Old Masters had cast a spell to keep the place drier.
Cassian glanced over his shoulder. A few of the American handlers were still muttering among themselves, side-eyes tracking every move he made. One of them spit into the grass when he passed. Real professional lot.
He wasn't expecting much anyway. If the Greek Temple was anything to go by, whatever was buried here had been sealed by people who knew exactly how to keep future idiots out. Not everyone listened, of course. The team in Greece had been too eager to poke around. They'd seen carvings in three scripts, recognised two, shrugged off the third as decorative, and cracked the door open before anyone finished translating. By the time Cassian had caught up with the writing, they were already halfway through waking the thing. This time, he wasn't betting on older people having more sense.
He stepped up to the base of the pyramid, scanning the blocks. Bagshot was already circling the far side, dragging her fingers across the grooves. Bathsheda knelt near the south edge, sketching a series of runes into a notebook. A few of the American Keepers hung back, arms crossed, waiting for a slip.
"Found something," Bathsheda called.
Cassian moved over. She pointed to a strip carved just above the moss line, half-faded, twisted through erosion and old spellwork. The first symbol was clear enough. A warning mark.
The next was messier. Some form of adapted Aztec, layered over with a second set of sigils Cassian didn't recognise.
"Could be newer," she said. "Or just a regional variant."
He tilted his head. "Or two languages arguing with each other."
Bathsheda gave him a look. "You think they built it in conflict?"
"Possibly. Or someone tried to overwrite what was already here."
"With what? Different spells? Different gods?"
He pointed at a particularly tangled set of glyphs. "Different understanding of what needed binding. Language evolves, but fear doesn't. Some groups might've thought sealing it meant chanting and fire. Others probably just scratched its name off every stone and prayed it'd forget they existed."
Bathsheda nodded slowly. "And none of them were wrong."
"Nope," he said, standing. "They just died tired."
He shook his head. "A warning sign's not enough."
The others were still arguing in the background. Debating procedures, protections, bloody politics. As if the thing under their feet cared about meeting minutes. They had to find something solid to convince them it was a bad idea to open up this place. And find it fast.
Bathsheda glanced at him, gave a nod, and crouched again by the edge. She tapped another sequence of marks into her notes, mumbling under her breath. He joined her, dragging his fingers lightly over the stone.
They didn't get far. They'd barely started cross-checking the new section when a scream hit. It came from the outer tents. Panicked and abruptly cut off. A second followed, louder, then silence.
Cassian was already moving. He took the slope down in two steps, boots skidding in the mud. Bathsheda ran beside him, wand drawn. The others clocked the change a few seconds later and scattered after them, half the Keepers unslinging whatever they had. Goshawk shouted something behind them.
They cleared the tree break together. Cassian caught a flicker of movement in the trees, just leaves, maybe. Maybe not. He tightened his grip on his wand. The ground squelched underfoot, the mud grabbing at his boots.
Behind him, someone muttered a shielding charm.
The camp was too quiet. That scream hadn't come with a fight. A single second of pure panic. Then everything cut out.
He pushed past the last bush and froze.
Two bodies were on the ground.
One was curled onto his side. The other flat on his back, arms splayed. Both from the local team, Cassian recognised the red neck scarf and patch-stitched satchel. Their gear looked untouched. No scorch marks or blood near them.
He slowed. Something was off. Way off.
The air around them didn't buzz with magical residue. It didn't crack or hum or thrum with broken spells either. It was dead still.
Footsteps pounded in from behind. The American delegation pushed through. One of them, the man with the bone rings, swore and dropped beside the second body. "His soul's not in the body. How is this possible?"
Another from their side, a younger one in a long green coat, squinted. "You mean dead?"
"No," Xul'al said. She stepped between them so smoothly it felt like she'd been standing there all along.
"Not dead," she said. "They've had their souls taken clean."
Gasps rippled through the circle. A few of the local warders flinched. One of the Brazilian team muttered something in Creole and made a sign over his chest.
A young Mexican Auror straightened. "Taken?" she repeated. "Not killed? Not cursed?"
Xul'al shook her head. "Whatever was in there, it's no longer. These are hollow."
The American in green stared. "That's... souls don't just get taken. You can damage one. Shatter it. Bind it. But to take it... pull it whole from the body-"
"Would require dark magic of the oldest kind," another Keeper cut in.
A Canadian scholar looked up sharply. "Not a Dementor, then."
Xul'al glanced at her. "They don't take the soul. They consume the surface, thought, joy, memory."
Perenelle crouched near the edge, fingers skimming the dirt. Nicolas scanned the tree line.
"They didn't fight," Sabine said.
"And they didn't flee," added the Keeper beside her. "Whatever took them... did it without struggle. Fast and clean. No disruption."
Cassian's stomach turned. One still had a pencil in hand. A notebook lay half-slid from his satchel, the ink not even smudged. He'd been writing when it happened.
A voice piped up near the back.
"I've seen spirit damage," Sabine said slowly. "Ripped. Fractured magic. But this... there's nothing to repair. It's absence."
"But they're breathing, yeah? So- so they're still alive, right?"
It came from one of the junior dig team members. Couldn't have been more than twenty.
He stepped forward, glancing between the two figures. "Maybe it's a magical coma. My uncle had one. Something about the soul and body not syncing after a cursed object. He woke up. Took a month, but he woke up."
A second student nodded. "Yeah. Maybe it's the same thing. We just need to stabilise them until their souls catch up-"
"No," Xul'al said.
The pair stopped.
Xul'al stepped forward. "That's not what this is. In a coma, the soul withdraws. It shelters. Hides. The body waits. That's why healing magic still works."
She pointed at the man's chest, not touching. "Here, there's nothing waiting. The soul is gone."
"But if the body's still going-" the younger woman tried again.
Cassian finally spoke. "They're not in pain. If that's any comfort."
It wasn't. But he offered it anyway.
"If the soul was taken..." the younger girl said, more to herself now. "I mean, then maybe it can be brought back."
"By what?" Xul'al asked. "And from where?"
No one answered.
One of the Keepers crouched near the bodies, more gently this time. "They were good men," he said.
He looked up at Xul'al.
"I think we should burn them."
A sharp breath from someone nearby. Another person swore under his breath.
Eventually, Xul'al said, "That's the most merciful way."
"Still, how did anything attack without any of us noticing? It shouldn't be possible," Goshawk asked.
Cassian glanced at the edge of the clearing.
"You're thinking Crawlers," he said.
Perenelle shook her head. "No sign of consumption. No broken wards. Crawlers leave marks. They eat."
Sabine stood, brushing dirt from her hands. "We need full shields around the site. Layered, overlapping, keyed to breathwork if possible."
Goshawk raised her wand. "I'll start warding."
Perenelle followed, already casting. Sabine stepped in beside her, hands sketching tight sigils through the air.
The others began to move.
Cassian sat on the dirt, wand resting loosely in his grip. He stared ahead, not really seeing the clearing.
"Could be like the manananggal," he muttered. "Cuts herself in half. The top part flies at night, sucks out unborn souls."
Bathsheda glanced over but didn't interrupt.
"Even Christian myths had it. Demons that ate souls, not flesh. Like they couldn't touch the body but could rot it from the inside out."
She stepped closer and crouched next to him.
"There were Babylonian ones too," he added. "Utukku. Or worse, the gallu demons. Dragged souls to the underworld. Some were said to cut the soul out piece by piece."
He looked down at his hands, fingers curled tight around his wand. None of them fit cleanly.
"You're doing it again," she said softly.
He blinked. "Doing what?"
Bathsheda smiled faintly. Reached out and wrapped her fingers around his hand.
"When you don't know something and you're worried, you go over your knowledge like you might trip over the answer."
He huffed a quiet breath. Didn't pull away.
Bathsheda shifted her weight. "If this thing feeds on the soul... then what sort of wards do we even use?"
"None that I know," he said. "Soul magic's patchy. Most cultures didn't try to defend against it, just buried it deeper. Or gave it names and hoped fear would do the job."
"Could be psychic damage," she said, brow furrowing. "Not the mind, but the anchor point. What if it isn't eating the soul, just... loosening it?"
"Unmooring." Cassian nodded. "Like popping a cork. Sudden vacuum."
"If that's true," she said, "then we don't need soul wards. We need anchors."
She grimaced. "Which would require artefacts."
"Or time," Cassian said. "But we're short on both."
Bathsheda stood up.
"This is worse than Greece, isn't it?" she asked.
Cassian clenched his fist.
"I felt something," he said. "Just for a second. A presence."
Bathsheda finally looked at him.
"It felt like a Crawler," he went on, choosing the words as they came. "But it wasn't right. Maybe Nicolas was right, and this isn't one of the types we know."
Her brow creased.
"Night Crawlers fed on magic," she said. "Wards, spellwork, memory. Everything they could strip. Blood Crawlers fed on life itself."
She looked at him again. "You think this one feeds on the soul?"
Cassian nodded.
"I don't know how to explain it," he said. "It happened fast. One blink. One breath. And then..." He broke off, jaw tightening. Just for a blink. Like something had noticed him. Something tugged his soul for an instant.
And then it was gone.
***
When they returned to work, Nicolas already had something flagged. He was crouched near the base of the pyramid, shoulders tight. Xul'al hovered behind him, arms crossed. A few of the other Keepers stood nearby, frowning like they'd all caught the same splinter but hadn't decided whether to pull it or run.
"Cassian. Bathsheda," Nicolas called, "look at this."
They stepped in. Cassian crouched next to the inscription. He brushed a hand over the old groove. Some of the lines looked burned in. Others looked like they'd been carved by something sharp.
The text was half-decayed, laced with glyphs he didn't fully recognise. But the phrasing...
"Within the vault lies the Soul of Evil. Wake it not, lest the body be unshackled. Bound not by death, but silence. Touch not the name. Tread not the dream. Let memory lie forgotten, or risk unmaking the world that rose after."
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