The air around them hummed like a swarm of invisible bees. The Sun replaced the Moon, majestically, sending light across the atmosphere. Cole woke up, stretching and yawning, along with Kevin.
"Morning!" Kevin greeted.
Joyce seemed to have woken up earlier before they did. Cole squeezed his eyes.
"Morning!" He replied.
"How come you're still reading this?" Cole asked Lenora, as he saw her, still flipping through some pages of Latin materials.
"Still Trying to force pieces of junk into her head!" Kevin said, teasing her, as he walked out. She gave her a smirk look.
"Don't tell me you didn't sleep?" Cole asked
"Come on!..... I did but not much" She replied.
"We have to find info about this thing as soon as possible. We have to get the quest completed and go back home" She added.
"Yh. But still, you should have taken some sleep" Cole insisted.
"Well, how much information do we have?" He asked
"That's the painful part. I only managed to find out that the Lupercalia's Artifact and blood was once in the possession of an... Ancient evil dark lord." She said coldly, still flipping through the pages.
Cole was devastated. He just couldn't think about anything yet. Lenora had stayed up all night, searching for any information they would need to get the items they were looking for but she couldn't find any solid one.
"I will be back" He said and walked out.
Getting outside, he found Joyce arranging some backpacks and Kevin was nowhere to be found.
"Always wearing the long face, huh?" Cole asked her, when he walked up to her.
"You will have to mind your own business, Mason!!" She gave him a death look.
"Just saying..."
"And besides, we don't have to be like this. We are together in this quest and I think we have to work together" He told her.
"Oh, so what now?.... Feeling like the leader? Headmaster?. You were definitely close to Mr. Bruce, so am pretty sure you'll act like a 'Bruce'!" She retorted.
"Does anyone have a goddamn plan for us to get out of here and find the Artifact?" She yelled at herself.
"Definitely, none of us wants to be here. If we cope together, maybe we will find a plan." Cole said
"Don't you...."
"Fire in the sea..... Rising within me....." Kevin's loud voice arrested the rest of Joyce's words. He was humming a song, as he walked towards them, with berries.
"Cool with this!. We can catch up with them this morning for our stomachs" He joked.
"Aren't you supernatural enough to get good food?" Joyce turned to Kevin.
"I can't eat this!" She added.
"Well, If you think you're supernatural enough, go in there and get food!" Kevin retorted
"I got dinner last night!" She fought back.
"Heyyy. It's enough!" Cole had to stop the fight.
"You have to stop the fight, guys. We can manage this one for this morning" He insisted.
As soon as Joyce and Kevin had stopped the heated conversation, Lenora yelled from the inside.
"I've got it!!". They all ran inside.
"What's it??" Kevin asked, with curiousity.
"I found it. I found something!. I know where it is!" She said, with excitement.
"The Lupercalia's Artifact was missing for quite a long time and history has it that it was later found and has been kept in a museum, away from it's rightful place though" She explained.
"That's great!" Cole exclaimed
"Finally....." Kevin was in the feeling too
"Now, what we need is a Plan!" Joyce broke the celebration among them.
"Where is it?. What about the Blood?" She asked Lenora.
"Well, I don't have any information about the blood yet. But I know the Artifact is in one Museo della Civiltà Romana" She answered.
"That's the name of the museum" she added, after seeing the look on their faces when she said it.
"That sounds..." Cole was thinking
"Italian!" Lenora completed his thought.
"Italian???" The three of them asked in shock.
"Well, that's the only problem" Lenora said.
"What the hell?. The Artifact is in Italy. How do we get to Italy from here?" Kevin started asking the questions.
"And why exactly did they send us to go look for something that tends to be in U.S and it's in Italy?" Cole was flabbergasted.
"It's gonna be rough!" Joyce wasn't left out of this one too.
After some seconds of just asking themselves questions, Joyce broke the silence.
"Yhh!. I got it!"
"You've got what?" Kevin asked
"I know of a way we can get to Italy!" She revealed.
"You do?" Lenora asked
"Back then, in Nyxoria, my Dad used to do some sort of rituals to open Portals, in which we would use to go see our Mum where ever she is. I think I can apply that and we can get to Italy" She said.
"Thank goodness, Man!" Cole sighed
"I say we get the Artifact first before the blood." He added
"Are you sure about this?" Lenora had doubts
"Trust me!" Joyce replied.
As soon as she said it, they all raised an eyebrow, giving her the 'what' look.
"Come on, guys!. Let's pack up. We've got a place to be at!" Cole tuned on the spirit. They arranged their stuffs and went out, where they would carry out the ritual stuff to get to Italy.
Joyce gathered dry sand and wood in a circular shape.
"Just this?" Kevin asked.
"And this!" Joyce bought out a piece of silver coin from her pocket.
"So you take that everywhere you go?" Kevin asked
"Not necessarily..... And you ask too much questions" She replied.
Joyce's hand trembled as she held the final silver coin above the circle of dry sand. Symbols, copied carefully from the ancient pages of the archive, curved around their feet. The sunlight made the grains glitter like powdered glass.
"It says the path will answer blood," she whispered.
"Blood??"
"Yes and we will give it blood. It's a ritual, isn't it?"
And One by one they let a few drops fall into the center. The sand drank it greedily. For a moment, nothing happened.
Kevin exhaled. "Great. We just stabbed our fingers for nothing."
But then the ground shivered.
The symbols began to glow, thin at first, then brighter, stretching into sharp lines of white fire. Wind burst from nowhere, whipping their clothes, pulling at their hair. Cole tried to step back, but an unseen force locked his boots in place.
Joyce shouted over the roar, "It's working! Hold on to each other!"
Lenora grabbed Kevin's wrist. Cole clutched Joyce's arm. The light rose higher, bending, twisting, until the day itself seemed to tear open like paper.
Through the rip they saw movement — shapes, shadows, distance folding in on itself.
"Italy," Lenora breathed. The portal swallowed them. They crashed into heat.
Not gentle warmth— heat that wrapped around their lungs and pressed sweat instantly from their skin.
Cole groaned first. "Why does Italy feel like an oven?"
Kevin pushed himself upright, brushing sand from his face. Then he froze.
"Guys..... tell me Italy doesn't have pyramids."
Lenora looked up. Her heart dropped.
Before them, rising like golden mountains against the blazing sky, stood enormous triangles of stone. Endless desert stretched in every direction. The sun hung high and merciless, brighter than any noon she remembered.
"Wait.....This isn't Italy," she said quietly.
Joyce turned in a slow circle, panic creeping into her eyes. "No... no, no. The spell was clear. Museum. Europe. West of here. Nothing went wrong with the ritual!"
Kevin laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"Well unless Europe moved overnight," He said.
"This is Egypt!" Cole broke it.
The word settled like dust.
Egypt.
Thousands of miles from where they were supposed to be.
Thousands of miles from the artifact.
Lenora felt her excitement crumble into dread. The ritual hadn't just failed — it had flung them into the wrong continent.
"How?" Lenora muttered, replaying every line she had translated. "I read it perfectly. The directions were right."
Kevin rounded on her. "Were they? Because last time I checked, we are not anywhere near Italy."
Joyce lifted her chin. "Don't start."
"I'm just saying," Kevin snapped, "you said you knew how portals worked!. You said your Dad used to use them in your presence. See where your ritual has dumped us!"
"I said I had some experience!" Joyce fired back. "Not that I was a professional gate opener!"
Cole stepped between them before the argument could grow teeth. "Fighting won't move us."
Kevin gestured wildly at the desert. "Oh really? Because standing here will magically send us home?" Kevin was mad now.
Lenora pressed her hands to her temples. The guilt burned worse than the sun. She had been the one to read about the museum. She had been the one who convinced them this would work.
If she had been wrong...
"I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was small, almost carried away by the wind.
For a second Kevin looked like he wanted to keep shouting. Then he turned away, kicking the sand instead.
"Is alright, Lenora." Cole consoled her. "It's not you fault at all. You made great efforts trying to find information about the Artifact"
Joyce sighed, anger leaking into worry. "We can fix it. Portals can be redirected. Maybe we just miscalculated the anchor point."
Cole glanced at the endless dunes. "So where do we even start?"
None of them had an answer.
In the distance, the pyramids stood silent and ancient, like they were watching.
Lenora swallowed. Something about them made her skin prickle. Egypt was old — older than the ritual, older than most magic they knew. If the portal had dragged them here, maybe it wasn't only a mistake.
Maybe something had pulled them.
"You feel that?" she asked.
Joyce nodded slowly. "Yeah."
Kevin looked back. "Feel what?"
"Like we're not here by accident," Cole said.
The wind shifted, carrying with it a whisper that might have been imagination.
Or a warning.
Joyce took a steady breath. "Alright. New plan. We find shade, we figure out where exactly we are, and we try the ritual again tonight."
"And if it sends us to Antarctica next?" Kevin muttered.
"Then we pack warmer clothes," she replied, this time, with a fierce voice.
Despite everything, Cole let out a short laugh. It helped, just a little.
Lenora stared once more at the pyramids, her mind racing. If ancient powers had interfered, they might be closer to answers than they thought.
Or closer to danger.
"Come on," Cole said, forcing courage into her legs. "Let's move."
Together, uncertain and far from home, the four teens began walking toward the horizon — toward history, secrets, and a destiny none of them had planned.
Behind them, the last spark of the broken portal faded into the sand.