"We will remove your memories."
The crowd went absolute silence.
The Greek Minister's face flushed deep crimson. "Remove our memories? Are you mad? This is our land, our site. You don't get to waltz in here and decide who remembers what!"
The Turkish Minister barked a laugh that didn't sound amused. "Finally, something we agree on. The arrogance. Typical of Westerners—"
"—oh, don't start," the Greek Minister cut in, turning sharply. "You would happily scrub every mind here if the chamber had been on your side of the border. Do not lecture me about arrogance."
The Turkish Minister's jaw tightened. "At least we would have the sense to handle it ourselves instead of inviting every bloody country to poke their wands where they don't belong."
"Handle it?" The Greek's voice rose. "You couldn't handle a rogue basilisk in Smyrna last year! And now you think you can contain this?"
Cassian's brow creased slightly as he watched the argument spiral. Typical politicians... more fire for the person across the table than the thing chained in the next room.
Perenelle's voice sliced clean through the shouting. "Enough."
Both Ministers snapped their mouths shut. The air around her seemed heavier somehow, pressing on them.
"We are not here to soothe egos," she said flatly. "You broke ancient bindings, woke something you barely understand, and now squabble like children over who gets to claim the mess."
Nicolas straightened, eyes narrowing at the pair. "That creature was buried for a reason... best none of us remember that."
The Turk bristled. "So you expect us to sit back like meek schoolboys and let you meddle in our minds? You are asking for trust you haven't earned."
The veiled elder leaned slightly on her staff. "It isn't about trust. It is about survival. Knowledge of the Crown spreads. Once it takes root, there is no stopping it."
The Greek Minister's lips pressed thin. He shifted his weight as if he might protest again, but his eyes flicked toward the archway where faint heat still radiated from the runes. His jaw worked soundlessly.
Master Ji walked forward. "It is not a debate. The decision is made."
Flamel stepped forward, his robes brushing the dirt. "When it is done, you'll leave. Your Ministries can return to their petty border squabbles if it pleases them."
The Greek Minister's hands curled into fists. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, as if some small part of him knew there wasn't a winning argument left.
Perenelle stepped next to Nicolas, "This will go down as an 'earthquake' in the reports."
"Mm," Cassian murmured. "Neatest lie wins."
"Better than admitting the truth."
"Suppose so." He glanced toward the Ministers, both standing stiff as boards now. "Bit of a shame. Would've liked to see them explain this to the paper."
The crimson-robed witch muttered something sharp under her breath, her nails digging into her sleeve.
Cassian's eyes flicked to her, then back to the Flamels. "Start with me, will you? I've had enough of this circus."
Nicolas shook his head. "We will need you and Miss Babbling's assistance further. As for the rest..."
Before anyone could blink, his staff struck the ground. A dull thud rolled across the site, and every single person apart from the old masters, Master Ji, Dumbledore, Cassian, and Bathsheda crumpled where they stood. Wands clattered, scrolls dropped, and the air seemed to hum with the lingering force of the spell.
Cassian froze. Sweat tickled his spine. He didn't move. Didn't dare twitch a finger.
"Rusty," Nicolas muttered, stretching his back with a faint pop. "Took me longer than I'd like."
No one except Cassian and Bathsheda reacted, like whatever was happening was all normal.
"Send them home, please?" Nicolas said, turning to the temple as if they'd just finished a morning stroll. "I've stripped every memory of this site."
"Done," Ji replied simply.
Cassian's brows furrowed, his hand still tight around his wand as he muttered to Bathsheda, "Remind me not to annoy old people."
Nicolas turned to Bathsheda with a nod. "We will need to redo the confinement runes. Would you be so kind as to guide us, Miss Babbling?"
She stiffened. "M-me? Please don't joke. I am proud of my achievement, but next to you, I'm still inexperienced."
The veiled woman gave a short scoff. "We didn't get here by collecting candles on birthday cakes, lass. Those who've lived as long as we have know merit outranks seniority."
Perenelle stepped forward. "Show us your glyphs, dear. The rest will follow."
Bathsheda glanced at Cassian, who flashed her a grin that could have meant either "Go gurl," or "You've got this, my beautiful love." She preferred to imagine it was the latter. Smiling to herself, she knelt by the outer ring, her wand tracing across the dirt. Sparks flared faintly as the rune lines began to glow once more.
Cassian stood back, watching Bathsheda sketch her glyphs into the dirt while the masters looked on. She didn't falter, not even when Nicolas knelt at her side, his sharp eyes tracking every stroke of her wand. The spirals flared softly as they settled into place, faint golden light crawling along the lines.
Since Cassian couldn't contribute to the rune-drawing, he loitered nearby. Spotting a book Nicolas had been reading, he picked it up and began to leaf through it.
"Gibberish," he muttered with a nod. The letters, if they were letters, were unlike anything he had ever seen before. Just as he was about to set the book down, something caught his eye.
"It can't be," he whispered.
The old masters seemed to transform into wide-eyed students, as if they had just begun their magical schooling at eleven. They clustered around Bathsheda, watching in awe as she drew runes. Whenever she paused to catch her breath, they eagerly raised their hands, always waiting their turn, to ask questions. Cassian rubbed his eyes again and again, half-convinced he must be imagining the sight.
One wizened warlock even shuffled closer on his knees, quill in hand, as though he might take notes right there in the dirt. Another muttered a question under his breath, then immediately raised his hand like a guilty schoolboy when Nicolas arched a brow at him. Their long beards and heavy robes did little to disguise the childlike wonder sparking in their eyes.
It was absurd and humbling all at once.
It took them weeks to properly seal the temple again. Even then, they weren't satisfied... not until the runes were layered thick and tight, checked thrice over by everyone old enough to have invented three alphabets.
By the third week Pepper-Up was being slugged like water. They patched and repatched, arguing over every spiral and sigil, like a group of grumpy painters fighting over brush strokes. No one wanted to be the one remembered as "the idiot who let the Sprout of Evil wander off for a snack."
They even translated the story into English, the widest-known language on Earth, so that if this place ever surfaced again, there would at least be hope that the founders could decipher and read it without blundering in blindly. The safest bet would have been to carve it in every tongue, but space was limited, and there was no way to know which language would survive the centuries.
When they finally finished, Nicolas straightened, brushing dust off his knees. He turned to face them all, "Time to strip memories. Everyone's. Ours included."
Others nodded, and all of a sudden, Cassian felt a shift. The air seemed thinner somehow. The old masters, who had walked into the site like weathered statues, suddenly felt... smaller. Even Ji and Dumbledore weren't quite the towering presences they'd been moments ago. It was like some invisible weight had been lifted... like a curtain pulled back to reveal they were, in the end, only people.
The veiled woman sighed, "No one must return here. Not for study, not for worship, not for idle curiosity."
Perenelle gave a solemn nod. "Every trace of this event... gone. From our minds, from the records, from the world itself. None of us will be exempt. As the ancients once did, we will bury this place, and it will not surface again until the runes weaken."
Bathsheda's fingers twitched faintly at her side, but she didn't speak. Her eyes lingered on the runes carved into the earth... her runes.
Cassian wanted to say something, anything, but the words stuck in his throat. He hated this part. Erasing history wasn't in his nature. It felt like hacking off a limb to save the body. Necessary, maybe. But brutal.
Nicolas raised his staff. "If knowledge of this thing survives, it spreads. Like rot. The seal weakens. That is how it feeds."
Bathsheda's voice was quiet. "And what about the runes I drew? If they're forgotten too... how will the seal hold?"
Nicolas glanced at her, a faint crease between his brows. "It won't. Not forever. But you won't forget them."
Her head jerked slightly. "What?"
"The glyphs are part of you now. That much is clear. Your mind may forget, child, but your core magic won't," Perenelle smiled at her softly. "Whatever lives in your magic... it will hold the memory even if your mind does not."
Before Cassian could ask what the hell that meant, Nicolas stepped back, staff tapping lightly against the stone. "It is time."
The Masters stood in a loose ring around the temple mouth, eyes glassy with exhaustion. Nicolas stepped forward, his hand trembling... not with fatigue, Cassian realised, but with something older, deeper. Fear, perhaps. Or memory.
"I will do it," He murmured.
Before anyone could answer, he drove the tip of his finger into the earth. Power flared... like a root system threading deep beneath their feet. Soil cracked, stones groaned. A thunderous thrum rolled outward and upward as the temple mouth collapsed in on itself.
In moments there was nothing but a patch of earth, pale and bare under the high sun.
Cassian stared. "Well. That is not ominous at all."
Nicolas didn't smile. His thin fingers traced a sigil in the air... one Cassian didn't recognise.
"I left a mark," the alchemist said softly, almost to himself. "If..." His gaze swept the circle, "When the wards weaken, we will all feel the pull. I copied it from what was once here, a mark left to summon the ancients, though they were gone before it could be activated. It has been copied thrice since. I would teach it to you as well, but we will all forget it."
Bathsheda shivered beside him.
Nicolas turned.
"Pray it stays silent," he said. "Because if you ever feel it... there will be no time to pray."
Master Ji chuckled. "We each left ourselves vague warnings. I suggest you do the same. In the future, if you meet any of us again, we'll know you once helped. We won't remember why or how, but we'll know it was important. You and Professor Babbling have done us a great service."
Cassian waved a hand. "I barely did anything."
The old masters shook their heads. The veiled elder said, "Your knowledge runs deep. The young lass may have drawn the runes, but you were the one who completed the circle. Don't belittle yourself. And that book of yours was... mind-opening. It will be a rare treat to read it again, knowing we won't remember it."
Elders nodded as Nicolas came between.
And then he raised his staff again, this time toward the gathering.
Light sparked at the tip, faint at first, then growing until it felt like the air itself was humming.
Perenelle's voice was soft. "When you wake, the world will be lighter. You won't know why."
***
Cassian opened his eyes to the sound of waves dragging stones across the shore. The air smelled sharp with salt, warm sunlight flickering against closed lids. He blinked, then again, staring at a stretch of pebbled beach that seemed to stretch into nothing.
The sea was calm, impossibly blue, like someone had painted it on glass. A few gulls drifted overhead, their cries carried off on the wind. Sand, stone, and the slow pull of the Mediterranean.
Cassian blinked against the sunlight and sat up, gravel crunching under his palms. The beach stretched endlessly ahead. He rubbed a hand over his face. His head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton wool.
A few metres away, Bathsheda sat cross-legged in a black two-piece, skin glinting faintly in the sun. A towel lay spread beneath her, and she was digging through a canvas bag for something.
"Thought you would sleep through the tide." Bathsheda didn't look at him as she spoke, eyes on the water. Her tone was light, almost teasing.
Cassian pushed himself upright, elbows digging into the sand. "Sorry, how long have we been here?"
"About an hour."
"No, not to the beach. I mean, yes, the beach, but I meant this part of the country."
She raised a brow. "You are joking."
"Humour me."
"Three days," she said. "After the dig collapsed."
Cassian stared at her, something cold settling in his gut. "Collapsed," he repeated.
"Mm." She flicked her wand. A pebble skipped across the water, bouncing twice before sinking. "Lucky we got out when we did."
He stayed quiet.
Trying to understand what the hell was going on.
The ruin. The spirals. The thing in the dark.
He remembered every detail. The weight of the air, the smell of burnt stone, the way Flamel's staff cracked against the ground before they started erasing memories. He remembered the name.
Cassian shut his eyes, willing the memory to blur. To be gone. It didn't.
Not even a little.
Well, bollocks. As usual, history clung to him like burrs... whatever spell they used, his mind shrugged it off.
"Cass?" Bathsheda's voice was closer now. He cracked an eye open. She shifted, crouching beside him, the sunlight turning the edge of her hair gold.
"You are acting odd."
"Odd is generous," he said lightly. "I feel like I've had my brain shaken out and stuffed back in backwards."
She huffed a laugh. "That is what happens when you drink in the sun. You will live."
"Mm." He didn't correct her.
She didn't remember. Perhaps none of them did.
But he did. Every second. Every spiral burned into his mind like a brand.
Cassian stared out at the sea, jaw tight. The creature. The crown. The bloody warning carved in three dead scripts. And one alive now.
'Did they forget to scrub it from me? No chance. That wasn't how this worked.'
"Hey, love, how'd we end up here from the temple?" Cassian asked, keeping his voice light.
Bathsheda tilted her head. "Don't you remember? Did you get sunstroke?"
He shook his head, lips twitching faintly. "Just a little foggy."
She rolled her eyes. "They call it drunk." Still, she humoured him. "Jenna told us about this place after we escaped from the temple when it collapsed."
Cassian's eyes narrowed slightly. "Jenna?"
Bathsheda sighed, digging through the bag at her side. "The witch with the crimson robes. Minister's daughter. You and her were arguing before we entered."
"Right," Cassian said, though his voice was distant now.
"Don't tell me you don't remember. Healers patched us in Delphi that first night, then Jenna Floo'd us here for 'absolute rest'." She looked to see if he was pulling her leg.
"And the old masters?" He asked.
Bathsheda froze for the briefest second before turning back to him. "What old masters?"
Cassian's mouth curved slightly... forcing a smile. "Never mind. Probably nothing."
Chains grinding over living bone echoed in his ears, the gulls' cries warped into the monster's rasp for half a heartbeat.
Well, fuck.
(Check Here)
Sometimes I think we're communicating telepathically. Then I remember, no, it's just me.
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