In Naples, the hospital corridors smelled of disinfectant. The building carried centuries in its bones and modern misery in its waiting rooms. People sat with plastic cups of water and plastic plates, eyes flicking to the doors each time they opened.
A healer arrived with two Unit members at his shoulder.
Their posture did not need a badge. Nurses moved aside without being asked. The security guard at the lift straightened and kept his hands visible.
The healer wore simple grey robes, clean cuffs, and was holding a wand, as some of them still enjoyed the theatrics of it. A silver emblem hung at his chest, the Alliance mark made small enough to be polite.
A senior doctor met them near triage, coat unbuttoned, eyes tired and sharp. "You are expected. This way, please."
The healer followed with calm steps, gaze already taking in the hallway like it was a ward map.
A woman sat on a bench with a boy pressed against her side. The child's skin looked grey. His breathing came shallow.
The healer paused.
The doctor opened his mouth, then closed it again when the Unit member beside the healer gave him a look that belonged to men who did not accept delays.
The healer crouched in front of the boy and kept his hands open. "What is his name?"
The woman's voice shook. "Luca."
The healer nodded once. "Luca. Look at me."
The boy's eyes lifted with effort.
The healer's palm settled on the child's chest, firm and warm. The other hand took some vials from a mokeskin pouch.
The healer fed the vials to the boy one by one. Starting with Invigoration Draught, and going on to Wiggenweld, Blood-Replenishing and some antidotes.
The boy's breathing hitched once, then eased, then deepened. Colour returned to his lips in slow increments. All the while, the healer was casting diagnostics on him.
The mother's hands flew to her mouth. Tears ran without sound.
A nurse drifted closer, then stopped, as if she had found the edge of something sacred.
The healer pulled his hand away and watched the boy breathe for two more beats. "He will be tired. He will eat when he is ready. Give him water. Do not panic when he sleeps long hours."
The mother grabbed his sleeve, fingers tight. "How do I repay you?"
The healer's gaze held hers, calm and without judgment. "Help another in need in the name of Silvanus."
The woman blinked, confused by the name, then nodded anyway because gratitude did not argue.
The doctor stepped forward, voice low. "We have another. Paediatric oncology. If you have the capacity."
The healer rose and gave a small incline of his head. "Lead the way, please."
They moved.
Word travelled through the building faster than any announcement. Families stood when the healer passed. Some in the crowd lifted their hands almost in unison, fingers brushing brow, chest, and shoulders as they traced the Sign of the Cross together out of habit, then stopped and looked embarrassed. As they have no idea how to be appreciative of the service these Mana Users were providing.
In the children's ward, a father in a worn jumper stood by the bed and looked ready to break. The girl inside the sheets had lost hair and colour. The hum of the machines was the only sound in the room.
The healer approached without rushing.
The father's voice came hoarse. "Is it true?"
The healer placed his wand on the bedside table. His hand settled on the girl's wrist. "It is."
The mother leaned forward, face tight. "Will it hurt her?"
The healer's thumb brushed the girl's pulse point once. "No, it won't."
The girl's eyes opened a fraction. The healer leaned in. "You are very brave. You do not need to be brave right now. You can rest."
Her lips moved. "Mamma."
The mother made a sound that belonged to a different life and caught her daughter's hand.
Magic moved.
It did not blaze or spark. It pressed through tissue like warm water through cloth. The girl's breathing steadied. The brittle tension in her face eased. A line of pain left her brow.
The father's knees threatened to give. One of the Unit members shifted behind him without touching him, ready to catch in case of need.
The healer withdrew his hand and looked at the parents. "You will make sure she drinks these every three hours." He left some potions. "She will need food and strength. She will need time to rebuild. You will stay on schedule with the doctors. Do not treat this as permission to ignore them."
The father nodded too hard. "We will do anything."
The healer's gaze softened by a degree. "Then do this. Help the people in need, help nature in the name of the old gods Juno, Apollo, Vesta and Jupiter."
The mother swallowed. "You want us to worship."
The healer's mouth tightened, almost humour. "I want you to remember where healing was honoured before it was priced."
Outside the hospital, controlled media waited.
A reporter stood under bright lights with a microphone and an expression trained to look harmless. The street behind him had been cleared with the kind of efficiency that made locals mutter about Rome being able to do this all along when it wanted.
She stepped close to a member of the Unit.
The reporter lifted the microphone with careful cheer. "People are asking simple questions. Is it possible to turn water into another drink?"
The Unit member's face remained blank. He conjured a glass with a motion that made the camera zoom. The glass appeared between his fingers, solid and clean.
He filled it with water from the air. The stream curled into the cup as if poured from a natural source.
The reporter held his breath.
The Unit member touched the rim with a fingertip.
The water darkened. The smell changed first. Caramel Macchiato, sweet and warm.
The reporter stared, then forced his voice to work. "That is."
"Caramel Machiato," the Unit member answered, explaining, "It's my favourite."
The reporter took a cautious sip and blinked hard. "It is actually... good."
The Unit member smiled. "Enjoy it."
A second reporter pushed forward, emboldened. "Sir, is it true that Mana Users can control lightning, earth and other elemental forces like depicted in the legends?"
The Unit member looked past the camera toward a patch of empty pavement they had cleared. He raised his hand.
The air prickled.
A thin line of light snapped between two points and held for a breath, contained and precise, not a storm, a demonstration. The streetlights flickered, then steadied.
He lowered his hand.
The pavement cracked in a clean circle, the stone lifting by a finger's width, then settling back as if it had never moved.
People behind the barriers made sounds that belonged to fake miracles performed in shows.
No one laughed or mocked.
The footage ran across Italy, then across Germany, Russia, Denmark, Turkey, Mongolia, and anywhere else the Alliance shaped the air. The question always looked innocent. The answer always landed like a small miracle.
In each country, healers used the old names.
In Germany, a healer asked a family to help another in need in the name of Woden.
In Turkey, a healer used the name Umay Ana in a tone that made an old man's eyes fill with tears he could not explain.
In Denmark, a healer spoke of Odin as if the name still had weight in the world.
The controlled media did the rest. Careful language with soft hints. The suggestion that the figures in old religious, literary, and historical tales might have been people who were able to channel Mana.
People began to join the dots. They asked more. They watched the Unit more.
Corvus watched the whole machine from a distance and treated resistance like an engineering problem.
Segregation increased. Not because he needed hatred. Because modern societies have a habit of letting loud, destructive minorities pull down what generations built, then calling it virtue. The New Order did not allow that.
The wealth of ordinary people rose, not in slogans, but in wages and in rent that stopped climbing like a fever. Corvus structured the countries under his control to prevent corporate giants from being born.
He did it for a simple reason.
A corporation strong enough to become global would seek control. It would swallow industries, then swallow governments, then offer the public a choice between obedience and inconvenience.
He broke that future before it could grow.
--
While those structures hardened in the surface world, the hunt for the artefacts of the Elders took a turn beneath Crete.
The dome sat on the seabed like a second sky. Corvus floated outside it in basilisk form for a long moment, eyes narrowed, listening to the magic.
The barrier did not feel like a ward he recognised. It did not push him away. It watched him.
He shifted back to human form.
Cold water bit at his skin for a heartbeat, then he cast the Bubble Head Charm. Air wrapped around his face, clean and dry. He pulled the true invisibility cloak from a charmed pouch and let it settle over his shoulders.
The cloth drank light. His presence diminished.
Merfolk still watched from the broken city behind him. They did not approach the dome. They remained among the ruined columns and statues like guards who had learned where their authority ended.
Corvus drifted toward the barrier.
His hand touched the dome.
The surface felt like cool glass and was soft at the same time. It rippled once as he passed through.
The pressure of the sea vanished.
Water was warm inside, warm enough to feel like he was not in the bottom of the Hellenic Trench but on a beach. The silence changed as well. It was not the muffled silence of the depth. It was a silence that belonged to halls and temples.
Light came from the city itself.
The streets glowed with stone that held a gentle sheen, as if it had once known sunlight. Water streams ran in clean rings around the city, curated like a decorative feature rather than a hazard.
The architecture followed a pattern that tugged at memory from old texts.
Concentric circles. Canals. Bridges that arched in repeating intervals. Walls faced with stone in different colours, pale and red and dark, layered in bands that made the whole city look planned by someone who enjoyed symmetry and conquest.
Metal caught the light from spheres floating on posts. Some surfaces shone with a reddish gleam that looked like copper and something richer. Orichalcum, if the old stories did not lie.
The central temple rose above everything.
It sat on a raised platform, approached by a wide avenue. Pillars climbed in paired rows, carved with sea motifs that did look more like a record of events than being simply decorative.
Corvus kept Flight active and moved above the streets rather than swimming. He did not use the Demiguise invisibility he had replicated. The cloak was safer. Older.
Local merfolk drifted below.
They were not like the merfolk recorded or described in the books or even the ones who followed him a short while ago, with greyish skin, yellowed teeth, and fins that made them look more fish than man. These were different.
Upper bodies looked almost human. Skin held warmer tones. Shoulders carried muscle the way a soldier carried it. Hair fell in long waves. Their eyes carried depth and age. Their lower bodies still held the sea, tails scaled and powerful, but the line between human and fish sat lower. They looked closer to old sculptures than to the creatures Hogwarts students mocked in their books.
They floated in small groups, speaking in a language that clicked and sang. Jewellery of pearl and shell sat against throats and wrists. Tools hung at their waists.
Corvus approached a cluster and kept his distance.
Memory Mapping worked with cold practicality. He reached for the eldest.
The old man's hair was pale. The lines at the corners of his eyes spoke of years spent staring through salty darkness.
Corvus pulled back immediately and drifted away, careful, controlled. The group did not react. The old one's gaze shifted once, as if he had felt a draft, then returned to his companions.
Corvus found a thick stone column near a terrace and let Phase take him.
His body slid into the stone.
The pillar accepted him, cold and solid around his shoulders. He held still inside it, cloak pulled close, breath steady in the Bubble Head air.
His eyes closed, he processed the memories.
Caution proved correct.
These were not ordinary merfolk. The mind held old pride and old grief. A lineage that did not bow to surface laws or any, for that matter.
The name Nereus repeated.
According to the elder's memory, Atlantis had been swallowed by the sea. Not as a fable. As a wound. The god Nereus, like the other gods, had decided to leave this world after it happened.
Before leaving, he created this place.
He divided it into ten regions and left ten daughters behind to rule each region under his name. The rest of the Nereids left with him.
The memory held a vision of the central temple and a feeling of distance that did not come from geography. The Nereids stayed there now, in the middle, protected and watched.
Corvus opened his eyes as he left the stone pillar.
His gaze returned to the central building, the temple that anchored the city's rings like a heart.
A smile formed under the cloak.
"Let us see," the words stayed a murmur inside his Bubble Head air, "what the daughters of an Elder look like."
He moved toward the temple.