The MACUSA delegation did not leave after one meeting.
They stayed four days.
Arcturus gave them the Ministry's best mansions and polite guards. He gave them freedom within the mansions. Every meal was served with the old courtesies that made visitors feel honoured.
On the first morning, the subject that settled the room was not trade.
It was segregation.
The long table in the meeting hall held parchment folders, quills, and a tray of tea that kept refilling itself with steady patience. Wards hummed in the walls.
President Whitcomb sat opposite Arcturus, hands folded, posture careful. Department heads flanked her. The school heads sat behind, silent but alert.
Arcturus kept his tone level. "Before we speak of trade and gold, we agree on the only point that truly keeps our world alive."
Whitcomb's gaze did not waver. "Separation."
Amelia Bones watched both leaders and noted how quickly they converged. Politicians could argue about everything except survival.
Whitcomb's fingers tapped once against the table, then stilled. "The Pacific has become crowded with rumours. In parts of South East Asia and the Middle East, visibility is being mismanaged. Our position is simple. We do not mix. We do not blur the lines. We do not permit social experiments that risk exposing our children."
Arcturus acknowledged it with a small inclination of his head. "We are aligned. We will advise those regions to do the same, and we will make it clear this is not a suggestion."
Gellert leaned back in his chair. He looked as if he was watching younger men reinvent a lesson he had already learned the hard way.
Vinda's eyes stayed on Whitcomb. "If their local governments cannot enforce it, they will invite consequences."
Whitcomb held the line without flinching. "MACUSA will support that message. The Muggles and the Magicals should not mix. We are different races of the same species, and the reasons are not sentimental."
Her director of Magical Law Enforcement, Santiago, turned a page in his folder and spoke into the space like a man used to committees. "Safety comes first. We have kept our world hidden for centuries. The moment the line blurs, the line dies."
Arcturus inclined his head slowly. "This is where the Unit comes to us. We have shown them the gentle face of Mother Magic. Healing the Muggles serves many purposes. It is welcomed by them, and it strengthens our cause. Invoking the old pantheons unsettles the religious authorities, but whether their beliefs change is of no concern to us. What matters is that they do not attempt to repeat the past. We will continue to reveal Magic to them, little by little, in measured doses."
The second day, they spoke of trade.
The third, they spoke of coordination.
By the fourth, they spoke as if they had never been enemies.
Trade parchments were stacked on the table. Agreements for potion ingredients. Enchanted metal exchange under sealed routes. Shared standards for warded transport. MACUSA asked for access and offered access in return, and the room's mood remained civil because all sides knew what desperation looked like.
Whitcomb's control slipped only once.
It happened when she mentioned reserves.
"Theft," she said, eyes cool but voice tight. "Over a year. Stores we considered untouchable. Vaults protected by wards built before my predecessors were born. They were emptied in raids that left no living witness who could give a useful description."
Gellert's smile did not reach his eyes.
Arcturus kept his face still, but his attention flicked to Corvus.
Corvus sat at the far side of the table, hands resting lightly on the wood, posture composed. He did not react, which was in itself a reaction.
Whitcomb followed the movement and looked directly at him.
Corvus met her gaze for a beat, then let it go like it was not worth holding.
Santiago cleared his throat, the sound careful. "The International Confederation is gone. We do believe they were responsible for those raids. We expect matters to return to normal."
Arcturus answered with measured assurance. "I am sure they will."
The words were correct. The meaning remained negotiable.
Whitcomb was not an idiot. None of them were. They had watched Magical Britain move like a central gear in the largest new confederation, and they had watched Corvus sit near the helm without wearing the crown.
They understood where power lived, even when it kept quiet.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, MACUSA asked for training.
Santiago presented the request without drama. "Your new Aurors carry Muggle weapons. Our Aurors have worked with wands for generations. We require instruction. Formal instruction. Safe handling, enchantments and doctrine."
Amelia glanced at Arcturus and waited for his cue.
Arcturus turned to Corvus without looking at him directly. Corvus's mouth moved by a fraction.
"We can assist."
Whitcomb allowed herself a small smile. "We would be grateful."
Corvus returned the gesture with a nod.
His nod carried a second decision underneath. He was not going to send Nestborns for nothing. He understood MACUSA's internal fracture. A progressive wing, loud and stubborn, still clinging to the old argument that integration was a moral duty and secrecy was a cruelty. Corvus did not debate with such people. He was going to replace them.
He met Whitcomb's eyes again and kept his voice calm. "A training cadre will travel. Aurors, instructors, and support."
Whitcomb's relief looked real. "You will have our full cooperation."
Corvus gave a small inclination of his head that could pass as courtesy. It was also closure.
As the delegation prepared to leave for Magical Russia, then Germany and France, the new agreements sat signed and sealed. Segregation sat above them all like a silent clause that required no ink.
When the last Portkey flare died in the International Office, the Ministry felt quieter.
Arcturus exhaled once. "Four days," he murmured.
Gellert's chuckle came softly. "Better four days than years of paranoia."
Vinda's eyes stayed cold. "Paranoia keeps you alive."
Corvus did not stay for the aftertaste. He returned to his frigate.
The Mediterranean carried him back as if it wanted him gone. The ship remained hidden. He went straight to his study and covered the walls with maps.
Ancient Egypt.
Scroll copies, modern charts, and marked temple sites. Fields of old ruins, old caravan routes that existed only in dust and scholarship, were open in front of him.
His search began at Sallum, a small town on the north-west coast, where the sea met land with indifference. He left the frigate before dawn, cloak on, Flight active, eyes scanning the earth for the only thing that mattered.
Elder's work left many scars on the planet. Mana avoided those places as he personally experienced them in Afghanistan.
For two months, he flew over dunes and broken stone. He watched the Nile from altitude and did not care about its beauty. He watched temples rise from sand like teeth and tested each one for the wrong pull in the air.
Most were empty. Some were warded by old houses of Magical Egypt, impressive for their age and irrelevant to him.
He kept going.
Abydos.
North of the Temple of Ramses II, an area that tourists would treat as history and locals would treat as dust. To Muggle eyes, it was an opening, a small ruin, a place to take a photograph and leave.
To Corvus, it was a wound. Mana moved around it.
It did not flow through the space. It bent away as if the air carried a taste it disliked. The same disturbed avoidance, the same unnatural dead zone.
A smile touched his mouth. He donned the cloak and activated Phase.
Sand swallowed him without resistance. He sank through it as if descending through water, the pressure increasing, the air thinning, the wrongness strengthening.
Seven hundred metres down, the sensation became physical. The hum of runes vibrated through stone. His bones felt it. He dropped deeper, then activated Flight.
The sand stopped. Open air, hot and stale, met his Bubble Head charm and slid past in an invisible shell.
He hovered and looked.
A cavern opened beneath Abydos like a hidden world.
It was vast enough to hold a town. The ceiling arched high, supported by columns of stone set in equal spacing like the ribs of a buried giant. Each column carried carved hieroglyphs filled with old power. The walls bore the same writing, layered in lines that looked decorative to the ignorant and structural to anyone who understood what they were.
Reinforcement, binding, and Pressure control.
The runes held the ceiling in place and told the earth to remain calm.
Light came from braziers that burned without fuel. Their flames sat steady, casting gold across stone and making the whole cavern feel like a living temple that refused to die.
Buildings stood within the space.
Low houses of mud brick and cut stone, arranged in streets with deliberate geometry. A central avenue led toward a larger structure, a temple front carved into the rock face, its entrance guarded by statues that looked too sharp to be ancient.
The air carried incense, blood, and heat.
It was not empty.
It was inhabited.
Creatures moved through the streets with the casual rhythm of citizens.
Some had the heads of cats, ears high and eyes narrow, their bodies humanoid and wrapped in linen and jewellery. Their movements were precise, controlled, and judgemental.
Others carried falcon heads, beaks sharp, necks held upright like nobles. They watched from rooftops and balconies, gaze sweeping for threats.
Jackal-headed beings moved in pairs, their heads angled as if always listening for something beneath speech. Their bodies looked built for labour and violence.
Lion and lioness-headed forms strode near the larger structures, heavy, authoritative, decorated with gold bands and pectorals that marked rank.
Ram-headed figures moved as priests. Curved horns. Slow steps. Eyes calm and indifferent.
Wolf-headed creatures appeared at the edges, lean, watchful, a patrol line rather than a citizen line.
Corvus watched them and understood the design.
Each animal head was a creation of a different god.
Cat for Bastet, guardian and judge.
Falcon for Horus, watcher and war.
Jackal for Anubis, keeper of dead roads.
Lioness for Sekhmet, hunger and plague, a blade dressed as a goddess.
Ram for Khnum, shaper at the wheel.
Wolf for Wepwawet, opener of ways.
This was not theatre.
It was lineage and role.
Between them, mummified beings shuffled through streets as if their state was normal. Linen wrapped tightly. Eyes sharp. Their movements were steady and not mindless at all. They carried trays. They cleaned. They served. They were dead or undead, to be precise, labour that obeyed for aeons.
Corvus drifted forward.
Ritual chambers lined the cavern, cut into stone with careful repetition. Hundreds of them. Each one held circles etched into the floor and stained dark with old use.
Cages stood near the chambers. Not decorative cages. Prison cages.
Muggles pressed against bars, eyes wide, mouths dry. Some wore modern clothing, torn and filthy. Others wore rags that looked taken from different places. Among them, Corvus felt magic in a few bodies, weak and frightened.
He did not stop.
South of the cages, the ground dipped.
A hole yawned in the stone.
Heat rose from it in waves.
Corvus moved over the edge and looked down.
Magma.
A pool of it, thick and slow, glowing red and orange in the dark like the earth's own blood. Corpses and body parts lay scattered around it, limbs piled, torsos half burned, the smell thick enough to push through the Bubble Head barrier.
A jackal-headed creature approached as if it was cleaning a stable.
It pushed a severed arm into the magma.
The arm vanished with a brief hiss.
Another body followed.
Corvus hovered above, cloak hiding him, and let the disgust settle into focus.
He moved closer to the jackal-headed cleaner and extended his Replication.
He kept his face still as the magic reached.