The fireball hit like an accusation.
Evelyn laughed as if someone had told a joke. She raised both hands, palms open, grinning at the smoke and scorched sand as if the explosion were a party trick gone right.
"You saw that, right? Sorcery or some kind of special explosive? And did you hear—the Book of the Sun is actually here. I told you! Incredible."
O'Connell didn't laugh. His eyelids still twitched from the memory of Li Ming's control earlier—something colder and stronger than hypnosis. Seeing the man produce a fireball with a flick of his hand left no comfortable explanations. He stepped in front of Evelyn and held her there, eyes narrowed, tolerance already grinding into caution. This was the woman he intended to marry; reckless, yes, but his. He'd shield her, even from miracles.
He forced his voice low. "Who are you?"
Li Ming straightened his collar, amused. "Call me Austin. Profession? Mage."
O'Connell's smile was brittle. "Mr. Mage—if we help you find these two books, will you let us leave?"
Li Ming's gaze lingered on Evelyn, warmth never reaching his eyes. "Besides this lady who reads ancient Egyptian, your other excavation has a professor who knows the language. You're useful, but not indispensable. Worst case, my servants do the digging. Whether you live or die matters little to me—I commune with the dead. Kill you and I'll still fetch the location of those books from your soul. The dead are often easier to handle than the living. You don't want to know what I can do to a spirit."
The threat was casual, almost conversational, and that was what made it worse. O'Connell's jaw tightened. Hamunaptra was not small-time luck; the name alone proved Li Ming knew more than he should. Bargaining narrowed until it was almost impossible.
"Looks like I don't have much room to bargain," O'Connell muttered.
Evelyn, cheeks flushed with adrenaline, barreled on. "If sorcerers exist, then the Book of the Sun—with all its incantations—is real too?"
Li Ming shrugged. "The spells are real. More dangerous than you imagine."
He nodded toward the other diggers, who were clustered near a toppled Anubis. "These people are yours now. Command them. I only want the two books. Any gold or jewels you find are yours."
Pistols flashed. Men opened fire.
Bullets chinked against air and clattered uselessly into the sand. Li Ming had already thrown a shield up—an invisible dome that swallowed bullets like rain. The gunmen froze, then fled, only to collapse moments later, hands clawing at their faces as madness took them.
Li Ming's staff rose. The night smelled colder, like a winter season shoved into the desert. From nowhere, shadowy figures bled into existence—Dementors, if that was the name for them; Li Ming's command turned the air itself into teeth.
"Wangcai, seal off Hamunaptra," he said. "No one enters or leaves without my order. Anyone who tries becomes your meal."
Frost crawled across the sand as if some unseen cold were remembering the ground. Evelyn rubbed her arms, startled, and then furious.
"You murderer—"
O'Connell clapped a hand over her mouth and dragged her toward the ruins. Jonathan kept pace, plastering on a smile that said profit-minded more than panicked. Getting between Evelyn and Li Ming now would be suicide.
Eventually Evelyn's anger cooled into practical fury. She barked orders and the diggers began working at the base of a towering Anubis statue with mechanical obedience—fear works better than gold.
Li Ming watched with an indulgent half-smile. Words cost him nothing; his patience was the real toll. As night fell, the laborers hauled up a heavy chest. Evelyn stormed forward.
"Three people died for your precious book already! You're a mage—why don't you snap your fingers and make it fly into your hands?"
O'Connell swept her away again. Jonathan sidled up to Li Ming, eyes greedy. "We found this chest at the treasure site. Maybe your book's inside. If not—could I keep the treasure?"
"I only want the books, not the chest," Li Ming said, disinterested.
The workers hesitated. The carved warning on the lid—He who opens it shall die—no longer read like superstition. With a sorcerer present, curses read like instructions.
Li Ming tapped the wood with his staff. The chest blew open on a sigh of dust. Linen-wrapped within was the Book of the Dead; it rose and settled into his hand like a thing that had been waiting for him.
"Don't touch the jars under there," he said, when Jonathan's fingers inched. "You don't want to know what's inside. Focus on hauling your gold instead."
He noticed the carved slot on the book's cover and motioned toward it. "Recognize this? Fetch your sister's key. And have her translate."
Jonathan sulked but obeyed. Evelyn, face still tight with irritation, tossed the key at Li Ming and crouched to read. Her voice was brisk, academic—then slower as she realized the words: hymns, praise.
At that moment Wangcai's watchmen reported riders on the horizon. Another team, probably. Li Ming chuckled under his breath. In this world I'm already untouchable—let them come. He pointed the Dementors outward—feed, he ordered without cruelty, only purpose.
He opened the Book of the Dead and set a condition. "Remember—never read the words aloud in Egyptian. Read them out loud and you'll resurrect a mummy."
Evelyn snorted, derisive at first. "Aren't you supposed to be some mighty mage, and you're afraid of a mummy? I'm not—" Her tone cut off; the word resurrected sat heavy in the air.
Li Ming watched her closely as she read, listening to the cadence. What came out of her wasn't ritual—it was worship. "Praise the sun, praise you, Ra the god…" hymn after hymn, adoration without instruction.
He frowned. In the films—if memory served—there were spells in this book; Evelyn had read a revival spell before. Here, the pages Evelyn translated were devotion, not incantation.
Something was wrong.
He let the thought sit, then decided the obvious route: if the book in their hands wasn't giving him the spells, he'd get the power another way.
Fine. I'll resurrect Imhotep myself. He can unthread the secrets for me.
Li Ming closed the book, feeling the weight of linen and linen's ancient dust. Outside the circle of lantern light the night creaked with the movement of men who didn't know what their masters had bargained for. Inside, the mage's plan tightened into something small and sharp: resurrect, interrogate, unweave the spells the world had kept buried.
Evelyn's translation droned on. O'Connell's hand tightened on her arm. Jonathan's eyes lingered on the jars despite Li Ming's warning.
Li Ming smiled—thin, patient. The dead would speak. The living would be convenient. And if a mummy wanted to answer questions, Imhotep's voice would be loud enough to drown out any hymn.
Imhotep had once been the Pharaoh's right hand—the high priest, bald and radiant, revered as if he stood just beneath the throne itself. His flaw was never courage but judgment: steel nerves, clay wisdom. He courted what he could not have—the Pharaoh's wife.
When the affair surfaced, the Pharaoh decided Imhotep's screams would serve as music. The sentence was the cruelest the priests could devise. His soul was chained to his flesh, condemned to remain as sacred scarabs consumed him alive. It wasn't just execution. It was suspension—neither living nor truly dead. He would never pass to Anubis's dominion, never find rest. He would linger as something worse: an immortal threat. Revive him, and the curse promised he would rise capable of unmaking the world.
The Pharaoh's final order was simple: Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, would be guarded across generations. No fool would be allowed to tamper with Imhotep's tomb. And so it was, for three thousand years. Raiders came and fell. Pretenders sought and failed. The guardians endured.
Until tonight.
Ardeth Bay, commander of the latest generation, had grown used to the silence, the uneventful patrols, the peace. But peace broke. His scouts found signs of intrusion, and so he led his riders into the desert under the cloak of darkness.
The cold struck first. Frost climbed across the dunes, turning the sand to glass under the moonlight. Men toppled from their saddles, some screaming, others slack-jawed and vacant. Something was bleeding madness into the air. Ardeth urged them back. If Imhotep had been awakened, his people could not face him here. He spurred his horse alone toward the ruins, to see with his own eyes if the nightmare had returned.
Inside Hamunaptra, Li Ming was guiding Evelyn toward the inevitable. He was about to mention that Imhotep's sarcophagus lay directly beneath the Book of the Dead when a cloaked rider staggered into view, nearly falling from his horse. Inked markings on the man's face sparked Li Ming's memory—the guardians. So Wangcai's victims earlier had been this man's kin.
Ardeth Bay's spirit had been raked raw by Dementors; he was too broken to speak. Li Ming gestured to laborers bedding down after their long shift. "Set him somewhere safe," he said, before turning back to Evelyn and her translations.
By morning, the sun pressed heat heavy enough to cook an egg on the sand. Ardeth lurched from his tent, his head splitting, steps uneven. Around him, the diggers swarmed, chasing orders and treasure alike. He seized an Egyptian worker by the shoulder. "Who commands here?"
The man's eyes fell on Ardeth's tattoos. Respect softened his reply. "The boss went into the ruins. They're planning to resurrect a mummy."
The words snapped Ardeth's mind awake. He bolted, racing through the ruins. Before he reached the chamber, he heard a woman's voice echoing in ancient Egyptian. She was chanting. Spellcasting.
"Stop! Stop at once!" he shouted, bursting into the burial chamber. Evelyn's voice carried the final line as the sarcophagus trembled.
Li Ming didn't spare Ardeth a glance. His focus was on the figure stirring within—a skeletal shadow that had waited three thousand years in silence.
The lid shifted. Darkness breathed. Then Imhotep roared. His first act after centuries in a coffin was a scream in Li Ming's face, rage mixed with insanity. Li Ming understood in theory—three millennia in a coffin would drive anyone mad—but the stench of it nearly floored him. Reflexively, he brought his staff down on the mummy's jaw. "Close your mouth."
Imhotep shoved his jaw back into place, insulted but undeterred. His hollow gaze fixed on Li Ming. This was the man who had opened the chest and lifted the book. That meant essence—his essence—was the key to making the resurrection complete. He didn't know why. Rituals seldom explained themselves. They only demanded steps be followed.
Bones creaking, Imhotep reached out, voice guttural in the language of the dead. "Give me your flesh!"
Li Ming's eyes lit with curiosity. So, the priest spoke the tongue of spirits. That saved him the trouble of conjuring a translator. But an ambush before introductions? Uncivilized. He slapped a time-stop talisman across Imhotep's face, froze the moment, then cracked his staff down. Imhotep's spirit ripped free, hanging half in and half out of his body.
Li Ming tilted the Book of the Dead toward him. "You understand the spells in here?"
Imhotep's spirit stared at skeletal hands, confused, then at Li Ming. "Who are you?"
"Austin," Li Ming said easily. "A mage who wants resurrection."
Imhotep narrowed his eyes. "Sacrifices. Give me what I require to regain strength, and I will teach you."
Li Ming smirked. Transparent. The priest wanted power restored before bargaining. Li Ming turned his gaze to Ardeth Bay. "If this mummy had only his head left, would he still count as alive?"
Ardeth bristled. "Do you understand what you're doing? He is—"
"Imhotep," Li Ming finished for him. "High Priest of Egypt. Question was simple. Can he still talk if only the head remains?"
Reluctantly, Ardeth nodded. "Resurrect him and Egypt will suffer the Ten Plagues—"
"Not now," Li Ming muttered. He flicked his staff, and Ardeth shrank, fur sprouting, ears twitching. A rabbit landed on the stone floor, blinking in horror.
Li Ming turned back, cheerful again. He hammered Imhotep's neck with his staff. Once, twice, three times. Nothing. The bones were harder than steel. He raised his brows. "Good bone density."
Enough delay. He snapped open a portal, the edge of space itself like a blade. He slipped it around Imhotep's neck. The priest's spirit screamed "No!" as the gate closed.
The cut was clean. The head tumbled, the body falling silent. Li Ming summoned fire hotter than desert noon, burning the corpse to ash, scattering it into his mirror dimension until nothing remained.
He held the head up, the hollow sockets staring back at him. With deliberate care, he carved a slave sigil into the bone, sealing it with words of command. "I asked politely. You didn't listen. Now you'll serve."
The rune flared. The head trembled. And Imhotep's fate, three millennia delayed, was decided.