Ian and Merlin stood before the mysterious coffin, its lid slowly pushed aside. A musty, yet strangely uncanny aura wafted out, filling the air with a weight that pressed on both of them.
Their gazes locked on the interior of the coffin. Inside lay the corpse of a raven, extraordinary in appearance. Though lifeless, it seemed impossibly vivid, its feathers smooth and glossy as if it were merely sleeping, ready to take flight at any moment.
Time and decay seemed to have no effect on it; it was as if the bird had simply paused mid-motion, untouched by the ages.
Even the eyelids looked as though they had been gently closed, ready to snap open the next second, sharp and alert.
"This bird… it's beautiful."
The iridescent black shimmered with an almost unreal hue.
Ian noticed the raven's body holding the final posture it had in life, its right talon clenching half of a shattered crystal. The crystal no longer bore the faintest trace of magic, yet this was not what intrigued Ian the most. What puzzled him far more was why there was a bird in his own tomb.
Why a raven?
And strangely, the raven seemed… familiar. A nagging sense of recognition gnawed at him. Ian racked his memory, trying desperately to find any clue linking him to this mysterious bird.
At that moment, Merlin's tirade of curses continued unabated.
"This wretched thing! I actually have to see it! That damn creature!" His face flushed red, eyes wide and fiery with rage, as if steam might shoot from his ears.
"What exactly is your connection to this raven?"
While Ian wrestled with his thoughts, Merlin suddenly whirled around, glaring at the small wizard beside him. His anger crackled like lightning. If Merlin remembered correctly, this should be Medivh's tomb, the tomb of the very person standing before him.
Ian instinctively shrank his neck, inexplicably feeling a rush of unease, as if he had done something wrong for no reason at all.
"I… I don't know," Ian muttered, voice low.
"I just… this raven looks familiar." His mind raced, but try as he might, he could not piece together why it seemed so recognizable. Especially those tightly shut eyes, they felt hauntingly known, but no memory could fully coalesce.
"Familiar?" Merlin's anger faltered and a flicker of surprise broke through his expression.
"You've been tricked by this bird too?" He asked instinctively.
The thought arose unbidden. It was simple reasoning: throughout history, anyone of note who had appeared on the world stage had at some point been toyed with by this bird.
Not just wizards.
And Medivh, as a hidden figure in the annals of history, could very well have crossed paths with it. The realization stirred something in Merlin, a spark of curiosity and caution intertwined.
Ian, hearing this, paused for a moment, slightly startled.
"Tricked by it? Not exactly… It just reminds me of a Phoenix I once raised. They look… roughly similar." Ian offered the only explanation he could think of for why the raven seemed so familiar.
His black Phoenix shared about eighty percent of its features with this raven.
"A Phoenix?" Merlin furrowed his brow, puzzled.
"I could have sworn Phoenixes don't look like this! Don't think I've never seen one!" As he spoke, Merlin's emotions began to flare again, completely abandoning the careful composure he had displayed while fearing for his life moments ago.
"A Phoenix is a sacred being! Surrounded by flames, radiant, glorious! How could it ever look… like this, this vile, shameless, utterly corrupt thing?"
It was hard to imagine what experiences Merlin had endured to make him react like this.
"But mine is a black Phoenix." Ian casually dropped the bomb. With that single sentence, he shut Merlin up completely, cutting off all the complaints Merlin hadn't even finished voicing.
"A black Phoenix?"
Merlin's eyes widened, as though he had been confronted with a knowledge blind spot. Having traversed countless magical spaces in his long life due to his unique bloodline, Merlin had seen and heard almost everything. Yet he had never, not once, encountered or even heard of a black Phoenix. Could this boy be making it up? His eyes glowed white as they locked onto Ian's, trying to pierce his very soul and gauge the truth of his words.
After a long moment, surprise finally softened Merlin's expression.
"Strange… Does it actually exist? A black Phoenix?" Though he couldn't enter Ian's mind, Merlin still had the magical ability to sense whether someone was lying or telling the truth. In his mind, the notion of a black Phoenix was utterly inconceivable.
"I always speak the truth," Ian said with a wink, completely unashamed. This time, he wasn't just telling the truth, he was revealing the full truth, without reservation.
"If there's a chance, I'd like to see this Phoenix of yours… You said you're from a thousand years in the future, right?" Merlin's curiosity was suddenly piqued.
"That's right." Ian nodded.
"What kind of era is that?" Merlin pressed, his tone filled with genuine interest.
"It is the best of times, and the worst of times," Ian said without hesitation, borrowing the famous line almost instinctively. "At least for wizards, learning magic no longer requires reinventing the wheel behind closed doors. We don't have to wander the world with our teachers, struggling to survive. Survival rates are many times higher. Every wizard child can attend schools with multiple powerful wizards as instructors."
He gave a brief overview of the educational system of the future and even cited some comparative data, showing that young wizards in his era had far better survival odds than those of Merlin's time.
"Interesting." Merlin stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"Hogwarts?"
The name slipped out unexpectedly.
Ian froze. He hadn't mentioned Hogwarts at all.
"How do you know that?" Ian looked at Merlin in genuine surprise.
Merlin only gave a soft, knowing smile.
"It really is Hogwarts… seems I have quite a connection with this school." He didn't directly answer Ian's question, instead confirming his own suspicion through Ian's reaction.
"You've seen our school's founders?" Ian couldn't help but speculate. If they could all find a way to traverse across such long stretches of time, why couldn't Hogwarts' founders? And judging from Dumbledore's memories, he only gained that broken ancient Time-Turner after becoming headmaster.
It wasn't hard to imagine that a broken Time-Turner might have been left behind by one of the founders.
"That's not information I'm sharing with you," Merlin replied, still avoiding a direct answer, though the meaning was clear. Perhaps he had once signed a contract preventing him from revealing such details.
"To be honest, Lady Ravenclaw's notes mention that she once saw a bird like this as well. But she didn't seem to harbor the same hostility toward it that you do."
Ian's eyes flicked back to the raven in the coffin as he spoke, his sense of unease growing. He still couldn't be sure whether this raven was the same one Ravenclaw had seen centuries ago.
After all…
A raven living for thousands of years was an astonishing thought.
Ian's gaze drifted upward again, drawn to the softly glowing line of runes hovering above the coffin:
"Death is a great gift."
The words shimmered, swaying like they were alive, whispering of a yearning for death. Ian wasn't certain whether these words were left behind by some previous hand, or if they alluded to the extraordinary raven, which might have lived for centuries within this coffin.
"Hostility, you say?"
Merlin's anger flared again at Ian's words. His fists clenched, teeth gritted, and he growled, "Hostility? You have no idea what that bird has done to me. That bird has caused me more grief than anything else in my life. Outwardly it looked harmless… but behind my back, it was plotting to--"
He cut himself off mid-sentence, as if unwilling to recall old scars.
(To Be Continued…)
You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395