"Dawn—hey! Dawn? Wake up, Dawn!"
A distant voice echoed closer and closer.
In the darkness, Dawn slowly regained consciousness and realized he was lying on the ground. Someone was shaking his shoulders violently.
Thud!
Instinctively, Dawn swung his fist.
A solid impact followed by a muffled grunt sounded in the darkness. The voice was oddly familiar.
"Ahh! Damn it! What's wrong with you?!"
Hearing that voice, Dawn's crimson eyes suddenly narrowed in surprise.
"Amir?"
"Hiss—yeah, it's me! And that punch really hurt!"
As Amir winced and inhaled sharply, the faint beam of light revealed his white teeth flashing in the dark.
What was happening?
Dawn's mouth opened to ask, but a sharp pain struck his temple. His head throbbed, forcing him to clutch it, though his thoughts remained strangely clear.
Wait....wasn't Amir turned into a Niffler?
He remembered it clearly!
In his residence, Dawn had used the Crushing Charm to sever the black threads inside Amir's body and rewrite his magical signature.
The transformation was certain — Amir had become a Niffler.
So how was he here now, back in human form? Did Amir somehow reverse the spell, attack him, and bring him to this place?
His mind swirled with confusion. Fragments of memory flashed like disjointed scenes from countless films, blending into chaos.
Then—
His fingers brushed against something hard and slender in his palm.
His wand!
It hadn't been taken away!
That surprised him more than anything.
Still, there was no time to think. He decided to subdue Amir first and figure out where he was later.
But just as he moved his wrist, another hand shot out of the darkness and clamped tightly around his arm.
"Don't move! And for Merlin's sake, don't use magic!" a familiar voice hissed.
Another person?
Dawn's eyes narrowed again.
He was about to counterattack, but then the realization hit him—he knew that voice.
"Harris?"
"It's me!"
A rustling noise followed, as if someone was rummaging through a bag.
Moments later, the faint buzz of a flashlight flickered to life. A narrow beam of light illuminated their surroundings.
Now Dawn could finally see where he was.
He lay inside a narrow stone tunnel, barely half a meter high. Every side was hemmed in by rough, cold stone walls that smelled of age and dust.
Two figures crouched nearby—one in front, one behind.
Amir was kneeling ahead, breathing heavily, clearly still reeling from the punch.
Behind him was none other than Harris Carter—the same man who had supposedly left the tomb.
Dawn blinked in disbelief, staring between them. Nothing about this made sense.
After a moment, he finally spoke, narrowing his eyes. "Mr. Carter, why are you here? And… where exactly is this?"
Harris froze for a second. "What? Did you hit your head and lose your memory or something?"
Rolling his eyes, he muttered, "You've got some nerve asking me that. If I hadn't risked my neck to carry you out, you'd still be in that chamber—feeding the worms!"
Feeding worms?
Dawn frowned. Something was definitely off. He decided to stop guessing. "Just tell me, where are we?"
"Tutankhamun's tomb, obviously! Where else?" Harris grumbled. "If you want the exact spot, I couldn't say. I was too busy running for my life to take notes."
Tutankhamun's tomb?
Dawn's expression went blank.
Why was he here?
"Come on, you don't remember?" Harris asked, looking at him strangely. "You started coughing up blood—the curse on you flared up. Then you said you'd come with me to find the scarab. You really don't recall?"
Dawn frowned deeper.
Was that true?
Had he chosen to enter the tomb with Harris himself?
A flicker of memory surfaced, vague but eerily familiar.
Then, realization struck like lightning.
No! That's wrong!
He clearly remembered refusing Harris's offer. When the curse acted up, Harris had already left!
He sat up abruptly and turned toward Amir. "Then why is he here? How do you know him?"
Harris and Amir exchanged an uneasy glance.
Harris explained, "He's a graduate from the Wagadu School of Magic—came here seeking treasure. We met him at the tomb's entrance and decided to team up. You really don't remember that either?"
Damn it.
Dawn clutched his head again.
As Harris spoke, his mind filled with scenes that felt both real and wrong at the same time.
But no—it couldn't be!
He remembered catching Amir and transforming him into a magical creature himself. He had seen it happen—Amir turned into a Niffler before his eyes!
And then…
Then what?
His memory stopped cold.
"Alright, gentlemen," another voice cut through the air, calm but weary.
A tall woman with long hair stepped into the flashlight's glow. Metal rings glinted on each of her fingers as she crouched down beside them.
"I checked the back passage," she said grimly. "Those things are still blocking the way. Which means we can't go back the way we came. We'll have to move forward."
"Tch, just great," Harris muttered, rummaging through his backpack. "I'm out of Mana-Reveal potions. If we keep going, we'll trigger every curse in this place."
"Oh, stop worrying, dear," the woman, Fatima, replied with a shrug. "Even if you had more potions, we couldn't use them. Those spirits behind us would sense it instantly."
The atmosphere grew heavy.
Amir sighed softly. "I'm sorry… if it weren't for me, none of you would be in this mess."
"Huh?" Harris frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"Because I'm unlucky," Amir said miserably. "Everything I do turns out wrong. Even the goddess of fortune hates me."
He slumped down on the stone floor, defeated. "I finally gathered the courage to raid a tomb, and now I've got nothing to show for it. I even dropped my last ten drakhmas while running. Just my luck."
His eyes flicked toward Dawn's wand, full of longing. "Why is it so hard just to buy a wand?"
"To buy a wand?" Harris repeated blankly. "Wait...so you came into a cursed pharaoh's tomb to earn enough money to buy a wand?"
Amir looked at him pitifully. "Mr. Carter, you really don't understand anything."
Harris stared at him in disbelief.
Dawn leaned silently against the stone wall, watching their exchange.
None of this made sense.
How had he gone from the Carter residence to Tutankhamun's tomb in the blink of an eye?
Was it an illusion?
Everything around him felt painfully real.
Harris and Amir acted perfectly normal—true to character. The fiery mark on his wrist proved that his Unbreakable Vow with Harris still held.
His senses were intact. Nothing felt off.
He checked his belongings—wand, potions, coins—everything was exactly as he remembered.
And that was precisely the problem.
If he really had chosen to enter the tomb, he would've been far more prepared.
Then Fatima handed him a bottle of water. "You left your things in the previous chamber. Drink this for now."
"My things?" Dawn muttered.
"Yes," Harris said, rolling his eyes. "You made me buy you all that gear, and the moment things got dangerous, you dropped everything and ran. Nice job."
Well, at least that explained why his money hadn't gone missing.
Dawn took a deep breath and looked up at the rough, dimly lit ceiling.
Then, suddenly, a thought struck him.
He recalled a passage from Mad Magic: Blood and Taboo—the case of Celeste, who grafted flesh to transform a young man named Sika Carter into a Thestral, only to find he'd become a donkey instead.
Afterward, that same Sika Carter worked as a curse-breaker in Egypt, with little connection to Celest.
"How similar," Dawn murmured, glancing subtly at Amir.
"So, you understand now, Dawn?" he remembered Dumbledore's words. "Some things are meant only to be stories."
And then he recalled the day he learned that the Carter family's blood curse turned people into donkeys.
If magical transformations truly followed the world's immutable laws, then was his sudden appearance here a result of touching one of those laws?
A "correction" made by the world itself?
If so — After this tomb expedition, would Amir, like Sika Carter before him, inherit a blood curse and transform… into a rat? Or perhaps a platypus?
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