The night was as black as ink, thickly shrouding the entire city.
The bustling streets of daytime had fallen silent, with only a few Oil Lamps swaying in the wind and casting mottled shadows. Ian quietly returned to the surface through a hidden exit from the Ancient Egypt library, his mind still echoing with the wisdom and warnings of those ancient tomes. He did not hurry back into the city. Instead, he moved slowly through the shadows on the outskirts, trying to sort out his thoughts.
However, as he passed through a narrow alley, the corner of his eye caught a blurry figure. It was someone in a dark gray cloak, slender in build, moving lightly and cautiously. He was crouched before a household's wooden door, holding a slender magical pen and quickly, covertly drawing something in the shadow of the doorframe.
Sneaky and mysterious—he did not look like a good person. His movements were frighteningly practiced. In just a few breaths, he had "visited" every doorway on the street. Moonlight poured over the Stone Slab Roads of Memphis like murky beeswax as Ian silently followed the furtive figure.
What the man drew was not random graffiti, but an exceedingly complex set of Runes—interwoven lines linked in rings, with a tiny hexagram embedded at the center.
Once he finished, he swiftly rose and moved to the next house, repeating the same action.
"Marking every door in the dead of night?" Ian frowned deeply. "This is no ordinary act. If he is not a thief scouting the area, then it is the precursor to some sort of ritual."
Alarm bells rang in his mind. He thought of the recent string of disappearances, the maid's bizarre corpse, the temple's abnormal seal, and that imitation fragment of the Eye of Ra.
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