Read Chapter 21: Pottery's Secret

The South Korean pottery collection sat in a long, narrow gallery on the second floor, a quiet island of celadon glaze and pale porcelain that felt almost peaceful compared to the shrieking rising from the basement. Eamon’s boots squeaked on the polished floor as he moved between the display cases, the map on his palm glowing faint green, like a vein of phosphorescent moss under his skin.

The scarab’s trail led him to a case in the far corner, partially hidden behind a replica of a Goryeo dynasty water dropper. Inside, nestled between a celadon incense burner and a stack of shallow bowls, sat a small clay figurine no taller than his hand. It was crude compared to its neighbors—unfired terracotta, rough-hewn, with a face that had been pressed rather than carved. A soldier. He wore the armor of Qin dynasty footmen, and in his raised right hand, there was an empty slot where a weapon should have been.

Eamon read the placard. *Unglazed earthenware figure, believed to be a practice piece. Acquired 1973. Provenance: private collection, Seoul.*

Practice piece. Right.

The museum trembled. Dust shook from the ceiling, and a long crack splintered across the glass of a nearby case. The shriek from below—the stone door grinding against its frame—spiked in pitch, drilling into his skull like a dentist’s bit. He didn’t have time for riddles.

He looked at the figurine’s empty hand, then at the dagger at his belt. The blade was a standard issue military knife he’d kept from his tours, but the hilt was wrong. It was bronze, wrapped in a worn leather cord—he’d always assumed it was a battlefield replacement, something he’d picked up without remembering. But now, holding it up, he saw the pattern along the guard: interlocking spirals that matched the spirals painted on the clay soldier’s armor.

His hands moved before his brain caught up. He lifted the figurine out of the case—no alarm, the relics didn’t care about security systems anymore—and slid the dagger’s blade into the empty slot.

It clicked. The fit was exact.

The room went white.

Eamon was no longer in the gallery. He was standing on a plateau of dry yellow earth, under a sky the color of old bone. Wind screamed across the plain, carrying dust and the distant sound of war horns. Below him, a vast army stretched for miles—thousands of terracotta soldiers, ranked in perfect formation, their painted faces turned toward a single point on the horizon.

But they were moving. Not marching. Searching. Their heads swiveled on stiff necks, their empty eyes scanning the ground, and their mouths opened and closed in silent, desperate shapes. They were looking for something.

The vision narrowed. He saw a general—taller than the others, his armor decorated with gold leaf and jade inlays—standing apart from the formation. The general was not searching. He was kneeling, his hands pressed into the earth, and when he lifted his head, Eamon saw his face. Not clay. Flesh and blood, pale with grief.

The general’s lips moved. Eamon couldn’t hear the words over the wind, but he read them: *“I lost it. I lost her.”*

The vision shattered.

Eamon was back in the gallery, on his knees, the clay soldier still cradled in his hands. The dagger was gone from the slot—no, not gone. It had dissolved. The blade had melted into the figurine, and now the soldier’s empty hand held a faint, shimmering outline of a sword, like a watermark that hadn’t dried.

His radio crackled. Maggie’s voice, tight with barely contained panic: “Eamon, the east wing door is open. I can see light coming through the crack. It’s not orange. It’s white. Like daylight.”

“I’m working on it,” he said, though he had no idea how.

“Working on what? You’ve been in there for six minutes. We don’t have six more.”

He stood, shoved the figurine into his jacket pocket, and looked down at his palm. The green map was fading, but a new mark had appeared—an arrow, pointing out of the gallery and to the left. Toward the Roman collection.

The dead dragon’s voice echoed in his memory: *Humans break promises.* But the vision had given him something else. The general in the terracotta army wasn’t Qin. He was wearing scale armor, the kind Eamon had seen in museum catalogues of Roman officers stationed at Hadrian’s Wall.

Rome. The fallen general. The vision was telling him where to go.

He ran.

The Roman gallery was only two halls over, but the museum was no longer a building—it was a living thing. The floors buckled in waves, sending display cases toppling. Golden artifacts from the Egyptian wing had taken on a sickly luminescence, pulsing like infected wounds. Statues of Greek gods turned their heads as he passed, their marble eyes tracking him with cold curiosity.

He burst into the Roman gallery and skidded to a stop.

The general was there. Not the terracotta one—the real one. A tall figure in Roman scale armor, standing in the center of the room, his hands resting on the pommel of a gladius driven into the floor. He was translucent, a haze of pale blue light, but his face was the same face from the vision. Grief-stricken. Broken.

“You came,” the general said. His voice was dry, like ash. “They said a debt-holder would come. I didn’t believe them.”

“I’m not here for you,” Eamon said, pulling the figurine from his pocket. The clay soldier was warm now, almost hot, the ghost-sword shimmering in its grip. “The dragon said I have to right a wrong. A curse on a Chinese king. It showed me you.”

The general laughed—a hollow, terrible sound. “The dragon’s curses are not selective. I was a Roman officer, sent to the court of the Han emperor as a gift of peace. I betrayed him. Not for gold, not for power.” His jaw tightened. “For love. A woman of his court. She was executed. I was buried alive with her memory.”

The floor shook. Eamon heard the shriek from below rise to a howl, and then a crack, deep and final. The door was open.

“The dragon demands balance,” the general continued. “Her tomb is unmarked. If you place a single rose upon it from the museum’s night garden, her spirit will rest, and the debt will be cleared.”

Eamon’s stomach dropped. “The night garden is on the other side of the museum. The door is already open. I don’t have time to run a flower shop.”

“Then you don’t have time to save anyone.”

Eamon looked down at the figurine. The ghost-sword had stopped shimmering. It was solidifying, the outline taking on the shape of the dagger he’d sacrificed. He understood now. The sword wasn’t a weapon. It was a key. And he’d just given it away.

“Where is she?” he asked.

The general raised his hand and pointed to the far wall of the gallery. Behind a case of Roman-era glassware, there was a door he hadn’t noticed before. It was unmarked, rusted shut, but as he looked at it, the outline of a rose appeared on its surface, glowing faint silver.

“It’s not the door I need,” Eamon said. “It’s the garden.”

“The garden moves,” the general said. “It’s been waiting for you. For the debt-holder.”

Radio crackled again. Maggie, screaming this time: “Eamon! Something is coming through the door! It’s not a person—it’s a hydra. A real one. Greek. Still dripping from its case.”

Eamon ran.