Under the Oak Tree - Time Before You

35 Crypt

His blood ran cold. While Riftan genuinely missed her, seeing a replica of her before him was a completely different story. It was her, yet not her.

Dressed in a regal white silk dress with gold thread embroidered into the hems, the fashion style appeared to be a few centuries ago. With his inadequate understanding of fashion history, Riftan was unable to identify the exact era: was it medieval, rococo, renaissance?

Well, it did not matter.

Her striking red hair was wild and freed, beautifully cascading over her shoulders. Her delicate fair skin, which was close to the colour of an egg shell, was adorned with contrasting large emerald earrings and necklace. Riftan felt his heart skip a beat and almost swore aloud. Even though this was just a sculpture, he was still falling hard for her.

"Is that the professor?"

The lieutenant commented with an odd quiver as he walked up next to his captain. Osiriyan forces were trained to be emotionless, but the discovery had seemingly unsettled them all. For once, Riftan did not have an answer for his man. He knew how impossibly irrational he could get whenever the circumstances involved her. However, he was not the only one to have noticed the resemblance.

"Perhaps not. Take a closer look."

Another officer replied. He was already up in front of the statue.

Perhaps the man was right.

With a deep breath, Riftan strode up. It was silly to assume there could only be one red-haired woman. Even though only two percent of the world population were naturally born with this hair colour, there were still millions of people with this gene. The brain would often trick one to see what one desired to see.

Moreover, if this was an attempt to capture the impression of Professor Maximillian, the sculptor ought to burn in hell. Now that he was taking a closer look, the idol's features were not beautiful at all. Her nose was chiselled too sharp, while her cheeks too sunken to be beautiful. Though to be fair, there would be absolutely no way the professor's beauty could be captured by the cold and flat impressions of plaster. While it was apparent that the statue had been carefully conserved over the years, the base medium limited its realism as compared to contemporary ones made of resin and fibreglass.

Riftan rolled his shoulders and sighed.

There was no reason why the cult idol could be modelled after the professor.

Like a broken record, the captain kept repeating this statement to himself. He ignored his subordinates and continued to stare at the statue. But no matter the reassurances, Riftan just could not shake off the dread. His sixth sense was always sharp, and he really wished for it to be wrong for once.

"Hey, check this out."

A pale face reappeared amidst the extravagant statues they were surrounded by — Ruth. Despite all their earlier warnings, he continued to run solo and off tangent. The two things that a soldier should never do during a mission. Unlike in movies, self-proclaimed heroes were always the first to die. But the captain held back his tongue. The coroner no longer had the initial enthusiasm when they first discovered this chamber. He appeared to be rather uptight, his brain racing to make sense of their discovery.

"Hurry, Captain."

Curling his slender forefinger, Ruth urged him.

Riftan nodded his head and threaded carefully. There could be bobby traps lurking about the statue if it was so treasured. It was as if they were in an Indian Jones movie, looking for potential switches and invisible threads that would set off an alarm or explosion. The team navigated through the mountains of treasure cautiously, taking some time before reaching the coroner and his discovery.