***
Back to the southern desert.
The Boat of Millions of Years hung suspended above the desert like a second sun, its hull radiating power that made the very air shimmer with divine authority. Ra stood at its prow, his falcon head crowned with the solar disk that had burned since the first dawn, his golden eyes fixed on Monument One with the terrible patience of cosmic justice itself.
This was no mere vessel—this was order incarnate, the physical manifestation of the principle that kept the universe from sliding into primordial chaos. Every plank of its hull had been carved from condensed starlight, every rope woven from the dreams of sleeping gods, every sail stitched from the northern lights themselves. The bark had sailed the heavens for eons uncounted, carrying the sun from horizon to horizon, maintaining the cycle that separated day from night, order from chaos, existence from void.
