Ra's response to Apep's assault was not the desperate flaring of power that the Serpent had expected. Instead, the sun god's expression showed something far more dangerous—the calm satisfaction of one who had spent eons preparing for exactly this moment.
"My ancient enemy," Ra spoke, his voice carrying across the battlefield. "Every night you have risen to devour me. Every dawn, I have emerged from your coils to light the world anew. Did you think, in all those countless cycles, that I learned nothing?"
The sun god raised his staff, but the power that erupted from it was unlike anything he had displayed before. This was not mere solar fire or divine authority—this was the accumulated wisdom of every victory over darkness, refined across millennia into something that could end their eternal cycle permanently.
