Some awaken to light. Others awaken to ashes.
The air was unnaturally still.
Zaire's eyes opened slowly. The world around him was cloaked in a shimmering twilight — not quite night, not quite dawn. Above, the sky stretched like cracked obsidian, painted with shifting hues of deep violet and dying gold.
Beneath his feet, polished black stone reflected a distorted version of the world, and of himself. Every step he took echoed like a whisper in a tomb.
Ahead stood figures — faint at first, but becoming clearer as he moved forward. His grandparents. And behind them, others he recognized from a photograph framed in dust at his grandmother's hearth: warriors, priestesses, sages, and kings. Ancestors he had never met but had always felt watching.
They stood silently, unmoving. Their golden eyes glowed softly, as if lit by a sacred fire.
Then the smoke came.
A pitch-black mist slithered between their feet like a living shadow, spiraling upward, thickening into a vortex behind them. It pulsed, alive and aware. From its depths, a colossal silhouette rose — a giant wreathed in robes of ancient gold and black, bearing a jackal's head with a crown of horns and sun-discs.
Its staff, long and carved with hieroglyphs that shimmered faintly, struck the ground with silent authority. The Aakh — the ancient sigil of passage — hovered, burning like an eclipse in his other hand.
Zaire stood firm, sharp eyes unreadable. There was no fear. Only stillness.
And then — it shifted.
From the space between the smoke and the shadow, another figure stepped forward. Regal. Measured. Beautiful in a terrifying way.
A man, tall and commanding, wearing a sleek black four-piece suit threaded with gold filigree. His jackal head was crowned by golden markings that shimmered subtly as he moved. Around his wrist, the Aakh symbol coiled like a living relic, glowing faintly with divine resonance.
He walked through the smoke with the confidence of a god.
"Zaire," he greeted, a faint smile curving his muzzle. "You look exactly as I remember."
Zaire's gaze narrowed. "You speak as if you know me."
"I do," the god replied. "Or rather… I knew the fire you carry. Long ago."
"I am Anubis," he said with quiet reverence. "God of Mummification. Gatekeeper of the Afterlife. Patron of balance. I've waited for this meeting since your soul first stirred beneath the veil."
Zaire glanced at his ancestors, their eyes still glowing. "Why am I here?"
Anubis circled slowly, footsteps silent over the black stone. "There was once a priest. A devout follower of Amun-Ra. Righteous. Powerful. But when the Sun God shattered, his divine soul splintered across the realms. The priest, blinded by ambition, now hunts those fragments."
He stopped. "If he succeeds, the balance between realms will collapse. He seeks to reignite the Solar Flame and reshape the world into a twisted empire of fire and light."
"And you want me to stop him."
"I want you to choose your own purpose," Anubis replied. "But yes. I believe you are the only one who can."
Zaire folded his arms, thoughtful. "Why do you believe in me?"
Anubis tilted his head. "Because even in silence, you are flame. Calm, but unyielding. Intelligent. Focused. You don't ask for power. That's why you're worthy of it."
He raised his hand.
"I offer you a pact. Become the first Ashborne — a vessel to my will, my watch, my wrath. You will carry one of the five divine souls of Anubis — the Soul of the Spiritual Realm."
He paused. "The full weight of my essence would burn you alive. But this… this fragment will awaken what's dormant in your blood. In your destiny."
Zaire was silent. But within him, something cracked — a memory, a wound left by betrayal. The face of the man who stood beside his father, who then helped bury him in silence.
"I want justice," he said. "Not vengeance. But if this helps me see through the lies they left behind… then I accept."
Anubis smiled — not with triumph, but with something closer to grief.
A blaze of violet-gold flame spiraled around Zaire. The Aakh symbol burned itself into his palm, pulsing with a quiet rhythm like a second heartbeat.
Behind him, the ancestors bowed their heads.
Anubis stared at the boy as the smoke began to retreat, something deep and old flickering in his eyes.
In a voice not meant for mortal ears, he murmured:
"You were his mirror. The only one who never wavered. Zaire… you are the echo of the one I failed."
And then, the shadows swallowed them both.
End of Chapter 1.