The dig site was a place of organized frustration. For days, Amira's Eidolon Exploration Team had been meticulously excavating a newly discovered temple complex, a relic from a forgotten dynasty that lay perilously close to the active warzone. The soldiers were tense, their eyes constantly scanning the horizon for signs of the Alliance. The scientists were frustrated, their delicate instruments struggling in the harsh, windswept conditions. Amira moved between them, a point of calm focus in a sea of anxiety, her mind cross-referencing their findings with the strange, intuitive map in her soul.
They were close. She could feel it. A cold, dormant energy that slept beneath the stones.
They all felt the explosion.
It was not a sound at first, but a silent, blinding flash on the eastern horizon that bleached the color from the world for a split second. Then the ground beneath them bucked and rolled, a violent, gut-wrenching tremor that sent men and equipment tumbling. Minutes later, the sound wave arrived—a low, continuous, world-shaking roar that was the sound of a god dying.
In the ensuing chaos, as soldiers shouted orders and scientists scrambled to protect their gear, Amira was the only one who noticed the new light.
It was coming from the center of the excavation pit. A single, massive stone altar, covered in hieroglyphs that had been worn smooth by the passage of millennia, was now glowing with a soft, golden light. The ancient symbols, once inert, pulsed with a steady, rhythmic energy, a heartbeat of stone and light.
"Colonel! Look!" a young archaeologist cried out, his voice a mixture of terror and utter awe.
The soldiers raised their rifles, but Amira held up a hand. "Hold your fire," she commanded, her voice steady. She was not afraid. The light from the altar was not hostile; it was a call, a resonance that hummed in perfect harmony with the power that had awoken within her.
She walked towards it, down the ramp and into the pit, her team watching in stunned silence. As she drew closer, the hum intensified, and whispers filled her mind. They were not words, but feelings, intentions, memories, all jumbled together in a torrent of psychic noise.
She reached the altar and, acting on an instinct she did not understand, placed her palm flat against the glowing, central glyph.
The world vanished.
She was no longer Amira Khan, scholar. She was Neb-Hathor, Captain of the Pharaoh's Medjay warriors. The phantom weight of a heavy bronze shield was on her left arm, the familiar grip of a khopesh in her right. She could feel the scorching sun on her neck, smell the dust and sweat of the men around her. Her muscles, not the soft, academic muscles of Amira, but the hard, coiled muscles of a lifelong warrior, knew the rhythm of combat, the precise angle of a killing blow, the perfect balance needed to deflect a chariot's charge. The knowledge was not learned; it was inhabited.
Then the world shifted. She looked up, through Neb-Hathor's eyes, at a sky that was both familiar and terrifyingly alien. There was the sun, Ra's golden barge, but beside it was another light, a second sun, a furious, screaming crimson star falling from the heavens.
She felt the warrior's awe and terror. She felt the ground shake as the star struck the earth far to the west, a blow that shook the foundations of the world. She felt the wave of new, strange energy—the Sehmet's Breath—wash over the land, changing everything, awakening a new, terrible magic in the sand, the beasts, and the blood of men.
The connection shattered.
Amira gasped, stumbling back from the now-dark altar, the phantom weight of the shield and sword vanishing from her limbs. She was herself again, but she was also more. The muscle memory of a master warrior was now imprinted onto her own, a ghost of skill in her scholar's body.
She looked east, towards the distant, smoldering ruin of the battlefield. The whispers in her mind were gone, but the knowledge they had left behind was a terrible, world-altering revelation. This was not the first Starfall. The cataclysm of today was just an echo of a story that had been written in the very stones beneath her feet, thousands of years ago.