The light inside the cocoon deepened — orange bleeding into molten gold, every pulse of it like a heartbeat echoing through time.
Pash drifted weightless, his body suspended in thick, luminous liquid. He couldn't tell if he was breathing, or if the cocoon itself breathed for him. The silence was total, yet he could hear something beneath it — the whisper of a memory, ancient and divine.
Then came the pull.
He wasn't falling through space. He was falling through memory.
The light collapsed into darkness. The stars vanished.
And when he opened his eyes again — they were not his own.
They were hers.
---
The horizon burned red. The dunes trembled beneath the roar of gods. Spears of light clashed with shadow. Thunder rolled across the deserts of Kemet.
"Sekhmet…" The name left the woman's lips like a wound.
Ahead of her stood her sister, a lioness wreathed in fire, eyes dripping with the fury of Ra himself.
"You would side with mortals again?" Sekhmet's voice cracked the sky. "Our father commanded their judgment. You defy him?"
Bastet raised her blade — a curved arc of sunfire trembling in her grasp. "They are his creation too! To destroy them is to mock the gift of life itself."
Sekhmet's roar split the heavens. Divine light carved through air, burning sand into glass. Bastet met the blow, staggering beneath the force. Light and shadow entwined — one born of wrath, the other of mercy.
Steel clashed. The dunes bled gold.
Then came a blinding flash. The world went white — and then black.
---
She wandered for what felt like ages. Her divine body trembled, bleeding radiance with each step. Once a goddess, now she was little more than a dying star wrapped in mortal flesh.
She crossed the banks of the Nile as her light faded, her once-blazing aura flickering like a candle in the wind. Her feet sank into mud, her breathing shallow. The reflection of the moon rippled across the water — a pale, silent witness to her fall.
By the time she reached the village, she was no longer glowing. Her skin was bruised, her divinity cloaked in frailty.
She collapsed at the door of a mud-brick house, the smell of bread and smoke curling in her nostrils. A startled gasp cut through the darkness.
"By the gods — you're hurt! Please, don't move!"
Strong hands caught her before she could hit the ground. His touch was warm, human — so different from divine flame.
And for the first time in eons, she felt something she hadn't known in all her immortal life.
She felt safe.
---
Days passed like whispered prayers.
Through her eyes, Pash saw the man — Menef — and his world. Sunlight filtered through woven mats. The scent of grain and river reeds filled the air. Children's laughter echoed beyond the mud walls.
Bastet healed slowly, pretending weakness to remain by his side. But with each moment, her heart betrayed her divinity a little more.
When he smiled, she felt warmth ripple through her chest — soft, dangerous, and utterly human.
He doesn't know who I am, she thought, watching his reflection in a bowl of water. And yet, he looks at me as though I am whole.
Ra's distant call tugged at her soul, faint and relentless. She knew she was being summoned. But the pull of humanity… was stronger.
---
One night, Menef worked under the moonlight, shaping clay with his hands. Bastet approached quietly, her shadow stretching long across the floor.
"What are you making?" she asked.
He smiled without looking up. "A cat. They bring good fortune. My mother said they carry the gods' light in their eyes."
She laughed softly, the sound like chimes swaying in the wind. "Then you must be wise to craft such sacred creatures."
He chuckled. "Or foolish enough to hope they'll bring luck to a poor man."
Their eyes met — and for that single heartbeat, the goddess and the mortal were equals.
---
Then came the night of the flood-moon.
The Nile sang softly beyond the walls. The air was thick with warmth, heavy with the promise of rain. Bastet stood watching Menef sleep, the moonlight gilding his features in silver.
This is forbidden, she thought. Yet why does it feel truer than eternity?
She reached for him, fingers trembling. Her touch grazed his cheek — and in that instant, something divine shattered.
For one breathless moment, she was not Bastet the goddess, not the daughter of Ra. She was only a woman — trembling beneath the weight of love's first warmth.
And in that fleeting moment, a new light sparked within her.
From that night, the child was conceived — a heartbeat of divine fire within mortal flesh.
---
Pash felt her joy, her fear, her defiance. They weren't just visions — they were memories. They were his.
The memory shifted again.
The dawn broke with thunder. A hawk descended from the heavens, its wings blazing with solar fire.
"Bastet, Guardian of the Dawn," the messenger spoke. "Your father calls. You have lingered long in mortal shadow."
Menef woke, confusion clouding his eyes. "Bast? What is happening?"
She turned to him, tears glimmering like molten gold. "I cannot stay."
He reached for her, desperate, but the wind already pulled her away.
"Forgive me," she whispered as her form began to dissolve into light. "Our love was never meant for this world."
Her last sight was their child — swaddled in linen, his tiny fingers glowing faintly with golden light — as Menef clutched him close, shouting her name into the heavens.
Then the light consumed her.
---
Inside the cocoon, Pash's body jolted. His heart thundered, veins surging with molten energy. His mind burned with Bastet's last emotion — love so deep it could tear heaven itself.
Then she appeared before him — her true form, radiant and fierce, eyes like suns. She reached out, cupping his face with both hands. Her touch was warmth and lightning, divine yet achingly familiar.
For the first time since birth, he felt the touch of a mother not his own — and yet somehow, it was.
"You may not understand what has happened," she said, her voice both thunderous and tender, "nor what will come. But when the time arrives, you must rise. You must become what you were born to be."
Her voice grew softer, echoing within him. "My child, the blood of sun and shadow flows within you. Rise."
Then, in a final blaze of light, her whisper tore through his soul:
"Rise — and trample those who wish you harm, son of Bastet."
---
Something within him broke loose.
His blood ignited, his skin darkened to obsidian, his veins glowing red beneath. His fingers curled, lengthening into claws that gleamed like black steel. His body convulsed as if a god was remaking him from the inside out.
The cocoon pulsed, cracks of orange light racing across its surface. Each pulse shook the air harder than the last.
And then—
It burst.
A torrent of fiery wind exploded outward, shredding the silence. The land quaked, the very air warped from the pressure.
When the light cleared, a shadow stood in the center of the destruction.
The man from before — the swordsman who had slaughtered the Scryvians — lowered his arm, shielding his face from the debris. He stared ahead, eyes narrowing as the dust began to settle.
And there it was.
A creature — vast and terrible — stood in the middle of the street.
Its body was black as soot, skin glistening like molten stone. Shadows rose off it like smoke, wrapping around its towering form. Its eyes blazed crimson, veins — or perhaps runes — throbbing with unstable red light.
Its claws sank into the earth. Its breath came in slow, thunderous waves.
Then it lifted its head and roared.
"ROOOAAAAR!"
The sound shattered the night. The ground trembled, windows cracked, and those within the distant shelter froze in fear. The roar rolled across the land like a storm — primal, unrelenting.
When the echo faded, the creature lowered itself to all fours, muscles coiling like springs, eyes locked onto the lone man standing before it.
The swordsman exhaled slowly, removing the leaf stem from his mouth. For the first time, he drew his sword completely from its scabbard — the blade gleaming in the moonlight.
"Oh boy," he murmured with a grin. "This is going to be a long night."
He pointed the blade forward, confidence radiating off him like heat.
"Come…"
A faint glimmer of excitement flickered in his eyes.
"…let's play."
The beast lunged, the ground cracking beneath its weight — and the night erupted into chaos once more.
*******