The afternoon heat had thickened into something almost chewable by the time Merit sent Kael-Ankh to the village shrine. She had wrapped a small loaf of fresh-baked bread in a clean linen cloth and pressed it into his hands along with a clay flask of watered beer.
"Ptahhotep does not suffer fools gladly," she warned, though her tone carried more amusement than caution. "But he also does not turn away those the gods have marked. Show respect, speak truth when he asks, and do not pretend to know more than you do. He will smell a lie faster than a jackal smells carrion."
Kael nodded. The scarab amulet rested against his hip, its gentle warmth a constant reminder of the morning's discovery. He could still feel the faint echo of the protective barrier he had summoned—fragile, but real. Part of him wanted to test it again immediately; the rest understood that raw power without guidance was a quick path to disaster in a world where gods paid attention.
The shrine stood at the eastern edge of the village, where the mudbrick houses gave way to open ground sloping gently toward the floodplain. It was modest by the standards of the great temples he had studied in photographs and reconstructions—no towering pylons, no forest of columns—but it had presence. A low wall of sun-dried bricks encircled a small courtyard. Inside rose a single-room sanctuary of whitewashed mudbrick, its entrance framed by two slender papyrus-bundle columns painted red at the base and green at the capitals to mimic fresh stems. A wooden door stood half-open, releasing the faint scent of myrrh smoke and old oil.
Two small statues flanked the doorway: one of Bes, squat and leonine-maned, tongue lolling in eternal grimace; the other of Taweret, hippo-bodied and fierce, yet somehow comforting in her swollen, protective bulk.
Kael paused at the threshold, feeling the shift in the air. It was cooler here, almost unnaturally so, as though the stones themselves remembered nights of ritual and prayer. A thin thread of blue-gray smoke rose from a shallow brazier just inside the door.
He stepped across the threshold and bowed his head slightly—not out of practiced piety, but genuine caution.
Inside, the space was dim and intimate. A low altar of polished limestone held offerings: a small loaf of bread, a cluster of dates, a shallow bowl of milk beginning to curdle in the heat, and several lotus blossoms floating in water. Behind the altar stood three wooden figures on individual plinths—no larger than a forearm's length each.
The central one was Ptah—mummiform, tight-wrapped, wearing the blue cap of a craftsman, hands crossed over his chest holding was-scepter and ankh. To his left stood Ma'at, feather-crowned, serene. To the right, a small figure of Thoth as ibis-headed scribe, palette in one hand, reed stylus in the other.
Before the altar sat Ptahhotep.
The elder was thin to the point of gauntness, skin the color of old papyrus, stretched tight over sharp cheekbones and a long, narrow skull. His head was shaved, gleaming with oil. He wore a plain white kilt and a leopard-skin shawl draped over one shoulder—the mark of a sem-priest, even in this small village shrine. His eyes were dark and piercing, set deep under heavy brows. Age had carved deep lines around them, but they held a clarity that made Kael feel suddenly transparent.
Ptahhotep did not rise. He simply looked up from the small papyrus scroll spread across his knees and regarded Kael with the unhurried appraisal of a man who had seen many strange things arrive on the river's current.
"You are the one Merit calls 'the stranger from far waters,'" he said. His voice was dry and precise, like wind moving through palm ribs. "Kael-Ankh, she says you named yourself."
"Yes, honored one."
"Sit."
Kael lowered himself to the rush mat opposite the elder, careful to keep his back straight and his gaze level but not challenging.
Ptahhotep studied him for a long, uncomfortable silence. Then he reached out and touched the back of Kael's right hand—lightly, almost clinically.
"Your Ka burns strangely," he murmured. "Not like a man born of woman in Kemet. It flickers like flame fed by foreign oil. And yet it does not gutter. It grows."
Kael felt the contact as a faint electric tingle. The scarab at his belt pulsed once in response.
"I come from… a place where the gods are spoken of but not seen," he said carefully. "Where their stories are written in books and studied as history. I died there. And woke here."
Ptahhotep's expression did not change, but something shifted in his eyes—curiosity sharpening into interest.
"Died and returned unmarked. No mummy wrappings. No weighing of the heart. No ferryman's coin. That is no small thing." He withdrew his hand. "The gods play strange games with souls. Sometimes they pluck them from one river and place them in another. Sometimes they do it to test the world. Sometimes to mend it."
He gestured toward the altar.
"Speak truth now. Are you sent by netjer? By Set? By some foreign power wearing a familiar mask?"
Kael met the elder's gaze without flinching.
"I don't know who sent me. I only know I remember things others here do not. I remember how levers work, how light bends, how sickness can travel on unclean hands and breath. And I feel the heka here—real, tangible, like a current under the skin. I want to understand it. I want to use it to protect, not destroy."
Ptahhotep considered this for a long moment.
Then he reached behind him and drew forth a reed stylus and a fresh sheet of papyrus, rough but serviceable.
"Write your name," he said. "Your true one. The one you carried before this flesh."
Kael hesitated. In his old life, names had power only in legal documents and login screens. Here, he suspected they carried weight of a different order.
He took the stylus, dipped it in the small ink pot of ground charcoal and gum, and wrote in careful, practiced hieratic—not the formal monumental style, but the flowing cursive he had learned from papyri facsimiles:
kꜣ-n-ꜥnḫ
(Kael-Ankh)
Beneath it, in smaller signs, he added the phonetic complement he felt belonged:
Born of two worlds.
The ink sank into the fibers. For a heartbeat nothing happened.
Then the papyrus shimmered—faintly, like heat haze over desert sand. The signs glowed soft gold before fading back to black. The scroll accepted the name without protest.
Ptahhotep exhaled slowly.
"It is written. It is accepted." He rolled the papyrus carefully and set it aside on the altar beside the milk bowl. "You are Kael-Ankh in this place, by word and by Ka. That is no small gift."
He rose—slowly, joints creaking—and moved to a low chest of acacia wood near the wall. From it he took a small linen-wrapped bundle.
"Stand."
Kael rose.
Ptahhotep unwrapped the cloth. Inside lay a thin bronze dagger—short, leaf-shaped blade, hilt wrapped in leather and bone. Simple, but balanced, the edge gleaming with recent sharpening.
"Take it. Not as a warrior's weapon—yet. As a tool. Heka begins with intent, but intent must sometimes meet flesh. You will learn to ward it, to guide it, to make it more than metal."
Kael accepted the dagger. It felt right in his hand—lighter than modern steel, but keen. He tested the balance, then slid it into the belt at his waist opposite the scarab.
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me yet," Ptahhotep said. "You will earn it. Tonight, after the evening offerings, you will return. I will teach you the first true words of power—not the simple breath charms mothers whisper over children, but the structured heka of a priest. You will learn to call light without flame, to bind shadow without chain, to speak to the small netjeru that guard thresholds."
He paused, eyes narrowing.
"And you will tell me more of this 'place of glass and steel and thinking machines.' If the gods have sent you with knowledge from beyond the horizon, then that knowledge belongs to Ma'at now. To order. To Kemet."
Kael bowed his head.
"I will share what I can."
Ptahhotep made a small gesture of dismissal.
"Go now. Help Merit until dusk. Eat. Rest. When the first star appears above the sycamore fig, return here."
Kael stepped back toward the doorway, then paused.
"Honored one… the scarab I found this morning. It spoke to me. Not in words, but in knowing. It showed me rebirth. Transformation."
Ptahhotep's gaze sharpened again.
"Show me."
Kael drew the amulet from his belt and placed it in the elder's palm.
Ptahhotep studied it for a long moment, turning it over, tracing the gold lines with one fingertip. Then he pressed it briefly to his own forehead, closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was something new in his expression—respect, perhaps even a trace of awe.
"Khepri's own mark," he murmured. "Not made yesterday, nor the day before. This has slept in the silt for cycles beyond counting. And it woke for you."
He returned the scarab.
"Guard it close. Speak to it in quiet moments. It will answer—if your heart remains true."
Kael tucked the amulet back against his skin.
As he left the shrine, the sun was beginning its long descent toward the western hills. Shadows stretched across the village like fingers. Children called to one another across rooftops. Somewhere a woman sang a harvest song in a low, clear voice.
Kael walked back toward Merit's compound, bronze dagger at one hip, scarab at the other, the weight of both anchoring him to this world.
He felt the first stirrings of purpose—sharp, bright, dangerous.
Tonight he would begin to learn how to wield the myths he had once only studied.
And perhaps—just perhaps—how to bend them in ways even the gods had not foreseen.