Chapter One: The Sand Remembers
Bryan ran barefoot through golden sand, though he couldn’t feel the heat beneath his feet. All around him, massive stone columns rose from the earth like forgotten titans, each carved with symbols that pulsed with a faint blue light. The air buzzed with whispers—not voices, exactly, but thoughts… memories that weren’t his.
Ahead, a temple loomed. Its entrance was draped in shadows, guarded by a jackal statue with eyes that gleamed like obsidian. As Bryan stepped closer, the sky rippled—day turned to dusk, and the desert wind carried the scent of frankincense and something older… something alive.
He didn’t know why, but his chest ached with a strange mix of fear and longing. A voice echoed inside his head, deep and ancient:
“You are chosen. The blood remembers.”
Bryan reached out to touch the stone wall of the temple—and fire surged through his veins. The sand rose in spirals around him, forming a cyclone of gold and flame. He screamed—
—and snapped awake.
Gasping, soaked in sweat, Bryan sat upright in his bed. The soft hum of the city night filtered through his half-open window, but his heart was still racing like he’d just outrun something… or someone. He glanced at the clock: 2:14 a.m.
Sleep wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
⸻
Chapter One (continued)
Bryan swung his legs off the bed and rubbed his face. The dream still clung to him—too vivid to shake off, too real to ignore. He’d had strange dreams before, but never like this. The kind that felt like memories… someone else’s memories.
He threw on a hoodie and padded out of his room, careful not to wake anyone. The penthouse was quiet, dark except for the soft glow of security lights lining the hallway. His mother was probably still out—late meetings, as usual. He didn’t mind the silence. Sometimes it was the only thing that felt honest in a house full of wealth, glass walls, and artificial smiles.
Bryan’s feet led him downstairs, past the sleek modern kitchen and into the hallway that led to the private elevator. At the end of it stood a locked door—one most people thought was just a maintenance room.
He pulled out the old brass key he’d found in his mother’s drawer a year ago. She never said anything about it, and he never asked.
With a soft click, the door opened.
The air changed instantly. Cool. Dry. Heavy with dust and time.
He descended the narrow spiral staircase slowly, the walls around him lined with aged bricks and flickering with dim emergency lights. This part of the building wasn’t on any blueprint. His grandfather had the cellar built decades ago—for storage, he claimed. But Bryan had always sensed it was something more.
At the bottom, rows of shelves stretched across the underground chamber. Books. Crates. Artifacts. Everything his mother collected but never talked about.
Bryan wandered between them, fingers grazing over leather-bound volumes and rusted metal trinkets, until something caught his eye—
a book that didn’t belong.
It sat alone on a pedestal, covered in deep red cloth. The air around it seemed still—thick, like it was holding its breath.
He stepped closer, pulling back the cloth.
The cover was black, cracked with age, but etched with gold symbols he didn’t recognize. At the center was an emblem: a falcon’s head crowned with a sun disk—Horus, if he remembered the bedtime stories correctly.
The moment his fingers brushed the cover, a shock ran through him—like touching a live wire. He staggered back, breathing hard.
And then… the book opened on its own.
Pages flipped in a blur before stopping on a section written in an ancient script that seemed to burn into his vision. The symbols twisted, reshaped, and then—
He understood them.
Every word.
“To awaken the Eye, blood must remember. To carry the god, the soul must burn.”
The air thickened. The lights flickered.
A low hum filled the room, rising in pitch, until—
Everything went black.
