longer.blue

Solo | 1 | Anubis Awakens In the shadowed heart of the Duat, where the eternal river flowed black as pitch and the scales of judgment gathered dust, Anubis stirred. For millennia he had slumbered, jackal-headed guardian of the dead, weighing hearts against the feather of Ma'at. The living world had grown loud and forgetful. Temples crumbled. Prayers faded into memes and digital echoes. But the balance had tipped too far. The veil tore open one storm-lashed night. A ripple passed through the sands of Egypt. In the Valley of the Kings, tourists filming TikToks felt their cameras glitch. Deep beneath the ruins, a sarcophagus that was never meant to be sealed cracked open. Anubis rose, tall and terrible, his obsidian-black form wrapped in linen that shifted like living smoke. Golden eyes burned beneath the jackal mask. He carried no weapon death needed none. His mere breath was entropy. Only his Was-Scepter He stepped into the mortal realm near Luxor, or as he called it-Thebes, as the first light of dawn bled across the sky. The air grew heavy, thick with the copper scent of impending blood. At first, the changes were subtle. A small fishing boat on the Nile listed suddenly, its hull splitting along an invisible seam. Three men drowned before help could arrive. In the desert outskirts, a jeep carrying archaeologists flipped for no reason, its engine igniting in a bloom of fire. Far away, seismographs in Cairo twitched as tectonic plates, quiet for centuries, began to whisper against one another. Anubis walked north, unseen by most. Those few who glimpsed him a jackal shadow too tall for any earthly animal felt their hearts stutter. He did not hunt. He did not need to. The world itself hurried toward ruin in his wake, as though eager to deliver souls to his scales. By the time he reached the Mediterranean coast, the first hurricane formed unnaturally fast. Meteorologists in Alexandria stared at their screens in disbelief. "This isn't possible," one whispered as Hurricane Khepri spun into existence overnight, sucking moisture from the sea like a starving god. Ships in the harbour snapped their moorings. One massive container vessel, the MV Osiris, was torn in half by waves that should not have existed in calm waters. Hundreds of containers spilled into the deep, and with them, hundreds of lives. Anubis stood on the cliffs and watched, impassive. The dead did not cry out to him; they simply arrived. He moved on, drawn by some ancient instinct toward the great cities of men. Across the sea he travelled, his presence rippling outward like a stone dropped into the river of time. In Europe, forest fires that should have been contained by autumn rains exploded into infernos. Greece, Türkiye, and Italy burned at once. Entire villages vanished in walls of flame that moved with unnatural intelligence, herding people toward dead ends. Over the Atlantic, a passenger jet bound for New York suffered catastrophic engine failure mid-flight. No mechanical explanation was ever found. The plane fell silently from the sky, its final transmission a looping prayer in Arabic that no one understood. Rail lines across Asia buckled. A high-speed train in Asia derailed at 320 kilometres per hour, carving through villages like a scythe. In India, two trains met head-on in a remote station because signals that had functioned flawlessly for decades simply... forgot. Anubis walked through it all. In Mumbai, he passed through a crowded market. Within minutes, a gas cylinder exploded, then another. Bodies piled up. In the Alps, he climbed unseen paths, and an avalanche buried three resorts. Skiers who had laughed moments earlier were found frozen with looks of mild surprise on their blue faces. The world noticed too late. Scientists spoke of climate anomalies. Governments declared states of emergency. Conspiracy forums lit up with theories about HAARP Research, ancient curses, and bioweapons even aliens. A few mystics and Egyptologists whispered the old name: Anubis. Most laughed. Until the floods came. The Nile itself, sacred river of his people, rose in fury. It swallowed villages and ancient sites alike, drowning both the living and the relics of the dead. Followed by all major rivers across the world. In America, Hurricane after hurricane slammed the coasts in a relentless parade. California burned from end to end. Japan faced its strongest earthquake in recorded history, followed by a tsunami that erased entire towns. He was death, and the world was learning what it meant for death to walk among the living. In a quiet moment on the ruins of a temple overlooking the flooded Nile, Anubis finally spoke. His voice was the grinding of stone and the whisper of sand across bone. "The scales were neglected," he rumbled to no one. "Hearts grew heavy with arrogance. Now they will be weighed." Yet even gods can be surprised. A young Egyptian archaeologist named Layla, who had lost her entire family to the first flood, tracked him. She carried no weapons, only a small statue of Anubis her grandmother had given her as a child. When she finally stood before him on the cliffs, soaked and trembling, she did not beg. She asked only: "Why punish the innocent with the guilty?" Anubis regarded her for a long moment. The golden eyes softened, just fractionally. "Because death does not sort the worthy from the unworthy until they stand before me," he said. "And too many have forgotten to live as though they would one day stand there." He placed one great jackal hand upon her shoulder. She did not die. Instead, she felt the crushing weight of every soul lost in his wake millions now pressing into her mind. When he withdrew his touch, Layla fell to her knees, weeping. But the storms did not cease. Anubis turned toward the horizon, where new fires bloomed across continents. The living world had grown too large, too loud, too careless with its fragile spark of existence. Perhaps it needed reminding that all things end. And so the god of death walked on, and the world hurried to meet him.