I walked through the corridor lit only by torches set into cracks in the stone. Their flames flickered, but otherwise there was complete silence. The walls were bare, without decoration, just rough-hewn stone. There was nothing here that reminded me of the great sanctuaries I had known in my own time.
I stopped in the middle. My heart was beating fast, not from fear—but from the weight of my questions.
"Where am I supposed to begin?" I said aloud.
They had sent me here, shown me the way, but given me no clear command. The gods I had known in my time were already powerful, with temples, priests, and rituals. But here… nothing like that yet existed. All I saw was raw stone and simple altars.
I thought. Maybe that was the point. Maybe in this age the gods were not yet what I knew later. Maybe they were only beginning to form. And if that was true, then…
I touched the stone of the wall. It was cold, hard, unshaped.
"If the gods are to be born," I told myself, "they need something to hold them. People. Temples. Offerings."
It was a simple chain of thought. In my own time, every priest would have laughed at me if I spoke it so plainly. But here, at the beginning, it was clear. The gods did not have power on their own. They had it from people. And the more temples, the more rituals, the more strength they would gain.
I took a deep breath. Maybe my task was exactly that. To bring the knowledge I had in my own time, here. To design temples, to teach people how to sacrifice, how to build, how to sing.
But the question remained: where to start?
The temple where I stood was dedicated to Ma'at—I recognized her symbol. But it was crude, unfinished. The priests sang, but without order. Everything seemed as if it was only being tested.
Maybe I should begin here. Help them create order. Teach them how a temple should look, how hymns should sound, how rituals should unfold.
Or… maybe I should begin elsewhere. Go to other cities, find where the gods had only a name without shape, and lay the first foundation there.
I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. I realized this was not a trial set directly by the gods. This was choice. If their power was to be shown, I had to build it for them first.
"If I am to build," I thought, "I must know what people here revere. What is important to them. It would be foolish to force upon them what they don't know. But if I guide them, if I show them how to sacrifice, how to build, they will feel something change. And maybe that way the gods will gain shape and power."
I opened my eyes and looked at the bare stone where vessels of water and grain were placed. Something inside me told me I could not begin here. This temple was too small, too weak. If I tried to impose order and new rituals here, the people might accept them, but it would not change all of Egypt.
"No," I whispered. "I cannot just begin anywhere. I must go where the heart of the land beats. To the greatest city."
I turned. The priests watched me, but said nothing. I felt they were waiting to see what I would do. I left the temple.
On the streets, there was bustle. Men carried baskets of straw, women filled jars at the well, children shouted and ran barefoot through the dust. Every eye turned toward me—no one missed a stranger.
I stopped by a man carrying sacks of grain on his shoulder. He was tall, muscular, his face burned by the sun.
"Where… big city?" I asked slowly, pointing toward the horizon.
The man looked at me for a moment, as if translating my words in his head. Then he answered: "Big… city… south." He added a few more words I didn't understand—they sounded familiar, but harsher, shorter, and the meaning escaped me.
"South?" I repeated, to be sure.
He nodded and pointed with his hand. "Big. King. Many houses."
I understood enough. If the city was big and had a king, it had to be the place where the first Pharaoh-queen ruled, the one the gods had spoken of.
I thanked him with a simple nod. The word "thank you" in this older form of the language I did not yet know.
I walked further, but an old woman stopped me by the well. Her eyes were narrow, her face wrinkled. She spoke to me quickly, and I caught only pieces. A few words sounded familiar—"stranger," "careful," "gods." That last one I understood clearly.
I nodded, though I did not grasp the whole sentence. The meaning was clear enough—she was warning me. That the road ahead would not be easy.
I moved on slowly through the streets, thinking. The language itself was a trial. Every word I heard had to pass through my mind before I could connect it to what I knew. If I wanted to teach, I first had to learn to speak as they did.
I stopped at a market square, where vendors stood with fish and grain. I listened to their conversations, caught words, matched them to gestures. It was not impossible—only difficult. Like listening to a child speaking a language you know, but in half-formed shapes.
In my pocket I felt the feather Cleopatra had once given me. It was a reminder that my path did not begin in small towns, but where power ruled. Where I could lay foundations that would endure.
"To the south," I whispered. "That's where I'll go. That's where I'll begin.
I left the city just before sunset. The gate was open, the guards looked at me, but said nothing. They remembered the foreigner, but no one cared where I was going.
The land stretched out before me differently than I had known it in my own time. The Nile flowed more calmly, its bed narrower, its banks wilder. Trees grew without order—palms and fig trees, sometimes a cluster of reeds. There were no irrigation canals, no dams to control the water. Only the river, as it had been from the beginning.
I followed the path that wound along the river. It was only trodden earth—no leveled paving stones, no carved blocks like in my time. Footprints and wheel ruts showed that people and carts passed this way, but it was nothing more than marks in the clay.
Sometimes I passed small settlements. Huts of straw and clay, low walls, roofs covered with branches. People looked at me with distrust but said nothing. Children hid behind their mothers' backs, men kept working as if I wasn't there.
I stopped at one of the villages and watched men pulling nets from the river. Fish writhed in them, silver and alive. In my time, there would have been boats carved into solid shapes, but here they had only rough tree trunks, hollowed out to hold a man above the water.
I walked on. The sun sank lower, painting the land orange. The wind carried the smell of wet clay and smoke from village fires.
By the road I saw a stone with a carved symbol—a circle and a line. I didn't know what it meant. The language and writing were older than I knew. Maybe it was a road marker, maybe something sacred. Either way, it reminded me that here I was the one who had to learn. Not they from me, not yet.
For a while I sat by the riverbank. The water shimmered, the current carrying twigs and leaves. I listened to the sounds—no noise of buildings, no chanting priests, only frogs and birds crying above the river.
"This is how it looked," I whispered. "This is how it was, when Egypt was only being born."
I knew the journey would be long. The southern city they spoke of must be far away. But I also felt it was exactly the place where I had to begin. Where a king—or queen—ruled, there I could lay the first foundation.
I stood up, brushed the dust from my cloak, and went on. I wasn't a warrior or a merchant. I was only a wanderer carrying knowledge from another time. But that was all I had.
And maybe it would be enough.
The journey took several days. I followed the Nile, winding through the land like the only certainty in this world. The river gave me water, fish, and direction. Sometimes I rested in small villages, where people reluctantly gave me bread or fruit, though they still looked at me as a stranger.
Slowly, I began to catch their speech. The words were harsher, shorter, but their meaning opened to me little by little. I understood when they spoke of fishing, of crops, of the Nile flood. When I answered them with a few simple phrases, they looked at me in surprise—as if I was becoming less of a stranger.
The road was not easy. Sand and sun drained my strength, nights were cold. I slept under the open sky or in small huts when someone took me in. One old woman gave me a piece of cloth and said something I didn't fully understand, but I knew it was a blessing.
On the fifth day I saw the city walls. They weren't as massive as in later times I had known, but for this age they were imposing. Blocks of stone laid one on top of another, the roads leading toward the main gate. Above the city rose a temple—simple, but larger than any I had seen along the way.
The gate was bustling. Men drove cattle, women carried baskets of grain, children shouted and raced. Guards stood on both sides, holding spears and shields, and when I approached, they looked at me suspiciously.
"Where from?" one of them asked in a harsh voice.
"From far," I answered slowly. "Stranger. I seek temple."
They conferred for a moment, then let me pass.
I entered the city. The streets were narrow but full of people. Merchants sold fish, bread, jars of beer. Men wore linen skirts, women necklaces of shells. And in the center—a palace. It was simple, but already had the shape I recognized. It had to be the house of the ruler.
I stopped and looked at it. That was the moment I understood—here my task began. Here, in the city where the first Pharaoh-queen of Egypt ruled.