The sun reached its zenith, a white-hot hammer pounding down on the anvil of the desert.
The air shimmered, distorting the world into a watery, unstable illusion. X stood frozen before the stele, the ancient words echoing in the silent chambers of his mind.
"Death will strike with its poisonous wings..."
It was a promise, an oath carved in stone, and it felt as if it had been waiting here, through all the unremembered years, just for him.
The discovery was not a comfort. It was a burden. Before, the enemy was simple: the sun, the thirst, the vast, impersonal emptiness.
Now, there was a name for the dread that lingered at the edges of this broken world: a Pharaoh's Curse.
It gave the suffering a shape, a malevolent intelligence. The loneliness X felt was no longer just the absence of others; it was the chilling presence of something ancient and rage.
The ability to read the hieroglyphs was a terrifying miracle.
Where did this knowledge come from?
Was He a scholar?
A historian?
A grave robber?
Each possibility felt as weird as the last. The amnesia was no longer a simple blank slate; it was a wall, and X could now feel the immense, complex structure of a life hidden just behind it.
Flashes of skill, like the knowledge of this dead language, were cracks in that wall, offering terrifying glimpses of the person he used to be.
Thirst, however, was a more immediate and brutal tyrant than any curse. The revelation had provided no water. X's tongue was a swollen, useless thing in a mouth that felt coated with dust.
The need to move, to find water, was absolute. With one last look at the ominous warning on the stele, X turned away from the ruined settlement.
The journal was a hard rectangle against their hip, the stele a cold weight in his mind.
He were the only two possessions X had in the world, and both spoke of death.
The walk resumed, but it was different now.
There was a new alertness, a new fear. Every gust of wind seemed to carry the whisper from the journal.
Every shadow seemed to hide the skittering things the writer had seen.
The desert was no longer empty; it was watching. X's eyes scanned the horizon, not just for water, but for movement, for anything that seemed out of place in the natural order of sand and rock.
The afternoon wore on, a long, slow torture of heat and effort. The landscape began to change subtly. The rolling dunes gave way to a flatter, rockier plain, littered with black, sun-baked stones.
In the distance, a line of jagged cliffs rose up, their dark shapes a stark contrast to the pale sand, it was a destination, something to aim for.
Cliffs could mean shade and shade could mean cooler ground and cooler ground could mean a chance of life.
As X drew closer, a strange scent touched the air. It was faint at first, a foul, acrid smell that was utterly alien to the clean, dry scent of the desert. It grew stronger with every step, a smell of rot and chemicals, of something deeply unnatural.
X slowed, caution overriding the desperate need for a stable shelter, not this run down house. The source of the smell was a dark patch on the ground near the base of the cliffs.
It looked like a pool of black, viscous liquid, bubbling slowly under the heat of the sun. It was not water.
Around the edges of the foul pool, the sand was stained a sickly green, and the rocks were coated in a crystalline, yellow substance.
It was a wound in the earth, a place where the desert itself seemed to be diseased.
This, X thought with a sickening lurch of the stomach, was what the curse looked like. This was the blight.
The poison on the wind.
A sound made X freeze. A low, chittering noise, like a thousand insects rubbing his legs together.
It came from the shadows of the cliffs, just beyond the corrupted pool. X's hand instinctively went to his hip, fingers brushing against the hard cover of the journal, as if the dead man's words could offer some protection.
The sound grew louder, closer.
From the shadows, something emerged. It was low to the ground, its body a segmented carapace of glistening black. It had too many legs, scuttling forward with an unnerving, fluid motion.
A long, curved tail, tipped with a bulbous stinger dripping the same black fluid as the pool, arched over its back.
A scorpion, but something wrong here, It is the size of a large dog, its pincers thick and powerful enough to crush rock, and its multiple, clustered eyes glowed with a faint, sickly green light.
It was a mutation, a nightmare born of the desert's corruption.
Fear, finally broke through the haze of exhaustion and thirst. X's heart hammered, a frantic drum against ribs that felt as brittle as twigs.
There was nowhere to run. The creature was between X and the cliffs, and the open desert behind offered no escape.
It raised its pincers, clicking them together with a sharp, menacing snap. The chittering sound intensified, a hungry, predatory hum.
The inciting incident had not been finding the stele.
That was just the prologue. This was the first sentence of the story.
Death, it seemed, did not always wait for one to disturb the peace of a king. Sometimes, it came looking for you, scuttling out of the shadows on eight legs, its poisonous wings replaced by a venomous tail.
X backed away slowly, feet shuffling in the sand, eyes locked on the monstrous creature.
The giant scorpion advanced, its movements a horrifying blend of insectile speed and reptilian deliberation. Its multiple eyes, glowing with a malevolent green luminescence, tracked X's every move.
The air was thick with its acrid stench and the dry, electric hum of its chittering.
X's mind, which had been a fog of thirst and confusion, snapped into a state of hyper-awareness. Every detail was sharp, every sound amplified. The crunch of the creature's legs on the gravel. The slow drip of black venom from its stinger. The frantic, terrified beat of X's own heart.
There was no weapon.
Only hands, feet, and a mind that was suddenly, strangely, clear. The panic was still there, a cold knot in the stomach, but it was overlaid with an icy calm, a detached analytical focus that felt utterly foreign.
X's body shifted, sinking into a low crouch, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. It was not a conscious decision; it was a reflex, an echo of a forgotten skill rising from the depths of amnesia.
The scorpion lunged. It was faster than anything that size should be, with a massive pincer snapped shut where X's head had been a split second before.
X had already moved, diving to the side, rolling through the grit and loose rock.
The stone scraped skin from an arm, but the pain was distant, unimportant. X came up in a crouch again, circling, keeping a constant distance from the creature.
The scorpion's tail whipped forward, a black arc of death.
The stinger slammed into the ground, sending a spray of sand and gravel into the air. X had anticipated the move, dropping flat, the stinger passing inches above their back.
The sheer force of the impact shook the ground. A drop of the black venom landed on a nearby rock, which hissed and smoked, a small patch of its surface dissolving into a bubbling sludge.
This couldn't last. Evasion was only delaying the inevitable.
The creature was a fortress of chitin and venom, and X was a fragile collection of flesh and bone. X's eyes darted around, searching for an advantage, a weapon, anything.
The desert offered nothing but sands and some rocks. Rocks.
As the scorpion repositioned itself, its segmented body turning with an unnerving fluidity, X lunged for the nearest rock. It was the size of a human head, heavy and awkward.
Hoisting it with a surge of adrenaline, X faced the creature again. The scorpion chittered, a sound that might have been agitation or amusement, and raised both pincers in a threatening display.
It charged again.
This time, X didn't dodge, holding the rock like a shield, X braced for impact. The creature's pincer slammed into the stone with a sickening crack. The force of the blow was immense, jarring X's arms to the shoulders, but the rock held.
The scorpion recoiled, shaking its pincer, which now had a visible crack in the black exoskeleton. It let out a high-pitched shriek of fury and pain.
It had worked, and It could be hurt. A wild, desperate hope flared in X's chest.
But the creature was enraged now. It abandoned its measured attacks and launched into a frenzy, pincers snapping, tail lashing.
X was forced back, using the rock to deflect the blows, the impacts sending shockwaves through their arms. The rock was starting to fracture, chips flying off with every hit.
During the chaotic dance, something glinted on the creature's body. It was near the joint where one of its legs met the main carapace.
A piece of metal, catching the harsh sunlight. It was dark, almost the same color as the exoskeleton, but its smooth, unnatural surface stood out. It looked like a small, flat disc, held in place by a crude leather thong that was wrapped tightly around the creature's leg.
A pendant?
Why would a monster be wearing a pendant?
The question was absurd, but it lodged in X's mind. It was a sign of intelligence, of something beyond mindless mutation. It was a link to the world of people, of makers, of owners.
The rock in X's hands finally shattered, exploding into a dozen pieces under a powerful blow from the scorpion's pincer. X was defenseless.
The creature shrieked in triumph, its tail arching high, the stinger poised for the final strike, and there was no time to think, only to act.
As the tail descended, X threw himself forward, not away. It was a suicidal, counter-intuitive move, but it was the only one left.
X slid under the arc of the tail, the stinger missing by a hair's breadth, and slammed into the creature's side.
The impact was like hitting a wall of moving stone.
X's hands scrabbled for a hold on the slick carapace, finding the leather thong of the pendant. With a desperate, adrenaline-fueled yank, X ripped it free. The leather snapped. The pendant was in X's hand.
At the same moment, a sound split the air, then a sharp crack, like a whip, but a thousand times louder. The scorpion convulsed. A hole, smoking and sizzling, appeared in the center of its head. The green light in its eyes flickered and died.
The massive body shuddered, its legs buckled, and it collapsed to the ground with a heavy, final thud. Silence descended, broken only by X's ragged, gasping breaths.
X lay on the sand, chest heaving, every muscle screaming.
The pendant was clutched in a white-knuckled fist. It was cool to the touch, a small, smooth piece of obsidian carved into a strange, spiraling symbol. It seemed to hum with a faint, almost imperceptible energy.
"Don't move." The voice was low and gravelly, like stones grinding together. It came from the cliffs. X's head snapped up. A figure was standing there, silhouetted against the rock face.
He was an old man with his face a roadmap of wrinkles, his beard a wiry grey scrub.
He held a long, ancient-looking rifle, a thin curl of smoke still rising from its barrel. He was dressed in patched leather and dusty canvas, and his eyes, narrowed and sharp, missed nothing. He looked as much a part of the desert as the rocks he stood on.
"You're either the luckiest fool I've ever seen," the old man said, his voice dry as the dust at their feet, "or the stupidest."
He lowered the rifle slowly, his gaze fixed on X. "Now, what in the blighted hells are you doing out here alone?"