The inscriptions on the temple's walls had guided us for two thousand years. We hadn’t seen a dragon for five hundred.

My family had served his for as long as we had existed; we knew their secrets and we knew their powers.

As for him, only by the trials of the gods could he claim his place as the manifestation of the hydra and rule the kingdom that his father was so abruptly departing. And only as the hydra could he save our fallen souls.

my bones and my blood and my soul are all one, above the earth

THE PHARAOH’S FATE

TRIAL I: DEATH

On his deathbed, as he lay he spoke to me:

'The old woman said to me, ‘We are all equal in death.’ But she was old and decrepit, and I was young. Her words decayed as they left her mouth. I leaned to her and told her not to speak to me of death, for I have looked him in the eye and smelled his rotten breath, kissed his putrid ankles.

When I was young and strong I took his crumbling skull in my hand and crushed it to powder. They called me The Harbinger then. But I have no use for silly names.

I am a denizen of the world; the earth trembles beneath my foot. My eyes are of midnight, of marrow and bone. I have bled from my tongue words with golden flourishes.

Once I held this kingdom in my palm, but I am too weak now. Go forth to your father's land, to my land, and do unto your people more than I have done unto mine. Trust in me: you will find yourself in the sand's mirage one hundred miles west of the khan's gates.’

II. THE PASSAGE OF ONE MILLION SONS

TRIAL II: LIFE

… West of the khan’s gates we walked for seventy days and seventy nights. Our marked leader beckoned us with burning eyes …

He knocked three times on the door, steadily. His knuckles were heavy. It yielded to him. We followed.

Inside the room were one million life-mirrors that told us our own stories -- the good and the bad without choosing. We all looked away except for him.

He screamed incessantly…

“Who am I?”

And his runes surfaced, glowing, glowing, glowing

“What am I?”

Glowing, glowing, burning

Dragonblood, the first in five hundred years, with power unbounded, eyes glowing, flames licking his skin

Dragonblood

But he never looked away

He left as quietly as he came.

III. THE SCARAB'S SECRET

TRIAL III: REBIRTH Your feet are bloody and broken as you kneel before the gates. Your lips, dry and cracked, beckon for water; above you, a spirit descends and implores you.

‘My child, join us in this chant:

For every single life that they have taken, we call upon one god to bless us with two new ones. We called him the Soul Hydra and we fed him with the blood of the impure.

For every horror you have seen, there are thousands more. The armies of death call for the blood of the innocents.

This world has not seen a protector in half a millennium. The Soul Hydra has become entangled in the affairs of the heavens and has not returned to the decaying world until now.

Once the gods have deemed a man fit to manifest the Soul Hydra, he must carry the burden like his ancestors before him.

The truth will come only in death; like a snake, shedding its skin; the soul will die before becoming new again.’

The men behind you move closer as you grow weak, but no man has ever been able to beat a dying soul to its final destination.

THE END

ABOVE, THE SKIES RAINED FIRE AND BEFORE US HIS BODY BEGAN TO TWIST --

His death came swiftly. Our marked leader --

dragonblood

-- fell softly, terribly, to the black floor.

THE BEGINNING

He awoke with cobalt heat in his throat and a burning of the eyes. The men around him would remember much later the runes branded into his skin that spoke of an internal fire and a will to protect their people.

But in that moment, the men saw only the terrible and beautiful serpent that had returned to restore the will of the gods to a once mighty kingdom.

Dragonblood among men.