The Valley of the Kings was scorching under the Egyptian sun, as if it were rented out to deceased pharaohs for the summer.
Ryan Pearson adjusted his backpack straps and squinted at the glimmering limestone hills. The heat waves distorted the air, making it hostile.
His T-shirt was soaked with sweat, but he barely noticed. He had been anticipating this moment since Cairo University awarded him the scholarship.
KV62. Tutankhamun's tomb. They were really going inside.
"This place is insane, right?" Megan said next to him, her blonde hair tied back in a practical bun and her notebook clutched tightly.
Her eyes sparkled with excitement. "Like... we're actually here. Tutankhamun!"
Leo trudged through the sand behind them, his shoes collecting half of the desert.
"I can't feel my face anymore. Are we sure this isn't just an elaborate plot to cook us alive?"
Ryan glanced back with a grin. "You'll survive. Probably."
"Probably?" Leo's expression flattened. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, man. Really comforting."
"Dude, you signed up for this."
"Yeah, because Hassan promised extra credit. No one mentioned the bonus prize was heatstroke."
Megan rolled her eyes. "You two are literally impossible."
Dr. Hassan's voice cut through their playful banter, firm and authoritative at the entrance of the tomb.
"This is not a tourist site. KV62 is fragile. No flash photography. Do not touch the walls. Keep your voices down. We show respect to the dead."
Leo muttered quietly, "Right, respect. Got it. Too bad we can't livestream a cursed tomb though. Would've been viral."
Megan nudged him on the ribs, while Ryan just chuckled and followed the line of students into the darkness.
*******
Inside, the air shifted instantly. It was cool, but the stillness was stifling, almost suffocating.
Dust was in Ryan's throat and he coughed, trying to clear it. Then his eyes adjusted and the rest of the world faded
The walls blazed with hieroglyphs, with the characters that textbooks had turned them into lifeless diagrams. Here they were alive.
The sun disk of Ra glowed in red and gold. Anubis stared out with his jackal's eyes, sharp and knowing.
Three thousand years old and the colors still sang.
Then Ryan noticed it.
The pattern among the symbols that felt... wrong. A repeating lotus motif, so many times it was distracting. An asymmetry near Ra's disk that didn't belong.
He stopped, ignoring the shuffle of students and the professor's lecture echoing from deeper chambers.
He took his notebook and began sketching the unusual arrangement, his pen moving quickly across the page.
'This wasn't random. No way. Had restoration work altered the original design?' he thought.
Megan leaned over his shoulder. "Seriously? We've been here thirty seconds and you're already in full archaeology nerd mode, dissecting the wall art?"
"This is important," Ryan muttered, his eyes fixed on the symbols.
"How important? This place is full of crucial paintings and all you can think about is this single wall?"
Ryan didn't respond, focusing on scribbling the symbols.
Megan groaned. "He's completely hopeless."
Leo's voice could be heard up ahead. "Day three, video diary. I'm trapped in a cursed tomb with Nerd Prime and Nerd Supreme. Send help. Preferably air-conditioned help with snacks."
They moved on, still arguing. Ryan barely noticed their banters.
All he could think about was how something was wrong with those symbols. They felt almost... alive.
"Pearson!" Hassan yelled impatiently. "Stop dawdling. The Artifact Chamber won't wait for you."
Ryan shoved the pen into his notebook and stood. "Yeah, yeah. Coming."
The pen slipped, bounced once, and rolled straight into a crack beneath the sarcophagus.
"Oh, come on," Ryan groaned, dropping to his knees. His fingers scraped against stone, and he just managed to hook the pen when the tomb moved.
It wasn't just the burial chamber. The entire bedrock beneath them.
The floor jolted like a living thing. Cracks spread across the ceiling like a spider web, sounding like a breaking bone. Dust fell on him, choking him.
Stone and debris crashed into the corridor, blocking the entrance to the burial chamber. The emergency lights flickered once, then died.
Total darkness swallowed him whole.
********
When the dust finally settled enough to breathe, Ryan stumbled toward where the entrance had been. His hands met only rubble, massive blocks of limestone that hadn't been there sixty seconds ago.
He pushed, pulled, scraped at the gaps.
"MEGAN!" His voice tore through the silence. "LEO! PROFESSOR! ANYONE!"
Nothing answered. Just the pressing silence.
He spent half an hour trying to dig himself out, his fingers were already bleeding and his lungs aching from the dust.
Eventually, he slumped against the far wall, accepting the truth.
They should have gotten out. And he had been left behind.
Ryan pulled out his phone. The screen lit up, showing 26% battery and no signal.
"Perfect. Just absolutely perfect," he whispered to the darkness.
Then, behind him, golden light bloomed across the wall.
Ryan spun around, seeing tendrils of liquid gold spread between the hieroglyphs like living things, flowing from Ra's solar disk, from Anubis's eyes. The symbols moved, pulsing with light that shouldn't exist.
The entire wall came alive with energy that made his teeth ache.
"What the hell—"
The golden threads reached every corner of the chamber, then vanished. Darkness crashed back in, absolute and suffocating.
A panel materialized in front of his face. Soft gold with glowing black text, floating in mid-air like something from the LitRPG comics he had read too many of.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
[Welcome, Heir of Anubis.]
Ryan blinked. "Okay. This is either a hallucination or I'm actually dead and this is some kind of afterlife tutorial..."
The text shifted.
[STATUS WINDOW]
[Name: Ryan Pearson]
[Title: Heir of Anubis]
[Rank: E—Novice Absorber]
[Health: 100/100]
[Mortuary Essence (ME): 25/25]
[Statistics:]
[STR: 6 | AGI: 7 | VIT: 6 | INT: 7 | WIS: 8 | CHA: 6 | DEF: 6 | LCK: 7]
[Skills:]
[Death Sight (Passive): Vision unaffected by darkness. Can detect and distinguish between living and dead by sensing their essence within 50 meters.]
[Essence Siphon (Active): Absorbs residual Mortuary Essence from deceased creatures within 50 meters.]
[Minor Life Drain (Active): Absorbs life-force from living creatures.]
[You may access this Status Window at any time by mentally calling for it.]
Ryan stared at his own name floating in glowing text.
"This is oxygen deprivation. I'm hallucinating video game mechanics because my brain is running out of air and—"
The panel vanished.
Darkness returned.
He waved his hand in front of his face experimentally. "Okay, so apparently I have something called Death Sight or whatever, which means..."
He froze.
He could see. Everything. Every detail of the stone walls sharper than they'd been in full light. The texture of the sarcophagus. The cracks in the ceiling. The individual grains of sand on the floor.
"No way."
He turned slowly, taking in the impossible clarity of the pitch-black chamber. "Holy shit. I can see everything. In complete darkness. This is..."
Nausea hit him and he dropped on the stone floor. His eyes found the rubble blocking the exit. Death Sight showed him things he hadn't noticed before—gaps between stones, structural weak points, the way debris had settled.
Maybe he could work with this.
Then he felt it. A tremor, but not from inside the tomb but deep below. The vibration traveled through the stone and into his chest like a second heartbeat.
Ryan pressed his palm flat against the floor, feeling the pulse of something far below.
Something was moving beneath him.
Something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
*******
Outside the burial chamber, chaos consumed the corridor.
Megan's nails bit into her palms hard enough to draw blood as dust filled the passageway. "He's still in there! We can't leave him!"
Leo doubled over coughing, his face pale with terror beneath the layer of dust. "The whole ceiling's coming down! If we stay, we're dead too!"
Dr. Hassan didn't respond. He threw his shoulder against the massive limestone slab that had sealed the chamber entrance. He grunted with effort, sweat streaking through the dust on his face.
Again. And again. But the stone didn't move.
More cracks split the ceiling above them with gunshot-like sounds. The decision was made for them.
"Professor, please!" Megan sobbed. "Ryan trapped! We can't just leave him!"
"I know!" Hassan snapped, his own voice cracking. His bloodshot eyes met hers, full of grief and fury at his own helplessness.
A section of ceiling the size of a car crashed down three meters away, sending shards flying. Students screamed.
The choice was made.
Leo grabbed Megan's arm, yanking her backward with desperate strength. "Megan, MOVE! NOW!"
She fought him, trying to pull free, but Hassan grabbed her other arm. "Enough! Out, now! That's an order!"
He dragged them both down the collapsing corridor as the tomb shook itself apart. Dust and stone rained around them, in the narrow passage.
They burst into blinding sunlight, gasping, coughing, their clothes coated with powdered limestone.
Behind them, KV62's entrance gave one final crash as an avalanche of stone sealed it completely.
Megan whirled on Hassan, shoving his chest with both fists. "You left him! You left him there! He's—" Her voice shattered into sobs.
Hassan caught her wrists, his face etched with pain. "Listen to me. If we'd stayed, you'd all be buried with him. Do you understand? I will call the authorities. I will get a rescue team. But I cannot save him with my bare hands and neither can you."
Leo stood frozen, trembling. "He was right behind us. And now..."
The other professors herded the shocked students back toward the buses. Hassan remained at the ruined entrance, staring at collapsed stone, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. He looked a decade older than he had five minutes ago.
He dropped on the ground before the sealed tomb, surrounded by a few male teachers. His fingers trembled as the emergency line finally connected. He pressed the phone to his ear, voice low and urgent with forced control.
"Tutankhamun's tomb. Cave-in. One student trapped inside. I need a rescue team immediately. Yes, I know the protocols. I'm telling you there's a person buried alive in there. Send help now."
His free hand curled into a fist against the hot sand as Megan's sobs echoed across the Valley of the Kings.