The bronze felt cold.
That was the first thing Dr. Elara Vance noticed. It was a deep, unnatural cold that seemed to suck the warmth from her fingertips, even in the climate-controlled stillness of the museum's artifact vault.
It was 10:17 PM. The only sounds were the distant hum of the ventilation and the soft click-clack of her own heels on the polished concrete floor. Elara shouldn't have been there. The vault was supposed to be sealed for the night. But the artifact had called to her.
Not literally, of course. Elara was a woman of science, a pragmatist who believed in carbon-dating and catalog numbers. But this new piece... it was an anomaly.
It sat alone on the sterile steel table, bathed in the sharp, white light of her work lamp. It was a heavy bronze seal, shaped like a coiled scorpion, its tail arched high. The "Scorpion Seal of Kaelen."
Emperor Kaelen.
Even two thousand years after his death, the name carried weight. History knew him as the Tyrant of the Sun-Scorched Empire, the man who unified the warring desert tribes through sheer, brutal force. He burned the Great Library of Ashur, slaughtered his own generals, and was rumored to bathe in the blood of his enemies.
A monster. A historical footnote of pure, unadulterated cruelty.
And this was his personal seal. The tool he used to sign death warrants and declare wars.
Elara leaned closer, her dark hair falling over her shoulder. Her modern, tailored blazer and jeans felt sacrilegious this close to something so ancient. The museum had acquired it from a private collector, and its authenticity was still hotly debated.
"You're supposed to be a myth," she murmured, tracing the air just above the intricate carvings. The craftsmanship was impossibly fine. No historian could figure out how the ancient civilization, for all its brutality, had achieved this level of metallurgy.
She was the lead researcher tasked with proving it was real. For three weeks, she had studied it, slept in her office, and lived on bitter coffee and vending machine snacks. Her notes were piled high, but the seal gave up no secrets.
Tonight, she was tired. Frustrated.
"Just tell me," she whispered to the object, a habit she'd never admit to her colleagues. "What's your story?"
Driven by an impulse she couldn't explain, she did the one thing every museum professional is forbidden to do.
She touched it.
Not with a cotton glove. Not with a sterile probe. She pressed her bare thumb against the center of the bronze scorpion.
The cold was instantaneous. It didn't just chill her skin; it plunged into her veins like ice water. Her head snapped back. The white work lamp above her flickered, buzzed, and then exploded in a shower of sparks and darkness.
"What the—"
Elara stumbled back, clutching her hand. But the cold was already spreading. It wasn't a normal feeling. It felt like... falling.
The world dissolved. The smell of dust and old paper vanished, replaced by the acrid stench of ozone and hot sand. The hum of the ventilation became a roar, a deafening wind that tore the breath from her lungs.
She felt a violent pull, as if the universe had hooked a fishing line through her navel and was reeling her in.
Her vision blurred. The steel tables, the concrete walls, the shattered lightbulb—they twisted and smeared like wet paint. She saw colors she couldn't name, heard sounds that didn't exist.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
The fall ended. She didn't land on the smooth floor of the vault. She landed on something hard, gritty, and incredibly hot.
Elara gasped, opening her eyes.
The first thing she saw was the sun. It was a furious, white-hot ball in a deep, unforgiving blue sky. The air was a furnace, baking her skin through her thin silk blouse.
She pushed herself up onto her elbows, her head spinning. Her entire body ached.
"This... this isn't the museum."
It was a stupid thing to say, but her brain was struggling to catch up. She wasn't in the city. She was in a vast, open-air courtyard, paved with sun-baked sandstone. The air smelled of dust, spices, sweat, and something metallic... like blood.
Dozens of people surrounded her, but they weren't museum patrons.
They were soldiers. Huge men, built of muscle and sinew, clad in dark, hardened leather armor and bronze helmets. They carried massive, curved spears and stared at her with open, undisguised shock.
She scrambled to her feet, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
"Where am I? What is this? Is this some kind of... historical reenactment?"
The soldiers didn't answer. They just watched her. One of them barked a command in a harsh, guttural language. Elara's mind, the mind of a researcher, frantically sorted through linguistic files. It wasn't Latin. It wasn't Greek. It was...
It was ancient Ashurian. A dead language. A language she had only ever seen carved on tablets.
...Jel'kasha! Hi'ra! (A witch! Seize her!)
Two guards surged forward. Elara yelped and tried to run, but her rubber-soled heels slipped on the dusty stone. They grabbed her arms, their grips like steel vises.
"No! Stop! Let me go! I'm a researcher! I'm... I'm an American citizen!"
Her words were meaningless noise to them. They dragged her forward, through the stunned crowd of soldiers, toward a raised platform at the far end of the courtyard.
She fought, but it was useless. She was a scholar, not a warrior.
"Please!" she cried, desperation clawing at her throat. "I don't understand!"
They forced her to her knees at the base of the platform. The hot stone seared her skin through her denim.
"Look at the King!" one guard snarled, shoving her head down.
Elara, trembling, forced her gaze upward.
On the platform sat a throne. It wasn't a gilded, European-style chair. It was a massive, brutalist thing, carved from black basalt and shaped like a coiled scorpion, its tail arching over the top.
And on the throne sat a man.
He was the only person sitting, yet he dominated the entire space. He wasn't old, as the statues depicted him. He was young, perhaps not even thirty. He was draped in dark red robes, his chest bare beneath intricate bronze armor that left his powerful arms exposed. Black hair was tied back from a face that was severe and, to her horror, breathtakingly handsome.
He was beautiful, in the way a drawn sword is beautiful—all sharp angles and deadly promise.
But it was his eyes that held her. They were a cold, pale gold, like a lion's. They scanned her, taking in her strange blue pants, her silk shirt, her short, terrified breaths. There was no confusion in his gaze. Only cold, absolute authority.
He slowly raised one hand, and the entire courtyard fell into a deathly silence.
Elara's blood ran cold. The research, the data, the three weeks of sleepless nights... it all clicked into place.
The bronze armor. The scorpion throne. The Ashurian language.
This wasn't a reenactment. This wasn't a dream.
The man on the throne was the one from her textbooks. The one whose seal was still, presumably, sitting on a table two thousand years in the future.
This was Emperor Kaelen. The Tyrant. The Scorpion King.
And he was staring
at her as if she was something he had just decided to crush.