The sands of the Sahara swallowed the last rays of sunlight as Daniel Mercer stepped cautiously into the tomb’s entrance.
His torchlight flickered against the smooth, ancient walls, revealing faded hieroglyphs whispering warnings of vengeance. Sweat trickled down his temple, mixing with the fine layer of dust clinging to his skin.
Behind him, Ahmad, his local guide, shifted uneasily. “We should not be here,” he muttered.
His voice barely carried over the stillness of the chamber. “This tomb.....no one has entered for centuries. It was sealed for a reason.”
Daniel smirked. “And that reason is buried treasure.” He ran his gloved fingers over a golden sigil carved into the doorframe, a depiction of a pharaoh with hollow, sunken eyes.
The engraving felt strangely warm, like skin in the midday sun. He ignored the sensation and turned to Ahmad. “Come on. A few steps inside won’t kill us.”
Ahmad hesitated. Then, as though compelled by something unseen, he followed.
The moment they crossed the threshold, a gust of stale, ancient air brushed against them.
It carried a faint scent, rotting linen, damp earth, and something else. Something that did not belong in the desert.
Something alive.
The Lost Pharaoh’s Tomb
For centuries, the legend of Pharaoh Nefer-ka-Mut had been dismissed as a myth. A ruler cursed by the gods, erased from history, his name deliberately chiselled from every monument.
Unlike other pharaohs whose tombs stood as testaments to their greatness, his was hidden, sealed, and forgotten.
Until now.
Daniel had spent years chasing the legend. Every document spoke of the same terrifying fate, the king who defied the gods, condemned to eternal unrest.
The priests had sealed his body in a chamber no mortal should enter, bound by rituals lost to time.
Yet here he was, standing before the burial chamber, torchlight casting long, wretched shadows against the walls.
Ancient carvings lined the hallway, depicting grotesque images. Men clawing at their own throats, eyes blackened, mouths open in eternal screams. The deeper they ventured, the stronger the scent of decay became.
A single doorway loomed at the corridor’s end, marked with a golden cartouche. Daniel stepped forward, tracing its inscription.
The symbols spoke of vengeance, of a godless king denied peace.
A cold breath touched his ear.
“Leave.”
He spun around. The air stood heavy with dust unmoving.
Ahmad’s face was pale, his hands trembling.
“The pharaoh speaks,” he whispered. “He knows we are here.”
The Murmuring Dark
Daniel ignored the warning. With steady hands, he placed his crowbar between the stone door’s edges and pried it open. The chamber beyond was vast, lined with pillars carved into the shapes of watching figures.
At the room’s centre lay a black sarcophagus. Unlike the faded relics of other tombs, this one gleamed as if untouched by time.
The lid was etched with the same hollow-eyed pharaoh.
Ahmad refused to step inside. “You have gone too far,” he said, voice barely above a breath. “The priests did not seal him away to protect the dead. They did it to protect the living.”
Daniel scoffed and approached the sarcophagus. Dust curled beneath his fingers as he brushed away centuries of stillness. The air thickened, pressing against his chest.
Then he heard it. A voice, faint, rasping coming from inside the coffin.
“Who dares disturb my rest?”
The words were not spoken in the living tongue, yet Daniel understood them as if they had been whispered directly into his skull.
He staggered back, heart hammering against his ribs.
Ahmad was already backing toward the exit. “Seal it. Now.”
But Daniel, driven by greed, placed his hands against the lid and pushed.
The Pharaoh’s Curse Awakens
The stone lid shifted with an earth-shaking groan. Dust and sand erupted into the air, swirling like a living storm. A deep, guttural sigh rose from within the sarcophagus, filling the chamber with an unnatural presence.
The coffin split open. Darkness poured out.
Daniel stumbled backwards, the torch falling from his grasp. The light flickered wildly, illuminating something emerging from the abyss.
A figure wrapped in decayed bandages, but unlike any mummy Daniel had seen.
The wrappings clung to hollow skin, the face beneath sunken yet somehow aware. Eyes burned from deep within their sockets, black voids with shifting specks of gold, like trapped stars.
Its head tilted.
And then it spoke.
“You have freed me.”
A low, deathly chuckle rippled through the air, and the chamber walls trembled. The hieroglyphs flickered as if the stone itself recoiled.
Ahmad cried out, turning to flee, but the door slammed shut with an unseen force. The sound echoed through the tomb, final and unyielding.
Daniel fell to his knees, unable to move. A cold, skeletal hand reached towards him.
The voice returned, this time a whisper of many tongues, layered and shifting.
“Now, I take what is owed.”
The Eternal Scream
A force unseen lifted Daniel off the ground. His lungs burned, as though an unseen hand were squeezing the breath from his body.
His vision blurred, consumed by the flickering glow of the pharaoh’s gaze.
His mind cracked under the weight of ancient voices.
They chanted, sang, and wept, all at once. His thoughts no longer belonged to him.
Ahmad screamed for him, but Daniel could not respond. His body convulsed as the spirit of Nefer-ka-Mut poured into him, filling every fibre of his being with endless, suffocating darkness.
His skin turned grey. His veins darkened, pulsating with something unnatural.
Ahmad pounded against the door, desperate to escape.
Behind him, Daniel laughed.
Or rather, the thing that had once been Daniel did.
Ahmad turned slowly, horror twisting his features. The archaeologist’s body was still there, but something else now inhabited it. The eyes were no longer human.
They burned with divine hunger.
The thing that was Daniel stepped forward, tilting its head, considering its next move. The voice that emerged was layered with countless others, an ancient melody of suffering.
“Run.”
Ahmad obeyed.
The Curse Never Sleeps
The desert winds howled as Ahmad stumbled into the open air, his mind reeling. He did not stop running until he reached civilisation, gasping for breath, barely able to form words.
No one believed his story.
They dismissed him as a madman, raving about curses and gods long dead.
But he knew the truth.
The pharaoh’s horror had not died. It had simply found a new vessel.
And somewhere, in the shifting sands of Egypt, a man named Daniel Mercer walked the earth once more, his soul long gone, his body now ruled by the ancient darkness that should have never been awakened.
And at night, when the wind blew through the dunes, it carried a whisper.
A whisper of a pharaoh laughing.
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