Chapter 283

The sky darkened, as if the sun had been snuffed out, leaving nothing but a void above the world. Destruction had already begun, but no one understood it—not yet.

Khalid stood on the balcony of his apartment, staring out over the city. The once bustling streets were now eerily silent. The air felt wrong, heavy with something that couldn't be touched or understood.

It wasn't just the temperature—it was the feeling, like something far older than mankind was watching, waiting. Khalid wasn't sure what had triggered it, but something had. The anger in the world had finally risen high enough, enough for Ra, the ancient god of Egypt, to notice.

He had heard the stories, of course. Everyone had. The myths. The warnings. But Khalid had dismissed them as superstition. Who still believed in old gods these days? Who still believed in the wrath of an ancient being? But as the days passed and the sun began to scorch the earth—blazing with an intensity never before seen—he began to question.

At first, the heat was merely uncomfortable. It wasn't long before it became unbearable. People sweated, stumbled, and gasped for air. Streets cracked beneath the sun's rays. The weak perished in the heat while the strong tried to keep their cool. But as the days wore on, the heat didn't relent. It was like something was feeding on it, growing stronger.

Khalid had watched it all unfold from his small apartment, trying to ignore the gnawing fear in his gut. He'd always believed that the world would end in a way that made sense. An explosion, an alien invasion, maybe a disease that wiped out humanity. Something that felt like an accident, something without meaning. But not this. This was something deliberate, something monstrous.

The earth cracked again, deeper this time. He heard the shriek of metal as a building collapsed in the distance. In the sky, clouds of ash swirled, forming an unnatural darkness. And above it all, Ra's rage echoed in the hearts of every man and woman who dared look up.

Khalid could feel it, too, as if the rage was sinking into his bones. It was a primal fury—God's anger poured out onto the world. He remembered the stories his grandmother used to tell him, about how Ra had destroyed cities in the past. But that was just a myth, wasn't it? A story to make children behave. Now, he wasn't so sure.

The news had long stopped broadcasting. The screens, once filled with the usual noise of the world, now flickered with static. A muffled voice had tried to reassure the masses, telling them to stay calm, that it would pass. But no one believed it anymore.

Khalid walked back into his apartment. His hands trembled as he reached for his phone. He tried to call his mother, his friends, anyone. No connection. Just silence.

He went outside, the heat suffocating against his skin. His shoes stuck to the cracked pavement, his skin burned from the sun that no longer felt like a natural force but something demonic. People moved in slow, stumbling steps. Their faces were drained of color, eyes wide with confusion, terror. The world had become unrecognizable.

He turned, heading down the stairwell of his building. People rushed past him, ignoring his presence, their eyes frantic. They were in denial, clutching at their last threads of normalcy. Khalid wanted to scream at them to wake up, but no one was listening anymore. The sun was too bright now, too angry, and it was too late for anyone to escape its wrath.

He pushed through the crowded streets, dodging debris. The sound of cracking earth echoed under his feet. The world trembled as if it too were holding its breath, awaiting its fate.

Khalid had been a man of logic. He had studied science, had laughed at people who believed in fate, in gods, in forces beyond their understanding. But now, as he stumbled through the wreckage of what had once been his city, he couldn't help but feel the weight of it all. It was as if every step he took was leading him deeper into the jaws of something vast, something ancient.

And then, he saw it.

The sky split open, not with fire or lightning, but with something darker. Something more terrifying. A great eye, huge as the world itself, appeared above him. Its iris was a sickly yellow, glowing like molten gold. It stared down at the city, unblinking, as if it had seen everything before and was now displeased with the show it had been given.

The people screamed, but it didn't matter. No sound could reach the eye of Ra. It knew them. It had seen them all. The eye blinked once, and then a great beam of light shot down, scorching the earth where it landed. The ground turned to glass, cracks spidering out from the center of the impact.

Khalid's heart pounded in his chest as he fell to his knees. The heat had become unbearable. The sun—Ra's power—was everywhere. The sky, once blue, was now a violent shade of red and black. The earth groaned beneath him, as if it were trying to resist the pull of the god's rage.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed. Maybe it was hours. Maybe days. Time felt meaningless now. The light was constant. The sun never set. There was only the burning, unrelenting light that tore through everything.

Khalid had heard the stories. He knew what was coming. The wrath of Ra, god of the sun, was not swift. It was slow, deliberate. It consumed everything it touched, piece by piece, until nothing remained but ash. It was a punishment for arrogance, for forgetting the gods, for thinking man could stand above the natural order of the world.

He had seen the signs. The cracks in the earth. The way the sun had grown more intense each day. The way the world itself had begun to wither under its heat. He had seen it all, but he had ignored it, thinking it was just a phase, that it would pass.

Now, there was no passing. There was only the heat. The fire. The destruction.

The people around him were burning, their skin peeling off in great sheets, their flesh blackening. Their cries for mercy fell on deaf ears. Khalid tried to move, tried to run, but his legs wouldn't obey him. His body was weakening, his muscles strained under the heat.

He collapsed onto the ground, the ash of the ruined city coating his skin. The heat singed his hair, and his lungs burned with every breath he took. He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing for it to end. But the end did not come.

Instead, Ra's gaze locked onto him. The eye looked down, studying him with a terrible patience. Khalid could feel its presence inside his very bones, like a thousand suns all concentrated in one place. The god saw him for what he was: a small, insignificant human, unworthy of pity, unworthy of mercy.

There was no escape from Ra. There was no escape from the wrath of a god who had been forgotten, disrespected, ignored. The ground beneath Khalid cracked again, and he felt his body sink into it, as though it were consuming him.

As he sank deeper, the light from the eye of Ra grew stronger, hotter. His body twisted, his skin burned away, until all that was left was the essence of his suffering.

And as his vision blurred, he heard it. A final, soft voice, not from his own mouth, but from deep within the earth.

A single, guttural sound.

The sound of Ra laughing.