It was the third time—counting her strange dream which actually wasn’t a dream—that Anaïs’s feet touched the gray and dull grains of this strange desert. With Anubis and Isis by her side, the panic she had felt during her first visits was manageable, but the place still made her particularly uneasy. Everything was so empty, with sand stretching as far as the eye could see and no elements of nature, not even a slight breeze or a hint of greenery. The landscape was literally dead.

The jackal god had explained to her that this place was called Kheret-Nedjer, or the Necropolis in a language she could understand. It was a space-time that straddled the world of the living and the afterlife, a doorway between the two dimensions. The corridor with hundreds of doors that they had traversed to enter and exit the Field of Offerings—Sekhet Hetep, the “land” of the Blessed and the Gods—and to reach the Necropolis was a sort of purgatory, a place where souls awaiting judgment rested before being called to the Tribunal of Osiris, the judgment hall. Deceased humans waited their turn behind the hundreds of doors that made up the corridor.

Anaïs appreciated how Anubis had chosen to ignore the fact that she wouldn’t remember any of his explanations in a few minutes. Maybe he had sensed her growing nervousness about losing her memories or not knowing what to expect on the other side of the Duat. In any case, he was trying his best to maintain the conversation, which considerably calmed the young human’s nerves. Isis, on the other hand, was silent and observed a fixed point on the horizon, her gaze distant and lost in thought. She too seemed tense, judging by the way her fingers fidgeted.

The trio walked for a few hundred meters through the gray sand desert until Anaïs saw an enormous stone structure that rose several meters high. It looked like a door frame, and the young woman quickly deduced that it was actually a portal. Yet, she saw nothing through it, only the gray grains and the desert horizon. When the trio stopped in front of the stone, Anubis turned to their human guest, curiosity shining in his eyes.

"You see nothing but the desert, don’t you?"

Anaïs squinted to observe the surroundings because if he was asking, it meant she had missed something. Yet, apart from the portal structure in front of her, there was nothing.

"No. Should I be seeing something else?"

"The souls of the deceased pass through Kheret-Nedjer after their death, and they enter through this door. You don’t see them because you are alive," explained Isis hastily, not wanting to waste time on these details.

"Hmm, I see."

Good, the place would be even creepier, she thought, almost relieved not to see these human souls wandering around her.

“I still think arriving through the Giza necropolis is a bad idea,” Anubis pointed out, turning to his mother. "I don’t understand why there would be a piece of Osiris so close to Memphis if he threw them all into the Nile."

Isis winced, annoyed that her son was questioning their plan so close to departure.

"It’s your amulet that gave us this lead. Seth could very well have wanted to keep one close to him to prevent us from retrieving all the parts. It makes sense to start with the most obvious, doesn’t it?"

"It’s because it’s so obvious that I’m worried... Seth could be waiting for us on the other side. It might be a trap."

"The amulet can’t lie, and it pointed to this area even before Seth got his hands on it. There is a piece, I’m sure of it. Seth wouldn’t expect us to start in his own territory."

Anubis sighed and admitted defeat. He wouldn’t win this battle.

"Fine, but at least wait here while I check that the passage isn’t being watched," he ordered, transforming into a jackal with a uniformly black coat.

In Anaïs’s memory, the animal wasn’t supposed to be that color but rather had fur somewhere between red, beige, and gray. Anubis was the only jackal with a charcoal coat, which helped distinguish him from ordinary beasts, she supposed. Even in his beastly transformation, his divine status was clear. He was sized somewhere between a wolf and a fox, relatively imposing, and his gaze reflected the superior intelligence he was endowed with. His footprints were replaced by jackal paw prints, and he approached the portal to stop a few centimeters from the structure. Two seconds later, a blurry veil formed in the doorway, and Anaïs soon observed the other side of the afterlife. There was only sand-colored stone and artificial light created by torches, judging by the shadows dancing on the walls. The arrival room was relatively dark, which didn’t reassure the young woman much. Since this was the passage for deceased souls, and the place was called a necropolis, she now feared that the other side of the portal led to a real burial site, which made a lot of sense.

Five minutes later, Anubis’s snout appeared through the portal, and he invited them with a nod to cross and join him. Isis stepped through the magical veil without hesitation, unlike Anaïs, whose apprehension about finding herself alone in ancient Egypt was becoming a bit too real for her taste. She knew she had no choice and couldn’t stay here, but the desire was there. The city seemed so peaceful, and the Blessed lived up to their name, judging by the smiles she had seen while strolling through the alleys with the jackal god the day before. Since she didn’t know what to expect in the world of the living, resolving to cross the portal was more difficult than she had imagined. However, under the insistent gazes of the two deities, her legs finally moved, and, with her eyes closed, her body sank into the veil. She felt like she was navigating through a cloud of smoke, but the sensation lasted only a second.

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When she opened her eyes again, she found herself in the dark room she had seen through the portal, alongside Anubis and his mother. It was cool, but there was little oxygen, which increasingly confirmed the young woman’s intuition. If they were underground, as she suspected, it was becoming more and more plausible that the place they had landed in was a burial structure. As they left the small hall to enter a vast maze of corridors with high ceilings and small openings on both sides of the walls with colorful and gilded chests inside, there was no longer any doubt. Each opening was a tomb, and the chests were coffins adorned with gold and precious stones. As they moved away from the portal, the obvious wealth of the sarcophagi faded in favor of simple wooden boxes.

Great, my first vision of ancient Egypt is an underground cemetery. Sets the mood for my new life.

Little by little, the brightness of the torches was replaced by the timid rays of the sun as they approached the exit of the tomb. The jackal god sniffed the air and twitched his ears to detect any unusual or suspicious signs, then resumed his human form before stepping onto the exterior ground to avoid attracting attention. Apart from their attire, which betrayed a certain wealth with the golden jewelry of the two women and their immaculate cleanliness, the two deities looked perfectly human and could easily blend into the world of the living as long as they weren't recognized. At least, that was what Anaïs thought. Reality could also be quite the opposite, and the gods might be the celebrities of this era, known to all and revered even by the smallest and most isolated communities.

Wait, wait... I shouldn't remember their identities...

"I thought I was going to lose my memories," she exclaimed aloud just before they left the tomb, the confusion evident in her voice.

"That is the case," Anubis explained. "In a few hours, you will doubt the reality of what you experienced. Tomorrow morning, you will wake up thinking that all this was just a dream, and the day after tomorrow, your brain will have erased all information concerning the Duat. It would be too traumatic otherwise, and it would be experienced as a trauma for your mind."

So I have a few hours of respite...

The young human had expected a scorching desert landscape like modern Egypt, but that was not the case. It was warm, like a good summer day, but it wasn't as stifling as during her vacations and for a good reason: there was much more vegetation than in her memories. Of course, the ground was covered with fine sand, but there were many trees like date palms and acacias, and the closer the land got to the Nile, the more the sand grains disappeared in favor of greenery and various crops. The prehistoric climate was less dry and harsh thanks to the abundant water from the river, which extended tens if not hundreds of meters farther than in modern times. And, above all, there was none of that dirty concrete that replaced nature. Observing this landscape, Anaïs better understood why the Egyptian civilization could endure for so long.

The trio walked towards the direction of the river, with Anubis retrieving the amulet from his pocket to hold it in his hand. If Anaïs's vision was not failing her, the jewel vibrated and emitted a slight white glow. She assumed this was how they located the pieces and that the closer they were, the more the amulet expressed it magically. She couldn't tell if the current intensity meant that one of Osiris's parts was nearby, but judging by the conversation the two gods had earlier, there must be one in the vicinity. She had been told the day before that Anubis would take her to the city after they retrieved what they came for, as they needed to act quickly before being noticed. Anaïs had accepted, as she had no real choice or voice in this matter.

There was a small village two hundred meters from their position, with small brick houses stabilized by bundles of reeds. They were insulated with mud plaster, a mixture of mud and straw, and were large enough to consist of three or even four rooms depending on the dwelling. However, they were all single-story buildings with no upper floors, except for one or two larger houses that must have belonged to wealthier households. Here, there were fishermen, farmers, herders, and a few rare artisans and nomadic traders who stopped in the middle of the village at what looked like an improvised mini-market. The small community probably housed around five hundred people at best.

The amulet led them to the barley fields on the edge of the river and the village. Anubis encouraged them to bypass the village for fear that some villagers might notice them and find their presence suspicious, making them walk a good quarter of an hour to reach the cultivated land. The field was overflowing with greenery, with cereals having grown a good meter already. The harvest season must have been approaching quickly. The green ears added freshness to the landscape, which Anaïs did not mind at all.

"Seth would have buried one of his members?" Isis wondered, brushing her fingers over the cereals.

"The amulet clearly points to the inside of the field, and someone would have noticed if the piece had been hidden on the surface," Anubis analyzed seriously. "For it to go unnoticed... It would mean he buried it deep enough so the farmers wouldn't see anything when they tilled the soil for planting. I doubt it even stayed in the exact spot where it was buried. The soil is so wet by the Nile; the water might have altered the terrain enough for it to move a few meters."

Anubis stepped first through the barley stalks, pushing them aside with his hand to move forward, quickly followed by Isis. Anaïs found herself alone within seconds, hesitant to follow them. This wasn't her mission, but she didn't know where to go and still needed the jackal god to find her way. Yet, it wasn't the uncertainty of her path that kept her feet from stepping onto the field. It was a presence a few meters away from her, the pressure of an inquisitive gaze directed at her, which had frozen her in place.

When she turned around to try to find the person responsible for this chilling sensation, her eyes landed on a nearby farmer who was observing her every move. She relaxed somewhat, reassured that it was just a simple villager. She supposed he must have found her strange or wondered where she came from, as all the inhabitants likely knew each other in such a small community. When their eyes met and Anaïs did not look away, the man eventually gave up and returned to his activities.

I have a bad feeling about this... she thought before joining the two deities in the middle of the field.