Cairo Outskirts, Giza Plains.

Local Time: 00:47 AM

The desert was no longer sand.

It was meat...

Rotting limbs, shattered bones, broken armor plates, and crushed skulls were pressed into the earth so densely that boots no longer sank, they slid* Every step scraped against something that had once been alive.

Gunfire thundered nonstop.

Tracer rounds carved glowing scars through the dark, tearing through ranks of undead that simply kept coming. The ground reeked of cordite, ozone, and ancient decay baked under supernatural heat.

At the center of the chaos, a small squad moved like a knife through a sea.

Not more than twenty-four people.

Surrounded by millions.

They should have been erased within minutes.

They weren't.

"LEFT FLANK! SAND SNAKES... THREE, NO... FIVE!"

A man wearing half-destroyed powered armor spun, planting a knee into the ground. His name tag, Rafael "Black Jack" Mendez, was barely readable beneath blood and dust.

Former mercenary king of the Somalian pirates, where wars had chewed entire cities into bone.

He slammed his palm down.

A wind star diagram flared beneath his hand.

A compressed cyclone detonated outward, shredding undead bodies into fragments, flinging severed limbs across the battlefield like broken dolls.

"Reloading! Thirty seconds!"

"YOU DON'T HAVE THIRTY!" someone screamed back.

The ground exploded.

A sandworm burst upward, thick as a subway train, plated in petrified sandstone and bone. Its circular maw with jagged sharp teeth snapped shut on two soldiers mid-sprint.

They didn't even scream.

The worm vanished beneath the sand again, leaving only blood and collapsing earth.

"FUCK—!"

BANG!

Before panic could spread... the ground caved.

Not collapsed.

Plummeted!

A shockwave rippled outward in a perfect circle, pulverizing undead for hundreds of meters. Bones turned to dust, sand liquefied. The buried sandworm was crushed flat underground, its corpse erupting upward in chunks.

At the epicenter stood a shiloutte riding a living war-beast.

Two meters tall at the shoulder, leonine body plated with golden-black armor grown directly from its flesh. Its wings were not feathered but crystalline, etched with hieroglyphic sigils that glowed faintly as it moved.

Its face, half lion, half human, was calm, regal, merciless.

Its eyes burned with restrained divinity.

Atop it stood a woman with blood-soaked hair, laughing.

"HAHAHAHA... COME ON THEN!"

They called her Madam K.

She wore a shattered exosuit reinforced with relic tech, half human engineering, half ancient artifact. Her bare frail arms glowed faintly, veins lit with gravitational distortion.

She didn't swing her fists.

She punched gravity.

Each strike sent invisible gravity waves rolling outward, compressing undead rotten skeletons into flat discs, snapping spines, crushing skulls inward like wet clay.

A single downward blow...

The desert folded.

Tens of thousands of undead vanished as the earth buckled and swallowed them whole.

"Madam K! PHARAOH SIGNS... EAST RIDGE!"

She turned.

Far away, atop a dune that hadn't moved since dynasties fell, a figure stood.

Tall and still, wrapped in flowing blue burial robes, eyes burning with cold, undead azure light. In one skeletal hand, he held a staff of bone and lapis, crowned with a scarab skull.

Every movement of the battlefield aligned subtly with him.

Undead warrior obeyed.

He raised the staff.

The sky darkened.

"SHIELD FORMATION!" shouted Anya Volkova, former Spetsnaz storm-caster, lightning crawling along her spine. "STAR ARRAY... NOW!"

Seven soldiers slammed their boots into the ground, forming a rotating star sigil. Wind, thunder, frost, and flame surged together, erupting upward in a spiraling elemental lance that vaporized a corridor straight through the undead horde.

It bought them seconds.

Seconds they were bleeding away fast.

"THIS WAS A TREASURE DIG!" someone yelled hysterically. "WE WERE SUPPOSED TO OPEN A VAULT, NOT FIGHT A FUCKING WAR!"

Madam K laughed.

Not the polite laugh of a noblewoman, nor the refined smile of an academic treasure hunter.

It was the kind of laughter that burst out when blood warmed the veins and bones remembered what they were made for.

"Oh, shut up," she said, rolling her shoulders, cracking her knuckles one by one. "This is much better than hunting treasure."

Her eyes gleamed, before her stretched a sea of skeletons, mindless, obedient, charging toward death with rusted blades and hollow cries.

Some still wore scraps of blackened flesh, hanging like rotten cloth from bone.

To her, they looked like wheat waiting for harvest.

SWOOSH!

A sand snake burst from below without warning.

Twenty meters long, scales like jagged stone, jaws wide enough to swallow a truck whole. It lunged for her sphinx, mouth opening.

Madam K raised a single palm.

Bang!

No flourish, no chant.

The snake stopped.

Then split... from head to tail, its body tore apart as if an invisible blade had passed through it. Green blood sprayed, painting the dunes in arcs. The corpse collapsed in chunks, twitching as gravity finished what she started.

Her hired mercenaries froze.

These were men and women who had fought wars. Who had killed and survived. Who had signed contracts expecting traps, curses, maybe a few guardian beasts.

Not this.

Two hours ago, this land had still been land.

Then the sky broke.

The dead rose.

And everyone died within fifty miles, except them.

They were alive for one reason only.

Her...

Compared to Madam K, they were children wearing soldier skins. Small horses yoked to a cart far too heavy, pretending their legs wouldn't snap.

They glanced at her again.

Athlaea Kemet.

Founder, supreme Commander, the madwoman of the Kemet Group.

Her ash-blonde hair whipped in the wind, streaked with dust and blood. Her face was smeared red, yet her beauty only sharpened, feral, radiant, like a goddess who had just rolled in a battlefield instead of perfume.

Fierce...

Beautiful...

While they fought for survival, she fought for pleasure.

The sphinx beneath her suddenly stiffened, its stone wings twitched. Its burning eyes lifted skyward.

It roared.

Madam K followed its gaze.

"…Whose grandma died," she muttered, squinting upward, "that they're crawling into this god-forsaken place now?"

Her smile faltered.

Shadows were descending.

Whoosh!

The first figure landed gently.

The ground beneath its feet crystallized instantly, sand turning into frozen silica, spreading outward like a disease. In a blink, an entire wave of undead, hundreds of thousands, locked in place, frozen mid-charge.

Even the Pharaoh halted, blue fire flickered in his eyes, then dimmed, golden silica crept up his limbs, swallowing his robes, his crown, his staff.

An absolute silence descended!

A single figure had cleared a mile-wide patch of battlefield just by arriving.

Two more landed behind her, unfolding strange equipment, metal open like mechanical flowers.

Madam K whistled softly, her eyes lifted again.

"…There are more?"

The sky answered.

Three more figures descended, tearing through the locust sea, the black swarm ignited midair. Fire spread unnaturally fast, as if someone had poured kerosene over the sky itself and struck a match.

Locusts screamed.

Burned!

Fell like rain.

Rafael swallowed hard, his voice tight as he spoke into the comm. "Madam K… looks like reinforcements, Divine-grade. Maybe... We should leave."

Relief cracked through his fear. Gods had been reincarnating across the world, everyone knew it now.

This mess?

Above his pay grade!

Someone powerful enough had finally noticed, let them handle it!

Madam K clicked her tongue.

"So what?" she said, patting the sphinx's neck. "Since when did gods scare me?"

The mercenaries stiffened.

"You're not serious..."

"Relax," she added. "I'm not going to punch them."

"…Unless they start it."

She nudged the sphinx forward.

"Let's go take a look."

Fear crawled up spines.

None of them wanted to face godlike beings. But contracts were contracts.

And payment... wasn't finished.

They followed anyway.

Because in this world, everyone knew one rule:

As long as you pay the money...

You are the grandpa.

However, the worst still happened.

The moment they got close enough to see the four silhouettes clearly.

Madam K jumped.

No warning! No signal! No bullshit!

She kicked off the ground and shot forward like a pissed-off cannonball, abandoning her sphinx mid-step, her target crystal clear.

The only man among five women.

Like he owed her money.

Like he had slept with her and vanished.

Like destiny itself had slapped an IOU on his forehead.

The mercenaries behind her nearly pissed themselves.

"FUCK!"

"BOSS?!"

"She jumped! SHE JUMPED!"