Page 64 of Rise of the Gods: Vardor's Destiny
It was my turn to protest. "Don't. You know how much you mean to me. I wouldn't want anything else but you. Given a choice, I would always say yes, even if I had to walk through the depths of hell."
"You've given up so much for me, Vardor, and the one thing you ask of me?—"
"Stop." I shook my head. "There is only one thing, and that's you. Always and forever."
That afternoon was seared into my memory. In part because it was only a week later that Maezharr attacked and our life changed irrevocably, but also because for the first time in ourthousands of years together, she had shown me her vulnerable side. One she had kept well-hidden until then.
My love for her still burned with a frightening intensity inside me, but so did my love for Roweena as she stood next to me on deck of the ship as it entered Cairo via the Nile River, tugged along by smaller boats.
Cairo stretched ahead of us, sprawling and golden, a vast city beyond anything I had ever imagined.
I gripped Roweena's hand, the only familiar thing in a world that had changed beyond recognition. This land had once been mine, a place of rivers and life, a kingdom of green where the sands had not yet claimed dominion.
What I saw was not the land I remembered.
"This is Cairo," Roweena said softly beside me, her voice filled with the same reverence I had only ever heard when she spoke of this place. "The city that has stood the test of time."
Time.
I had been gone for so long that the world had reshaped itself without me. What had once been an oasis, filled with trees, palms, and Vaelora's great palace, had been swallowed by stone and dust.
Roweena leaned into me, her eyes bright with something I didn't understand. Veneration. Wonder. Love. I had seen her look at me that way before. She had always longed to come here, had spoken of it as if it were her destiny. And yet, as I stared down at the impossibly large city, my mind could not reconcile what I saw with what I had once known.
"You've been here before," she murmured, watching me.
I nodded, my jaw tightening. "Not here. Not... like this."
Her brow furrowed, but I wasn't sure how to explain it. How did I tell her that this was not the land I remembered? That once, the earth had been lush and alive, ruled by a goddess whosepalace had stood where those strange, pointed structures now loomed?
I had never seen anything like them—vast, triangular monuments of smooth stone, standing defiant against time, the desert, and the elements. They dominated the plateau, casting their long, unnatural shadows over the desert as if they had always been there.
They had not.
Vaelora's palace had stood there once. A great temple of white marble, columns stretching toward the heavens, surrounded by groves of fruit-laden trees and pools of water so clear they reflected the sky itself.
Now, there was nothing but these towering stone shapes and the dry breath of the desert.
"What are those?" I asked at last, unable to tear my gaze from them.
Roweena's lips parted slightly in pure, unadulterated veneration. "The Great Pyramids of Giza."
"Pyramids," I repeated, tasting the word, unfamiliar and foreign.
She turned to me, something between excitement and curiosity lightened her expression. "This wasn't here when you were here?"
I started to shake my head, but then I remembered. Vaelora had spoken of erecting a city beyond compare, a place of greatness that would stand long after mortal empires had crumbled. But when I had walked this land, her vision had been only whispers and half-formed dreams.
And now...
Now it stood.
I exhaled slowly. "She said she would build a city that would never fall. I never thought she meant this."
Roweena smiled, as if she had expected that. "She did more than build a city, Vardor. She shaped history."
I said nothing, but my gaze returned to the pyramids—her pyramids. The world had changed in ways I could not yet grasp, and for the first time, I felt something I had not expected. Humility.
The land I had once called home had outgrown me, had been built into something greater than I ever could have imagined. Vaelora's name might have been long forgotten, faded into the sands. But her creation hadn’t.
